Excuses for running over a human - Part 1

[ComedyPilot]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/201...rriage-motorists-surrey-ripley_n_1124926.html

Paper writes:

"Motorists driving on the busy A3 in Ripley most likely did not realise their mistake in the dark and the drizzle on Thursday night."

Hmmmm?

Police state:

"When the body was on the carriageway it was struck by a number of vehicles but it is likely the motorists did not realise what happened and did not stop at the scene."

I find this all a little worrying.

I was out driving on Wednesday night, it was dark and drizzly and there was oncoming traffic. As I rounded a bend about 55mph a rat ran across the road in front of me, and I unfortunately hit it. I saw the rat, braked but it was too late, and I felt the horrible bump as it went under the tire.

I saw the rat, in the dark, in the drizzle, no hi-viz, a LOT smaller than a human being.

How is it possible for 'a number of motorists' to not see a HUMAN BEING laying in the road, then run over it, not know what it was, feel the inevitable 'bump' and just drive on?

Why did the reporting motorist stop? What made the HUMAN BEING in the road visible to them that they could avoid hitting them, and stimulate the basic human decency in them to offer some care and to call the emergency services?

Ladies and gents - we have in our midst a number of motorists who (very worryingly) cannot see a body in the road, drive over it (feeling the inevitable bump) and drive on regardless.

Do you know the scariest bit? The paper excusing them, and worst of all the police also making an excuse for them.

 

[Simba]

Car is king unfortunately and it's not going to change anytime soon.

 

[Alien8]

I have wondered whether this is just a ploy the Boys in Blue use to try and encourage people to come forward after an incident. I see it in a lot a newspaper reports - motorists hitting something/someone and the police statement saying that they might not have been aware of the collision.

 

[ComedyPilot]

I understand that ploy, but doesn't it also tell the drivers that they are not responsible, and therefore could implant in their mind there's no need to come forward?

 

[numbnuts]

So do I take it that all these drivers that ran over the body are potential “hit and run drivers” after all a body of any size is quite a bump to drive over equivalent to a small speed hump......and they never noticed it.....yeah right

 

[ComedyPilot]

So do I take it that all these drivers that ran over the body are potential “hit and run drivers” after all a body of any size is quite a bump to drive over equivalent to a small speed hump......and they never noticed it.....yeah right

In answer to the hit and run part: We don't know how the person came to be on the carriageway, they could have collapsed and died on the spot then got hit. They could have collapsed, and got hit and killed. They could have got hit and knocked down then run over....there are a number of permutations. But the common denominator to them all: 'a number of vehicles' struck the body and did NOT STOP'

In answer to the speed bump bit: That's my implication. I ran over a rat and felt the bump - so how can a number of motorists not have seen the body, or felt anything? I have driven over speed bumps at 20 and 'felt' it. How can a 'number of motorists' not feel hitting a 'speed bump' at 70?

If they (as motorists) stick to the mantra 'I didn't see it' for long enough, it becomes an acceptable excuse.

It is NOT.

A driver should only drive their vehicle at a speed in which they can safely bring it to a halt in the distance they can see to be clear in front of them.

 

[srw]

If the motorists in question were driving articulated lorries would that change your view?

 

[I like Skol]

I find this all a little worrying.

I was out driving on Wednesday night, it was dark and drizzly and there was oncoming traffic. As I rounded a bend about 55mph a rat ran across the road in front of me, and I unfortunately hit it. I saw the rat, braked but it was too late, and I felt the horrible bump as it went under the tire.

I saw the rat, in the dark, in the drizzle, no hi-viz, a LOT smaller than a human being.

You were lucky, that's all. In the conditions you describe you cannot possibly see and account for every minor item and event on the road, be it an empty coke can blowing across your path or an unseen pothole that makes you wince when you drive into it. If you had happened to be momentarily checking your mirror (a perfectly reasonable action) or glancing at a road sign (again, nothing wrong with this if the road is otherwise clear) you could easily have missed the rats approach and then assumed the bump was some litter or a small pothole.

Car is king unfortunately and it's not going to change anytime soon.

For Christ's sake! GET A GRIP! No decent person is going to knowingly run over a human body and not stop to report it. The people that might are a minority, maybe the kind of people who have no license or insurance and no sense of right and wrong. This does not apply to the majority of road users and to try to suggest that the culture of mass car use implies a lack of such morals is both crass and wrong.


