Accident. Who's at fault

[Covidcovid]

I witnessed this as a pedestrian.

Teenager on bike comes out of a side street moving at speed. A van is on the main road coming in the same direction as bike. Behind the bike. Van is doing at least 30mph. Road in opposite direction is clear but van only pulls out about 3ft while going round cyclist and doesn't slow even though he could have moved much further out.

There's a small tesco on the right and cyclist without looking veers to the right to go to tesco. Van was still some point behind him and braked/swerved.

Can ended up on the pavement opposite side of the road. Nearly hit 2 pedestrian and took the kid on the bike out at the same time.

Obviously the kid should have looked but I feel with more thought to hazard perception, going slower and wider this could have been avoided. Driver said to me when I told him he was going too fast that he was only doing 30.

Well don't do 30mph and pass a cyclist so near. Even before the kid veered to the right I was watching and thinking the van driver was driving like an idiot. I wouldn't have overtaken until past the tesco turn.

The cyclist. He shouldn’t have pulled out of the side street in the first place until the road was clear and should have given plenty of notice that he was going to turn right.

In terms of legal liability, the van driver is at fault.

In terms of common sense, both contributed.

I don’t know if the cyclist left his bike at the scene. I left before he did. He was trying to stand his bike up but it didn’t look very straight or rideable to me.

Sounds like the cyclist from your description.

I’ve drawn a diagram. Cyclist is the black arrow/trajactory. Van is in red with a start position of where he was when cyclist pulled out and where he ended up. Blue is the point of impact.

I had no problem understanding op. Sounds like the van driver was driving aggressively. Something I see loads of van drivers doing. Personally I'd have slowed down more and given more space

But the cyclist shouldn't just swerve into the road.

Also just a another thought. If the van was going a more reasonable speed then they could react better and not end up swerving on to the pavement.

Cyclist at fault. If van was doing 30mph it's hardly "zooming". Lucky kid being ok - hopefully they'll have learnt their lesson.

So not really a junction to enter Tesco, just a driveway (?)

I don't know the perfect legal view.
Esp. given cyclist is < 16.
The van could have prevented the collision but was impatient.
The cyclist could have realised they were pulling into path of vehicle moving at speed (but not speeding?).

Cyclists need to ride defensively and try to avoid problems -- doesn't matter if you're in the right or wrong if you're dead.

Was the cyclist moving to turn into a side road? This came up when we were doing motorcycle training - another biker had been overtaking a line of traffic with a junction on the opposite side of the road (his right) and a car hit him while turning into the junction. The biker was fully responsible because you shouldn’t be overtaking at a junction. He was most aggrieved when our instructor told him that the police/insurance were correct...he’s been hoping for solidarity from another biker!!!

In your case we don’t know distance from junction or if it was a road or a car park entrance or whatever...but I’m going with van driver at fault legally. Cyclist at fault for not being more careful (assume all toad users are out to kill you) but hopefully will never do it again.

Cyclist shouldn’t have came out the junction by the sounds of it and also should have indicated and looked before turning.

Van driver was overtaking unsafely (too fast, too close) a CHILD on a bike. Then hit the child. Then shouted at his victim.

Van driver is in the wrong, completely. Drivers are always to expect children to behave erratically. Driver was also a twat.

The cyclist was at fault for not indicating or being aware of his surroundings HOWEVER he was a young teenager and the van driver would have seen this when he went hairing past. Therefore should have anticipated that the cyclist might not be as road savvy as a 40 year old on a fancy road bike.

At the end of the day as someone driving a vehicle you have to be aware of hazards, try to anticipate what might happen (inexperienced cyclist could potentially swerve across the road) and ultimately not kill anyone.

I can't believe a child was run over by a van, which then ended up on the pavement, which could have killed pedestrians and no one called the police. Is a hit and rum no longer a crime? Hopefully the parents called the police. The child was probably in shock and did not realise he was injured and probably terrified after being shouted at by a grown man, I'm appalled.

I would say strictly it's the cyclist fault but the van driver could have had better hazard perception / awareness.

It sounds like it wasn't a junction as such but just a turning into Tesco's so I'm not sure that the no overtaking at a junction applies.

Overtaking speed is a tricky one when it comes to cyclists because the slower you go the more chance you run into difficulties being on the other side of the road as it takes you longer to overtake...you are more likely to meet oncoming traffic and have to make a dangerous manoeuvre if you overtake at 10 miles an hour compared to if you overtake at 28 miles per hour I would say... Because it takes you nearly three times the amount of time to get past the cyclist.

if a cyclist really does make a sudden manoeuvre to pull out in front of you without looking at all I think sometimes there is is pretty much zero chance even a very safe driver could avoid that. I say that as a cyclist and someone that has been knocked down twice through no fault of my own.

Generally the person behind is expected to have sufficient distance between them and the vehicle in front in order to be able to stop.

If completing an overtaking manoeuvre they are responsible for ensuring that they can do so safely.

The recommended distance for overtaking at 30 miles an hour is 2m. It doesn't sound like the van allowed a safe distance to overtake.

The bike was in front and had been for long enough for the van to be responsible for this instance.

Whilst the bike should have indicated to turn right the van made an unsafe manoeuvre and risked killing the cyclist.

The diagram makes it even clearer that the cyclist was at fault. They shouldn’t have pulled out into the road in front of a moving van. What was the van meant to do perform an emergencies stop and cause a crash behind them?
If a cyclist (no matter what age) doesn’t know or understand not to pull out onto roads without looking or make a turning without indicating then they really shouldn’t be cycling, so dangerous.

The cyclist, he didn't look to see if it was clear to turn or indicate his intent to turn. Always check the path is clear before turning and always indicate.

I used to work in insurance claims. From an insurance point of view the van driver would be at "fault". That's not to say the child was not to blame, but the driver has a legal responsibility to look out for more vulnerable road users. Also, as this was a child it would be hard to prove they were purposely reckless.
Basically in a situation like this, without dash cam footage or several solid truly independent eyewitness statements, the cyclist trumps vehicle in RTAs

Just to be clear, was the cyclist still ahead of the van when he attempted to turn into Tescos?

I always go very, very slowly around cyclists. Lad was very silly not looking but van driver should’ve been going past him slowly.
Stories like this put the fear of god into me.

I don't quite understand what the OP is saying. Depending on how you interpret what she says, there are a couple of outcomes:

Cyclist is moving to a central position on the road/ weaving etc (but not signalling intention to turn right)

If the van driver wasn't sure what cyclist was doing, he should have given him a wide berth/ hung back until he was sure it was safe to overtake.

Cyclist is proceeding in a straight line (again, no indication of intended turn)
Perfectly acceptable for van to overtake, leaving as much space as necessary.

Given lack of indication and/ or observations by cyclist, the cyclist is (whatever some of you might think) ALWAYS going to be at least partly at fault. The van has right of way. It's that simple.

In the first option, you might get a 50/50.
In the second, if I was representing the van driver (and he was a good witness) I'd argue it on a full basis, and maybe concede up to 20% fault if I had to.

It's why if kids are going to be riding their bikes on roads you make sure they bloody well know how to do so safely.

sounds like karma, they're both idiots!

Cyclist at fault

From the diagram it also looks like the cyclist pulled out too close to the van. Vans options were to harshly brake and potentially cause a collision or move to the side out of the path of the cyclist. It wasn't as though they'd been driving for a while and the van was choosing that moment to overtake. The cyclist has pretty much gone straight across the main road.

The teenager has learned a valuable lesson about paying attention and riding safely on the roads. He's uninjured, he might not have been so lucky next time.