Which part do you think makes me an unfit driver?

The blatent disregard for speed involvement in an accident.

No-one expects people to be doing 100mph, so by doing that speed you ate making it way harder for everyone else to avoid accidents.

Rekon ? Is 70 that much slower in the video scenario than 95 ? But somehow 70 is classed as completely acceptable. Giving the usual 10% leeway, lets assume of 77 being within the speed limit accepted… is 77 that much slower than 95 ?

Rekon ? Is 70 that much slower in the video scenario than 95 ?

Nearly 30% slower so yes.

70 is acceptable on divided roads. 60 on that road. At 97 you are carrying two and a half times more energy than at 60. That’s huge. Would you rather be rugby tackled by an 8st woman or a 20st bloke?

Would you rather be rugby tackled by an 8st woman or a 20st bloke?

Either of them in babyoil ?

imnotverygood – Member

Would you really leave a 7 second gap between checking the road and starting your turn? What are you doing in the meantime? What exactly are you looking at if you aren’t looking where you are going?

This put it better than me.

You’re sat in a queue of traffic in the filter lane waiting for your turn to cross the oncoming traffic. You get to the front, it’s your turn. You’re looking far down the road at oncoming traffic, waiting for a gap. You see one, and you think ‘after that next car, I can go’. And after the next car, you go. Because the ‘last’ thing you expect is for someone to be overtaking into that gap and into a junction, let alone at close on 100mph.

There the set of rules in the highway code and you expect other road users to stick to them, anything outside that envelope is likely to not be anticipated and possibly result in an incident.

On top of that there’s the low level rule breaking most road users do, going 10% over the speed limit, flashing to mean “I’m giving way”, occasionaly not indicating, trying to figure out who really does have right of way when you get to a mii roundabout simultaneously, motorbikes filtering etc. That’s expected too and you make allowances or check for it before making a manouver.

Pulling upto where the car is, I’d have looked up the road, seen the car doing probably the speed limit, judged that there was a good 7-10 seconds before the car got to the junction, and turned. A bike overtaking into a junction at 100mph, yes you’d see it if you looked for it, but having looked up the road, seen it clear upto the next car doing the speed limit, I think I’d have turned on auto-pilot. Maybe I’m doing myself a discredit and I would look up the road again, but it’s very hard to say that and not have the feeling I’d be relying on 20/20 hindsight.

If you really think that I’m so far below the average driver standard that it’s worth to risk of overtaking at 100mph through junctions, go ahead, but I think I’m definately average/reasnoble/good/driving god, and in the bikes position I wouldn’t have expected that car to see me at all.

Is 70 that much slower in the video scenario than 95 ? But somehow 70 is classed as completely acceptable

Is 70 acceptable though – not for that stretch of road
Is 60 acceptable, it might be the speed limit but it’s not an appropriate speed – again read the highway code, looking at that junction i would say no more than 50mph would be acceptable.

Doing twice the appropriate speed at a junction will have inevitable consequences unfortunately.

LHS – Member

The blatent disregard for speed involvement in an accident.

Maybe you should just calm down a second and read the posts or something. I’ve never said speed wasn’t involved. But it’s a matter of court record that the driver caused this crash by pulling out into a stream of traffic as a result of failing to see oncoming traffic which he should have seen. Speed can only ever be secondary to that- without the careless driving, there’s no collision.

A lot of this feels like the traditional “Could have happened to anyone”. Of course the rider’s not blameless, because his speed made the dangerous situation much worse and removed any possibility that he could have avoided the crash. But people in this thread are defending a man whose bad observation killed another road user (not my opinion, that of the court, jury and police). If he’d SMIDSY’d a cyclist we’d be calling out for heads on spikes.

Speed can only ever be secondary to that- without the careless driving, there’s no collision

Until people get out of this blinkered mindset that speed is not a primary contributing factor, sad accidents like this will continue to happen.

He was going too fast for the section of road he was on. A junction like that you have to slack off a bit.

I ride as tho every other road user is blind and still at times do silly things. Most riders will admit that

On another day the junction would be empty. The other driver would have seen him. But it wasn’t another day

It could easily have been avoided tho by riding to the road conditions. Ive scrapped many bikers from cars and trees and most of them could have been avoided if im honest.

Until people get out of this blinkered mindset that speed is not a primary contributing factor, sad accidents like this will continue to happen.

Until everyone walks everywhere accidents like this will happen.

