Atrophy's Safety Hints

I'm in a line of traffic. Three cars in front of me, a car wants to turn right [this is UK, we drive on the left].

The road he wants to turn in to is sharply angled back, something like a 150 degree turn. The roads are narrow (just room for one car in each direction).

In order to get round, he moves to the left to make his turn as wide as possible, slowing right down, as we all do behind.

Meanwhile, Impatient Squid comes up, "filtering" along the centre of the road, at perhaps 25 mph past our line. As he passes me, I can see what's going to happen, and it does.

Just as IS reaches the right turner, the car executes his turn. The inevitable happens, the bike hits the side of the car, over he goes. Badly scraped bike, dented car.

I park up, other people get out of cars.

By the time I've got over to them, IS and the car driver are at loggerheads, obviously no-one is seriously hurt (at least, not yet).

I take the "none of my business" way out, mount up, and continue.

Could I have helped IS and the car avoid the accident? Possibly, but only if I'd been aware of his coming earlier, which might have been possible had I been looking in my mirrors a bit more. But, when doing about 5 mph in a solid queue, there was no need for my own safety. In any case, the road was on a bend, at the speed he was going he wouldn't have been in my mirror's line of sight for very long.

Even so, all I could have done was to sound my horn. I might then be accused of being a distraction to IS, so it could have been construed as my fault. Oh this litigious society ...

Could IS have avoided the accident? Yes, by travelling at a speed more appropriate to the conditions, and by being a bit more aware of what was going on, in particular a line of vehicles with a growing gap at the front as our leader slowed. Also, the road to the right was obvious, including a 'T' junction road sign. We are told: "Never overtake when approaching a junction."

I don't think he could see the car's indicator until very close because the car had pulled so far to the left.

Could the car driver have avoided the accident? Yes, if he'd done a last second check in his door mirror, or over his shoulder. This stretch of road often has a lot of motorcyclists, and has road safety "Bike Aware" and "Look Twice for Bikes" notices.

So, I can only put it down as each was partially to blame, but either could have prevented it.