No justification if you hit a pedestrian in reverse

Maximum attention is required when maneuvering the car in reverse gear, even more so after the sentence number 6150 of the Court of Cassation which confirmed the criminal conviction of a motorist, guilty of having hit a pedestrian, despite the movement of the vehicle at a pace. man. The Stoats considered the low speed of the car irrelevant as a justification, also in consideration of the consequences suffered by the over eighty-five year old who was accidentally hit and fractured his wrist. In commenting on the consequences of the February 14 pronouncement, the experts of the Seac group’s periodical All-In Giuridica underline: “the reverse maneuver must be performed with extreme caution, slowly and with full control of the space behind.

From this it follows that if the driver realizes that he has a road behind him which does not make the possible presence of pedestrians or the arrival of other vehicles perceptible, if he cannot help but carry out the manoeuvre, he must place himself in the conditions to check the road resorting, if appropriate, to the collaboration of third parties to help him during the manoeuvre”. And again, they add, precisely on the basis of the principles expressed by the Court, “should, due to the particularity of the case, any prudential measure prove to be insufficient or adoptable, the driver must give up the maneuver rather than jeopardize the safety of third parties, even more so when reversing can be avoided by carrying out an alternative maneuver to merge into traffic”.

In the case in question, the Court of Appeal of Florence had confirmed in the second instance the sentence imposed on a motorist by the Court. The driver had been found guilty of serious bodily harm (article 590-bis of the Penal Code), as through negligence, inexperience, imprudence and failure to comply with the relevant rules, she had hit a pedestrian while reversing, causing him bodily harm serious. Sentence in fact confirmed by the Cassation which deemed the motorist’s appeal, based on the paucity of the gait, as inadmissible.

The Court underlined how the judges on the merits have in any case recognized in the motorist’s conduct a profile of specific guilt, constituted by the violation of article 154 of the Highway Code, and in this sense the fact that the collision is irrelevant minor state. Highway Code which in paragraph 1 of article 154 of the Road Traffic Code states: “Drivers who intend to perform a maneuver to join the flow of traffic, to change direction or lane, to reverse the direction of travel, to reverse, to turn right or to the left, to take another road, or to enter a place not subject to public traffic, or to stop, they must: make sure they can carry out the maneuver without creating danger or hindrance to other road users, taking into account the position, distance, direction of them”.