**!!CC RIDER DOWN!!**

[Arch]

.. and yet here you are displaying such excellent abilities of observation... I refer you to the OPs post:
which clearly states that the driver was a woman.

So, should you be retested/forced to relearn to read, as clearly your skills are not up to par?

Some older drivers are very cautious (sometimes a little over cautious) and some are just plain useless due to a combination of traffic conditions being so differnt to when they passed a test (perhaps) ad/or failing eyesight etc. but some are excellent due to their experience.... Let's not just tar them all with the same brush, eh?

But it's much easier, isn't it. All older people are bad drivers. All cyclists jump red lights. All kids are on drugs. Why bother to think?

As a matter of fact, I agree with retesting. For everyone, every 5 years of so, regardless of age.

BTW, hearing is not as important a sense when driving as vision and reaction time - plenty of deaf people can drive quite legally, and indeed, perfectly well.

 

[Amanda P]

I thought I might get some grief from mentioning the driver's age. I'm not sure it's relevant to anything... For balance, I am 40 and male!

And, yes, I've found I've left indicators un-cancelled. Not often, but I'm sure we've all done it. The thing is, if I did this, and it was a contributory factor in an accident, I would expect to be held a lot more than 25% liable - particularly if the injured party was more vulnerable than me.

The fact that she was driving along for some miles with an indicator flashing also seems to me to be clear evidence of "driving without due care and attention" - but I was perhaps also guilty of not using due care and attention, since I failed to detect her non-turning. In any case, the penalty for careless driving is derisory and not worth anyone's effort to apply.

Anybody know what the situation would be if this accident had occurred in, say, Denmark or Germany or somewhere where they have strict liability? Just out of interest?

 

[Amanda P]

Also, thanks everyone for your good wishes.

The bent Moulton has gone to be recycled into parts of a Moulton tandem project, so it will live on! (At least, its knuckle joint, bottom bracket shell and seat tube will).

I have bought a 1990s AM14 to replace it. Now I just need to get it re-painted, then build it back up with some of the parts salvaged from the damaged one (the insurers let me keep it). Only the frame and chainset were damaged - everything else has survived.

It was insured, and the insurers coughed up with very little hassle -once they'd managed to see the photos I e-mailed them. I knew that Moulton would not supply bikes via their appointed dealer, and you can't buy a new one for the insured value anyway! I thought this would cause problems, but as soon as they understood that a non-Moulton replacement wouldn't be acceptable, they sent a cheque.

It was one of a number of bikes on our household policy with Swinton, underwritten by AXA, if anyone's interested.

(And Gerry - my 'bent survived your ministrations intact. I had been meaning to make some better handlebars for it for some time; some extra curves in them stimulated me to get on with it. It's since been on a 1000-mile tour of northern Europe during September with those new bars with no problems, so, erm, thanks! How are your elbows?)

 

[Arch]

I thought I might get some grief from mentioning the driver's age. I'm not sure it's relevant to anything...

I meant no grief at you for mentioning it, I just didn't like Crankarm's tone.

It's a tricky thing, the blame proportion aspect. I've got a feeling the Highway code, and driving tuition have a general tone, if not explicitly said, of "never rely on other people" - the most obvious one being the headlight flash to let you in - you always have to still check for other traffic etc, and you can't even be sure what the flash means. But I think a very large number of people, if not the majority, drivers, cyclists and peds, probably do take chances based on indication. Cyclists, perhaps, less than most. Or at least, good cyclists.

I'd be interested to hear what would happen somewhere like Holland too.

 

[Amanda P]

However, I think it would be for the good and benefit of all road users in the area if you made it clear to the 75 yr old that you are prepared to drop any idea of further action if he is prepared to retake a driving test or do some sort of driving course (at his expense naturally). He might even agree to it.

So far, the driver's insurers have taken no action against me. They have probably assumed (incorrectly, as I'm a CTC member) that I'm not insured.

If I bring a personal injury claim against her, though, this may prompt them to claim her damages from me. My personal injuries are apparently worth £1200 and my bike about £1000. The car had a badly damaged front end, and the cost of repairing that could easily run to a lot more than £2200.

And I am apparently 75% to blame for this accident (unless a CPS case establishes otherwise). On balance, then, it seems better not to bring my case, and I'm not in any position to impose conditions on the driver.

