Sixy_the_red wrote:
Its a tricky one mike. Don't take this as a dig, but I appologise if it sounds a bit that way.
The first thing to ask is that if you were unable to stop then were you travelling too fast? - given that you say that you know that people often walk out onto the crossing without looking (another issue in itself). I would suggest that you take a bit more time to look around the A-pillar at this spot - a slight movement of your head can make a massive difference. As you approach the crossing, slow down and take the time to make absolutely sure that there is no one on the pavement near the crossing. (I assume that there is a clear view of the pavement from the road? If not you might consider writing to your local council).
The facts are that the car coming the other way shouldn't have had its fogs on, and your ped shouldn't really have committed herself to crossing before she KNEW both vehicles had stopped. You can't justify relying on either of these as excuses though - people are stupid and you must be capable of compensating for other peoples' mistakes.
All in all, you didn't hit her, which however you look at it is a good thing. You'll learn from it and hopefully next time you would have left yourself enough time to stop.
I wouldn't beat yourself up overly about it. You're obviously making the effort to learn from it which is all you can do. There's no point talking in 'whatiffs' since you can't actually change what happened. I guess you're just lucky that they haven't invented zebra crossing cameras yet
!
Yea, well, no that doesn't really sound like a dig
I WAS travelling too fast, but I didn't want to go much slower, because then if I had stopped I would have probably been rear ended... Visibility to the pavement isn't all that great, you have cars parked on one side of the road as far as I remember, and the crossing is about 5 yards from a junction on the left hand side...
Edit> Just had a think about that, I guess it's a choice of the lesser of 2 evils, a car rear ending me at that speed probably won't do much damage to me, but me hitting an elderly lady at any speed it going to hurt her seriously...
I drive this bit of road virtually every day I'm at school, both directions... In the past I've had a few scary moments on it... There was a cyclist one day, but due to him being higher up on the pavement and me travelling the other direction, I saw him and had time to do an emergency stop, but he had no care for his life at all, he just bolted out in front of me, no checks, just riding across the road...
I'd say in this case, inappropriate speed was a factor, and I will start to check a lot more around the A pillar...
And, yup, lucky we don't have zebra crossing cameras, yet...