So how slowly should the lorry driver have gone, in your opinion? 25mph? 20mph? 15mph? If I drove my car like that I'd never get anywhere. You can see from the link I posted that the road has very good visibility and plenty of space for traffic turning right to wait.
You can anticipate many hazards, but a suicidal cyclist who pushes off into your path seconds before you hit him isn't really one of them.
I can't venture an opinion on how fast the lorry driver should have gone; I've not been at the junction and none of us know the precise circumstances at the time.
I also spoke about a perfect driver, who, clearly, does not exist. No-one is perfect. In a perfect world with perfect drivers, collisions would never occur. It appears the cyclist wasn't perfect either.
I would contend, though, that any time a vehicle (particularly a large or heavy one) is moving in close proximity to other objects likely to cross its path, it should be driven rather more slowly than is presently the norm. I'm often horrified at the speeds with which large vehicles thunder through junctions. Junctions are by nature dangerous places where collisions are more probable; that's why they often have SLOW painted on their approaches and sometimes contrasting road surfaces too. Unfortunately, many drivers treat them like any other stretch of road and proceed through them with no more caution, circumspection or thought.
Do you slow down to a crawl just incase at every junction with a turning box when traffic is waiting to turn? The lorry had right of way after all.
Perhaps not to a crawl, but I will generally slow down (if I'm not crawling already). The more there is going on at the junction, the poorer the visibility (often sightlines are obstructed by waiting vehicles), the greater the speed of other vehicles and the fewer 'escape routes' there are, the more I will slow. I might add that this action has almost certainly prevented a collision on several occasions.
I also tend to slow and watch their eyes when I see pedestrians or cyclists waiting to cross. And sure enough, sometimes they cross without looking and my having slowed saves me having to make some more desperate manouvre to avoid them.
I agree but there are limits to what you can do with reverting to having a man with a red flag walking in front of all motor vehicles again.
Agreed. I'm not arguing that we can make the roads perfect, but it seems we agree that with a little more circumspection and perhaps less impatience than there is just now, there might be fewer collisions.
Phil, you're pushing it now!
From the info available it was the cyclists fault, personally I feel sorry for the lorry driver, not forgetting the family of the cyclist!
Imagine if the situation was reversed, would people be trying to blame the cyclist?
Maybe I am pushing it. Perhaps I'm being deliberately provocative to make you think? I wasn't there; neither were you. That's why I put in "speculation follows". The info available may be incomplete or incorrect. We are allowed to speculate and if I've made you think about this event, that can only be good.
I also feel very sorry for the lorry driver. Even if the cyclist deliberately and suicidally threw himself under the lorry (it happens), the driver will still be affected. Even if a court completely exhonerates him, the lorry driver will be haunted by thoughts like "if only I'd not been on the phone...", "perhaps if I'd been going a bit slower...." and so on.
And those thoughts might, after all, be correct.
