Safe Speed Forums

I posted up this sad tale when it was first reported. Number of nationals carried the the story today. Verdict now reached and raises some issues.





The other driver received a 12 month ban and a £500 fine.


I will ask family - Ju-Ju has a pal who lives around the Billinge area. Another teacher.

Per the investigating police officer and a driving instructor who testified that the car was left in a very dangerous position on the bend.. it seems that the on-coming traffic were duped into a sort of "trompe l'oeil" in that the car appeared to be moving on their approach.






The guy who lost control when he realised - probably to his horror - that the car was actually parked and could well have nightmare flashbacks to this incident - and who pleaded guilty to careless driving in court and was reported as being "shaken and horrified at this incident which killed a baby girl in her pram" - received a 12 month driving ban and a £500 fine.


Given this verdict .. that she was the catalyst and had she used common sense when she spotted the childminder pal and parked closer to the kerb and away from what I understand to be a rather tight bend from Ju-Ju (but have asked for a photo.. ) - then one has to wonder whether or not the other driver can appeal against the length of his ban under this circumstance

The other issue which this verdict raises is that of a charge of "dangeroous parking".

I have not heard of this one before and Jazz. I think common sense and a desire not to have anything collide with our "gleaming pride and joys" prevails for most of us "seasoned lovers of motors"

But stopping on a blind bend.. within 10 metres of a junction (rule 239 and 243 of NEW Highway Code are the key issues .. but the set from 238-252 and rule 70 for cyclists make sense to me anyway. Have no problems with these. )


But the point for discussion just has to be

How far does contravening these rules back up a charge of dangerous parking - and does this charge only occur if an accident ... a tragic accident .. occurs as a result. Also what would be the burden of proof?


In this case.. clear cut because of the particular road lay-out .. and the fact she was way out into the carriageway when she "abandoned" the car? I think a fair conviction.. but given what happened as a result and the severity of sentence handed down to the driver who collided with the pram as a result.. I think she has got off very lightly really. But is this because there are no guidelines as to how to punish such crass carelessness?


I think that's what I am getting at when I say this case opens up a can of worms to "debait" over.... (Could not resist the corny joke... getmecoat.. )

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Nice touch of arrogance from the guilty "Mrs Owen had consistently refused to accept any responsibility for the accident and blamed the other driver." Responsibility seems to be something some else takes these days. Wonder if she even conceded that she had made a poor choice of place to stop?

Dangerous parking is another one of those laws that sounds good and is backed by a whole lot of common sense but is all to easy to dance around in a court - unless someone got hurt.

We could really do with making sure that drivers are educated that there are two sorts of bad parking. One that bad purely because you haven't paid And the other where you're causing an obstruction that's potentially dangerous.

In GMP land the have washed their hands of parking, even when it causing chaos and is a clear hazard. A couple of years back I challenged a Traf Pol sat in his car in the middle of the chaos caused by mothers collecting kids from school and he said parking wasn't their problem - one 4x4 was parked half on the pavement on the corner of a busy TL jct - probably the only time I'll get to be very rude to a Traf Pol and get away with it

The sooner the get the control back and have the resources to police it the better.

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Trouble is that in the old days , traffic wardens (the old yellow perils ) were employed by the police authority ,who got funded by the County .Although the Wardens might have brought in lotsamoney as fines and no sign was seen at police HQ(more importantly at County Hall).So wardens were (in marketing parlance ) a loss leader.Never mind the benefits in congestion clearing. They cost money . As incidentally did Trafpols .

So they were the first to go when economies were needed.Then came the idea of self funding schemes -a la Gatso (imagine a policing system that actually made money )

Then it didn't take some bright spark to see that the same principle could be applied to parking, and the local councils could get some more money to spend on yet more ludicrous left wing ideas --like £160,000 fountains on roundabouts (that spend half the time switched off in winter ,so as not to ice up the road )
But like the speed policy , no thought of safety etc was involved (or so it seems ) - just profit --or in the words of one from Oliver Twist - "Gotta pick a pocket or two -o"

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It does however strike me as astounding that we should need to educate people to recognise when their actions are likely to cause someone else a problem.
To me it is blindingly obvious that you don't park your car on a bend, away from the kerb, just over the brow of a hill or, worse still, a combination of these things. Why is this so difficult for some people to work out?
Are they so spacially unaware that they cannot anticipate the problems they may cause? Is just a simple case of not engaging one's brain? Or, being a little controversial here, is it simply asking too much to expect all sections of the driving public to possess the skills and knowledge necessary to make accurate and valid judgements in the dynamic 3D environment that is a road network?
I wonder what action we would expect a police officer to have taken if it had come across this parked vehicle before the tragedy occured?

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I fear we now have a nation of motorists whose first, and often only, question - having decided to stop - is will I get a parking ticket..No ..Thats okay then. End of thought process.

Our society has become very selfish and egocentric. We all want to do as we like but we're not happy about anyone else doing what they like.

