F@*@@*g Mini Cab Drivers

[mystic]

So, bad end to my week yesterday. Filtering through the London traffic on the A4 and some t@*t in a minicab so loaded with suitcases he couldn't see out the back window swerves across the lane in front of me.:shocked: Brakes on, very wet roads, bike slides from underneath me into the back of his car and I carry on down the road.
Thanks to all the To55ers in ther cars who saw it and didn't offer to be a witness on my behalf.:mad: :toilet:
But a big hats off to all the bikers who actually stopped to see if I was OK and especially the guy on the CBR who actually stopped and had a smoke with me while waiting for Police, Ambulance etc to arrive...

In my experience of writing off Ducatis, I would say that I won't ever see or ride my beloved S2r again. Part of engine casing ground off so oil dumped and all the usual damge from chucking your bike down the road!

Oh, and I also feel like I leapt out of a car doing 40mph this morning!

:Furious: :Furious: :Furious: :banghead:

[CK & AK]

Ouch!!!!!!

[Nonnie]

Oooh really sorry to hear that. I hope the driver is suitably admonished for not being able to see out of his car. I am always amazed that people think they can drive without being able to see all around them.

[Headhunter]

Glad to hear you're okay, Mystic. I bet the to55ers in the cars probably thought it was your fault too. :fou:

I remember when a black cabbie nearly plastered me across his bonnet for quick bit of cheap advertising.

[Rusty35]

Rusty35 :ukm: :hissy: Mat I can really feel for you, I came off my Bike in April earlier this year, guy came out of side road without stoping, I never hit him as I managed to avoid a collision but it was wet and I gave it too much front break to stop going into him and the front wheel locked and the bike flipped. It resulted in a fractured humerous, and a complete dislocation of the shoulder, new jacket required, new boots and new helmet and new underpance! It hurt like hell and I nearly got hit by a Bus on the other side of the road. I am still having physio but I was back on my Bike after 8 weeks. My theory is if I had had some Termi's and my 800 he would have heard me comming! :fou: I wish you all the very best in you recovery! and hope that your bike issue is sorted. My guy never had any insurence so the claim is going down through the MIB :devil:

[1001001001]

Sorry to hear the news ..... sorry the the bike is busted, but
more importantly your not total written off yourself.

One point that comes to mind, with all these cameras they
have all over the place (most watched city in the world) is there
any way to see if cameras caught it ?? ... cops offer any insight
into camera footage ??? :scratch:

[ladybird]

ouch and where abouts in london was it?

[ladybird]

Rusty35 .... and a complete dislocation of the shoulder, ...



get your shoulder checked (not you rusty as you obviously did :P) - i though i'd just bruised mine to start with as we wiggled it about in the ambulance so went on my way

a combination of being hit in the handle-bar and still holding on pulled it out and falling on the floor put it back :)

but was still haivng problems after a week of keeping it moving and taking painkillers - which weren't helping (although booze did - reportedly because it relaxed teh muscles)

so it's been 3 months of torture-shop later and it's feeling okay ish ( not sure how it will stand up to a 45min go-karting challenge next weekend though)


how do you feel your shoulder has come along, how often were you being prodded for it?


=============

also, in terms of witnesses:

my bang was at 9am and i've got no witnessess despite holding up traffic, which is a bugger, although i say none, but apparently there was a non-english speaking person who saw and volunteered information, however, he didn't speak enough english and they didn't speak enought foreign to be able to make a statement that counted, so the police couldn't charge. now the bloke is changing his story - he was apparently in the correct lane, clearly indicating......

[David Matthews]

Sorry to hear about it, speedy recovery.

[mystic]

Cheers for all the kind words:D

It happened on the A4, the flyover at Chiswick heading towards Hammersmith.

