On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:00:51 -0600, Jim Yanik
wrote:

Ed Pawlowski wrote in
:

On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:33:25 -0600, "HeyBub"
wrote:


Can you imagine what would happen if, while you're driving along Route
101 enjoying the scenery, your girlfriend squirmed around with an
urgent need to put her face in your lap and in so doing hit the shift
lever?


True story. A big lawsuit was being reported on a regular basis in
the Hartford Courant. A couple left a bar, probably inebriated, in
his Mercedes SL. Hit a tree, both were ejected, he was killed. She
says he was driving, pay my medical bills. His family says she was
driving, pay for our loss.

Her defense? Your honor, I could not have been driving. I was giving
him a BJ at the time. At "the moment" he hit the gas.


if they were ejected,then they were not wearing their seatbelts.
Probably against the law.
Sorry,no payment;operating the vehicle in an illegal manner.

That's between each of them and the government. But between a driver
and a passenger, the question is who is negligent in a manner that
caused the accident.

Failing to wear a seatbelt is negligence but it doesn't cause the
accident.

And between a driver and passengers, it doesn't matter who is
violating the law if that violation is not a cuase of the accident or
its severity. That is, if the driver were going over the speed
limit, the judgment against him would likely be more, but because
going faster causes greater injuries, not because it's illegal.

In some states, comparative negligence may be calculated, if the
passenger did something to help cause the accident.

In a few states contributory neglignece can prevent someone who was
only slightly at fault from recovering from the other party, but that
refers to negligence that caused the accident, not failing to wear a
seatbelt that results only in greater injury.

IOW,if you don't want to wear your belts,then you take responsibility for
the consequences.

A good maxim but in this case, only partly the law.

If the driver or another car were at fault, failure to wear seatbelts
could cause your judgment against the other driver to be reduced to
the injury you would have had had you been wearing your seat belt.

But as between the driver and passenger, the owner or driver could
have insisted that the other party wear hir seatbelt. When I pick up
a hitchhiker, I insist that he wear his seatbelt. With my friends I
don't (although they all do it anyhow.O)

If he was driving, I doubt that any act they were jointly involved in
would be a defense against a claim by her of negligence by him.