Incident, rider off

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gaz

Cycle Camera TV
Location
South Croydon
Who ever is at fault (i will leave the rest of you to discuss that), the cyclist could have avoided that by not going up the inside of a left turning car. That for me is a silly cyclist!
 

BentMikey

Rider of Seolferwulf
Location
South London
In defence of the driver, yes, he should have looked in his mirror, but then he should also be looking into the road he's turning into, and looking for any peds about to cross, and checking his offside wing mirror too. Unless he had three or four independent eyes, he has to choose one of those places to be looking at at the very point of turning. It's a similar thing to wanting hundreds of mirrors on an HGV - by the time you've looked in them all, the view in the first one might have changed....

...but to be fair, that is our job as driver or cyclist. If I can't check them all and be sure that I'm clear to turn, then it's time to slow down or stop.
 
OP
OP
G

gambatte

Middle of the pack...
Location
S Yorks
What is "POBSO"
Excuse me, I decided to take the liberty of combining two TLAs or three letter acronyms :smile:

POB the 'P' has a variety of possibilities, but the OB is 'on bike', the insinuation being, not a 'proper cyclist' :whistle:
BSO is a 'bike shaped object', generally the £40 dual suspension Asda/'mail order special. That well made that it won't stand up to an initial service without stripping threads.
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
...but to be fair, that is our job as driver or cyclist. If I can't check them all and be sure that I'm clear to turn, then it's time to slow down or stop.

I know. But I see some right eijits riding around at top speed, giving other road users very little time to see them. The OP said the driver had slowed to wait behind one cyclist, so it seems likely he was turning at a low speed anyway. Yeah, he could have stopped completely to check all round, whereupon someone else would probably have rearended the poor sod, and this POBSO might still have shot out of nowhere...

Frankly, there but for the grace of god have probably gone most of us at some point. The driver may not be blameless, but I think their level of blame is low.
 

Rebel Ian

Well-Known Member
Location
Berkshire
Personally I'd rather not be lying in a hospital bed saying I was right because the book says so!

Irrespective of what the car driver should have done for the cyclist to have put themsleves in the position where they could get hit was stupid. Drivers (and cyclists) don't always do things by the book so therefore you ride defensively and take responsibility for your own safety.
 

niggle

Senior Member
Who ever is at fault (i will leave the rest of you to discuss that), the cyclist could have avoided that by not going up the inside of a left turning car. That for me is a silly cyclist!
Absolutely, rule 1 = do not let this happen to you, the consequences could be serious, permanent or even fatal. This cyclist appeared not to know rule 1.

However this has no bearing on whether they would have a good claim against the car driver. Consider two queues of cars in adjacent lanes travelling in the same direction: if anyone in the right hand lane wants to move into or cross the left hand lane they have to signal and then wait for a suitable gap to make the manoeuvre, any collision with a vehicle in the left hand lane will be down to them. But I think that for an insurance claim it would most likely work out 25% blame to the cyclist, 75% blame to the driver, because the cyclist had not taken all reasonable steps to avoid the collision.
 

Rhythm Thief

Legendary Member
Location
Ross on Wye
Presumably the next time one of us makes an indignant post about signalling to turn right and having an impatient twat in a car blasting past us despite the signal ... oh, never mind.
The cyclist in this instance was an idiot and, as Mr P says, the whole situation could very easily have been avoided if he hadn't been so ripped to his tiny tits on weed as not to notice the car's indicator. It's very easy to say that the car driver should have spotted the cyclist (and certainly he should have looked in his left hand mirror for a final check before turning; of course, it's possible that he did), but as Arch says, drivers have a lot to look out for when making such manoevres in a busy urban street and with the best will in the world, they can't spot everything all the time. Part of riding defensively is not to put yourself in an unexpected position.
 

BentMikey

Rider of Seolferwulf
Location
South London
Presumably the next time one of us makes an indignant post about signalling to turn right and having an impatient twat in a car blasting past us despite the signal ... oh, never mind.

A much more relevant example might be with the car in the left lane of a four lane road, indicating right, and the cyclist passing by in the offside lane. Signalling doesn't give the right to cross someone else's lane, it's only requesting to do so.

Oh, and I understood the OP as the car driver having weed, although I wouldn't be too surprised if it was the cyclist.
 
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