Police motorbiker accident

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Hmmmm. I spotted something very wrong in the procedure. That being the yellow Seat that drove into him. ;^)

It just looks like he wasn't giving anybody much of a chance to spot him on a busy heavily congested dual carriageway.

As we are told. Dont just pull out onto the carriageway. Gradually build up speed then match your speed. It looked somewhat lucky that the artic was able to find clear road in the traffic that allowed it to move out a lane.

I dont think that yellow car, or any other vehicle driving into the officer was part of that procedure.

If he stopped on the hatched area (between on-slip and main carriageway), chances of oncoming traffic moving over from lane 1 to lane 2 would be minimal.

Watch the fly-escort units in UK, they would do exactly the same thing, which is to park across live lanes of traffic to create a physical block.

You can see the rider giving hand gestures from 0:08s, whilst he is still off the live lane. At this stage he is clearly visible to the lorry driver, who makes no attempt to move over.
Only few seconds later, when he gets his bike right in the live lane, the lorry driver decides to get over to lane 2.

There are several seconds gap, in which the driver of the yellow car would have seen the rider stopped ahead of him. But there is no indication whatsoever, that he as much as attempted to move over.
And its not that he had another vehicle beside him at that time, stopping him from getting to the lane two.
It looks as the driver was in fact asleep, or texting, or blindfolded.

Is such blockade safe? Of course not, but its what they do.

Regarding the speed build up, that something completely different, e.g. joining from complete stand still,after stopping on the hard shoulder.
 
The Seat driver was asleep, but even if he hadn't been, each subsequent car would have got closer and closer to the cop...and the accident would still have happened.

You are probably right, regarding each vehicle getting closer.
But normally, the idea behind such blockades is that they only last few seconds and then move off to the next junction ahead.

Again, not saying this is absolutely safe to either cops of members of public, but this is how it is generally done (UK included).
 
There was less than 4 seconds between the car behind the lorry moving out and the Seat hitting the bike.

There was also a car in the overtaking land abreast of the car 2 behind the Seat...3 seconds to see the cop, then think, then decide brake or move to the left with a car overtaking...what speed is the overtaking car doing...what speed is he closing the gap...all in less than 4 second.

I actually (change from above) do not think the Seat driver was asleep I think he had no where to go...3-4 seconds at say 60 mph covers a lot of ground.
 
Isn't that the point?

It isn't safe, and therefore it is dangerous...potentially life threatening.

And I am not disagreeing with you on that.
 
I don't want to be picky here, especially as I know nothing about biking, other than having spent half a year in a rehab unit - over half of the other patients were bikers and it was always someone else's fault, never theirs. New road surface, idiot turning right in front of cyclist overtaking, idiot fails to see biker coming up the inside in his own special middle lane - I heard them all. The best one was biker giving it the beans around a bend in the middle of the road when another biker comes the other way doing the same thing. I guess it wasn't either of their faults that some idiot but a bend in the road.

Watch the video. Instead of waiting for a gap in the traffic the cop pulls out 100m in front of an artic, which is forced to move over. The car behind moves over too. The yellow car is unsighted until about 20m before impact. The only mistake the cop made was not following the golden rule of advanced driving - assume everyone else is an idiot. Yes, yes, the yellow car shouldn't have been so close. That's an incredibly rare event, isn't it? No seasoned traffic cop could possibly have expected that on a busy two lane highway.

Urgent ambulance transfers, if that is what it was and not a meat wagon are arranged in advance, and planned with military precision. So no, I wouldn't have expected him to drive the wrong way down the carriageway to set up a block, I would have expected it to have been done from the previous junction.

While we're at it, I'm at a loss to understand why he needed to close a lane. Don't Dutch drivers let ambulances out at motorway junctions?

End of rant by man fed up of being cut up by invincible bikers.


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An adult sized object wearing day-glow yellow sitting astride a large day-glow yellow bike, side on to traffic offering the largest possible profile, with lights flashing. FACT.

Lorry and car drivers not reacting to said flashing bright yellow object in their path. FACT.

Observations, including precise distances of the poor victim car driver who was unsighted……….. his/her fault because they were driving too close to the vehicle in front with no proper view ahead. FACT.

Of course, it must be the police officer's fault because he a biker. PREJUDICE.

And a whole list of things you have been told but not witnessed but somehow managed to draw your own unassailable conclusion that "biker's" are to blame. Brilliantly deduced, Sherlock but completely irrelevant to the video.
 
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An adult sized object wearing day-glow yellow sitting astride a large day-glow yellow bike, side on to traffic offering the largest possible profile, with lights flashing. FACT.

Lorry and car drivers not reacting to said flashing bright yellow object in their path. FACT.

Observations, including precise distances of the poor victim car driver who was unsighted……….. his/her fault because they were driving too close to the vehicle in front with no proper view ahead. FACT.

Of course, it must be the police officer's fault because he a biker. PREJUDICE.

