Safe Speed Forums

anyone else spotted this....
good job it was wet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west ... 574609.stm

Yes, I've watched the footage. Bit early for April 1st?
But i'm not sure if it is for real.

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StoneRoad

Quite amazing really !
Not only that he failed to feel the car hit and the ongoing noise and additional force required needed to drive along. I can appreciate that he (assume) could fail to see the car 'completely' ! Surely he must have been able to see a part of the car? Perhaps a mix of inattention (to the extreme), tired, lack of care and observations (to early potential hazards).
I am curious as to what might be on the video that the Police find interesting enough to re-open the investigation, that they had not already been able to verify and establish when they attended the incident. Unless it is other information that has come to light of course.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Quite bizarre!

I'm curious as to why there was no tyre smoke from the Renault. I know lorries are quite big and heavy, but I can't believe the lorry driver didn't feel some sort of jolt as he hit it! I'm also curious to know how the Renault got sideways-on to the front of the lorry and why the lorry driver didn't see it. The video has a few frames shot through the side window of the car as the lorry passes it that are pretty much at 90 degrees to the lorry. Taking a straight line from where I estimate the lorry driver's head to be and the top edge of the roof of the Clio furthest from his bonnet, I think he should have been able to see it.

The report seems to also suggest that when the Plod got there, both vehicles were on the hard shoulder and the woman in the Clio was unhurt...

Very odd.

I wonder if the Clio had curtain airbags and whether they had deployed? That should give a clue as to the relative speed on impact.

I guess he had cruise control set to the maximum that the limiter would allow.

Looking at the wheels on the truck, it's empty (some are off the ground), so the weight of a Clio, even sideways would have been nothing for it.

Still quite a bizarre accident though. My guess is the clio moved across, clipped the wagon and spun it's self around.

I actually saw something similar a few weeks ago but at much lower speed. A Corsa managed to get sideways across the front of an artic and was pushed about 100 yards along a dry road. It might have gone further but the truck had to stop at a red light. There was surprisingly little damage to the car, the door skins were flattened against the side impact bars and it lost a door mirror but that's all I could see.

I wondered about the rubber too - a little sparks or while flash was all I noticed - wondered if tyres were burst but they would have only lasted a short while. I wondered if the lorry was at all lifting the car off the ground - but no evidence (that I could see) of this. That would of course have pushed the n/side tyres even more into the tarmac too!
The lorry and car look like they have their brake lights on - but I wondered about fog lights and or just lights ... little hard to tell. I did wonder if the lorry was breaking but it does not look like that his speed is reducing.
Why was the car filming back towards the lorry ?
Has they already past it and were leaving the road for their safety ?
Why shout out (if correct) 'He hasn't seen it'?
To say a car occupant is not injured surely is ignorant ! The shock alone and the trauma will last for years if it went untreated/dealt with?

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

this type of accident happened to myself a few years ago, it involved a polish artic pulling out into the middle lane of the M1 while I was overtaking it.
he was left hand drive and as I was in his blindspot in a small car (vauxhall corsa) he clipped my rear N/s corner causing my car to spin sideways in front of him against his bumper.
the impact was not that serious it was more a nudge, I hardly felt it in the car but at 70mph it put the car instantly beyond control.
I was ejected rearwards into the hard shoulder crash barrier, this was the biggest impact but because I was driving at the speed limit with everything correctly adjusted and seatbelt worn the car protected me and I walked away as if nothing had happened.
I also drove lorrys of this size for a lot of years now I am a car instructor, I think there may be a possibility that the lorry driver was genuine and never even saw the car or noticed the impact, if the vehicles were at nearly the same speed it has just gently collected the car. the car must have been trying to undertake the lorry some how and touched its front n/s corner with the cars rear o/s hence being pushed round in front of the truck.
The car also had brakes on when sideways, I did not in my collision I tried to steer out of trouble hence i completed the spin away from the truck (pure luck I think).
if you havent noticed a car there before it enters the trucks blindspot (about halfway down the N/S) you wont see it again until they are about 1 car length ahead, this is the height and width that obscure the drivers view even the extra mirrors dont fully cover this blind area.
the power these trucks have usually well over 400+ horsepower used to move 44 tonnes a 1.5 tonne car with brakes on is pretty light to an unladed truck.
I hope the car driver involved was not harmed in any way these things happen rarely, and I hope this insight I have posted
is of interest, and it dosent happen to anyone else my tip is give trucks a bit of extra space its easy to be caught in the blindspot.

