Thoughts on accident, who's at fault?

Retrogamer

Captain hindsight would enjoy some of the responses in this thread.

I would imagine a 50:50 outcome on this.

You should have checked your mirrors and ensured the road was clear before turning left. The insurance will claim if you had done this, you would have seen the van. You will hit the van, so they will assume you didn't do this.
Seeing as the road splits ahead into two lanes

The van shouldn't have passed on the left either though if it really is a single lane road.

If the road is really two lanes though, then the blame is more likely to go against you as you would have been blocking the outside lane, forcing the van driver to pass on the inside lane.

OddballJamie

Surely if the van was going that fast it would have collided with the cyclists in a few yards time.

From the photo it looks like the car was driving along on the right side, maybe about to enter the right turn lane and thought ohh McDonalds, then a sharp left without looking and collided with the van, which had to mount the pavement to avoid a bigger accident.

Just giving an alternative view, as insurance will look at both sides of the argument.

Chimpofdoom

Retrogamer wrote: »

Captain hindsight would enjoy some of the responses in this thread.

I would imagine a 50:50 outcome on this.

You should have checked your mirrors and ensured the road was clear before turning left. The insurance will claim if you had done this, you would have seen the van. You will hit the van, so they will assume you didn't do this.
Seeing as the road splits ahead into two lanes

The van shouldn't have passed on the left either though if it really is a single lane road.

If the road is really two lanes though, then the blame is more likely to go against you as you would have been blocking the outside lane, forcing the van driver to pass on the inside lane.

I'll agree with this.

The question is, who decides if it's a single lane or not...

Might be worth asking your local council for clarification for that one stretch of road?

Strider590

Regardless of all the trivial BS, the 3rd party undertook a vehicle that was indicating left.
Unless you'd overtake him and then pulled a left hook?

T-Sil

Strider590 wrote: »

Regardless of all the trivial BS, the 3rd party undertook a vehicle that was indicating left.
Unless you'd overtake him and then pulled a left hook?

There were also 2/3 more cars behind me, one also indicating left so he came from quite far behind to whiz down the inside.

Good idea about asking the council to clarify on the road!

Thanks all, much appreciated.

T-Sil

OddballJamie wrote: »

Surely if the van was going that fast it would have collided with the cyclists in a few yards time.

From the photo it looks like the car was driving along on the right side, maybe about to enter the right turn lane and thought ohh McDonalds, then a sharp left without looking and collided with the van, which had to mount the pavement to avoid a bigger accident.

Just giving an alternative view, as insurance will look at both sides of the argument.

Sorry that made me chuckle, it's so not what happened!
I also had my 9 month old daughter in the back. I am a VERY sensible driver, this is my first accident in 14 years of driving and no points on my license either.
I take driving very seriously after a tragic loss when I was younger.
Thank you for the alternate view though.

OddballJamie

So you could say that he didn't see you indicating as you were at the front of a queue. He also could have thought the queue of cars was waiting to turn right and you were all on the right hand side of the road so he moved to the left to continue his path straight ahead.

InsideInsurance

Drawings are very powerful thing but you HAVE to make sure they are right. As you have drawn it on the embedded image you are to the far right where as you now say you were in the middle, though if you were in the middle the road doesnt really look wide enough for you to be there and for them to have room to undertake.


These type of accidents are a pain to deal with, arguably if the two lanes have been established at the point of collision and given that each lane goes in a different direction then it wouldnt really be undertaking.

If there was a high value PI claim then it would be worth the insurer getting a Locus report to establish common practice of if this point is considered 2 lanes or one. Even if it is then you may well find it is still a split liability situation but a greater proportion of blame would be placed on you.

If there isnt one then it would also most likely end up a split liability with a 50/50 being fairly probable

OddballJamie

BTW I'm not knocking your driving, just trying to give you a heads up to what the van may tell their insurance. Accidents happen but peoples views on them differ, even witnesses.

anotherbaldrick

What the hell were you doing right over there if turning left ? The car park entrance is set well back so you should have had no problem turning in from the left side position. This one is down to you , better positioning would have avoided it even with a lunatic van driver behind. My reading is that the cyclists were just coming up to the crossing but rather than slow and fall in behind them you came up alongside and then had to stop to allow them passage. Think ahead