Now with speed overlay
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNuIZYaRrWI[/video]

Watching that video a number of times, because of the line of trees and oncoming vehicles, plus the van driver likely not really expecting a large vehicle to be coming from the right, the truck isn’t really noticeable until it’s almost at the junction; I’m pretty sure the last thing I’d be expecting is some jackass to come screaming out of a side road without apparently slowing for approaching traffic. I wonder if the side-road has give-way signs; I’d expect it to, so pulling straight across without stopping should be a clear infringement.

Compulsory retest with an emphasis on observation for those on the front page who saw a car transporter 🙂

not sure what the answer is to that (other than driverless vans!)

Drones!

The video starts with the filming vehicle just completing an overtake (which can only be on the lorry which comes past as it is parked on the verge. I guess the timber truck has clocked this lorry and is hoping to get in front of it (being empty he doesn’t want to be stuck behind a potentially slow moving truck) and is so fixated on the fast approaching truck he fails to notice the video car. Same way that many people pull out in front of bikes/motorbikes.

I reckon the van was obscured by the A pillar and the mirror. As has already been noticed, the HGV is on a constant bearing from the van i.e. it’s in the same position in the van’s windscreen, so with a straight approach from the side road, the same will be true for the view of the van from the HGV, and it looks like it’s at just the right angle to be behind the A pillar.

The HGV driver could have looked several times in the 5+ seconds before the approach and not seen the van. Not making excuses, but a likely explanation.

I bet that left a massive skid mark

I bet the car isn’t Hi Viz.

Now with speed overlay

Hang on a minute, isn’t he driving a van?

So the limit for him is 50 on an NSL single carriageway?

Looks like Molgrips was right he was going over the speed limit – and he is a bit daft for incriminating himself.

That doesn’t excuse the transporter driver though.

EDIT: hmmm he says in the YouToob comments: “My van is not restricted to 50, it has rear seats and windows?”. But then he also complains about the average speed cameras which are forcing vans to obey the limit.

“My van is not restricted to 50, it has rear seats and windows?”.

Only valid if it’s caddy sized or has been re-plated if it’s a Vivarro/Transit sized vehicle. My boss was ticketed for 65 on a dual carriageway in the crew van (5 seater), learning the hard way about weight restrictions.

Looks like as we thought – he does back off through the junction, fair play to him – looks like he’s seen the lorry but doesn’t think it’s going to pull out, as we thought above.

It’s clear when scrutinising the video that the lorry’s not braking and hence looks like he’s going for it – but of course that’s totally different to being in the driving seat. Plus whilst we may take cues like that when riding bikes, the speeds are much higher when driving so it happens quicker.

As far as I’m concerned he’s in the clear. Case closed 🙂

Plus whilst we may take cues like that when riding bikes, the speeds are much higher when driving so it happens quicker.

Interestingly in the YouToob description of the second video he notes that he is a motorcyclist and is used to this kind of thing happening on his bike, but it’s a bit more unusual for someone to SMIDSY a big sodding van.

I suspect his experiences on a bike may have actually helped him there, many drivers wouldn’t have processed that situation until it was too late.

I suspect his experiences on a bike may have actually helped him there, many drivers wouldn’t have processed that situation until it was too late.

Yes. I found that experience from MTBing helped me in my low speed situation – being able to read ahead and pick a line, so to speak whilst under pressure. I basically did what he did only on the other side – had to slot my car as much as possible in the shrinking gap between the pulling out car and the queue of traffic oncoming. Ended up with a slightly dented bumper on the corner instead of a frontal smash.

The problem with “post event analysis” is that it is just that, post event. You know the outcome.

In the real world, trucks arrive at T junctions several millions times a day. if every time you saw one, you performed an emergency stop, you’d never get anywhere at all (and you’d get rear ended all the time too, ooh matron…..

So, regression to normality becomes the significant factor in (near) accidents like this. In fact, i think the driver did ok. He was driving at an appropriate speed (imo) and when it became clear the truck wasn’t going to stop, he brakes under control, and remembered to steer out of the way )amazing how many people just brake and then drive straight into the object, even when they could have just driven around it!)

I think a fair proportion of distracted drivers on our roads probably wouldn’t have even spotted the truck at all and just driven straight into it……..

This nails it for me.

