Last nights brush with death...

[summerdays]

You also have to take care the opposite way - when you are travelling down the middle of the road and a stationary car on the main road lets a car turn right out of a side road, and obviously the bigger the vehicle that lets the other traffic out the more hidden we become and the less we can see ourselves.

 

[BenScoobert]

Technically entirely the drivers fault as others have said. But you have to ride/drive defensively everywhere you go.
I take the stance that EVERYONE on the road is a total muppet until I'm clear of them, I find its best to assume it will go wrong unless you do something about it.
I guess it comes from years of driving everything and anything, from packed motorways through to busy confined building sites.

Short version, assume they are all planks until you know otherwise

 

[Tinuts]

Short version, assume they are all planks until you know otherwise

Yes, wise words.

My first accident after I moved to London (more years ago than I care to mention) was the same situation as described by the OP. Haring down bus lane (Theobalds Rd as I remember) a courier on one of those large BMW bikes pulled in front of me from the lane of stationary traffic. I ploughed straight into him and flew over the top. Not too badly injured - nothing broken at least. BMW so heavy the courier couldn't actually pick the damn thing up afterwards. The thing that sticks in my mind, though, is that despite the adjacent pavement being chockablock with peds not one of them offered assistance of any kind - but I guess that's London for you!

The positive side to it was that the accident prompted me to go out and buy a helmet (I hadn't worn one up to that stage) and, needless to say, I treat bus lanes (and the rest) with considerably more respect now.

 

[PoliceMadAd]

I was on a driving lesson once, and attempting to pull out of a side road, a bus was blocking my view of one lane of the road, my instructor rightly told me not to proceed, as i couldn't see down the road past the bus and it wasn't safe. Made we wait till the bus had gone :L.

So IMO it was the drivers fault, he should've waited till he could fully see down both oncoming lanes and not entered the lanes till he had a clear view.

 

[Norm]

The law is, IMO, very clear and BentMickey, with others, have called the legal liability correctly. That doesn't help if it just means "he had priority" appears in the coroner's report.

If you had been riding a recumbent, there is no way that you could have seen over the cars, or that the opposing driver could have seen that the lane was clear. A friend of mine was killed on a motorbike in very similar circumstances, when a van he was filtering past slowed to let a car out of a side turning.

A nasty situation and one that always has me slowing when approaching a junction in stationary traffic, whether my two-wheeler is powered or not.

 

[Jezston]

Wait err what inspired you to bump this 'Ad'?