I'm sure in pretty much any country a driver is supposed to break if there's a chance of collision.
But consider the following situation: An Average Joe drives down the road. Suddenly out of nowhere a pedestrian appears. Joe hits the brakes, but too late, the poor guy is killed.
He just didn't have time to react. There's no Joe's fault, unless it can be shown that he saw the pedestrian, could stop, but deliberately decided to teach him a lesson.
Now if exactly the same thing happened on a crosswalk, a driver would be at fault. A crosswalk, by design, is a place where pedestrian are crossing. In this case the driver should have expected a person appearing on the road and be prepared to stop. Unless it can be proven that a pedestrian has done something nasty, like jumped on the car from a tree.
But consider the following situation: An Average Joe drives down the road. Suddenly out of nowhere a pedestrian appears. Joe hits the brakes, but too late, the poor guy is killed.
He just didn't have time to react. There's no Joe's fault, unless it can be shown that he saw the pedestrian, could stop, but deliberately decided to teach him a lesson.
Now if exactly the same thing happened on a crosswalk, a driver would be at fault. A crosswalk, by design, is a place where pedestrian are crossing. In this case the driver should have expected a person appearing on the road and be prepared to stop. Unless it can be proven that a pedestrian has done something nasty, like jumped on the car from a tree.