Interesting point: what should the Clio driver have done, having got in to this situation?

I commented on this in another forum when it happened so here is a direct C & P

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The Box said "Windows XP or better" ... So I installed Ubuntu

Wait for the law requiring mirrors tacked along the top of the windscreen viewing the blind spot immediately in front of a lorry with a raised cab. Soon it will be like looking out of the eye of a fly

We've already got them mate. But we still have to look in that particular mirror at the right time don't we.

Three mirrors on the left..Two on the right..One in the middle.

How did we manage in those old ERFs of yesteryear ?

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The Box said "Windows XP or better" ... So I installed Ubuntu

Discussing this elsewhere, I made this picture from the video:

and also posted this:

So is clutch in, BRAKES HARD ON the best course of action if you ever found yourself in the same predicament?
Seems that way to me.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Yes I had a look at that part of the video and it lead me to think that the top left hand edge of the Clio's roof might JUST have been visible to the driver, but, of course, as you say, he would probaboy have been looking much further ahead.

I'm sure the wet road would have helped the tyres stay lubricated and I hadn't considered the point about the tread not being able to clear the water effectively due to being sideways-on. In fact, i think that's a very important point and might also account for me not being able to see any steam from them.

There's a bit more on it this morning here:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100322/tu ... 23e80.html

and it does appear to have happened exaclty as iadi1 and Outcast suggest, the car and lorry were both moving at similar speed and the lorry caught the right hand rear corner of the car and pivoted it round until it was sideways-on - thus, I guess ,accounting for the lack of any big impact which might have triggered any airbags on the Clio and alerted the lorry driver to something being wrong. I agree that clutch-in, stand-on-the-brakes and start praying are probably the best options - although if I'd had a sunroof, I wonder if opening it and waving frantically through it might have been useful (or even possible in what must be a completely panicked state)! On the other hand, she mentions that she called for help on her mobile, so she clearly did SOMETHING! (And I expect the full force of the law will be brought to bear if she wasn't using a hands-free)!

There was an advert (during Corrie) earlier tonight saying that the driver of the Clio would be on GMTV in the morning for an interview!!

No other details, and nothing on the http://www.gm.tv/ website yet though

mb

From the Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... inute.html

From what she describes
Here

Sound to me that possibly she had the lorry in her blind spot and a look over her right shoulder would have enable her to see it and avoid this incident. I am amazed (depends how far they traveled so locked) her tyres lasted ! You can see that she applied the brakes ...
I am surprised that she debated using her phone !
I am surprised that she didn't think of using power to break free (forwards or reverse (advantage to head to hard shoulder), once braking and honking failed to work.

Thinking about what I might do (now that I have considered it) placing myself ahead of the lorry and car, a suitable distance ahead, put on hazards, and putting the arm out the window to indicate 'slow', would have worked here .... not sure any other manoeuvre would work without placing oneself in danger .. and obviously calling the Police.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

I think staying impaled on the truck would be the safest option as long as it was going sideways so easily.

Once you started to slide off the front of the truck, you have very little chance of gaining steerage, or traction to go forward or backwards fast enough.
If the truck was doing 55mph, then you would need to drive off at the same speed... and the truck would tend to spin you as soon as you got partly off the front!

Then you cannot see if any traffic is coming past - could be an emergency service vehicle coming to take a look.

There has been some debate elsewhere following the Clio drivers story to the press. Most seem to point the finger at the truck driver.

Don't get me wrong - I think neither party is blameless - but I think I have shown with the still from the video how the driver might well not have seen the Clio tucked below his windscreen once it was there, yet most of the media attention is on how far the truck travelled with the Clio impaled, rather than how it came to be there in the first place.

Clearly the lady driver THINKS she has not done anything wrong.

Should have been thinking about driving on the motorway!



I think the Clio driver had more of a part to play than she thinks or is saying.

If I had a question or two for her, it would be when did she first see the truck - when it hit her? And did she at any time see the driver once impaled? If not, then he probably could not see her.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

is the truck in the middle lane ? (sorry.. lane 2)

Aparrently the lorry driver was not at fault but the woman driver tried to pull in front of the lorry from the left hand lane....bad move obviously

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I assume that you have seen some media coverage ? (got a copy or link please ?)
I assume that you mean that she was in L1 (nearside lane (nearest to hard shoulder) ) and went to move into L2 (middle lane).

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.