Police suggested getting my insurance to try and obtain footage but its also been pointed out that filtering can be a bit of a grey area when claiming so footage not always beneficial.:look:

At least I can get stuck into some real boozing now I'm off the road:drunk:
Take it easy all

[Nickj]

A recent court case up in this neck of the woods established that filtering is now at least 50:50 as far as claims go (used to be 100% our fault)
If you can get any witnesses / evidence that he didn't exhibit due care it switches to 100% his fault.

[Nickj]

Have a read through this, it gives the background and the current status.... The paragraph 'Both to blame' is the most relevant one, the preceeding is background material. And BTW the rider in this case admitted he was going over the limit and still got 80% blame placed on the car driver.

Personally I'd sentence them to 3 months hard commuting in winter with bald tyres and 6V electrics. Death is far too easy on them :thumbsup:

[Didge]

A recent court case up in this neck of the woods established that filtering is now at least 50:50 as far as claims go (used to be 100% our fault)
If you can get any witnesses / evidence that he didn't exhibit due care it switches to 100% his fault.

Not true. Filtering is recognised in the Highway Code.

88
Manoeuvring. You should be aware of what is behind and to the sides before manoeuvring. Look behind you; use mirrors if they are fitted. When in traffic queues look out for pedestrians crossing between vehicles and vehicles emerging from junctions or changing lanes. Position yourself so that drivers in front can see you in their mirrors. Additionally, when filtering in slow-moving traffic, take care and keep your speed low.

Here is a copy and paste about filtering. I cannot remember where I got it from, but I knew it would come in handy at some point.
It is quite long I'm afraid, but worth the read.


If any of you have been involved are currently have accidents where filtering is involved currently on the go, no doubt the other side have tried to throw Powell v Moody (1966) at you onthe basis that this case law is the only relevant matter and therefore the fact that you were filtering means that you are liable.
Well, from now on you can tell the other side who quotes this to shove it where the sun don't shine.

I knew that this case was due to be heard, but now it has been dealt with, the outcome is that the rider won 100% despite the fact that the filtering rider was quite brisk and was beyond the centre white line. It was a typical filtering type of accident.

Sorry it is a bit of a long read, but it is useful and very important case law as it is the first time in the court of appeal that a direct case of filteringhas gone this far and the Appeal court has said that filtering is perfectly acceptable and drivers have a duty of care to ensure that riders are not filtering before they pull out or change speed or direction. So, if anyone has a case pending which they are having difficulty supplying their legal representatives or insurance companies with ammunition, then this is the chappy. Here goes, sorry again for the long read, but as i say it may be worth even saving it on your computer for future reference.

[Didge]

1. LORD JUSTICE HUGHES: This is a defendant's appeal in a running down action. The judge held him solely to blame for the accident. His contention is that there should have been a finding of some measure of contributory negligence. The accident occurred on the main A40 road in Oxfordshire on a long straight section where there is one lane each way. Both the claimant and the defendant were travelling westwards. The defendant was in a largish saloon car trapped in a substantial traffic jam with cars in a queue about a half a mile, or perhaps more, long. As with many such queues, it was either stationary or inching forward. The claimant was riding a motorcycle in the same direction. Because there was nothing at all oncoming in the eastbound lane, and because the road was straight with excellent visibility for half a mile or so, the claimant was able to overtake the stationary queue. The defendant decided to get out of the queue by executing a U-turn and going back the way he had come. As he emerged from the queue in the course of that U-turn there was a collision between his car, by now roughly broadside across the eastbound lane, and the claimant's motorcycle. It was a nasty collision and the claimant sustained serious injuries. This all happened at about 6.30 pm on a summer evening. The weather was fine, the road was dry, the visibility was excellent for both drivers some hundreds of yards in each direction from the point of impact.
2. The judge's primary findings of fact were these:
1) both drivers were responsible, respectable people. The claimant was a careful and experienced rider, doing a journey that he did regularly. The defendant, who was a visitor from abroad, was a very experienced driver, both in his home in the United States and also in Europe, and as the judge said no doubt ordinarily an exemplary driver.
2) The claimant on his motorcycle was well out into the oncoming lane about half or two thirds of the way across it from the central white line. That was so as to make himself as visible as possible. He had his headlight on, dipped, his right hand indicator was flashing and he was travelling at something between 40 and 45 miles per hour. He had been in that position for about half a mile. He was not weaving in and out of the traffic.
3) The stationary queue then nudged forward about one or one-and-a-third car lengths. The defendant moved over towards the left hand kerb. He then pulled out to make his U-turn.
4) The claimant's motorcycle was there to be seen when the defendant did that, but the defendant did not see it until the collision. The defendant was looking the wrong way. He was concentrating on looking to his left westwards along the road. The judge's finding to that effect was squarely based on the defendant's own evidence that that is what he was doing.
5) At the time when the claimant first spotted the defendant moving leftwards towards the kerb preparatory, as it turned out, to a U-turn, the claimant was no more than five cars' length back from the point of impact.
6) The defendant had become impatient. He was on the wrong road for his destination and stuck in a traffic jam to boot. He had said in evidence in a single answer that he was possibly a bit annoyed. The judge found that he was sure that it was significantly more than that and that that was a significant factor in explaining the error that the defendant had made.

