It’s interesting that the motorcyclist pleaded guilty. Perhaps there were many other witness statements of him being a dick further up the road? I don’t know. Or perhaps the cops have analysed the footage frame by frame and determined his exact speed since you can see his helmet all the way along that curve and it would be pretty easy to measure the distance along the road that he’s travelled in that time. I’d do it on Google Maps but we don’t know exactly where it was – do we?

Wait, we do:

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.217163,0.1704133,3a,75y,207.2h,92.58t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-ovzA6WR1aX9Oxpg36HaoA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

It’s beyond question that the motorist turned across in front of an oncoming vehicle

I know that road and the curve does mean you need to be sure you can see well past the car ahead of you before turning, so yes, it was careless. The bike doesn’t obviously react at all to the car in his path, although it’s possible he is hauling on the brakes and the video makes it hard to see. There’s a pedestrian crossing just past the shops where the bike comes from, so I’m assuming the lights went green, bike set off and cars were following. It’s possible the bike accelerated above the speed limit just before the impact.

It’s a 30 ahead of 60, a large number of people prepare for the 60 well ahead of time, just by the school that’s up the road o_O.

I reckon he goes from the start of the hedge to the incident in about 4 seconds, and from Google Streetview that looks like around 100m, which is about 56mph. Obviously a shit-ton of error in that estimate but seems reasonable to say he was speeding a significant amount. For him to not have been speeding it would have had to take 8s which it clearly doesn’t.

That confirms it really. If you move forward to the junction on streetview, sightlines around that curve are not so bad, the driver should have had visibility a good distance up the road before committing to the turn. The car in front blocks vision slightly, but that’s the driver’s choice to follow closely and not wait until they could see properly.

As for the rider’s speed, yes, it’s clearly excessive, but if you drove around with the expectation that you’d never encounter anyone speeding or generally being a dick, you’d have a lot more accidents. Driver shares fault here, and hopefully wasn’t just given a pass because the rider was uninsured and had previous.

Driver shares fault here

Sounds like you need to go on a driver awareness course. Obvious that speeder is always at fault: if they’re not speeding the accident simply doesn’t happen.

That confirms it really. If you move forward to the junction on streetview, sightlines around that curve are not so bad, the driver should have had visibility a good distance up the road before committing to the turn.

Perhaps if you were in a truck that sight-line would be correct – as a streetview camera sits a good foot or more above the roof of a streetview car.

The driver was still too close to the car in front to commit to that turn – he should have sat back a few more car lengths before turning. 50/50 IMO.

As a driver you also have to be aware of risks and that includes speeding cars/bikes – if the motorbike had hit a few feet further forward and there was a passenger in the car, they could have been seriously injured.

Absolutely. Totally right to prosecute the rider, probably at least 70/30 his fault, but I see so many drivers pull across right from a tailgating position without looking properly, and that’s textbook careless driving. Even though the rider was speeding, it shouldn’t be an automatic get-out clause for a driver who doesn’t have right of way in that situation.

If only the roads were full of STW perfect faultless drivers. We’d never need to have these discussions.