For it to be worth a fight there has to be the possibility of a 100% decision. Essentially even if your girlfriend's insurance company pay out 50% of the damage then she'll still lose her bonus.
She pulled out in front of him, so it starts out being her fault. If she could prove he was speeding then probably some of the negligence would be deemed to be his and may cause the blame to be shared. This may give her some emotional satisfaction wbut will make litle or no financial difference.
If I had to fight her case of the other guy's, I'd probably win the other guy's.
Your notes are worth the paper they're written on, but not much more. The third party could have thrown himself at your feet and begged for forgiveness for speeding, it wouldn't make much difference. Even an apology is only taken as a potential indicator rather than proof of fault. Contemperaneous notes are worth a little more than notes taken later, but again not much - sounds cool though, doesn't it.
I suspect that she will lose her bonus, fail to recover her uninsured losses and indeed her insurer may well end up covering the other person's losses. It won't go to court, nobody cares enough, you'll never be called as a witness by Perry Mason and your much vaulted notes will gradually fade in a file somewhere.
Aside from that, she pulled out in front of a car having *assumed* what it was doing, rather than actually looking and seeing. I truly do not believe that she sat there and thought "oh, I have 6 seconds, that will be sufficient", 100 yards is not far and its certainly close enough to work out what speed a car is doing. She shouldn't have assumed it was doing 30mph, she should have checked. So she wouldn't be on for a whole bunch of sympathy from me, I'm afraid.
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Yes, we have this situation every day at the bottom of our road where we have to pull out of a junction - and we have to make a decision based on whether oncoming traffic is speeding or not as it comes over the crest of a hill. We have speed limits in built-up areas because there are more hazards such as people leaving side roads - if drivers haven't the sense to slow down, then we need more cameras and steeper fines. Obvious, ain't it?
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p.s. a bit of confusion on my part about who owns/spoke about notes etc. Sorry, but they stripped my edit button when they snapped my sword and DD ran off with the remains of the ploughmans.
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Am I missing something here? The OP, UncleFester, does not mention anywhere that his GF has written notes from the other driver saying he was speeding. He just remarks that he admiited he was speeding.
It is other contributors who have brought up the subject of signed statements!
Or am I missing something?
Anyway, IMHO, taking the speeding aside, if you are pulling out of a junction and you see another car, then it surely must be up to you to decide whether the other car is stationary, moving, speeding or whatever? It looks like she has spotted a car, assumed it is too far away and pulled out, all in the one movement, maybe even not from a stationary point ie. has came up to the junction switched down to second, a quick glance and then pulled out?
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It's controversional incidents like this that show the value of acquiring a good record and then getting a protected NCD. If you do then happen to be involved in an accident apportioning blame becomes of little or no importance. I'm just pleased I'm in the position of being able to let my insurance company sort things. It's what I pay them for.
--
L\'escargot.
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>>Am I missing something here?
Yes. The note I wrote at 8:16, almost an hour before you missed something.
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A person waiting at a junction and considering whether to pull out or not is presumed to be capable of judging the speed of any oncoming vehicle. It is not a precise judgement, but the over-riding caution is, if in doubt, wait. I don't think the large excess of 60 over 30 actually helps your GF's case. If she can't judge that difference, what speed can she judge? Would she have spotted that he was doing say 80 or 100 mph, or still pulled out regardless?
Even having the right of way does not give someone the right to deliberately put one's vehicle in the path of another. And she did not have right of way.
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Funny, but before speed cameras came along nobody would ever assume another vehicle was doing 30mph.........
The GF sounds like a typical example of a 'quick glance' driver; being a motorcyclist, I see these every day; as I keep my speed down I usually watch them perform their antics in front of me - I wish the recent 'take time to look for bikes' had been more general, i.e. TAKE TIME TO LOOK !!!!!
Perversely, I often see the opposite effect; many drivers see a bike's light and expect it to be speeding - they sit there waiting when they had plenty of time to pull out.
Unfortunately our driving culture is one of 'right of way' and 'blame'. It really isn't as simple as that; people make mistakes, people get carried away, all it takes is for two such people to be in the same road space and bang, another 'accident'.
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>>The GF sounds like a typical example of a 'quick glance' driver; being a motorcyclist, I see these every day...
Defintely take issue with that! Being in a car with a "quick-glance" friend of hers who nearly stopped a motorcyclist "dead" taught her that one. She stops at "give way" lines (even gaining the odd toot from someone behind who expects her to breeze through), and spots ALL motorcycles/cycles/cars/pedestrians - including the spotty kids on mopeds with no lights!