Until everyone walks everywhere accidents like this will happen

😯

If he’d been travelling at 70 I’m reasonably confident that he could have avoided the car all together by going behind it rather than in front. Always aim where the obstruction was – not where its going to be. The car is very likely to continue moving forwards, its very unlikely given the time scale involved that it could move backwards.
You need to constantly run through possible scenarios in your mind so when something happens you react instantly in the way you have programmed you mind to do rather than what your instincts tell you is the right thing to do. A good example of this is running into a bend too fast – the last thing in the world you want to do is brake but your natural reaction is to do exactly that. If you think about it enough you can alter that reaction so that you wouldn’t even consider braking.

I’ve had a couple of accidents, two at speed (when I was a lot younger and way more reckless) and one when riding within the speed limit, around 14 years ago. The two at speed were down to misjudging corners, etc, with no other vehicles involved, and resulted in bruises / bent levers, pegs, etc. The other one was a result of a car driver pulling out of a junction directly into my path, the usual ‘I didn’t see you’ scenario. That one, at just over 30 MPH, wrote my bike off, and left me with a pelvis broken in five places, three broken ribs, and a heart attack at the scene of the accident. I’m pretty certain that if I’d have been going any quicker, I’d have been killed. Very brave of this guys mum to release the footage, and if it only makes one person think about the possible consequences of their riding or driving, then at least that’s something. I’ve no doubt at all that the bikers excessive speed contributed massively to the accident, but just want to say that we all have responsibilities, bikers and car drivers alike, and we all need to look out for one another.

Has anyone mentioned “making progress” yet?

Many years of motorcycling experience here, and I’m no saint, but I would not have approached that sort of junction at that sort of speed, particularly knowing that a car was approaching wanting to turn across the carriageway I was travelling on. I’d have rolled off the throttle, and at the very least been covering the brake, if not braking in anticipation of the car turning. I’ve had enough people pull out on me to know that there’s a good chance it could happen.

Ultimately, it may not have stopped the impact, but might have given the rider a fighting chance.

The car driver not seeing him is the ultimate cause of the accident, but a number of factors contribute.

I agree with Northwind in that the collision was caused by the driver turning. The driver could just as easily have also crashed into the car (travelling at a legal speed AFAIK) because he failed to see that as well as the bike.

The speed of the biker contributed to the seriousness of the collision and also removed any chance of avoiding the collision.

What bugs me is the comments from earlier in the thread claiming that speed limits make people travel at the speed limit all the time without ever thinking about what’s safe. The biker clearly thought his speed was appropriate and that had nothing to do with the posted speed limit.

It’s like the “would you rather I was doing 30mph but paying no attention or 40mph but looking where I’m going” strawman. Actually it’s possible to pay attention and obey the speed limit. Just like it’s possible to make suyre that your speed meets two rules:
A. Is it at or below the posted speed limit?
B. Is it at or below a safe and appropriate speed given the hazards and road conditions?

It’s possible to obey the 30mph limit even though you think 40 would be “perfectly safe”. (A<B)

It’s possible to stick to 30 through an awkward junction even though the posted limit is 50 or 60mph. (A>B) e.g. the speed limit here is 50mph http://goo.gl/maps/TPjux but clearly doing 50 under the bridge would be stupid. There’s no visibility for people wanting to pull out from the side road

To claim that if we got rid of speed limits then suddenly everyone would behave themselves is madness. People don’t break the speed limit because there’s a speed limit. They break the speed limit because they think 80 or 90 or 97mph is a safe speed. If you took down all the signs then they’d still think the same.

As for “it’s legal to do 70mph on entirely different roads, so we’ll round that up to ~80 and that’s not far off 90 so what’s wrong with doing 97?”….FFS.

Edit: “and at the very least been covering the brake, if not braking in anticipation of the car turning. I’ve had enough people pull out on me to know that there’s a good chance it could happen.”
I would have done this on the (pedal) bike, never mind on a motorbike!

You need to constantly run through possible scenarios in your mind so when something happens you react instantly in the way you have programmed you mind to do rather than what your instincts tell you is the right thing to do

Am I the only one who is imaging Rockhopper has a display like Robocop on his eye lids?

Twenty one years motorcycling here. Rolling into a situation like that, two junctions (if I recall), with traffic around and in them, and you slow right down – I suspect I’d not even be doing the limit through that situation. It illustrates that riding on the road is about so so much more than just bike control.

The whole discussion of blame is complicated by the fact that the driver didn’t misjudge the speed of someone going way too fast, they didn’t even see that person, or even the other car on the same road, at all. That’s dangerously incompetent regardless of whether it caused this crash.

Popping to the local IAM or equivalent is a very good idea for any motorist, regardless of the sniping advanced driving/riding groups get from some STWers.

If he’d SMIDSY’d a cyclist we’d be calling out for heads on spikes.

#

Hypotheticaly if it had been a cyclist, and hypotheticaly if the driver was cleared. I dunno, cyclist’s arent excluded from doing stupid things.