It’s easy to look at that video and see a lorry that’s “obviously” not going to stop, when there’s a big text box on the side of the vid going “watch the lorry approaching from the right.” Fact is, most drivers would expect him not to just pull out into traffic. In fact, I’d expect the majority of drivers would’ve been gazing into the middle distance and not seen it at all.

Even a relatively observant driver would see it and assume that it was going to stop, it’s difficult to gauge relative speed from that video but there would be a delay between seeing the lorry, realising he was coming in a bit hot, realising that he wasn’t stopping but pulling out onto the first half of the carriageway, and realising that he’d no intention of stopping at all. As Graham says you still need to process what you’re seeing, and disbelief would slow your reactions too – “he must have seen me.” Then once you’ve realised what’s going on you’ve to make a decision very quickly on what action to take.

I’d like to think that I’d have seen him, and would’ve been at least backing off and covering the brake before he pulled out; I do tend to scan into junctions and across crossroads just in case someone’s decided that red is the new green. But it’s difficult to really know. I reckon the van driver did at least as well as could be reasonably expected of anyone, and considerably better than most people would’ve done.

Interestingly – the visibility is very good at that jucntion – could this be part of the problem? Because we’re encouraged to continue without stopping at give ways when you can see, people want to do it, and this could lead to this. If there’d been a few more trees in the way the lorry driver would’ve been forced to stop.

This is acknowledged when designing roundabouts, I think – they make the entries sharper to force pepole to slow down. There’s a bugger of a roundabout near our house that’s really hard to get out of – and it’s because it’s TOO well sighted that people approaching it don’t bother slowing down (they have right of way after all) and cruise through at 25. Because it’s small though it means there’s never a chance for anyone else to get out.

So – can you have too much visibility?

I reckon the van driver did at least as well as could be reasonably expected of anyone, and considerably better than most people would’ve done.

+1

Through his own actions he walked away uninjured from what could have easily been a fatal accident. I’d count that as a win.

Anecdotally,

I used to work off J20 (Lymm) of the M6. I was turning right off the odd little double-roundabout junction, and the number of people entering the roundabout from the opposite carriageway who just didn’t stop was incredible.

It got to the point where I was expecting them not to stop by default, covering the brakes, and looking for eye contact with the approaching drivers so that I knew they’d seen me. Even when they’d looked me right in the eyes I reckon I had about one a week who still just sailed into the junction with gay abandon, and many of them were trucks or vans. Whether they just don’t see, or don’t care because they’re bigger than you, I don’t know. But it was definitely a Thing.

So – can you have too much visibility?

Absolutely – classic Risk Compensation.

If you make a road “safer” by making it straighter, with better sight lines, wider lanes, smoother surfaces etc then people will drive faster on it and subsequently the actual risk won’t fall by nearly as much as you might expect.

So are the police involved?

Whether they just don’t see, or don’t care because they’re bigger than you, I don’t know.

I’d guess it is a bit of both.

If you are much smaller then you present less of a threat to them and you don’t register on the instinctual “caveman” predator/prey brain. It’s an extra mental step to consider the threat that they pose to you.

And if you are “unusual” traffic (i.e. something not car-shaped, or even a car doing something different to the rest of the herd) then that can require an extra mental leap too.

So are the police involved?

Yep. Telegraph article said “The junction is known as something of an incident black spot and Police Scotland, who have been made aware of the video, are now investigating.”

I cycle through J30 of the M4 a lot, and I’m always worried that people coming up the sliproad from the West won’t stop and will simply take me out. However it’s actually a little difficult to see because of the crash barriers and fences on the overpass, and because you come up from below the roadway. So people seem quite happy to stop and look properly.

If road designers show people a huge expanse of road it seems that their brain is happy to assume it’s clear without a close look (including myself here).

It was very foggy this morning on the way to work, the amount of drivers without lights on was surprising, and they were usually the ones in the silver/grey/fog coloured cars 😕

Houns – Member
Logging truck driver being a bat £&)( mental driver shocker

There is something especially bat excrement mental about logging truck drivers, some absolute loons on the A68 usually.

Thank god it wasn’t DezB in the van.
He would have carried on driving into the lorry to ‘make a point’.
Or maybe caught up with the lorry and crashed into it, also to ‘make a point’.

So are the police involved?

It’s on the H&I Division facebook feed as being investigated.

It’s on the H&I Division facebook feed as being investigated.

