BBC Article

Not much substance or real progress/intent, but at least it’s a start

Keir Starmer is a good ‘un. He seems to see the failure of justice that we hear about so often in road KSI cases.

By calling for all KSIs to be referred to the CPS rather than to the judgement of police officers (who may subscribe to the attitudes described by Martin Porter in the article) he is calling for the sort of incremental change that may lead to better justice for people killed or maimed on the road.

Were he to go all-out and call for Strict Liability, it would be easier for the conservative Powers That Be to dismiss him as an extremist or an idealist.

Last year a Freedom of Information request by BBC’s Newsbeat found that between 2007 and 2014 there were 276 recorded incidents where a cyclist was killed in an accident involving a motor vehicle.

Of these, 148 – 54% – resulted in the driver of the vehicle being charged with an offence. Of those found guilty, fewer than half went to prison.

I wonder what the comparable stats relating to drivers killing drivers are like.

I once caused an accident on the motorway. I changed lanes without observing properly and forced another driver into the crash barrier. No-one was hurt but the guy had a big scrape down the side of his car.

I was completely straight with the attending officers: “I made a mistake and changed lanes with this guy in my blind spot”. I was fully expecting to be arrested for Driving Without Due Care, but the officer said “I should arrest you, but we see this sort of thing all the time. We’ll let your insurance company sort it out.”

Obviously I was relieved. But it left me with the impression that the police saw “a moment’s inattention” as not a matter for the courts.

SO…

Let’s say I had made the same mistake, but the following vehicle had been a motorbike, and I had caused the rider to come off his bike, causing injury or death. My crime would have been the same – “a moment’s inattention”, or “not **** looking properly”, depending on your choice of phrase – but the consequences hugely more serious.

I would have gone from a ticking off at the roadside to a court appearance, and possibly prison, but for the same action, of failing to observe properly.

An educational and sobering experience for me, in many ways, but it did give me an insight into the difficulties of administering justice on the roads.

PS Admitting to bad driving on this forum is risky. Flame me if you like, but I don’t think you’ll be teaching me anything I haven’t already learned!

hebdencyclist

An educational and sobering experience for me, in many ways, but it did give me an insight into the difficulties of administering justice on the roads.

PS Admitting to bad driving on this forum is risky. Flame me if you like, but I don’t think you’ll be teaching me anything I haven’t already learned!

Modern cars have serious blind spots with their large door pillars. it’s easily done and is the reason I always try and least to check over my shoulder before changing lanes.

Even at that my wifes Leon had such massive A-Pillars you could be merging into a lorry and not see it.

Yep totally agree with all of that.

I can’t really explain what happened. I thought I always did a shoulder check, but on this occasion I can’t have done, otherwise I would have seen him.

I was driving without due care and attention.

Let’s say I had made the same mistake, but the following vehicle had been a motorbike, and I had caused the rider to come off his bike, causing injury or death. My crime would have been the same – “a moment’s inattention”, or “not **** looking properly”, depending on your choice of phrase – but the consequences hugely more serious.

Which is exactly why the police/HSE should be doing root cause analysis, on both KSIs and near misses. There are almost certainly lots of common factors – the driver is a fallible human being but one of them. We can’t (yet) fix that, but we could fix a lot of the other causes.

Not so much the A-pillars, but the number of people I see check their mirrors and not their shoulders scares me.

Yes your rear view and wing mirror have a largely overlapping view of whats behind, but that doesn’t stop the ability to hide a an entire truck (or a bike) in the gap between the wing mirrors view and your view facing forward!

A couple of months ago I was pulling out of a T-junction and turning right, the passenger side A-pillar was blocking out a car coming from the left who was slowing and turning right in to the road I was coming out of. My turning speed matched the speed of the oncoming car which meant that it was behind the pillar and blocked from my view for some time. It was only when my wife shouted out that I realised and stopped, the other driver had come to a halt wondering what the idiot in front of him was doing.

Had there been a collision it would have been my fault, driving without due care and attention. I should have moved my head around to ensure that nothing was hidden from me.

That’s why I do every manoeuvre nice and slowly, just in case I’ve missed anything. Gives me time to look again and the other person time to evade me.

And that’s why I have a problem with the zoomsters, because they can make mistakes just like everyone else, but there’s far less margin for error.

I don’t want to derail this into an argument about road safety but I think it’s already too late.

@thisisnotaspoon – People check their mirrors? Crikey, that’s a bit radical round here! Mirror-Signal-Manouevre, generally they only bother with the last bit.

I wonder what the comparable stats relating to drivers killing drivers are like.

There’s some analysis for “blinded by the sun” fatalities here: https://beyondthekerb.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/erasure/

Only 2 victims in motor vehicles, so probably not statistically significant, but both of them resulted in convictions vs a depressingly low rate for cyclist and pedestrian victims.