A very important lesson. Please read!

rossyamaha

 A year and a half ago I asked for some help for my oldest and closest friend who lost his son after being hit by a car and didn't stop. Investigations have been ongoing and today the inquest finished with the final result. 

The car was a taxi which had faults resulting in poor visibility and not seeing the boy lying in the road. Something as simple as quickly pulling over and manually sorting it would have prevented his death. I realise we are all rushing around and I know as I drive around 60k miles a year how impatient you can get. You just want to get to where you are going. i can't see this tragedy as anything less than laziness. The "it'll be alright" mentality. What's the worst that can happen? Well the worst did happen. 

At least my friend can at last move on and hope to find some level of peace. Just please everyone, if you're driving, even just to the shop up the road, make sure you can see. It really doesn't take long to do this. At worst you add 2 mins onto your journey. It may just save a life. Yours or someone else's. X

http://m.derbytelegraph.co.uk/halcyon-theuri-s-mum-speaks-out-after-inquest-concludes-chef-should-have-been-seen-lying-in-road/story-30003544-detail/story.html

marantz1300

i  lost a son.he was three months old.28 years ago.
you never really get over a childs death.
i feel for you friend,especially this time of year.
i hope he can find some peace.

Emp_Fab

Please don't take this the wrong way - I am genuinely sorry for your friend's loss, but I'm surprised the inquest (or the journalist's interpretation of it) publicly criticised the driver for hitting a dark-skinned man lying motionless in the middle of a road - at night - in poor weather.  If there are any lessons that can be learned from this awful tragedy, surely trying to drum home 'don't get drunk and lie down in the middle of a road at night' ought to be a higher priority than 'make sure drivers can see you'.  Still, I suppose if you're paralytic, all bets are off.  Awful tragedy nonetheless.

rossyamaha

@Emp_Fab certainly not taken it the wrong way. You have a point. A black guy in a non lit area lying in the road pissed is never going help anyone. 

That said, when sat behind a ton of metal travelling at speed, even not breaking the limit, it is our absolute duty to make sure we are paying absolute attention to the road and aware of everything, let alone be able to see properly in the first place. Even sober pedestrians in broad daylight can be an issue. It is my opinion (and I can't think of an argument against this) that if someone is behind a wheel and is unable to give their attention on the road, that person should not behind the wheel. For their own sake as much as others. 

It's not just pedestrians either. I see more accidents than most because of the amount of time I spend in the car. I can't imagine how many of those are due to things that shouldn't have happened. Checking a text. Changing channel on the radio. Making sure your hair is ok. Its baffling. What's more important than keeping yourself and others alive. Yes, pedestrians have a responsibility themselves to pay attention. Just like drivers however, this doesn't always happen. In that situation, a car will win that fight all day long. 

The taxi driver in this case made a terrible judgment and someone lost their life. He made the deduction that despite not being able to see the road and his surroundings fully, that was good enough to continue on his journey. The story could have been a different one. "Taxi driver involved in fatal collision due to not being able to see an oncoming vehicle". Then who is at fault? I can't  see any way of reading this story other than the driver should have spent the few seconds it would have taken to make sure he could see properly. 

EricTheWeary

Having done a bit of driving lately both late at night and first thing in the morning I am reminded how little care some pedestrians and drivers seem to take in the dark/ bad weather. I'm regularly cursing pedestrians strolling across the road in the dark whilst they are dressed top to toe in dark clothes. But when you're the one in charge of the potentiality lethal machine you have to be responsible for taking every care possible. Arguably a professional driver such as a taxi driver particularly should know best of all but anyone who drives should be legal and safe, there's never an excuse not to be. 
I hope the outcome helps your friends in some way. 

BigMonka

That's such a tragic story, sorry to hear it's someone you know Ross.
Whenever I scrape the ice of our windscreen I'm always really careful to do the vertical strip by the passenger's A-pillar. It's one of those hits that you're not sure is worth doing as it's not the bit you look out of, but as a regular cyclist I'm well aware that that is often the part of the windscreen which you'd see me out of. Again, a little bit of laziness can lead to catastrophic result.

Sporky

rossyamaha said:

I can't  see any way of reading this story other than the driver should have spent the few seconds it would have taken to make sure he could see properly. 

Indeed. Even if he didn't see the chap I would have thought it'd be difficult to drive over someone without realising, but reportedly he just drove off.

And if you're not able to see something the size of a body in the road then you shouldn't be driving.

PolarityMan

I remember the original post about it. Hard to have any sympathy for someone who just drove off from the scene.

Emp_Fab

IMO a far bigger problem is mobile phone fiddling whilst driving.  I see it several times every day, without fail.  It's one thing to make sure your windscreen is clear and your demisters are working correctly, but it helps enormously if you're actually looking through it too.

Sambostar

With modern headlights, hills and bad headlight alignment you're lucky if you can see non hi viz pedestrians at all in the darkness. If all headlights were of the capability of my smiley transit or an old vauxhall viva no one would ever get run over again.

fretmeister

Just a point of Order.

Inquests are not courts of "blame" or "liability" they are courts of fact.

They are only there to decide the most likely factual description of an event leading to a death. there is no power to penalise, punish, or even clear any party involved.

The verdict reached is persuasive in any subsequent action (criminal or civil) but not binding.

So in this case, it appears the family of the deceased have a civil case against the driver, but any damages will be significantly lowered due to "Contributory Negligence" of the deceased for lying down in the road in the first place.

Contributory Negligence is a feature of most injury based litigation. Often a worker who didn't wear the issued protective gear, or a biker that didn't wear a helmet etc etc. The Index Event was still caused by someone else, but the injured person's own failures are taken into account if those failures led to a level of harm that would not have occurred without the failures.

I used to do quite a lot of Coroners Court work. It's one of those jobs where there is no such thing as a good day.