Just about absolute. Fall off bridge onto car, I guess not. Olympic sprinter dashes out from car intentionally trying to be hit? Guess not either. Clothed mostly in black on a rainy night on a freeway? Not either.

But you hit a kid in daytime? It's your fault. Period.

> You seem to be implying that there are no circumstances in which a vehicle can hit a pedestrian and the driver not be at fault... which is absurd.

It is absurd, but that doesn't mean that the attitude can't be useful!

In teaching my teenager to drive, I drilled into him the fact that, in every accident, regardless of who is "at fault", there is almost always something that the other party could have done to mitigate it. I gave him plenty of situations as examples...

You're going down a street that has kids on the sidewalk? You better be prepared to have one of those kids come out in front of the car while rough-housing, playing, whatever.

You had right of way? Maybe you did, but did you even look at the opposing traffic to see if it was safe to proceed or did you just look at the traffic light?

I've driven, thus far in my life, roughly 600000km (maybe more) with 2x non-trivial accidents, both ruled not my fault. In hindsight, I could have avoided both of them (I was young and not so self-aware).

I'm paranoid when driving, and my stats are much much better than Waymo's (have never injured anyone - even my 2x accidents only had me injured), even though I drive in all sorts of conditions, and on all sorts of roads (many rural, some without markings).

Most people don't drive like this though (although their accident rate is still better than Waymo's).

No it's not. The same principle applies to rules of right of way on the water. Technically the 32 foot sailboat has right of way over a triple-E because the triple-E uses mechanical propulsion.

You have a responsibility to be cautious in heavy equipment no matter what the signage on the road says, and that includes keeping a speed at which you can stop safely if a person suddenly steps onto the road in situations where people are around. If you are driving past a busy bar in downtown, a drunk person might step out and you have a responsibility to assume that might happen. If you have to go slower sometimes, tough.