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I suppose if you're cycling around in the dead of night on a full black bike with all black clothes and no lights and you get hit by a car, it sort of is your own fault.
The point of liability is that it isn't binary.
Greenbank-
@skydancer @Greenbank I was trying to take it to the logical extremes. Imagine a cyclist riding down the centre of a straight road, who is hit from behind by a car.
In the case of a perfectly camouflaged cyclist who has somehow made themselves completely invisible to other road users, the driver (who is not breaking any other laws) would be blameless and the cyclist 100% at fault.
At the other extreme - a cyclist wearing normal clothes, in the day time, in ideal conditions - the driver should be able to see the cyclist. If the driver hits the cyclist from behind again, the driver is 100% at fault, and the cyclist has done absolutely nothing wrong.
The point is that in the real world everything falls somewhere between those two scenarios. I don't think you could write a law that says "when it's darker than this amount of illumination, this item of clothing/safety gear is required". So you write an ambiguous law instead, and let a judge decide on a case-by-case basis.
frankenbike
I suppose if you're cycling around in the dead of night on a full black bike with all black clothes and no lights and you get hit by a car, it sort of is your own fault. If you get hit by a car riding a normal bike, wearing normal clothes, without a reflective ankle bracelet in the day time it's the driver's fault.
It would be hard to legislate that, really, so I suppose a law with some wiggle room is the best way to deal with it.