[Didge]

3. On those facts the judge found first that the defendant was negligent in making his U-turn without looking properly, or indeed at all, to his right. There is not and cannot be any challenge to that finding. Indeed; that the defendant was negligent in that way was conceded at the trial. The judge found that the claimant was not to blame. He held that there was nothing he could have done to avoid the accident. He had indicated in the course of argument that his first reaction to the evidence was that the claimant was perhaps travelling faster than he should have been, but after argument and further consideration he concluded that that was not a legitimate criticism. But in any event he held that even if the claimant had been travelling appreciably more slowly than he was, it would have made no difference, because he had been right on top of the point of accident when the defendant first did anything to excite anxiety. In other words the judge held that even had there been any excess speed, it was not causative of the collision.
4. Ms Perry has helpfully taken us to short notes of two cases noted in Bingham's Motor Claims Cases. It does not seem to me that authorities on a point such as this are in the end of great assistance. That in different situations an overtaking driver may well be guilty of contributory negligence is something about which there can be no debate. But it does not follow that every such driver is. The cases to which we have been referred are both cases in which this court said no more than that there were no grounds to interfere with the findings of the judge below.
5. Everything depends in those cases and depends in this case on the point at which the overtaking driver was alerted or should have been alerted to the fact that there was any danger ahead. With two exceptions, the appellant defendant does not challenge the judge's primary findings of fact. In two respects however, he does. We should remind ourselves, as it seems to me, that the judge heard the evidence and saw the witnesses. He saw not only what they said but how they said it, and it seems to me that we should be very slow in this court to attempt to second guess his findings as to primary fact.
6. The challenge to the primary findings comes to the last two findings that I have listed, namely first that the defendant acted when annoyed or irritated and secondly, to the finding that the claimant had no time to react to what was happening ahead of him. As to the first, it seems to me that the judge was entitled to find that annoyance was a significant factor in causing the defendant to make his U-turn and to make it without looking in one direction at all. It is said that that finding is inconsistent with the evidence before the judge. In particular it is said that the evidence of an independent witness, Mr Howard, to the effect that the defendant emerged very slowly, indeed barely moving, is inconsistent with it. It was, as it seems to me, for the judge to assess which parts of whose evidence he accepted. But in any event the defendant did not have to move rapidly in order to present a sudden and unexpected obstacle to the claimant. To the extent that it is suggested that a second witness, Mrs Waters, whose short statement to the police officer was before the judge though she did not give evidence, supported the suggestion that the defendant was moving very slowly, I for my part cannot see that that can be related to what she says. Indeed, she said it all happened very fast.

