to actually feel sorry for the driver of the car? WARNING- upsetting video.

[ToThePark]

Ok, so I've been a wimp and name changed in case I get totally flamed.

www.suffolk.police.uk/newsandevents/newsstories/2014/september/hardhittingvideolaunched.aspx

The motorcyclist was travelling at 100mph past a busy junction. I watched this video and thought, as a car driver, this could easily happen to me. What an horrific thing to have on your conscience.

What if it had been a child crossing?

The biker would not have been responsible for a death if the other vehicle was being driven carelessly or without due care and attention.
He was on the right side of the road, the car was crossing a main road, crossing the path of oncoming vehicles, he should have waited until the road he was crossing was clear.

I haven't RTFT, so apologies, but I've read the first page and watched the video twice and read the report. It's very, very sad, but the motorbike was going at 97mph !!! So, so, so dangerous. The car driver should have waited, but I can't help thinking it was only a matter of luck that the motorcyclist didn't crash prior to that going at that speed, loads of unnecessary overtaking. I remember doing a speed awareness course (after doing 37 in a 30mph zone) and the instructor saying it's amazing how many people will argue the toss as to who is to blame in these situations. eg, people making mistakes at roundabouts and other cars carrying on regardless because the mistake-maker "should have given way". The car in this case should, of course, have waited, and the biker shouldn't have been in a postion where he was overtaking in and out at 97 mph. What a total waste.

It does look like the car waits until the bike is close and then turns.
But that is most likely the speed.

It is 100% the bike's fault. Because it wouldnt have been 'there' if it hadnt been going twice the speed , it would have been level with the car it overtook which i presume was going the speed limit. (Hence even though the car driver didnt see the bike or other car the other car wasnt involved in the accident- driving at a reasonable speed i assume they didnt even plough in the back.)

Going100 mph what would the bike have done if the accident he was in was in the middle of the road? Reckless.

Bikers decision to speed going up to a junction where traffic might cross his path.

I guess the fault is similar to driving in the back of someone its usually the one behinds' fault. The same is possible if you cross the path of traffic.
Ridiculous campaign when it just makes us think - well its the bikers fault for speeding. Which isnt helpful.

It would be interesting to know how fast that car was going.

Maybe driver accepted blame as he was threatened with jail if he denied liability.

I dont think i would feel the same about speeding on a motorway as traffic is going the same way , less junctions, no head on collision.

Maybe people wouldnt speed if the responsiblity for accidents was theirs . A bit like someone dying while committing a crime.

I think the mums attitude is wrong and a bit rude the shoe sooo easily could have been on the other foot and her son killed someone maybe a family with his speed.

That should have been the message... Luckily he didnt kill the driver of the car as he was speeding i wonder if that would have been dangerous driving (even manslaughter) like others have said almost twice as fast.
So half distance to react, stop.

I think Maryz is saying that if the biker hadn't been massively speeding, he would not have physically been in the location he was when the car that hit him made its manoeuvre.

The car's manoeuvre itself (turning across traffic into a side road) is obviously not illegal; turning without leaving enough time to clear oncoming traffic is. But drivers do make turns when oncoming traffic is visible, of course - they have to do it all the time, you can't wait for the road to be perfectly clear or you'll be there forever. You have to make a quick judgement about how close the nearest oncoming vehicle is, how fast it's going, and how long it'll take your vehicle to clear it.

'Oncoming vehicle going twice the expected max speed' is not something you anticipate when you're doing that quick calculation. And it's really hard to tell how quickly something is moving when it's coming towards you (as opposed to side-on).

knee do you see the biker as being at no fault in this accident?

He wasn't at fault in this accident.

The accident was caused by the driver turning without checking oncoming traffic. [not just my view, but that of the court, police and the driver concerned]

I agree 100% that the biker was breaking the law with the speeds he was doing, but his speed didn't cause the accident.

I also agree that anyone doing such speeds is riding dangerously and likely to come unstuck, with or without coming across a car driver driving without due care.

I do not condone speeding in this way.

The biker would not have been responsible for a death

He would surely, if a collision at the speed limit would not have killed anyone.

In a recent case here where a biker killed himself and the car driver who lap he drove his bike into, the biker's speed was found as being the cause of the accident.

I saw a very similar case to this about 10 years ago. Biker doing an estimated 75-85, reports of him travelling in the centre of the road just prior to the accident, car turning from stationary into a farm on a country road - farm happened to be on a slight bend.

No way the driver could have seen the bike in time to take evasive action, especially on a slight bend, especially from stationary.

Biker was killed. Driver was handed a very similar sentence - massive fine, think it was more than £1,000 - and disqualified from driving for a very long time, which would cause him to lose his job and possibly his house (mortgage issues). He was also suffering from severe mental health problems as a result of the accident.

It struck me at the time how terribly unfair it was, and terrifying, as a driver.

