Hit by a car

So now is the time to start making clear and concise notes about the incident.

 

I must respectfully disagree on this point. Certainly when I was learning to drive, it was drilled into us that you don't move a motor vehicle unless you can see what you are moving it into. That can involve getting out and having a good look, asking someone else to be your eyes, or anything it takes, but you don't blindly move a vehicle into traffic, which is what this bloke would have to have been doing in order to cross the pavement to get to the road. In this particular case, he had a passenger, so if visibility was impaired he could have asked her to stand at the end of the drive and guide him out. The highway code (unless it has changed since I learned) does make provision for warning other potentially unseen road users of your presence. This is what the horn is for (although there are conflicting rules about its use).

Of course sometimes it is very difficult to be sure. I myself am guilty of having failed to make all the necessary observations once, when I reversed into another vehicle (and then immediately admitted it was my fault because I was in charge of the car that reversed into the other car). In such situations (barring the afforementioned low speed bump) my technique is to move very, very slowly, such that if someone is coming that I haven't spotted, they have loads of time to spot and react to me, and worst case if I hit them, it is so low speed that nothing and nobody breaks.

Its easy to say 'let it lie' in this case because JJ is an adult. But the fact remains that a car driver crossed the pavement without making sufficient observations, and hit somebody as a result. That somebody, had it not been JJ, could have just as easily been a young child who has only just learnt to ride a two wheeler and still has very limited balance and coordination, or maybe an elderly person on a mobility scooter. In that situation, I ask @pete and @longk if it would still be right to let it go? I don't need an answer, I'm just throwing it out there as something to think about.

 

But what if the other way round? If a child or user of a mobility scooter had stepped out/ridden onto the pavement and been hit by a cyclist riding along the footpath with faulty brakes?

Would you then also assume whoever was exiting the driveway to be the guilty party?

 

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand this. Who has the faulty brakes? And who is emerging from the driveway?

 

Sorry Shiney, I disagree with you. It's telling falsehoods ... JJ says she was riding along a pavement (not permitted by English law) on a bicycle with brakes which did not work .....

What is the law on backing out of your private driveway, albeit across a public pavement onto a public road? The driver has the same responsibility of due care to the traffic on the pavement as he has to the traffic on the road. Having said this, traffic on the pavement is intended to be of a pedestrian nature. A driver cannot reasonably assume that the traffic on the pavement is of a vehicular nature unable to stop in a safe and timely fashion ..... particularly if the brakes are ineffective!

Having worked in law for most of my life, I would back down if I were you JJ ... you admit you were wrong in what you were doing ... why create more stress for yourself?

 

The person emerging from the driveway would be a child or user of a mobility scooter into the path of a cyclist riding along the footpath and the person with faulty brakes would be the cyclist that rode into them.

 

In that case, the person emerging blinding from the drive would still be at fault. I was taught as a child to always look to see what I am stepping into, and I teach my kids the same. Of course kids don't always make the necessary checks, and accidents result, and it is not nice to say the kid is at fault because they don't really have the mental maturity to be at fault, but in that case unless the person coming along the pavement is moving at an inappropriate speed, it is not the person already on the pavement that's to blame. Sometimes accidents happen and there is no blame. JJ's case is not such an incident in my opinion.

As for JJ's brakes failing, maybe @Jungle Jane could clarify if she wishes to, but I know that when I've had to do an emergency stop, be it in the car or on my bike, I've always thought my brakes were failing when in fact they weren't. Its an old cliche but its true (in my experience) that when it's for real, your brain races so fast that some things seems to happen in slow motion, so as the rate of deceleration as you brake. Doing a test emergency stop (on a quiet deserted road away from houses) from 30mph, no adrenaline, you stop in what feels like a couple of seconds. Do a real emergency stop from 30mph when the adrenaline is pumping and it can feel like it takes 10 times that, to the extent that you can think that your brakes are not doing anything when in fact they are working perfectly.

 

Totally agree!!!

 

The points I'm making are to caution against those egging on JJ to start embarking upon a potentially expensive litigation, without those doing so knowing all the facts. OK perhaps if going via a free legal expenses/no win no fee route.

 

I say this as a cyclist;
Having done the google streetview thing based on your map I'm puzzled as to why JJ didn't see the car coming?
And in all fairness JJ it is some three or four hundred metres to where you were going (the cycle path). So as a cyclist (who I will admit objects to bikes on the pavement, children or not) I think that you and the driver have to take this one on the chin.

I do agree with you entirely about the attitude of the female passenger though.

The Highway Code used to say that the driver should always reverse from the major thoroughfare onto the minor thoroughfare, never the other way round.

 

I agree it would be unwise to pursue compo in this case. The point I'm trying to make is that based on the information we've been given, it would seem to me that a negligent driver is not going to have his attitude checked in any way.

JJ has not said that the driver immediately leapt to her (JJ's) defense when his passenger started kicking off. This suggests to me that the driver is more concerned about the damage to his vehicle than he is about other people that he may affect (and has affected). By putting the case in the system so to speak, he will have a claim registered against him even if that claim is for £0. This will affect his premiums, and hopefully make him think about what is more important, his precious car, or the people he might hit with it. Or if not, he might at least think about his pocket, and how his pocket is affected by his lack of attention and consideration.

 

Good job the highway code is a set of guidelines rather than law, otherwise it would be a legal requirement for me to emerge from my drive blind, as the wall which would be on my right if I reverse in would be so close to the driver's side of the car that the angle I could cover would be such that Gothilda's lengthy bonnet would have to be already across the pavement before I could see what or who was coming along the pavement from the right. Reversing out puts me on the opposite side to the wall, giving me a much wider viewing angle.

 

Yet negligent uninsured cyclists can carry on? I would like to point out that this is not a judgement of JJ but a general observation.