horizon wrote:Ellieb wrote: If you fail to take reasonable care, then your negligence leads to a reduction in the compensation you are owed. I don't have a problem with that.
Well, in fact it leads to serious injury. But it needn't if the driver allowed for a lack of reasonable care. What many cyclists fear is that while they intend to follow the rules of the road scrupulously, they might have an occasional lapse or distraction and that will be their downfall - the driver will expect them to act at all times with care and attention. To avoid that scenario, the cyclist stays at home or takes the bus. Are we really, really saying that a cyclist who wobbles at the wrong moment is a cyclist who should expect to be hit by a car?
I just want to say a few words about the victim: as far as we know he was up early, punctual, well kitted out, helmet, cycled on the left and on the road, keen, disciplined, bike in good order, a rule follower, an upstanding citizen in every respect. He puts me to shame.
But he made a four second mistake. And indeed, as many people have pointed out, it is the rule-following female cyclists in London who have found themselves under the wheels of a tipper truck, not pavement-cycling ninjas.
The counsel of perfection that leads drivers to expect and demand that cyclists are never negligent or distracted or reckless or stupid is what is killing both cyclists and cycling. I have a moral right as a human being, as a cyclist and road user to ask that drivers make allowance for my occasional stupidity. Without that I simply wouldn't (indeed couldn't) take the risk of cycling on the road.
Interestingly, there are now 20 mph speed limits. Why? If cyclists and pedestrians and children followed the rules, looked left and right and didn't cross the path of cars then all would be well. According to the judgement under discussion, there is no need for a 20 mph limit, just a reduction in compensation for a paralysed child.
it wasn't a 4 second mistake though, far less in fact.
We are told that the van could have been in view for 4 seconds as they are theorising we should theorise that the cyclist did an over the shoulder safety check as the van was just entering the carriageway, we then have a possible 3 second window.
Now we come to reaction time, in a perfect world we'd be able to react like a 100m sprinter but we can't, we assume that he saw the van at the side of the road, theorised that he could have shoulder checked at the precise moment the van started entering the carriageway but then it's not a 100% expectation that it will emerge right in front of you the last time you looked. Especially since it's a wide dual carriageway and the huge margin they (the driver) has to pull away/stay in the outer lane, accelerate and be clear, you don't dismiss it but it's not the same consideration as a vehicle coming from your left/nearside. So we knock off another 1.5 seconds for reaction time (the std time given by investigators), then we have 'Brake Engagement Distance', taken to be 0.3 seconds, we include this as it's part of the summary as to avoiding the collision completely as an absolute (which is nonsense IMHO).
That's even if the cyclist thought braking was the best solution (you know braking on a dual/fast traffic behind is not always the greatest of options) and thought steering around was best as it seems apparent he did.
We also have this, read not just the paragraph below but the whole article.
http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/reactiontime.html"Stimulus-Response Compatibility
Humans have some highly built-in connections between percepts and responses. Pairings with high "stimulus-response compatibility" tend to be made very fast, with little need for thinking and with low error. Low stimulus-response incompatibility usually means slow response and high likelihood of error.
One source of many accidents is the human tendency to respond in the direction away from a negative stimulus, such as an obstacle on a collision course. If a driver sees a car approach from the right, for example, the overwhelming tendency will be to steer left, often resulting in the driver steering right into the path of the oncoming vehicle. The stimulus-response capability overrides and the driver simply cannot take the time to observe the oncoming car's trajectory and to mentally calculate it's future position. In short, the driver must respond to where the car is now, not where it will be at some point in the future."
1.2 seconds, 20% blame for a near one seconds moment of inattention in a high stress situation, utter bulldust