As cold winter weather leaves us for spring’s warmth and eventually the heat of summer many area residents will be dusting off their bikes, taking them out of their garages and onto the road for some healthy exercise and fun. However, in addition to always taking the proper safety precautions such as wearing a helmet or using lights at night riders and following all applicable laws there is one rule in particular that all DC-area cyclists need to know: contributory negligence.
Contributory negligence is an old “common law” doctrine holding that if a person is injured in part due to his or her own negligence (i.e. his or her negligence “contributed to” the event that caused the injury) the injured person is not entitled to collect any money damages from the other party involved. Under this system if the injured person is 1% negligent and the other party is 99% negligent they do not get a single penny of recovery under the law.
Sound harsh? Yes it does – and that is because it is. As the law evolved the results of contributory negligence lead the vast majority of states to change this rule in favor of “comparative negligence” where the injured person may still recover money damages, but the amount of money may be lessened due to their own negligence that also caused the accident. That 1% versus 99% example seems a lot fairer under that system. Currently only four states (and the District of Columbia) still apply “pure” contributory negligence along the common law lines. However, two of those states are Maryland and Virginia-placing the entire area under this regime.
Therefore, it is critical that area residents know what this rule means in practice. For example, if a rider wears headphones and gets into an accident this may bar recovery, especially if local law (as is the case in Virginia) classifies this behavior what is called negligence per se. That means that under the law the headphone-wearing rider is negligent as a matter of law no matter what other circumstances may or may not have played into the accident and he or she will not be able to recover even from a driver who admits or is found negligent. The same result may happen if the cyclist is speeding or in violation of some other traffic rule they may or may not know of.
There is one major caveat to all of this: the negligence of the injured person must have actually contributed to the cause of the accident. So, if a cyclist is riding at night without proper lights and reflectors and is struck in a well-lit parking lot their negligence may not have actually been a partial cause of the injury. Under this system it becomes essential that riders are extremely careful in what they say and whom they speak with in the aftermath of an accident. Being injured on the roads is a stressful and difficult ordeal, and because one small act of negligence may prevent all recovery those on the other side of the dispute will be digging for this information. This may all seem like a draconian rule or a relic from history, but even if sometimes unfair it is the law and resident bike riders are better off knowing how it works.