[rangibaby]

> At speed, injuring the pedestrians who get in your way is an inevitability

Well, that's the point. You are supposed to be riding or driving at a speed that you can safely stop if you need to. This is the same in every country, right?

> Japan is messaging that Japanese people ought to stay far, far away from bicycling unless they have particularly extreme appetite for risk.

Bicycling to work or school is very common here

> Japan takes the pedestrian victim-blaming even further than necessary in this case, and bills their families for the cleanup costs.

They sue for damages because they have to arrange buses for tens of thousands of people. It's not cheap

[closeparen]

>stop if you need to

If you're on a 45mph road and someone puts themselves in your path 10 feet ahead, no, we don't say that you should have actually been going 5mph just in case something like this was going to happen. You're required to yield at crosswalks, but there's an expectation that mutual acknowledgement between you and the pedestrian happens at a reasonable distance before the pedestrian enters the roadway. Similarly, if someone enters an intersection on red, you have a duty to try and avoid the crash, but if it's too late, that's on them.

[bkor]

> If you're on a 45mph road and someone puts themselves in your path 10 feet ahead

This is why roads should be designed not to cause such a situation. If you have a pedestrian path really close to a 45mph road the design is bad. I'm not aware of anywhere having such a high speed road where a pedestrian could walk along side it (in Netherlands). Usually it's more closed off with pedestrians being banned.

[8note]

you can tell beforehand that its possible for somebody to suddenly jump out, so yes, you probably should be going 5mph

[closeparen]

It's always possible for someone to enter the road, even a restricted-access freeway.