 

[Arch]

If I bring a personal injury claim against her, though, this may prompt them to claim her damages from me. My personal injuries are apparently worth £1200 and my bike about £1000. The car had a badly damaged front end, and the cost of repairing that could easily run to a lot more than £2200.

I suppose, in darker moments, you can take some comfort from having 'caused'* some damage and therefore expense and inconvenience.

*please note use of inverted commas, I mean purely in mechanical and Newtonian terms..

You said you'd spoken to the driver? Are you able to say (without prejudicing anything) what her reaction has been? I know she'd been careless, but I imagine she was also pretty shaken by it all. And did you say that the other witnesses also thought she was slowing? Is there any explanation for that?

Sorry, I'm bombarding you with questions.

 

[Amanda P]

You said you'd spoken to the driver? Are you able to say (without prejudicing anything) what her reaction has been? I know she'd been careless, but I imagine she was also pretty shaken by it all. And did you say that the other witnesses also thought she was slowing? Is there any explanation for that?

Sorry, I'm bombarding you with questions.

I spoke to her on the phone. She was quite matter-of-fact. She clearly assumed I'd been injured much more badly than I was*, so was relieved to hear otherwise. We didn't discuss the cause of the accident (at this point I was considering a personal injury claim, so thought it best to steer clear of that - plus it was a friendly conversation which I didn't want to sour), but she did admit to having been shaken (who wouldn't be?).

She came across as lucid, pleasant and reasonably intelligent (look who's talking!). I would not have guessed her age from the phone conversation - if you'd asked, I might have said 50s or 60s.

I imagine the police took statments, breath tests and checked on all the legalities at the scene, but everything was in order (they didn't breathalyse me! - or not that I can remember).

Other witnesses did apparently mention she was slowing, and attributed my behaviour to the combination of this and the signal - they had also been misled. There is no clear explanation for this at this time.

*Apparently, if you're carted off in an ambulance, the North Yorks Police tell the media "serious injuries". If not, "minor injuries". Just those two categories - led many people to assume the worst.

 

[magnatom]

Glad to hear you have recovered.

It seems like she made a mistake and you made a mistake. Together they led to a nasty incident, but one that you luckily recovered from. There was no intent, so no one deserves any further punishment IMO. So time to put it down to experience.

We all make mistakes, yes EVEN ME!! We just have to hope that when we do, the consequences aren't serious. The VAST majority of the time they aren't.

 

[Arch]

Glad to hear you have recovered.

It seems like she made a mistake and you made a mistake. Together they led to a nasty incident, but one that you luckily recovered from. There was no intent, so no one deserves any further punishment IMO. So time to put it down to experience.

We all make mistakes, yes EVEN ME!! We just have to hope that when we do, the consequences aren't serious. The VAST majority of the time they aren't.

Yes, there but for the grace of god go I, and all that. It's sometimes a fine line between even noticing something happening, and it being fatal. Fate's a funny thing. I wonder if we (by which I mean the human race, or at least the 'developed' part of it) are so expectant of having everything under control that we forget that? Sorry, I'm straying OT a bit there.

That serious/minor injuries thing is a bit simplistic, but I suppose the police have better things to do than compile detailed health reports, and I guess some injuries seem more serious at the roadside than once they get checked out. Better maybe not to report anything until there's more info, but in the era of webpage news, I guess you have to get the stories up quickly...

Talking of which, lunchbreak over...

 

[Amanda P]

It seems like she made a mistake and you made a mistake. Together they led to a nasty incident, but one that you luckily recovered from.

Agreed.


I just wish I could remember the event so that I could better analyse, and learn from, my own mistake! (It's very strange to hear about something that happened to you only from other peoples' point of view...)

 

[magnatom]

Agreed.


I just wish I could remember the event so that I could better analyse, and learn from, my own mistake! (It's very strange to hear about something that happened to you only from other peoples' point of view...)

I can certainly understand that. Because you can't remember it, you will never know how the situation looked from your perspective and you have to trust other people observations and memory (which is known to be poor when recounting incidents like this).

Your here to tell the tale. That is the main thing!

 

[summerdays]

There are even some 75 year olds on the road who haven't taken a driving test - my parents for a start - I don't know when driving tests came into force but it was definitely later in Northern Ireland.