And a whole list of things you have been told but not witnessed but somehow managed to draw your own unassailable conclusion that "biker's" are to blame. Brilliantly deduced, Sherlock but completely irrelevant to the video.
There's only two facts here. Police motorcyclist pulls out into busy traffic and gets run over. FACT.

There were other ways that things could have been organised, in fact a whole host of ways, so that he was exposed to absolutely zero risk of getting run over. FACT

I'm no biker ond no lorry driver, but my understanding is that the big wagons don't exactly turn on a sixpence at 100kph and they aren't encouraged to swap lanes when there is traffic outside.

I don't know what the legal outcome was, but for my money the motorcycle cop should have been prosecuted for dangereous driving. The outcome was entirely predictable.

If you don't want any deductions you don't like the sound of, then don't bother with the "ex-biker" rant. It's elementary my dear Watson. Just 2.6% of the road using population, maybe as much as 50% of the occupants of spinal injuries centres and 35 times the risk of death compared with other road users. You do the math.


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Wow you really are an angry person giantvanman
 
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Wow you really are an angry person giantvanman

You got me………..not normally quick to rant but when someone as much says that all motorcyclists are bikers with all the connotations inherent in that simple little word AND has no evidence to contravene accounts he only heard but does it anyway irked me somewhat.

Then the biker hater tries to use ARITHMETIC to try and justify a prejudiced position, it only confirms my belief that he is unable to see past his own prejudices and form an objective opinion.

For the last time, if you cannot see far enough ahead because you are driving too close to the vehicle in front, you are driving carelessly and failing to see a large reflective flashing object is inexcusable, regardless of what vehicle is being driven.

After all, let's not forget, by the rational supplied, anyone whose vehicle broke down and could not get to a safe refuge is fair game and to blame when some idiot runs into them because said idiot couldn't or wouldn't look far enough ahead to make sure the road was clear when travelling at dual carriageway speeds.:doh:
 
Wow! Still a little angry then?

I'm not sure what the difference is between motorcyclists and bikers, but it obviously means something negative to you that I simply don't understand. Please accept my apologies for any unintended confusion in terminology.

My position isn't prejudiced and definately not as a biker hater (whatever that may be). Let's be clear - I saw my frist motorcyclist accident in hospital over 30 years ago and to my best of my knowledge he still has no use of his right arm. He was the one giving it the beans around a blind corner, by the way. Promising career gone, girlfriend gone, life ruined.

I also spent a long time speaking to bikers (sorry, motorcyclists) who were adjusting to life in a wheelchair and eating with a spoon strapped to a hand that didn't work. Even the guy who'd been in a coma for 8 weeks and couldn't remember a thing was adamant that it must be someone else's fault. My cousin was a witness in a court case where a young chap got killed in rush hour traffic - you guessed it, he was in the private middle lane reserved for two wheels that they don't tell you about in the Highway Code. So yes, I have an opinion and it is well based in fact, not conjecture.

I'm sure there are responsible motorcyclists. Plenty of them. You may have been one of them, although your tone of post doesn't suggest it.

You can't get away though, from the fact that the cop got run over and ought to have planned not to. People break down on the motorway and get injured by other traffic almost every day of the week. It's tragic, but it's a long way from deliberately placing yourself in harm's way and assuming that a yellow jacket and a flashing light will keep you safe.


Rgds.

p.s. It's not arithmatic - that's when you add numbers up and do guzz-inters. I was quoting statistics.


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'Fault' is bot binary, it is often shared between several parties to varying degrees.

The sequence of events was initiated by the police officer stepping out in front of a fast moving large truck. One of two things are evedinetly inevitable in these circumstances: the truck might not have enough space to stop safely and will hit the biker, or the truck will swerve out of the way and will expose the biker to the unexpecting traffic behind it.

The second happened.. the police officer should have seen it coming. He was way to close to the truck when he stepped out. He should have waited for the truck to pass, and stop traffic only when he could see (and be seen by) the car he was stopping AND several cars behind it.

Then the driver behind the truck was clearly unattentive, yes had he been more alert he could have braked earlier and avoided hitting the police officer, or at least hit him at a slower speed and with less force, though in his defence it should be said that his margin of error was seriously reduces by the police officer's initial actions.

What cemented the event was a bit of bad luck - both the police officer and the driver swerved in the same direction (like a penalty kick...).

So a short-sighted police officer, an unattentive driver, and some bad luck all conspired to bring about this crash.

Had one of these been avoided, as I am sure happens every day many times over, there would have been no clip on YouTube.

A friend of is a commercial pilot, and once told me that an aircraft crash is like several pieces of swiss cheese impaled on a stick and rotating at different speeds - once every so often all the holes will align so that there's a clear tunnel from one side to the other, at all other times the pieces will come close to it but no one will notice.
 
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I ride bikes, i also escort large slow vehicles on busy roads.

The rider was at fault, but more so driver of the yellow car.

That's not FACT, that's my opinion based on my career and my hobby.
 

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