[Didge]

7. As to the critical finding that the claimant had no time to react, the defendant's case was put to the judge on the basis of the defendant's own evidence that there elapsed five to ten seconds between the defendant's movement to his near side and the collision. It is no doubt true that if that time had elapsed, that would have given the claimant something like 100 or 200 yards in which to react. It is worth observing that the defendant had not recalled moving to his near side until he saw the claimant's statement to that effect. That might alone be thought to cast some doubt on any estimate that he made of the time elapsed after such movement, but in any event if there had been that kind of time for the claimant to react, it would have meant that for most of 100 or 200 yards the defendant was to be seen emerging and that the claimant had simply ridden straight into him. The judge was plainly right, as it seems to me, to say that that was simply not plausible.
8. The appellant's written grounds of appeal begin with the contention that the judge apparently accepted the evidence that the claimant had those five or ten seconds in which to react. The judge's findings make it perfectly clear that he did not. He recited the defendant's evidence to that effect, but his critical finding was that the claimant was only about five car lengths away when he saw the first leftwards movement of the defendant, followed immediately by the U-turn. It is perfectly plain that the judge did not accept the five or ten-second time lapse.
9. Here in this court the appellant defendant's case has been presented in a more refined form. Here the contention has become that the claimant must have been further back than five cars' length, because at 40 miles per hour he would cover that kind of distance, say about 20 yards, in about a second, and the U-turn manoeuvre, it is suggested, must have taken longer than that. That is an argument or a proposition which was not presented to the trial judge. Running down arithmetic is notoriously dangerous. This car only needed to move a very short distance in order to block something like two thirds, or perhaps a little more, of the lane in which the claimant motorcyclist was travelling.
10. It seems to me that it does not follow that when the claimant saw one car in a queue of traffic which he was overtaking nudge to the nearside, he should necessarily be expected to anticipate that what it was going to do was not only a U-turn which would completely block his path, but also that it would be done without the driver pausing to look his way. It is true that the claimant, with a candour that he shared with the defendant in evidence, said himself that he had seen the movement towards the nearside and he went on to say this:
"At that point alarm bells were ringing, but it was so instantaneous after that that I didn't have time to react to anything."
He added that he had thought that the car driver might be doing something different to what the rest of the traffic was continuing to do.

[Didge]

11. It does not, as it seems to me, follow from that that he was at that point sufficiently on enquiry of the prospect of a U-turn. But in any event on the judge's primary findings, whether the estimate of five car lengths is a mathematically precise one or not, the claimant was right on top of the scene and the point of impact when the defendant emerged from the line of traffic without looking. There is, as it seems to me, simply no basis for challenging the judge's finding upon causation. Once it is held, as the judge was plainly entitled to hold, that the claimant was so close to the point of impact that he could not avoid the collision, then there is simply no basis for any finding of contributory negligence.
12. I would for those reasons uphold the judge's finding and dismiss this appeal.
13. LORD JUSTICE HOOPER: I agree
14. LORD JUSTICE AULD: I also agree that the appeal should be dismissed for the reasons given by my Lord, Lord Justice Hughes.
Order: Appeal dismissed with costs.

Law lords all agreeing with the motorcyclist, what more ammunition do you need?

[jerry]

HOOLY sorry to hear about your accident, hope u are not in too much phyical pain , but only mental anguish from losing your beloved Monster.

[1001001001]

It happened on the A4, the flyover at Chiswick heading towards Hammersmith .. Wow, thats 200 metres from my place. S*ite little
round about under that flyover, the ramp up to the M4 from chiswick is real bad too. (lots of monkeys in BMW's etc)

A recent court case up in this neck of the woods established that filtering is now at least 50:50 .. Well they teach filtering in the D.A.S here, even though I had an Oz licence for moto, I had to do the D.A.S (long story) so my defence would be, they teach it at the schools so if its not a rule, then dont teach it ! ...

[gremlin]

I was taught rules of filtering and did query whether it was really ok but it is now standard procedure apparantly, so if it wasn't legal etc it wouldn't be taught. Glad you're relatively ok. Sorry about the bike though.