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PostPosted: Tue Oct 21, 2008 23:10 
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Coming back from Bristol this evening, decided to go A38 rather than M5. Turned off at Falfield onto the B4509 which crosses the M5 at J14.

The junction is traffic light controlled. The lights my way were green.

As I approached the traffic island I was in the right hand lane (for M5 south or B4509, the left lane is M5 north). At this point I saw headlights coming straight towards me and realised that a car was overtaking on the wrong side of the traffic island.

As I was level with the island I was now faced with a choice between going head-on or ditching the car into the verge - the other guy seemed to be sat on the white line between the two lanes. I chose the verge.

Unfortunately there was a traffic light in my path which I managed to knock over! My car's a bit of a mess at the front although it looks fixable. The question is, given the choices I had (head-on or ditch it) did I do the right thing? Or was there another choice that I may have missed?

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 08:45 
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I'm glad you're ok.

You took what I think was second choice. I'd have probably threaded the needlee, if necessary shoulder charging the one on my left. However, as usual, the salutory lesson is looking aherad. How did he "suddenly" appear? When reasonably could you have seen him coming if you were not intent solely on what was going on your side of the junction (which is a very understandable thing to be doing, and ione perhaps 75 - 80% of drivers would have been doing? If you had seen him far enough back you may have been able to slot into the northbound lane and escaped accident (at the expnse of a 10 mile journey penalty).


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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 18:46 
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He was actually straddling the line between the two lanes, so it really was a choice between head-on or ditch it...

As for not seeing... I think I saw but didn't realise - you simply don't expect to have someone overtake two stationery cars (waiting at a red light), go round a traffic island on the wrong side and head straight into your path leaving you no escape route other than to ditch the car.

It probably took a second or two for me to realise that yes, this guy was a lunatic and he's heading straight for me... oh crap, what do I do now?

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 22:23 
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You may well be right with the disbelief aspect.

Did he stop/did you get his detail - or did anyone else?


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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 04:14 
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Were the brakes an option that entered your mind?

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 13:41 
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Robin - yes, but had I braked I'd have then lost my opportunity to get out of his way as I'd have taken off too much speed and wouldn't have been able to get up on to the verge.

This would have left me a "sitting duck" and he would have gone head-on into me, or worse into the driver's door.

Roger - no, he didn't stop, just drove straight on down the road through the next set of lights (on red!) and onto the A38.

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 20:49 
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Location: Treacletown ( just north of M6 J3),A MILE OR TWO PAST BEDROCK
Been keeping a sort of record of your "mishaps " - and think perhaps you might consider a refresher driving course - ( before the police /courts decide to send you for one / an intensive driving test ) - All of you're "MISHAPS " POINT (TO ME ) of badly trained driving prasctices . (But then , I've only been driving for about 40 years , massive NCD, No accidents etc )( OH - and about 2million miles on all sorts of roads ,from single track to 4 lane motorway, both in UK and in other overseas countries - I hold at least one other overseas licence)

But then - I'm only a 60 year old cap wearing fuddie dudie :lol: ( actualy - I dont wear a cap )

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 22:27 
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Actually... I'm a member of the IAM, hold an advanced driving license etc.

On this occasion I really don't see what else I could have done, going head-on is something to be avoided at all costs...

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PostPosted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 22:55 
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I do not really have a 'picture' of this junction layout, but there are a number of things at play here.
When stopped at a junction you (usually) have time to check all directions of traffic. That can give you a great reference to your chosen next path. (First point that could have helped you here).
I always try to throw final and extra glances, as I move off, to ensure no blue light traffic, in spite of my apparent green light status.

I appreciate that your 'head on' car was apparently, at the island, but then you state, that you were level with the island, and he was straddling the line? Now I am confused, are you saying that he was straddling the centre line, and not yet at the island or that there were two lanes to your side of the road?

If you are driving so that you can stop in the distance that you can see to be clear, then you should have had enough time to stop. I know that you say that you chose not to stop, but instead to use your speed to help you drive into, your escape route, but, that then sounds like you simply made a mistake, and did the wrong thing, stopping being the right solution, and or part stopping on the verge. (Why would you need to need much 'drive' to 'get up the verge'? (Yet there is a lamp post there? which implies a flat area.) If he had hit you, then at least you would have got 'evidence' and hopefully he would have stopped too, you say that he would have hit your door - not ideal at all and very scary too.