What benefit is to be gained from such harsh punishment? It doesn't even act as a deterrent, I don't think, to other (car drivers).

edamsavestheday I think the brain does scan for car shapes, it also expects a certain part of the obstacle to be in a certain part of the road. If a biker is near to the centre line, it is neither car shaped nor in the area being scanned (I assume you would naturally scan from kerb side rather than centre to kerb). It would also be much harder to gauge the speed of a very different profile, because there is less information for the brain.

I also think humans are gap orientated, so would be looking for gaps. It's entirely feasible that a bike would be read as 'gap' if only part of the image was 'scanned'.

Which bit of red road are you looking at Mary, there are two with a considerable gap between them, when he hit the car he was on the right side of the road.

Having nearly missed a car travelling at that sort of speed recently (from behind me) - and I had checked the mirrors a split second before I really cannot agree that speed was not a contributory factor to the car driver not seeing him.

The car driver had 4 seconds after the bike overtook before he turned. That's really quite a long time on the roads. And he turned when the biker was very close. So, yes, he is at fault. But I still feel sorry for him. As I feel sorry for the biker and his friends. The sentence has probably been mitigated due to the speed of the biker.

sorry I meant biker (and his speed) was found as being responsible for the car driver's death

Knee if the biker had been driving at the speed limit then he wouldn't have been at that point in the road when the car turned. That's why a PP said he shouldn't have been there

The car driver still wasn't paying due care.

He would have just got away with not checking before he turned if the bike wasn't there, or someone else would have smashed into him.

I get the point that was being made, but its odd, because the issue was not the bikes position on the road, it was that the car driver didn't look before turning!

You haven't answered SaintlyJimJams question Knee. Do you see the cyclist being entirely innocent of blame?
If, on weekly cycle rally night, I were to pull out of my drive into the 40mph zone, having first looked both ways and decided the way ahead was clear enough, and a half ya list shot round the bend doing 80mph and hit my car, would I be totally to blame? or would some of the responsibility lie with the speeding rider?
Are you a motorcyclist?

If you're turning into traffic, it's almost always going to be your fault, same as if you run into the back of someone.

The biker's speed simply made the outcome far, far worse than it needed to be.

It does seem to be - from what you're saying bear- that if you have a collision as you are turning across another lane you are always at fault, no matter how idiotically the person who hits you is driving. You couldn't get much more idiotic than this biker (sorry I feel strongly about people driving at ridiculous speeds - there's no need for it)

I think speed is an issue knee because a vehicle of any sort travelling at 100mph is harder to spot than one travelling at 60mph.

I drive the length of Britain last week - and have a few instances to back this up! (Add in not being where you're expected to be - e.g. undertaking - and it gets harder still)

The 'cause' of an accident is very often not 100% one thing or 100% another thing. It's usually a combination; hence the legal concept of 'contributory negligence'.

Courts make their findings based on a number of considerations, including policy objectives, community attitudes, deterrence value, etc. It's not an exact science, that's for sure. Another court might have found quite differently, given the same set of facts.

I think the bike rider's extreme speed was absolutely a cause of the accident.

I know saintlyjimjams - and I do see that 9 times out of a 10 the car driver would absolutely be at fault - but laying the sole blame at the door of the driver is horrific.

Would the biker have survived at a lower speed? Would he have been able to swerve at a lower speed? Would the car driver have had more chance to spot him at a lower speed (and therefore change his decision)?

If you are crossing a lane and someone hits you because they don't have time to stop then you will be to blame.
Same as if someone goes in the back of you because they are too close and you have to brake hard then they are at fault.

You haven't answered SaintlyJimJams question Knee. Do you see the cyclist being entirely innocent of blame?

I have answered.

In the case of this accident, the biker was not to blame. he didn't cause it. His speed did not cause it.

I have said that he was breaking the law in speeding, but that didn't cause the accident.

I think speed is an issue knee because a vehicle of any sort travelling at 100mph is harder to spot than one travelling at 60mph

Possibly harder to spot according to speed yes.

But, this didn't happen because the bike was hard to spot, other drivers behind the car that he ran into, did see the bike, the car driver just didn't look.

Where are you getting it from that the driver 'didn't look'?

The report I saw said that the driver 'didn't see' the motorbiike, which is not the same thing.

Can you please clarify? Are you saying they were looking somewhere else altogether, or what?

Your speed affect how hard you hit the ground though - so even if you say the car driver was entirely at fault for the collision - the force with which he hit the ground was entirely the fault of the biker.

I hope bikers seeing that video will think to slow down, rather than just see it as a car driver causing a fatality.

I think if you're sitting behind, not scanning for a gap, it can be easier to spot everything. Unfortunately.

Clearly the bike doesnt see anything wrong with his speeding as he is videoing it.
I wonder what his other videos look like??
Would you get on the back of his bike?
If he had just sped a bit to overtake a car, but he did it straight away indicating his normal behaviour.