Reasons why I love my SClass!

[PJayUK]

Dear Mr Uberwagon I must say comment on your post!

V8's horrible, evil environment destroying things. How could you?

dont you care about all of those poor flowers and baby foxes?

Please think of the planet and trade in your evil German bunnykiller and consider either buying a 200CC lesbian car that runs on the refined urine of free range ethically reared farm animals....

Oh and what about the peaceloving, flowerplanting motorcyclists? Didn't you know that they can trace there ancestry back to the days of Abraham for 'tis written in the good book "Let no man hinder the path of the chosen ones for they hath the lord on their side (and they bloody need it!)"

 

[Meldrew2]

V8's horrible, evil environment destroying things.......

Now that is ironic, considering that parts of the environment (such as Lake Windermere) are best admired from the helm of a motor cruiser, accompanied by the music of two V8 petrol engines burbling gently at 1200 rpm.

The engines also sound magnificent at full throttle, but the scenery gets a bit blurred and 5 gallons per mile gets a bit expensive.

Boy, I really do miss my boat. And I miss the kind of speed limits that are only enforced at weekends and ignored the rest of the time, the lack of speed cameras and the maximum penalty of "a bit of a telling off".......

V8 engines - I'm with Jeremy Clarkson on this - there should be far more of them. Especially on lawnmowers. And if anyone comes up with a motorbike with a V8 engine, I might be persuaded to give the rider a whole bunch of red roses.

 

[kwakdonut]

Now that is ironic, considering that parts of the environment (such as Lake Windermere) are best admired from the helm of a motor cruiser, accompanied by the music of two V8 petrol engines burbling gently at 1200 rpm.

The engines also sound magnificent at full throttle, but the scenery gets a bit blurred and 5 gallons per mile gets a bit expensive.

Boy, I really do miss my boat. And I miss the kind of speed limits that are only enforced at weekends and ignored the rest of the time, the lack of speed cameras and the maximum penalty of "a bit of a telling off".......

V8 engines - I'm with Jeremy Clarkson on this - there should be far more of them. Especially on lawnmowers. And if anyone comes up with a motorbike with a V8 engine, I might be persuaded to give the rider a whole bunch of red roses.

http://www.bosshossmotorcycles.co.uk/
http://v8bikes.com/

eh voila!

Now where did I put that vase.......

 

[Sp!ke]

Oh and she did look over her shoulder and in her mirrors the bike filtered round a bend in the road at excessive speed and stood no chance of stopping in time. That is whats on my witness statement anyway and she has three others supporting her.

Sorry but now your talking utter BS to suit your arguement.

Earlier you said this occurred on the M25. Show me a bend in the M25 that could have possibly obscured the vision of a motorcyclist who must have been (according to your own 35mph guestimation) only a few feet behind the car prior to the lane change manovre.

Unless you were sitting inside said Corsa with this woman, how on earth could you possibly know whether she looked in her mirrors or over her shoulder and at the same time concentrate on controlling your own vehicle and be so certain of the motorcyclists speed?

If you were close emough to the corsa to see her looking in her mirrors and over her shoulders, how is it you could see the incoming motorcycle and she couldnt?

Your version of the events simply do not stack up.

 

[PJayUK]

Maybe the speed estimate was not 100% accurate, but it was certainly more than the recommendation of 10mph above the surrounding traffic speed. As per IAM guidelines. Given that the traffic was at a crawl (ie. below 10MPH) the absolute maximum he should have been going would have been below 20MPH.

And there are plenty of bends on the M25 that make it extremely difficult to observe filtering motorcyclists especially at 18:15 on a wet day (as it was). The site was just before J14 anticlockwise and the impact occurred under the bridge over the carriageway. Bike filtered between the outside and inside lane and struck the nearside

And as I keep saying he is clearly a minority.

 

[Sp!ke]

Actually the guide ratio is 20/20.

In short, don't filter in traffic moving flowing at more than 20mph and don't travel more than 20mph faster than the flow of traffic.