Let me paint an alternative scenario. As a high mileage driver in the past I have come across all sorts of debris in the road, step ladders, old carpets, bin liners of rubbish torn and spread across the carridgeway, road kill such as badgers which can be quite large. Most of the time these are spoted in good time to allow avoiding action to be taken but, just occasionally, perhaps at night in bad weather with vision obscured by oncoming traffic lights (often too bright or badly adjusted, but that's a different debate) an item might just flash into view the instant before it dissappears beneath the vehicle (in my case usually a Sprinter van). What should I do? I am pretty sure I saw a roll of old carpet, it went under the van with out too much of a bump and everything feels fine. Should I stop on the busy road in the rain and dark and walk back several hundred yards to confirm it was just an item of rubbish like the previous items I have encountered or, carry on and assume it is just an old piece of rubbish hardly worth risking my safety by wandering around in the road to check on?

 

[ComedyPilot]

Edit: in answer to srw:

On the 'feel' front - possibly, but even still - come on, would an artic driver not feel anything driving over a body?

On the vision front I put this to you, they are regulated to drive slower than other vehicles, the drivers are professionals, they are higher up (greater view of road?) so the 'I didn't see them' excuse is even harder to hide behind.

I am trying to be objective here, but are we implying that the primary sense to be employed when driving is the sense of touch? Ergo, if we didn't feel something, then it didn't happen?

Are we (on a cycling forum) really trying to find excuses for poor driving?

 

[marinyork]

What should I do? I am pretty sure I saw a roll of old carpet, it went under the van with out too much of a bump and everything feels fine. Should I stop on the busy road in the rain and dark and walk back several hundred yards to confirm it was just an item of rubbish like the previous items I have encountered or, carry on and assume it is just an old piece of rubbish hardly worth risking my safety by wandering around in the road to check on?

Absolutely you should go and check. It's upto you, however many people who run into pedestrians in particular say similar sorts of things. Sadly our system doesn't take very seriously the idea of people leaving the scene of accidents and people get killed this way.

 

[ColinJ]

For Christ's sake! GET A GRIP! No decent person is going to knowingly run over a human body and not stop to report it. The people that might are a minority, maybe the kind of people who have no license or insurance and no sense of right and wrong. This does not apply to the majority of road users and to try to suggest that the culture of mass car use implies a lack of such morals is both crass and wrong.

Okay, in this local incident, the drivers didn't actually run over the disabled 72 year old pensioner ... but they didn't stop to help him either - dozens of them!

 

[Norm]

On the 'feel' front - possibly, but even still - come on, would an artic driver not feel anything driving over a body?

Yes. My experience is a few years ago but LGV suspension was set pretty hard (as it needs to be for carrying 40+ tonnes across 6 axles) and you could feel bumps much more than in a car.

That said, however, I know that things have moved on with air suspension and suspended cabs being more prevalent now than they were 15 years ago, but you can still feel and, just as much, hear something if you run over something of any size.

 

[I like Skol]

On the 'feel' front - possibly, but even still - come on, would an artic driver not feel anything driving over a body?

On the vision front I put this to you, they are regulated to drive slower than other vehicles, the drivers are professionals, they are higher up (greater view of road?) so the 'I didn't see them' excuse is even harder to hide behind.

I am trying to be objective here, but are we implying that the primary sense to be employed when driving is the sense of touch? Ergo, if we didn't feel something, then it didn't happen?

Are we (on a cycling forum) really trying to find excuses for poor driving?

I have only driven 7.5t GVW vehicles but I suspect a fully loaded 40t truck would feel very little if hitting a 90-100kg body that passes between the wheels due to the relative masses and the clearance under the axles. I also expect that what the police recovered from the carriageway did not closely resemble the human body that we are picturing. I don't know the road but I guess there is a 60 or 70mph limit and if the first vehicle to pass over the body was an arctic then the scattered mess that was left behind might not be recogniseable to the following vehicles in the poor conditions.

I am not trying to excuse poor driving but merely trying to paint a realistic picture without the knee jerk emotional reaction crap! You only need one HGV driver to be momentarily blinded by some knob in his Corsa with badly adjusted super-duper eye burning bright blue illegal headlamp bulbs and suddenly you have a mashed body lying in the road that nobody saw or realised was there!

 

[I like Skol]

Absolutely you should go and check.

In this case there will be a whole lot more bodies littering the trunk road network! I don't know the road in this case but it does appear to be one of the main A roads for the area and is probably closer to being a motorway than a road. Why do you think police stop to make sure vehicles and inhabitants are removed from the hard shoulder asap? How many breakdown and recovery drivers are killed while attending vehicles on motorways? You are advocating getting road users with no training to wonder around a high-speed road in the rain and dark to make sure they haven't run over a human body when in 99.999999999% of the cases they most certainly will not have done.

 

[ComedyPilot]

For Christ's sake! GET A GRIP! No decent person is going to knowingly run over a human body and not stop to report it. The people that might are a minority, maybe the kind of people who have no license or insurance and no sense of right and wrong.

Sadly, it does look like a number of motorists did just that. Granted, only they know what they saw, and felt, before deciding to drive on - we can only speculate.