I hadn;t said she assumed he was doing 30mph... and she didn't sit there and calcuate empirically the approach vector of the other vehicle, as another poster suggested - rather saw the vehicle, and judged (according to her knowledge of the road from travelling along it herself) thaht she had time to pull out. An earlier post went into the maths, but I think mossed up somewhere - too late to go into the matchs myself though.
Yes, she ASSUMED the other vehicle was far enough away - a friend of mine in the local constabulary thinks the issue is with the layout of the road - the approaching vehicle's speed would not be apparent due to the course of its approach.
Anyways, thanks for all the feedback - latest is that the other driver has reported the incident as happening THREE DAYS later - our insurers thiunk he's maybe uninsured!! At least I have his address
Fes
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what speedcan she judge? Would she have spotted that he was doing say 80 or 100 mph, or still pulled out regardless?
People are carp at judging speed. Never mind my own experience, which cost me, of some fool coming out of a side turning to turn right, finding he couldn't because of traffic in the other carriageway, and stopping 40 yards ahead of me as I passed some other cars in the wet on a fastish bit of A road.
At Mike Hawthorn's inquest, an elderly pedestrian witness, according to Robb Walker who had been racing him home from the pub in his 300SL (Hawthorn being in a heavily tweaked 3.8 Jaguar), was asked what speed the cars had seemed to be doing. The geezer replied indignantly that 'Ooh, they must have been doing 80'.
Robb Walker thought this was because the guy probably couldn't conceive of a higher speed, and in typical heartless rich guy fashion thought it was quite funny.
I am not dissing either Walker or Hawthorn by the way. They were friends, Hawthorn was World Champion at the time and they can both be assumed to have known what they were doing. Walker thought Hawthorn as Champion simply couldn't stand being passed by someone who wasn't, and overdid it.
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">Contemperaneous notes are worth a little more than notes taken later, but again not much<"
Really? The Guildford Four might disagree with you, and the Court of Appeal.
">- sounds cool though, doesn't it.<"
What's "cool" got to do with it?
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nofm2r said:
>>..Contemperaneous notes are worth a little more than notes taken later, but again not much ..
contemporaneos notes
i prefer the words of justice stanley burnton, who in passing judgement, said in 2002:
"Where there is inconsistency between contemporaneous notes and a subsequent witness statement, I prefer the former unless there is reason to doubt their accuracy. ..."
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>>Really? The Guildford Four might disagree with you, and the Court of Appeal.
I'm afraid I am not familiar with that incident, did they collide at a road junction ?
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8< SNIP
This and loads of other pointless / argumentative comments removed.
DD.
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If the original post was correct that the oncoming vehicle was 100 yards away, then IMO I would pull out as that is a huge distance. There are numerous roads locally where you can't see more than 100 yards, and so have to pull out onto a B road with a 60 limit and hope someone isn't doing more than 60. Even so I get hooted and/or flashed. (No doubt they do not see the signs warning of a side road, do not notice the poor visibility due to a corner, and hurtle on at the limit regardless.)
But, unless there is a witness .... there is no proof that it was 100 yards, or that the oncoming vehicle was speeding.
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If the original post was correct that the oncoming vehicle was 100 yards away, then IMO I would pull out as that is a huge distance. >>
Distance is not the issue, it is time that is the issue, speed / distance = time.
The driver who pulled out was at fault for not judging the speed of the oncoming vehicle, it is a matter of due care, after all she could have been pulling out onto a 60 limit road where an oncoming vehicle may be doing 20 or some what over 60.
Aside from this the oncoming driver was at fault for speeding and will, one assumes, be prosecuted if his speed can be proven.
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>> If the original post was correct that the oncoming vehicle was >> 100 yards away, then IMO I would pull out as that >> is a huge distance. >> Distance is not the issue, it is time that is the issue, speed / distance = time.
Well yes obviously. 100 yards/metres is a large distance and would have given plenty of time to the speeder to respond if needed. Clearly he/she was not only greatly exceeding the limit (if the original poster is correct) but was not paying attention. Exactly the sort of driver who should not speed.
As to how easy it is to judge speed of a car 100m away, well who knows.
Leif
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Distance is not the issue, it is time that is the issue, speed / distance = time.
[pedant mode = on]
distance / speed = time
;-)
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