Barkstar

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absolutely. just drive down wilmslow road in manchester at the curry mile section for prime examples

All covered in the HIGHWAY CODE .But then in today's conveyor belt learner driving scheme - little attention is paid as to WHY these are not the places to park, and the learner is not encouraged to ask - just to get into the car , learn to reverse park / parallel park , keep going through narrow spaces ,stop thinking whilst in car -just avoid doing anything that will attract major faults on test. Learning to drive used to be about the why / wherefore and what not to do and why . Nowadays it's all about avoiding major faults. And that is being carried over into driving after the test - no explanation of why /what if / cause and effect --- where are the lessons in risk assessment ----forward planing - gone at the alter of test results.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

But it can't have been her fault, can it? I mean, she was not going past a GATSO at 30.9mph, so according to the "zero is a safe speed" merchants, that woman was 'driving' as safely as possible.

But she wasn't and, despite what she believes, I think she is up to 80/90% responsible for that accident, from reading the report and the additional local knowledge here.

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Yeah, so is driving at a speed that means you can stop safely in the distance you can see to be clear.

Why no condemnation of the idiot that came off the road, do you think the driver was travelling at a "safe speed"?

The report of the original inquest und the prosecution of the colliding driver all say he was NOT speeding. He was on a road und approached a bend. Per the police officer ... his approach und vision of this road at the time would make driver think the car was on road und moving .. because it was IN the carriageway on the apex of a bend .. which would create the illusion that this car was "on the move"

He unlucky in that he clipped something und the start of this would have resulted in the split second loss of control which sent him into the pavement per the coroner as reported in Wigan press after the event.

Unfortunately - he hit a stationary car und no one had prosecuted her for her part in this until now - und the man pleaded guilty to careless driving.

There ist a duty of care und parking a car dangerously or in such a way as a collision ist inevitable - then that person abandoning car in such a way should also be held accountable too.

I do not park or leave my car or bike or bicycle where they either cause inconvenience or nuisance to another I have too much respect for self, others und my shiny toys.

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Anyone know where this happened? I've looked at an aerial photos of the road and it looks like there are double yellow lines on the straight bits.


Except we have. It's called council tax.
Toll car parks make people park elsewhere. Usually in a more dangerous place.

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Andrew.

Didn't suggest he was, I asked if people thought he was travelling at a safe speed.

It certainly doesn't seem that way because a possbile cause of the crash was he didn't have time to react to the stationary car.

Another option is that he wanted to buzz what he thought was a slow moving vehicle, and realised it was actually stopped a bit late in the buzzing manouvre.

Or of course, he simply might not have been looking.

I bet he drives more carefully now, if at all.



No, neither do I, but in the grand scheme of things I don't think hitting something stationary is indicative of careful and considered driving, the judge obviously thought as much.

But as the police say he was not speeding he was therefore not exceeding the speed limit which, or so we are told, means he was driving at a safe seed, ie below the speed limit.

I wonder if those yellow lines were put down because of this accident?

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Yes, because I'm sure that if there would have been a free car park, that same motorist would have used the car park, then come back to talk to her friend.

What an irrelevant point. Not everthing is as a result of the perceived injustices against motorists.

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In a former life I was Capri2.8

Maybe, maybe not. Don't know.
But if there is a car park which isn't free then it's easier to park elsewhere. Elsewhere is probably less safe. So toll car parks (other than causing more problems for the poor than the rich) could possibly encourage dangerous parking.

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Andrew.

You mean it's cheaper to park elsewhere. Almost always paid parking is easier to find a space.

I don't believe the council making a charge in order to ration a finite resource is encouraging dangerous parking, and CERTAINLY not in this case!!

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In a former life I was Capri2.8

If someone needs to be somewhere for a certain period of time then they will need to be there whether of not the council has tolled the car park.
The parking spaces are self-rationing on a first-come-first-served basis. Tolling at best makes it most wealthy first.

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Andrew.

I'm still completely puzzled as to what on earth this has got to do with original incident??

Nobody with an ounce of common sense will park half a meter from the kerb on a bend because the council charge for parking!! Rationing by price is not ideal but it's the simplest solution to the problem. If the poor can't afford it then we need to look at the tax system to imporve standards because everyone deserves a living wage. The answer is not free car parks for all.

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In a former life I was Capri2.8

Who by?

Highway code says: -

Speed limits
124 - You MUST NOT exceed the maximum speed limits for the road and for your vehicle (see the table above). The presence of street lights generally means that there is a 30 mph (48 km/h) speed limit unless otherwise specified.

[Law RTRA sects 81, 86, 89 & sch 6]
125 - The speed limit is the absolute maximum and does not mean it is safe to drive at that speed irrespective of conditions. Driving at speeds too fast for the road and traffic conditions is dangerous. You should always reduce your speed when

the road layout or condition presents hazards, such as bends
sharing the road with pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders, particularly children, and motorcyclists
weather conditions make it safer to do so
driving at night as it is more difficult to see other road users

You are quite right that the law, advanced training manuals, and indeed people on SafeSpeed all agree that the safe speed for the conditions may well be (a lot) below the speed limit - BUT when was the last time you saw public education on any scale (or indeed enforcement) that emphasised the point.

We are regularly pointing out that the emphasis on the speed limits as used by cameras/safety partnerships does NOT reinforce this point and indeed tends to send out the message that the speed limit is a safe speed.

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