If your escape route included a lamp post, as the better alternative then it was not the right route ! An earlier route was needed, which then sounds like, it all happened too late, for you to really put anything into 'action'. So as this seems to be the case borne out by your resulting accident, I would suggest that you are perhaps falling foul of that old AA accident report.
This is the one that states that if you have had to brake very hard 4 times, then the 5th is an accident. As other incident have been mentioned, might this be true?
This is usually a result of driving about 10% or more over your true capability - and that can occur for a whole host of reasons. The 'trick' is to recognise it, and correct your driving behaviours, so that you deliberately drive slower and with greater care.

We can all make mistakes, it is hard to be 'good' all the time, and since I truly believe that there is fault from both sides to incur an accident, it is hopeful that we can help you identify the true cause of this mis-hap. (There are very few accidents where there is only one side to be at 100% fault.)

It does sound like, your observations were not far enough ahead, and then that in your 'confusion', of what you were really seeing, you did not scrub off enough speed, so that your surrounding safety 'space', could be maintained. The third was that having not allowed enough loss of speed, to deal with a rapidly potential hazard, then then became a rapidly dangerous hazard, that gave you no 'time to react' as a last resort. There must have been a time, within that '10 seconds to impact' where you could have taken better action to avoid an incident.
I may not have got it precise here but I reckon that I am pretty close. What do you think? Have you a picture of the road ?

I am pleased that you are OK - it must have been very scary. I wonder if that junction has an obs cameras that your insurance company / police may obtain further information.
I wonder if the oncoming car was in a panic drive to a hospital or undercover cops on a desperate run somewhere ... or a car theft etc ...

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 15:16 
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I don't have a photo of the junction, however if this works:

http://www.multimap.com/s/vueze47A

I'll try to describe it - if it helps I'll get some photos of the road layout from "ground level" next time I'm there. That aerial photo looks to be quite old as the traffic lights don't appear to be there (they were installed in December 2006); I've just looked on Google Earth and they are shown on there so it may be worth finding the junction on there. It's M5 junction 14 at Falfield if that helps.

I'd been heading north on the A38. I turned right off the A38 onto the B4509. As you approach the motorway junction with the M5 the lane splits into two, left for M5 north, right for B4509 and M5 south.

I'd gone through the traffic lights (on green) and was about level with where I've placed the red circle on the Multimap link above when I realised that the headlights coming towards me on my side of the road were doing so at considerable speed leaving me with no room to stop. By this point I was level with the traffic island so going right wasn't an option.

The other car appeared to be straddling the white line between the main line and filter lane (not shown on the Multimap link as the junction was realigned when the lights were installed, it's clearly visible on Google Earth though). In the split second I had to make a decision I felt the only thing I could do was go left up on to the verge.

If that's still confusing I'll get a screenshot off Google Earth and mark positions of things in.

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 15:27 
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Just checked Google Maps, they've got the same pic as Google Earth:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=51.637231,-2.453118&spn=0.000371,0.000549&t=h&z=20

I was slightly forward of the white car at the top left of that picture - the lights my way were on green. The other vehicle pulled out from behind two (I think?) vehicle waiting at the red light coming in the opposite direction and overtook on the wrong side of the second island (level with the on-slip to the M5 heading north). By the time I became aware of what he was doing - and I'm suspecting an amount of disbelief at what I was seeing on my part - he was straddling the dashed line at the top of the northbound on-slip on a collision course.

At this point I steered hard left and up onto the verge, unfortunately I didn't have enough space to get off the verge and back onto the road before hitting the traffic light.

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 00:55 
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Hiya Squirrel

Sorry to hear of your problem here. Glad you are OK

But can you clarify to me - guy caused a collision in which I seem to understandyu car met with a traffic light post?

Did the other car not stop?


In which case . you really need to see police as this was a hit/run/ fail to stop incident if I am reading it correctly here :? :? :?

Get photos .. Get any CCTV footage.

Oh .. what you could do to avoid the idiot?


Well.. I go with COAST. I find it works. :wink:

That IG? A right devil who knows a thing or two - he taught me to COAST. I already had IAM etc when I first met IG, He's Wildy's BiB cousin. He checked me out when we first started dating seriously. Old fashoned family> I had to ask her father for her hand in marriage. He was only too willing. I soon found out why . :bunker: I joke. She's feisty . stubborn.. firm and still very, very funny! :lol:

OK .. digress, Seriously mate. You need to think a bit more COAST.


