Safe Speed Forums

She is also reported to have said that she was concerned that she had killed her family at one point.....why?....did she feel her actions were partly responsible at the time?

From almost day one the papers....and the Shropshire Star is as guilty as any...reported this case as "Driver FORCES family off road"...which conjures up a maniac deliberately trying to injure or kill, in my opinion....the case was weighted against him from day one.

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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.

It looks like they have disabled public comments on this case now...they certainly weren't allowing any comments supporting the mondeo driver (I posted 2 which weren't shown) but the usual bloodlust comments were being allowed.

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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.

That's about right for the Shropshire Star, sadly. And for SSv2, this is a B road, so the limit would be 50mph. I too think it was a gradual drift over to the right by the 807 driver, much the same as if she had pulled out to overtake an imaginary slower vehicle in front of her. Without looking. She estimates her speed as 40mph. Taking into account speedo inaccuracy, this would put her true speed roughly at my 35mph estimate for her max speed to have considered stopping at that patch of dirt from the first moment she saw it.

An interesting one this, but reading the various reports I do wonder if the advice given in the Highway Code of “mirror, signal, manoeuvre, “ is a contributory factor in this accident as this implies that once you signal you can then just do your manoeuvre. I would suggest that the advice should be, mirror, signal, mirror, manoeuvre, as the act of giving a signal indicates an intension and not a right to carry out the move unless it is clear to do so. It is interesting to note that in the 1977 edition of Roadcraft the second mirror check is listed as a definite part of “the system” when turning right.

Equally, when overtaking, one should be certain that vehicles in front are aware of your presence and be prepared to abandon the overtake if the situation changes. Having said that a driver in an overtaking position should have been able to see a right hand indicator of a car in front, seeing that a car turning right should be positioned towards the centre of the road. This tends to suggest that the signal to pull over to the right given by Mrs Griffiths was a last minute decision without any proper checks being made as to what was happening behind. So I too, from the information given, tend to consider that Mr. Dyche has been blamed for something that is far from entirely his fault.

Many years ago when I rode a Honda 175 motorcycle, a work colleague who also rode - a Suzuki 500 - elected to overtake a line of slow moving vehicles we had followed for some distance along a winding road... he was already a little distance ahead of me.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=ambleside+cumbria&hl=en&ll=54.423699,-2.976383&spn=0.003414,0.010568&sll=53.472423,-2.239765&sspn=0.02774,0.084543&hnear=Ambleside,+Cumbria,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=17&layer=c&cbll=54.423741,-2.976168&panoid=PLu8GJv9l18UOYwaFITukg&cbp=12,91.99,,0,-3.65
Three vehicles into the manouvre, he was confronted by a pedestrian who had decided traffic was slow enough for him to dart across between cars - and he ran into the handlebars of the bike, which resulted in a badly broken arm and ribs for the pedestrian, and a dent in the fuel tank where the bars had been forced back!
My colleague was tipped off, but had only cuts and bruises.

I happened along a few moments later, having been cautious for the whole of our journey from Coniston.
He was blaming the pedestrian for not seeing him, while everyone else was accusing him of going too fast.
The truth is of course was that both had failed to consider any other possibility other than that they could take the course they did without encountering anyone else!

His action was the worse in my opinion, as his acceleration could have resulted in taking any number of other road users by surprise, which he SHOULD have anticipated.
I rather suspect that this case occurred in similar circumstances, and could have been avoided if Dyche had not been so impatient as to ignore the potential for other road users to follow their own course - as anticipated in the section of the Highway Code I quoted.

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

So following this logic, all overtaking should be banned in case someone steps out on a road without looking/a car in the overtaking convoy also decides to overtake without looking?

All safe driving is based on the reasonable expectation of what others might do combined with your own risk management of the situation.

I agree with the-gog that if you took the risk mangement to the extreme then you could not perform any actions at all as someone else might do something silly. However, you might reasonably expect other road users to act in a certain way and it is the deviation from this "norm" that causes the accidents.

Taking the example of the pedestrian and the motorcycle, the pedestrian clearly did not act in a sensible way by not looking out for himself. I don't know what speed your colleague was doing - not fast judging by the injuries caused - but he should have been proceeding with caution past the line of cars.