Now given that you say the traffic was moving at around 10mph and the motorcycle about 35mph, once you have factored in allowances for your guestimation of speeds (which you agree aren't accurate), you simply cannot categorically say he was going too fast.

The only thing that can be categorically deduced is that the corsa driver performed a manoeuvre without first taking adequate steps to ensure it was safe to do so.

Furthermore, I fail to see how you can possibly say that the motorcycle was filtering round a bend at the location you describe. The more you try and move the goalposts the more you tie yourself in knots. It wont wash here, nor would it wash in any court of law.

If I am wrong, please point out this bend in the road you speak of that is so crucial to your side of the events?

 

[PJayUK]

Actually you were right in your previous post, I must have got it completely wrong, and its all BS...

I am not prepared to go through this again sorry Sp!ke I have had to go through the events several times with the Police and as its an ongoing investigation I shouldn't really discuss it in more detail.

Sorry mate, but I don't want this thread to vector off track any more than it already has.

 

[Sp!ke]

I'm only asking you to identify the bend that could have obscured the drivers view of the bike from less than 30ft away.

I only hope your prejudiced evidence doesn't mean the poor motorcyclist is unfairly affected.

 

[James Rothwell]

Why would you 'cruise' in the outside lane? What's wrong with the other 2,3 or 4 lanes?

 

[MBK]

Outside lane should only be used for overtaking not cruising.

 

[manalishi]

Why would you 'cruise' in the outside lane? What's wrong with the other 2,3 or 4 lanes?

Seems it's a W220 'feature'.

 

[popuptoaster]

Thats easily enough of a bend to obscure a bike in traffic, if you happen to be in a narrow vehicle like a Corsa, a wider one behind you like a van or a big merc that sticks out a foot or two more than your own car can easily obscure a bike on a straight bit of road let alone a bend.

looking at a top down view from so far away with no traffic queues on it is hardly representative of what you'd see in a mirror on a rainy winter evening.

 

[Sp!ke]

how far back would that have to be then?

half a mile or more? surely not within striking distance of a 20mph closing speed.

 

[popuptoaster]

in traffic a car further out in the lane than yours is could obscure a bike right behind it with no bother while the bike could pull out a bit to go round it and into the gap your aiming at after you had looked and started your lane change, the angle could allow you to see into the other lane and completely miss seeing a bike.

I wasn't there, but this highly technical darwing illustraes my point, it IS possible to miss seeing a bike through no fault of your own.

 

[oldcro]

in traffic a car further out in the lane than yours is could obscure a bike right behind it with no bother while the bike could pull out a bit to go round it and into the gap your aiming at after you had looked and started your lane change, the angle could allow you to see into the other lane and completely miss seeing a bike.

I wasn't there, but this highly technical darwing illustraes my point, it IS possible to miss seeing a bike through no fault of your own.

Did the car pull out into the bikes path? or was the bike travelling too fast with no conception of what could occur? I'm just asking, not being critical of either party as I was not there and saw nothing. It just occurs to me that a more defensive riding style could have prepared the rider to expect the unexpected.
Great technical drawing by the way, pity about the typos though.

 

[Sp!ke]

in traffic a car further out in the lane than yours is could obscure a bike right behind it with no bother while the bike could pull out a bit to go round it and into the gap your aiming at after you had looked and started your lane change, the angle could allow you to see into the other lane and completely miss seeing a bike.

I wasn't there, but this highly technical darwing illustraes my point, it IS possible to miss seeing a bike through no fault of your own.

I can see the point you are making with your diagram although in your diagram it would seem that the bike is some way back and would have to pull out to pass the following car into the line of vision for the lead car before the lead car makes its lane change if there were to be a collision.