Or change car as you may have "Satan's vehicle"

We had one in the outer extended family Leave that car anywhere .. something hit it. Relatice got rid after the third and final straw of being dnted whilst parked legally.

:stop: You do not have the dreaded :yikes: 666 in the reg plate :yikes:


Anyway .. think hard as to position of each car. You may need as this sound like a "hit and run/ fail to stop" from your post.

Get details :wink:

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 13:45 
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Just out of interest, how did he pass 2 cars at the red lights before if he didnt go into the other side of the road till after the 1st traffic island?

This car wasnt being chased by any other? It was just someone whom for no apperent reason crossed over onto the wrong side by that junction (which no police car would ever do)?

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 19:42 
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From what I could see (and it all happened very quickly)... there was a queue of 3 cars at the red light coming in the opposite direction (towards the A38). The third car back pulled out, overtook on the wrong side of the first island (from his point of view), went through the red light on the wrong side, stayed on the wrong side of the second island (the one I was passing through) straddling the line between the left filter and straight on lanes leaving me nowhere to go except into the verge.

As I said it all happened so quickly that by the time I realised what was happening it was too late to do anything more than ditch the car into the verge to avoid going head-on.

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 22:08 
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1st thing - you must have been going some speed to knock down traffic lights. They are not weak objects.

2nd - This guy went the wrong side of 2 traffic islands, while straddling 2 lanes of oncoming traffic, with nothing chasing him?

So it happened like in the picture? Is that where the 2 cars were parked?

Surely someone must have stopped, so you can get a witness for the police?


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PostPosted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 08:59 
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According to the Highways Agency guys there's now a breakaway point on all traffic lights, sign posts etc so it sacrifices the installation to avoid cutting a vehicle in half. I'm sure we've all seen the photos where the front end of a car has been virtually cut in half after hitting a traffic light, sign post, street light etc. So chances are I probably wasn't going that quick.

In Steven Haley's "Mind Driving" it states that at 30mph you've got enough momentum to clear a 2 storey building; I can well believe that. If you do the maths you can probably work out the energy, mass * velocity. An A4 weighs about 1.7 tons (the TDI quattro version anyway) including the driver and a full tank of fuel (65 litres in the quattro, 70 litres in the FWD). That much mass hitting a traffic light even at a relatively low speed (10-15mph) would cause some serious damage were it not for the breakaway base on all new installations.

Your diagram is fairly accurate. Sadly neither driver of the two cars that were overtaken (they were waiting at the red light rather than "parked") stopped. Either because they didn't see what had happened, unlikely at first but the number of people who drive around with "tunnel vision" and are totally unaware of what's going on anywhere other than directly in front of their vehicle is shocking, or because they didn't want to get involved. From a humanist point of view I hope the former, from a road safety point of view I hope the latter.

Perhaps fortunately nobody was behind me otherwise I could well have ended up in a concertina between the light and whoever was behind me.

However I have been going over what happened again and again... at what point did I become aware of the lunatic driver? I think he came up behind the two cars waiting at the lights and pulled out before he got to them (I'm assuming "he" but that may not be right!) but he may have just got fed up of waiting and overtaken around the island. Events unfolded so quickly that I didn't get a chance to rationalise what was happening.

Now back to the point of this part of the forum. While I know from a legal and insurance point of view that I was in the right (the lights my way were green and some lunatic overtook into my right-of-way against a red light on the wrong side of a traffic island) the key question here is "could I have spotted something sooner?" And - possibly - yes. I'm speculating here but I'm not ruling out the possibility that this guy began his reckless overtake at the exact moment when I looked to the right as I went through the lights to make sure nobody had jumped the lights coming off the M5, this is something I've done at traffic light controlled junctions ever since I ended up on the end of a 3-car pile-up about 4 years ago (silver Ka jumped a light, the Merc S-class in front of me clipped the Ka and sent it into the crash barrier, I ended up going into the back of the Merc - mine and Merc's insurance claimed off the Ka driver but learnt from that one the hard way to never trust the lights!). By the time I looked back ahead the guy was already on the wrong side of the road heading straight for me.

