I have this mate that I ride with a fair bit - Great bloke.
Anyway, when he's not out riding he drives a taxi for a living. Today when he was out working some muppet on a bike rear ended him and smashed his brake lights and dented his car.
He tells me that he had overtaken this cyclist and given them plenty of space, then a couple of hundred yards along the road he wanted to turn left, so checked his mirrors to see where the cyclist was (but couldn't see him), signalled, then noticed that he was going to have to slow down and stop to let people crossing the road cross safely - bang bike hits him.
He knows that the cyclist probably doesn't have any insurance....
What should he do? The guy cant work until his car lights are fixed and he is a bit skint.
why can't he work with the broken tail light? Doesn't seem to matter to the private hire cars around here.
Did he get the details of the cyclist? If not, he's fairly screwed!
It's the cyclist's fault by the sounds of it, but it's likely to be his word against yours unless he got independent witnesses.
Likely to be a shrug your shoulders and get on with your life moment I reckon.
We'll never know as none of us were there but I bet the cyclists story is a different one, taki over took him and immedaitely turned left and stopped giving a new light cover won't be much from a scrapyard so if I was him I'd get it fixed and back to work.
You guys are clearly not spending enough time trawling through STW 🙄
😉
"over took him and immediately turned left"
Probably the most annoying thing that can happen to you on a bike short of been run over.
Or possibly
"overtook and immediately stopped to queue for traffic"
😉
Was it raining?
Was the cyclist riding faster than 15mph but slower than 25mph?
Where the police and an ambulance called straight away?
Not sure, 20mph to be precise, and they turned up pretty sharpish. 😉
Interesting experiment...
Stu - that's why i did it.
Seeing as he is a taxi driver, he's probably lying anyway.
Don't feel bad, they all do. They are an industry of immensely fragile individuals. Surprised he's not got "whiplash", happened to be be off duty with his whole family who also all got "whiplash", and needs a hire vehicle as he would lose thousands in earnings over the odd day off (until you ask for his tax returns) but also strangly cant afford repairs until the cyclist gives hims hundreds for his crappy old toyota Carina 400k miles diesel.
I hope the cyclist says he was cut up and claims from the taxi.
yours sincerely,
from a cynical claims handler in the insurance industry.