Who's fault was it?

Wig

Hey OP,
How about a satelite photo of the junction.

Indout96

If there weren't two lanes that allowed the Polo driver to undertake safely then I think it's his own fault.

You do not need two lanes to pass a stationary (waiting to turn) car you need enought room for your car to fit through. The number of times I have gone through a gap to have a small car that was following me stop because there is not enough room is a joke, the driver generaly sits there stretching their neck upwards trying to judge the gap :rotfl:

If he was choosing to undertake

You only UNDERTAKE if there are two seperate lanes of traffic going in the same direction not if the right hand lane is waiting to turn.

We're all taught how important it is to anticipate - this person clearly did not as he was travelling too fast to stop.

Stopping takes a set amount of both time and space, no matter how fast your reactions you can not stop faster than this unless you hit something :rolleyes: if you are going 15mph and another veicle pulls out directly in front of you, there are only two choices. Hit it or take avoiding action via a change of direction. It is quite possible that the other driver saw this, checked the pavement, saw it empty and took this action choosing to collide with the shelter rather than risk hitting the OP's car and possibly injuring them. If I had done this I would also be rather upset at her for pulling out and a few choice words may have been said. :mad:


Lets not forget that we only have one side of the argument and whilst it may be 100% true it may not. Trust me the number of claim forms where BOTH drivers are totally to blame in the eyes of the other far, outway the "Sorry it was my fault" ones

derrick

Keith wrote: »

but that happened before he hit you.

maryjanethespider wrote: »

- although he did not hit my car just to add

Where do you get the fact that the OPs car was hit? they said "although he did not hit my car"

Defo the Polo drivers fault if what OP said is true, you do not drive on pavements!

Keith

I'm sure that said "damage" not hit last night, but hey it was late and I'd been down the pub :beer:

Anyway, liability, the but for test should be used.

If it wasn't for the OPs actions, would damage have been caused to the other party. If the answer is yes, then liability does not exist, if the damage would not have happened without the actions of the OP then the OP is liable.

Even if the other party has just broken a motoring law. If someone is speeding and you pull out and force them to crash, you'd still be partly liable, not 100% but some liability for the accident would lay at your feet.

Wig

Indout96 wrote: »

You do not need two lanes to pass a stationary (waiting to turn) car you need enought room for your car to fit through.

But you need to act responsibly, if there are not two lanes then in this scenario, as Doozer said there is a reasonable chance of traffic coming from the right. It is driving dangerously to squeeze through such an area at speed and without caution, such that the driver ploughed into a bus shelter. Even if there was room to squeeze through, the circumstances of this accident would cause me to have no hesitation to apportion blame to the Polo of atleast 70% Especially if we are to understand that the Polo was at one point stationary behind the woman, the speed he must have pulled off with beggars belief.

You only UNDERTAKE if there are two seperate lanes of traffic going in the same direction not if the right hand lane is waiting to turn.

I would call both scenarios an "undertake". I used the word "undertake" because it describes the act of passing a vehicle on its left hand side. I don't think it matters what the dictionary definition of the word "undertake" is, I think we all know what is meant when the word has been used in this thread.

BTW, Where did you get the definition of "undertake" to only apply to a multi-laned highway?

Stopping takes a set amount of both time and space, no matter how fast your reactions you can not stop faster than this unless you hit something :rolleyes: if you are going 15mph and another veicle pulls out directly in front of you, there are only two choices. Hit it or take avoiding action via a change of direction. It is quite possible that the other driver saw this, checked the pavement, saw it empty and took this action choosing to collide with the shelter rather than risk hitting the OP's car and possibly injuring them. If I had done this I would also be rather upset at her for pulling out and a few choice words may have been said. :mad:

As already said the situation would call for cautious driving, driving so fast that you are unable to halt your car before impact, and fast enough that you
1) Have to change direction
2) Are fast enough to be able to drive up a pavement
In this sitution, I would blame the Polo. Even more so if he had previously been stationary behind the woman.

Lets not forget that we only have one side of the argument and whilst it may be 100% true it may not. Trust me the number of claim forms where BOTH drivers are totally to blame in the eyes of the other far, outway the "Sorry it was my fault" ones

But we have to assume what OP said is true, that is the acount that we are being asked to call our judgement on.