Again, I repeat, this is speculation as to how I might have missed the warning signs. In the event by the time the brain registered what was happening I was left with a stark choice - head-on or ditch. Somehow I get the feeling that I should have spotted something - however small - a bit sooner. So trying to figure out now "how did I miss X?"

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 10:10 
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My god, so thats yet another crash I didnt know about?

Assuming everything here you say is true, then I cant blame you in this incident, I could have well done exactly the same, or worse. There is no way I would expect to see that coming.

But..and you knew this was coming..for your limited driving time on the roads, I would think its almost statistically impossible for all those things to happen to you, unless you were a real life, land based Jonah.

You have had countless people angry at you because of something *they* have done, you have had 2 or 3 cars written off, diesel on the road, cloned plates, at least 3 accidents aside from writing the cars off, and quite possibly many others.

I would just like you to consider that your driving is too aggressive. Its nothing to do with the car, and possibly not even your speed, just listen to what the more expirenced road users on here are telling you.

My personal opinion is over confidance, and a lack of patience. Im well aware I have not done as many miles as you, but I cannot help but think I am a better driver, and I put my driving down as mediocre. The reason for this is your previous tractor incident, and peoples attitude towards me. While the other car might have been in the wrong, its something I would have certainly been looking out for and wouldnt have risked.

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 19:44 
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New offer from Pratnership - post one topic, get one ad-hominem response free of charge...

Your last post contained nothing constructive and just appears to be having a go for the sake of it. I knew it was too good to last. Oh well.

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 22:23 
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Im trying to impress upon you, the amount of accidents you have are not normal, by any means. This points to something amiss.

And if you are utterly truthful, how often can it be someone else's fault?

Ok, ignore the fact I dont like you. Ignore everything else. Just look at the sheer number of incidents, accidents, and road rage you have encountered. Please acknowlage thats not normal??

But then dont listen to me, listen to other members, like SSV2, Madmoggie, IG, etc.

All of which have vastly more expirence, and are trying to help. And even Botach has noticed you have an odd number of..err...incidents.

By the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Nothing of the sort.

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 23:25 
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Pratnership wrote:
Im trying to impress upon you, the amount of accidents you have are not normal, by any means. This points to something amiss.

And if you are utterly truthful, how often can it be someone else's fault?

Ok, ignore the fact I dont like you. Ignore everything else. Just look at the sheer number of incidents, accidents, and road rage you have encountered. Please acknowlage thats not normal??

But then dont listen to me, listen to other members, like SSV2, Madmoggie, IG, etc.

All of which have vastly more expirence, and are trying to help. And even Botach has noticed you have an odd number of..err...incidents.

By the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Nothing of the sort.



I have to admit.. me.. my lovely Wildy :neko: wife who are not formally "police trained" .. but have been educated by IG :lol: and even IG himself are a bit worried by Squirrel's consistent escapades.

Sure we all meet numpties .. but we diffuse their danger by using our COAST.

Oh why we keep on with it on PH and here..


because it works and I know DIS and Speed Awares mark on this criteria. Now I admit I do not agree with speed cam logic in invite to latter programme. - but I will concede that the rubric of that course is sound in its basic intention. I admit we have some issues on fair play practice here and I think the DIS which is POLICE recommend only .. based on THEIR judgement has a more superiorly cutting edge

Now Squirrel.. we are supporting and wanting to help you here. But we say we have to evaluate each drive.


So.. please do not think I am trying to be :stop: :bib: :teacher: or whatever.

Trying to help here.

Think objectively. How did whatever you did affect the other person.. affect your your handling/feel of car/situation? Work out for yourself .. how you may handle better.. improve on your skills.

As you do so.. you gain.. .. gain in expertise . confindence in being able to judge developping dangers .. and thus diffuse.. with a bonus of a "feel good-ishly contented" about suriviving a hazard :wink:


We all understand you . but we think you need to think just a bit more here and we recommend you read Road Craft.. AA "Improve Your Skills" AND any work penned by Peter Amey /Paul Ripley :wink:

Good practice which we should all look up to.

It may well be that you live in some suburban hell hole of numpty galores.

If so.. you have my sympathy .. but I still suggest using stricter COAST to help you out here ;)
.
Let us know how things pan out for you. If we can help more.. just ask us. I am not judging you. I just wonder why you have so much grief here ..


Cheers


Ted

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