If a simple mirror/signal/manoeuvre is taken as opposed to a mirror/signal/look/manoeuvre and the bike tucked behind the following car then I suppose it is possible that in the time taken between the initial check in the mirror and the lane change it could be possible to not see the approaching motorcycle thus causing an impact. Even then, the distance between the cars would have to be very small and the closing speed of the bike on the high side in order to cover such an amount of ground in the second or so it takes to perform the lane change.


If the proper mirror/signal/look/manoevere process is used then there would be such a negligible time between the lifesaver check and the manoeuvre that it would still be impossible for an kind of collision unless *huge* closing speeds were involved.

Do car drivers still get taught the lifesaver check or is it only bikers that are trained in this discipline?

 

[popuptoaster]

20mph is almost 30ft per second so a bike could get around an average car in half a second or so even if going pretty slowly, personally i do still have a last look over my shoulder before i pull out, but i cant see much in my coupe as it has pretty thick rear pillars and im quite close to em so i'd have to be quite lucky to spot a bike that had been in a blind spot in my mirror i think, somethin i do tend to do now that i think about it is change lanes pretty slow, i'd hope a bike would have time to take avoiding action if he saw me and i dint see him as i was pulling out pretty slow.

 

[Dieselman]

I don't want o get into an argument but found this motorcycle site has some words on filtering.

http://www.motorcycle-training.f2s.com/filtering.html

Contrary to the belief of some motorists, filtering is entirely legal in the UK, providing that it is done safely. Typically once traffic speeds are high enough to suggest that the traffic is no longer queuing, the police may then regard your manoeuvre as a dangerous overtake. So for example on a Motorway a rider unlikely to draw police attention if they filter traffic doing 20ish mph or less and they themselves don’t pass at much over an additional 20mph.

So what speed was the traffic moving at and were conditions appropriate for filtering.
20mph isn't a legal speed at which motorcyclists can filter at, it's a speed at which most traffic Police wont deem it to be dangerous riding.

In general you will not succeed with any claim against a 3rd party in any of the following situations:


B) Narrow Gap - You collide with a vehicle while filtering between a narrow gap of cars because the car driver has either obstructed you or moved over within the lane without looking. As it is highly likely that you wont have any witnesses, you will find it difficult to prove that he hit you rather than the other way around. You stand a little more chance of succeeding if you are in an adjacent lane when they move into your path. Again you will need witnesses, so if you’ve just zoomed passed 50 cars at high speed, riding in an aggressive fashion, expect a queue of witnesses ready to stand against you.

From that I woulod say the motorcyclist might well be on a sticky wicket.

Read the rest of the page for precident set against filtering.

Filtering isn't the same as driving in a lane and the onus then goes on the rider to ensure their movement neither impedes nor is dangerous to another road user.

Another motorcycle site says.

http://london-motorcycle-training.co.uk/overtaking.htm

Filtering is Risky

When filtering you have to assume nobody can see you.

 

[Sp!ke]

Read the rest of the page for precident set against filtering.

Filtering isn't the same as driving in a lane and the onus then goes on the rider to ensure their movement neither impedes nor is dangerous to another road user.

Interesting but rather out of date I am afraid. Those precedents have been superceded in 2006 and like it or not, the whole legal aspect changed, placing the responsibility firmly in the lap of the lane changer.

In 2006 an appeal court judge stood the whole thing on its head. In Davis vs Schrogin, the judge found that, and I quote, "a filtering motorcyclist passing stationary or slow moving traffic could not be to blame if a collision occured and the rider had no chance to take avoiding action."

 

[Dieselman]

Interesting but rather out of date I am afraid. Those precedents have been superceded in 2006 and the whole legal aspect of changed..

Was the traffic in the collision mentioned stationary.?

It would appear not.

this seems particularly a problem in the slow moving M25 traffic. I witnessed a guy on a CBR last week who must have been doing 35mph in traffic that was crawling being hit by a lady in a Corsa.

If I was off to Ladbrookes I wouldn't be putting any money on the biker making a successful claim, especially given the poor weather conditions. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he is prossecuted as he wasn't riding in a fit manner for the speed or conditions.