I nearly took out a cylist in my car last winter at a mini roundabout, it was 10:30, raining and dark, they had some tiny knog style lights and dressed in black/dark clothes and aproaching the rounabout from the opposite side. I saw them, the next thing I saw was them almost coming through my drivers side window* as they’d come round the roundabout turning right without indicating.

I should have looked again and been 100% sure they were actualy turned off the roundabout, but didn’t as everything upto that point indicated them going straight on (same as I’d not wait for a car that wasn’t indicating to clear a roundbout). In that situation and the OP the (near) accident wouldn’t have happened if the 2 wheeled party had stuck with the highway code and the car driver had payed an (IMO) above average ammount of attention. But if you’re going to do 100mph or not indicate I think that infers a certain responibility on you to be 100% sure that you know everyone elses intentions and take some responsibility if your actions contribute to the resulting accident. If the other party doesn’t know you’re going to arrive at the junction 60%-100% quicker than they could ever anticipate (i.e. the speed limit) or turn without indicating, then you’ve removed any chance they had of anticipating the accident and are relying purely on their observation, reactions and stopping distances.

*maybe an adrenalin fueled exageration, they probably didn’t even have to brake as there’d have been the width of the junction between us still.

😯

I don’t think he’s actualy sugesting that you walk everywhere, just that the human brian and eyes are designed to stop you running into trees at <10mph, and the human body esigned to survive crashes a that speed. It’s not evolved to deal with 100mph or the crashes resulting from it.

Am I the only one who is imaging Rockhopper has a display like Robocop on his eye lids?

I dunno, but that’s my point too, you anticipate stuff and plan out how a situation is going to pay out in your head well before it happens(in my case the roundabout, we were both going to go straight on with 0% chance of a collision). If some people don’t folow the same rules that everyone else is planning their driving by then you’re severely limiting their ability to deal with their actions.

I appreciate the driver didn’t even see the car, but (in my pesamistic hindsighted oppinion) I don’t think he’d have nececeraly acted differently if he had. He’d have seen a car ~10 seconds away, giving him a margin of ~5 seconds to make the manouver, what he wouldn’t anticipate was a bike coming from behind the car at 2x the speed and closing the gap within half the time, those ~5 seconds he’d given himself.

People pull out on other people all the time- even in front of marked police cars with full flashing lights going. To be riding where he was, at the speed he was, on a road he knew, after 22years motorcycling shows he’s been on borrowed time- he clearly had no respect for what could hurt him.

To be honest, I don’t care how fast he was going, who’s fault it was or that he died. I’m just incredibly relieved that he didn’t kill someone’s child in the passenger seat of the car he hit.

The most telling thing for me is that he didn’t have time to brake! Not one little bit. You need a lot of clear road at 97mph to allow for reaction time alone.

I’m heartened by the nature of this discussion and the views of motorcyclists in general here.

The trouble is there are young riders and drivers out there who don’t get that people do stupid things and that they are going to get hurt if they don’t take this into account. Leave your macho crap on the track. I’ve spent too much time with parents of dead young drivers to think that this is a glorious unselfish death.

Weeksy. Just why not say you agree his speed was too fast for the junction, that it limited his options and made sure he did die, even if the car driver was ultimately 100% to blame for the collision?

Thanks to the OP for posting this btw.

People pull out on other people all the time- even in front of marked police cars with full flashing lights going.

Yup, the size/visibility of a vehicle doesn’t always make a difference:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFy-Kk6xm-w[/video]

Also, people will push the envelope of high performance vehicles. Sometimes they luck out…

…and sadly, in the case of the OP video, they don’t.

Weeksy. Just why not say you agree his speed was too fast for the junction, that it limited his options and made sure he did die, even if the car driver was ultimately 100% to blame for the collision?

Saying that would be completely wrong. I don’t think the speed was too fast, in the same way I don’t think the car was 100% to blame.

His speed was a factor…. both of them screwed up…

So he needed 44 meters at that speed for reaction time alone!! He was pushing his luck 🙁

I don’t think the speed was too fast

really?

I think 100mph is too fast to approach that (any?) junction, in any vehicle, where there are obviously other people present or possibly about to be present.

They might not have seen you, they might do something stupid, they might make a mistake. None of these things would be your fault, but it means that 100mph is an inappropriate speed for the circumstances*.

*circumstances being the presence of other people at a place where they all meet travelling in differing directions and speeds.

both of them screwed up

That really is the point, and what we should be taking away from this and thinking about, how can I adjust my behaviour to mitigate for other peoples mistakes as well as my own.

I don’t think the speed was too fast

[quote]His speed was a factor[/quote]
Which one?