Overtaking is a legal and reasonable response to a slower car in front. If you habitually drive, shall we say, "carefully" you must expect people to overtake and act accordingly.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I don't know what it's like where you're from, but around here "Thou shall not overtake" is the 11th commandment. It's upheld religiously by OAP drivers (but not exclusively by them), both in their observance and in their condemnation of anyone who commits that sin.

As i tried to point out in the Shropshire Star comments but was ignored, there are usually two sides to every collision and although one party might be more responsible than the other,there is usually (not always), something the second party could have done better to help avoid the situation.If he had been following for about one and a half miles (as suggested in the press), she should have, in that time been aware of at least two vehicles following, one probably quite intent on overtaking and made sure that when she veered across the road (looking at the road it would have more or less, been a continuation of a straight line as the road itself veers left at that point), that non of the other vehicles was likely to be overtaking and made quite clear her intentions. If he had been approaching the two lead cars at say 60MPH and done a "catapult" overtake, then I can understand her lack of attention but to have cars following you for over a mile and not being aware of them or the fact they are likely to maybe want to overtake, at the first straight bit of road, is just downright negligent driving in my opinion.

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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 often wonder if this is another example of the driver of lead vehicle driving above their ability. They drive safely enough to cope with the road, but their ability is not enough to allow them to glance in the mirror.All attention is needed to focus on road ahead. I often wonder if this is one reason why so many inexperienced drivers fail to notice those large well marked Volvos with roof lights following them , or they miss a great big white transit sitting in a layby.

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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

Mirrors? What are those? I've lost count of the times I've seen drivers (sadly, typically OAPs) driving around with both side mirrors folded in.

it's always interesting to note how long it takes me to notice my nearside mirror is still dipped from a parking manouvre after i pull away some mornings..... it rarely takes long, worst case is usually the first roundabout after 1/4mile.

perhaps we could sneak round putting stickers on people's wing mirrors and see how long it takes for them to notice

I like your style.

I refer to this as the 20ft bubble principle. They drive within this 20ft bubble. Anything outside of it simply doesn't exist. If anything (like a car, pedestrian, cycle, or motorbike) comes inside this bubble, it's a case of "where the hell did that come from?".

Yes, it does seem that the slower a person is driving, the less awareness they seem to have of things going on around them and they seem less capable of simple driving actions, such as indicating and mirror useage, they seem to be capable of.

(No doubt Weepy will soon pop up to tell us that slower driving means more time to react....if only some of these slower drivers actually had the capability to react)

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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.

No, simply exercise a degree of caution, as prescribed in Highway Code 167.

Dyche's responsibilities are described thus:

He took a risk. He failed. He let his impatience blind him to the situation that developed in front of him.
He admitted to that impatience at the scene. My colleague did not - but I had followed him and witnessed his problem!

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

when you would force another road user to swerve or slow down: I've caused that to happen many times - when overtaking a cretin who tries to pull out when I'm alongside him. He rapidly finds out I'm there, then swerves back in, many times clipping the kerb. Is that my fault, as I'm already nearly past him? You really don't get it do you that if someone pulls out without warning on a car that's already overtaking them, then it's not the overtaker's fault. In my book it's attempted manslaughter.

As for what Dyche admitted at the scene, that should largely be ignored. People blubber all sorts of things when in a state of shock.

Don't forget that a lot of these drivers have driven for years on poor quality wing mirrors,i.e mirrors mounted on the front wings, which for the most part are a bit better than useless,so they have become accustomed to being dependant on the interior mirror and looking over the particular shoulder in times of need. It's only of late that decent quality mirrors on the doors have become the norm. Add to that that a lot of this age group may not have driven anything bigger ( or with less rearward vision) than a car, so the extra vision of decent wing ( or rather door mounted ) mirrors may have escaped their attention. Add to that ,that when they sat their test, ( as possibly now), all the emphasis was on being seen to look in the inside mirror,to the effect that on tests ,candidates were advised to misalign mirrors to make certain that they had to move the head to( be seen to ) use it. I'd suspect that there is little emphasis on the current test on use of door mirrors to reinforce the view in the interior mirror. I am led to believe that use of the door mirrors on a reverse manoeuvre on a test is frowned on .
Sadly I find that a lot of younger drivers do not know how to use all mirrors.

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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

One paper reported that the woman said something along the lines "I thought to myself, have I just killed my family?" Surely that is just as damming as dyche's statement?

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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 must admit, that after driving vans for so many years, I tend to use mainly wing mirrors...both sides. (including for reversing) much more than interior mirrors these days

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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.