If I said to you I have 4 red balls and 2 blue, and I asked you if the number of blue was half the number of reds. I would look at you very strangely if you replied, ahhh but you could have 6 reds and 3 green so you actually could have no blue balls at all. - which reminds me of the football coach who when asked a silly question replied
"Well, if my aunty had balls she'd be my my uncle"

Indout96

But we have to assume what OP said is true

But all this is judged from

i noticed a black spec when he came in to veiw in my mirrors

so it must be true then.

Where did you get the definition of "undertake

I refer to

only overtake on the left if the vehicle in front is signalling to turn right, and there is room to do so

from the higway code they refer to it as overtaking not undertaking.

The OP has stated several times that she did not see the Polo and from that I can only assume that she is basing everything she said afterwards on what she was TOLD, the main witness was the one that "motioned" her out in the first place and if she had not done so then none of this would have ever happened.

As you are happy to quote sayings I'll end with the driver who was quoted as saying
"I've never had an acident in 30 years but I've seen hundreds in my mirror"


I will add however that I am not saying the OP is a fault - just setting forth other possible reasons for the accident, because you can bet your house on the fact that the Polo drivers account will not match the one OP has put.

derrick

Indout96 wrote: »

As you are happy to quote sayings I'll end with the driver who was quoted as saying
"I've never had an acident in 30 years but I've seen hundreds in my mirror"

Would that be Conor by any chance

Wig

Keith wrote: »

Anyway, liability, the but for test should be used.

If it wasn't for the OPs actions, would damage have been caused to the other party. If the answer is yes, then liability does not exist, if the damage would not have happened without the actions of the OP then the OP is liable.

Even if the other party has just broken a motoring law. If someone is speeding and you pull out and force them to crash, you'd still be partly liable, not 100% but some liability for the accident would lay at your feet.

This is not true IMHO, if there was no room for a car to come from the left (because the road was blocked by woman turning right), after checking the road was clear our OP would be free to move out and start to join the highway turning right. There would be no reason to expect a car to come from the left driving along the pavement. As long as the womans car remains stationary our OP can continue forwards legally.

In your rule book, a motorway can have the nearside lane with cars travelling in the correct direction. A nutter can drive the wrong way along the motorway in lane 2 passing all the cars in lane 1, until one of the cars iin lane 1 decides to overtake and pulls out into lane 2, too late to avoid a collision, the two cars end up head-on. If it wasn't for the legally driven car pulling out, there would have been no accident.


Another way to challenge your idea would be to say, If it wasn't for the Polo driving illegally on the pavement the accident would not have happened = the Polo's fault.

If it wasn't for the woman needing to turn right and stopping there, our polo driver would not have been stuck behind her and lost his patience = the womans fault.

If it wasn't for the school having an opening hour of 08.40am our OP would not have been there at that time = the schools fault.

loftus

Strange that the OP has been busy posting other threads but can't come back to clarify issues on her own

The more I think about this the more I suspect that maybe there was room for the Polo driver to pass the vehicle turning right, the OP pulled out because she was being beckoned forward, didn't see the overtaking Polo and caused him to take evasive action thereby striking the bus stop. This scenario seems to fit the facts best in my opinion although I am happy to be corrected.

Doozergirl

I don't give a toss if it's undertaking or overtaking. Thankfully you don't need to use the absolute correct terminology according to the highway code in conversation in order to be a courteous driver. I'm sure people knew what I was talking about.

I think what I think because the driver had been tailgating. The woman that stopped would not have had time to stop, beckon the OP out and for the OP to then react, check to the right, probably wave her thanks and then turn if the Polo, whom the lady driver had such intimate knowledge of, had been continuing along the road without stopping at all; unless he wasn't tailgating and was a good 50 yards behind all the time. Where would he have gone from tailgating then having the time to nearly hitting a car that had pulled out after all that time?

Also, the stopped car's position in the road would likely have been different letting someone out first than it would be if she was simply wanting to turn right without letting someone out first. You can read that from behind as well. If he was being aggressive before the accident then it's likely he carries a heavy weight of blame.

There was no surprise to me when I discovered the man that overtook me aggressively, when I was travelling at 40mph in a 40mph zone, in a ditch staring at his car 2 miles further down the road.