I don’t think the speed was too fast

He was doing 97mph on a road where the maximum is 60mph, and at a junction where the safe speed is probably quite a bit less.

If it was a closed road or in a race, that would have been a reasonable speed, but it wasn’t. He only killed himself, which is very sad for him and his family, but he could very, very easily have killed other people.

Until people get out of this blinkered mindset that speed is not a primary contributing factor, sad accidents like this will continue to happen.

Yes.

Here’s an analogy. If you keep petrol in buckets in your garage, they won’t catch fire on their own, and your house won’t burn down. So is it safe? Petrol is not a cause of fires, after all.

FWIW I’m definitely a less skilled rider than Weeksy. But I do think it was too fast. And it had the look of being habitually that fast too. I was no law abiding rider, tbf I’m a habitual speeder but I’m confident I wouldn’t have put myself in that position. Still, I wouldn’t have liked to be dealing with that at 60 either.

OTOH I’m also confident I wouldn’t have pulled out and killed him. So it’s swings and roundabouts.

Non bikers don’t often realise that 100mph on a bike is SO SO different to 100mph in a car. Getting to 100mph on a Superbike is a mere fraction from 60mph in 3rd gear, it’s the blink of an eye almost. Getting back down from 100mph is not far off that too. The handling of a bike at 100mph is also very different to a car (most cars anyway), the bike can turn, handle, steer and manouver, the cars are less able to do so.

The only thing that doesn’t change of course is the human factor, seeing, spotting and reacting.

Are you sure you’re a motorbiker? You do know that most superbikes have a longer braking distance than an average family car right?

I’m sitting here with blokes who selfishly throw themselves down mountains, through trees, over jumps etc and yet somehow I’m the one who’s selfishly having fun and putting myself at risk LOL. I

Mountain bikes don’t tend to weigh 170kg. Speed increases the energy of a crash which means if you hit a car, you’re more likely to kill the occupants.

I’m never speeding again or buying a motorbike after watching that video.

He was going too fast and driver is Stevie Wonder didn’t look hard enough.

Easily could happen to anyone.

R.I.P. David.

if the rider had been riding at an appropriate speed the car driver would have seen him approaching.

That’s demonstrably not true, as the driver admitted to not seeing either the motorcyclist or the car he’d overtaken. How fast was the car going, an appropriate speed?

Until people get out of this blinkered mindset that speed is not a primary contributing factor, sad accidents like this will continue to happen.

The issue here isn’t whether people think that speed was or wasn’t a contributing factor, rather that going “wah wah speed wah wah” is a gross oversimplification and unhelpful. It’s interesting that you use the word ‘blinkered’ because if all you’re doing is focusing on one factor (speed) then you run the risk of not seeing the bigger picture.

The biker was undoubtedly going too fast, IMHO, for that road and those conditions. He also failed to react to the conditions ahead of him; as I said earlier, you can see the car in the video from quite a long way away, he either didn’t see it or didn’t anticipate its actions.

I’m not convinced that speed was a primary cause of the accident in this case. Rather, observation failure by both parties was the primary cause. However, I think speed is very definitely the primary factor in his death.

Ie, if he’d been in the same place doing *handwave* 50mph when the car turned across him, the collision would almost certainly still have occurred, but his survival chance would have been significantly greater.

Speed might or might not have caused the accident, but speed is definitely what made it fatal. If he’d been doing 50mph the impact energy would have been 1/4 of what it was – that would have had a massive effect on survivability.

Plus doing 50 would have given him some time to scrub off a little more speed.

Ok Weeksy. I really wish you well mate but make sure you have an organ donor card please?

If he wanted to pootle at 50mph, he’d have bought a scooter. Selfish as it is, people (we) buy big fast bikes to go fast on.

Ok Weeksy. I really wish you well mate but make sure you have an organ donor card please?

Thank you. TBH fella, if you’d seen my riding 10 years ago I think you’d not have much left to take… these days, I’m a pussycat (IMHO, not in the STW opinion i’ll admit)

Tomorrow i’ll be doing 4-5 hours on the roads on my 1000cc sportsbike, with luck, I may even make it to Sunday.

If he wanted to pootle at 50mph, he’d have bought a scooter. Selfish as it is, people (we) buy big fast bikes to go fast on.

And that’s fine if you want to take risks – go to a racetrack or something. I’ve done some very, very risky and daft things too. But none of them would have killed someone other than me if they went wrong.

That’s where speeding on the roads is different to other thrill-seeking sports. It kills innocent bystanders.

If he wanted to pootle at 50mph, he’d have bought a scooter. Selfish as it is, people (we) buy big fast bikes to go fast on.

HAHA. All of the fast riders I know will roll off massively into junctions.