Safe Speed Forums

Three times in three weeks I've seen serious accidents on the main road near my house (Muller Road in Bristol, if anyone knows it) - it's a long, busy road with quite a big hill on it. Two of these have really puzzled me - they are "t-bone" collisions, where both vehicles end up on the same side of the road.

The vehicles were seriously mangled in both cases, and in the latest one it was a bus hitting a van.

Can anyone enlighten as to the likely cause of these sort of accidents - there are no junctions nearby, and no houses/driveways onto the road. My guess is people doing u-turns in the road, but are people REALLY that stupid??

You don't have to be stupid to make an error of judgement, or even a bad decision.

Many years ago now, a family friend (Peter) managed to hit a bus head on in the London Rd, Croydon (a long, straight road at the time).
Peter was middle aged, and had more driving/racing qualifications than you could shake a stick at. Even though he always drove high performance cars, you would never see him racing around the roads, nor exceeding the posted speed limits by more than 5mph.

Peter's collision with the bus came about simply because he averted his eyes from the road to turn a cassette tape over. While fiddling with the cassette, he drifted on to the wrong side of the road and that was all it took for his Reliant Scimitar to become a pile of fibreglass in the middle of the road.

Now I wouldn't call Peter "stupid" by a long shot because he was only doing what any other driver has done at some stage in their driving career, but he certainly made an error in averting his eyes for the extra second or so that it took for the car to drift on to the wrong side of the road.

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