Gotta get one of those cameras!

“My van is not restricted to 50, it has rear seats and windows?”.

Only valid if it’s caddy sized or has been re-plated if it’s a Vivarro/Transit sized vehicle. My boss was ticketed for 65 on a dual carriageway in the crew van (5 seater), learning the hard way about weight restrictions.[/quote]

It’s not even as simple as that, I’ve had two VW T4 Multivans, both 5/7 seaters, and obviously both the same size etc.

First one was subject to the “van” limits. But the current one isn’t.

It’s all down to what’s on the V5, not necessarily the size/shape/seats/windows etc.

Aye,, it’s all a bit confusing and includes factors like rear windows, whether or not there’s a bulkhead and the relative length of the unseated load bay to the rest of the vehicle.

A Crew Van (therefore normally with a bulkhead) will be at the lower limits.

On a related “is that truck stopping or not” (not even “what truck”) note, one tip I always recall from Motorcycle Roadcraft (I think, the equivalent of the car manual Roadcraft) – if a vehicle is stopped at a T junction as you approach, to pull out, check the wheels (as they turn and can be seen to change quicker) rather than the vehicle itself (although eye contact with driver is good).

Gotta get one of those cameras!

I bought one after nearly being rammed by a Big Black Car on my side of the road. A week later same B B C was tailgating me, showing how skilled they were by being really close.

Wished I’d bought a second dash cam for the rear winsdow.

I use that more when pulling out of a T junction. I never rely on indicators of vehicles on the “main” road and always wait until the approaching vehicle has actually started to manoeuvre into the road I’m exiting.

Just over a year ago I had an incident like in the video. Other driver in an MPV just didnt look right as she came out of a minor road to our right at a cross-roads. We were right on the junction though and in the slow motion that happens during something like this I remember glancing over to her and seeing she was completely oblivious to us, presumably right to the point she ploughed into the side of us as she didn’t brake at all (I was busy trying to make sure we didn’t plough into the side of the guy sitting at the junction on our left). Fortunately the pub on the corner had CCTV which instantly dispelled the claims of “you came out of no-where” that came up as soon as her husband appeared on the scene (who she was out of the car and on the phone to as soon as the accident happened instead of coming over to check we were okay in the car she just drove into). Never even so much as an apology.

Then this week I have had two people cut across me at a traffic light cross-roads when I have been turning right and they have been turning left. 1st one nearly hit the back of the car in front of us and I had to brake hard and slotted in behind it. I was speechless.

“you came out of no-where”

What does that even mean? Are they suggesting you beamed down from the Enterprise in front of them?

People.

What does that even mean? Are they suggesting you beamed down from the Enterprise in front of them?

I think this is where the video is intersting, because it shows the reality of many SMIDSYs. The truck driver never even gave himself a chance of having a proper look for anything coming… He just went.
This is why bikes appear from nowhere.

What does that even mean? Are they suggesting you beamed down from the Enterprise in front of them?

People.

the mind boggles. Police where baffled too and when the pub landlord showed they the CCTV footage they came back and could confirm that indeed we did not come from no-where but drove down the road in a safe and reasonable manner and the blame was 100% the other party.

Police can confirm that following enquiries in to video footage of a lorry on the A9 at the Tomich junction, a 43 year-old man has been reported to the Procurator Fiscal for road traffic offences.
Police would like to remind all road users to be vigilant when driving, especially when approaching or negotiating busy junctions.

Good.

Though, as the guy who actually posted the video said, given that it is a known “blackspot” what they really need to do is look at why the layout of that junction encourages people to behave that way.

I’ve had a few incidents recently too. I don’t know if anyone knows the A3, but in several places it has very minor roads that join the dual carriageway with almost no sliproad. Well, someone came down one and drove straight onto the road in front of me at about 30mph. i could sort of see the situation developing, so was covering the brake thinking “he’s not going to? is he? is h… YEP… ” and braked very very heavily (traffic in outisde lane), smoke off tyres etc..

Calmed down, then overtook and he was completely oblivious.

Anyone recommend a dash cam? Do they do ones that record front and rear automatically?

I’d be interested to hear if anyone’s had dash-cam video accepted by their insurance Co. in support of a claim. I did read somewhere that Aviva stated they wouldn’t accept such. But then I wouldn’t personally use Aviva for other reasons.