Coroner: "No doubt" that pothole caused crash that killed cyclist

Airzound wrote:

North Yorks Country Council is going to get sued for a lot of £££££££££££££££££££££££££££££. People at this council should at least lose their jobs for such gross incompetence which has resulted in some one losing their life. Disgraceful.

Authorities have audited processes which they have to follow for activities such as maintenance. For example, the Highways Agency has a defined 'grading' for severity of potholes which dictates how quickly they have to be repaired. As long as it can be shown that the employees were following the process correctly, no individual can be held responsible.

Ridgebackrambler wrote:

you are reliant on the car drivers behind acting responsibly if you suddenly have to pull out to avoid one, or worse go down one.

Sadly most drivers seem to have forgotten what a safe stopping distance is ("Stopping distance? Don't be ridiculous, I've been driving accident-free for 20 years ...")

userfriendly wrote:

Ridgebackrambler wrote:

you are reliant on the car drivers behind acting responsibly if you suddenly have to pull out to avoid one, or worse go down one.

Sadly most drivers seem to have forgotten what a safe stopping distance is ("Stopping distance? Don't be ridiculous, I've been driving accident-free for 20 years ...")

Erm, just for clarity are you suggesting that all cars should remain the correct stopping distance behind a bicyle at all times? In that case, how would they get close enough to overtake (or do you envisage one cyclist creating a tail back of 100 cars?), or are you also suggesting that cars should start overtaking 100m back from the cyclist? Either way, I think this is somewhat impractical on heavily trafficked roads and would simply create even more antagonism towards cyclists.

Simmo72 wrote:

or just stick it on fuel and lets us ride for free.

This.

Remove fixed costs from car ownership so it is much more pay per mile, it reduces the disincentive to use other means of travel. It makes those who drive most and by inference cause the most damage pay more.

I suppose one way to think of this, which is environmentally friendlier, a v12 Ferrari being driven 2000miles a year but at 15mpg, or a VW polo Bluemotion at 80mpg but driving 20,000miles per year. Which driver do you want to dissuade?

Simmo72 wrote:

scrap vehicle tax, reintroduce good ol road tax.
+ charge every vehicle based on weight
bikes pay £2, fiesta £50, range rover + £1000, hell make it £2000.

you use the roads, you wear out the roads, you pay for your use. No more paying into the big tax black hole. Road generated revenue for roads. this bollox about your co2 is tosh. Toyota Prius, what a joke, about as environmentally friendly as a Chernobyl fruit salad.

or just stick it on fuel and lets us ride for free.

I don't entirely disagree with the principle, but there are many other costs involved as well as just wear-and-tear/maintenance.

CO2 matters, even if you might be one of those who think you can make up your own "science" to suit yourself (dunno about a Prius, mind you, electricity generation produces plenty of CO2). But local pollution kills thousands of people every year also - diesel in particular is a scandal.

And then not all roads are equivalent, it matters when and where you drive as well as how far (some roadspace is in more demand than others - hence congestion charging - and some causes more local pollution harm than others).

There's also the opportunity cost/land rent element of using the roads - that cost far outweighs the maintenance cost - land has value.

And there's also the question of if you store your car on the street when not driving it, which is a fixed cost regardless of how far you drive.

Oh, and not forgetting the costs of occasional middle-east wars because North Sea Oil isn't of the right grade for petrol so most of it comes from Saudi Arabia (where some of the proceeds goes towards spreading Wahabbism around the Muslim world! Top Gear - ally of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism!)

So I think the actual costs would work out differently from your suggestion. For one thing the total cost would be far greater than VED and fuel tax combined at present.

It might turn out to be uneconomic to collect the resultant small charge for bikes, especially when considering how many there are owned by children or sitting unused in storage. But I am certain that even if cyclists paid some carefully calculated amount it would do nothing to change the attitude of some drivers towards them.

Simmo72 wrote:

scrap vehicle tax, reintroduce good ol road tax.
+ charge every vehicle based on weight
bikes pay £2, fiesta £50, range rover + £1000, hell make it £2000.

you use the roads, you wear out the roads, you pay for your use. No more paying into the big tax black hole. Road generated revenue for roads. this bollox about your co2 is tosh. Toyota Prius, what a joke, about as environmentally friendly as a Chernobyl fruit salad.

or just stick it on fuel and lets us ride for free.

And if the revenue were insufficient temporarily due to a shortfall in users for some short time period then what? Let them fall into disrepair and waste future money that could have been saved by maintenance? Centralized revenue in government exists for a reason. Simplisitic use-it-pay-for-it schemes don't fit with long-term planning in society.

Simmo72 wrote:

scrap vehicle tax, reintroduce good ol road tax.
+ charge every vehicle based on weight
bikes pay £2, fiesta £50, range rover + £1000, hell make it £2000.

Engineering research shows that the actual road damage is proportional to the 4th power of axle load. Weight^4

It'd be quite a shake up for society, as then a car would pay roughly 10,000 times what a bike payed, while a large HGV would pay about 10,000 times what a car paid.....

CarlosFerreiro wrote:

Simmo72 wrote:

scrap vehicle tax, reintroduce good ol road tax.
+ charge every vehicle based on weight
bikes pay £2, fiesta £50, range rover + £1000, hell make it £2000.

Engineering research shows that the actual road damage is proportional to the 4th power of axle load. Weight^4

It'd be quite a shake up for society, as then a car would pay roughly 10,000 times what a bike payed, while a large HGV would pay about 10,000 times what a car paid.....

Which would ultimately see the bulk of the additional costs added to consumer goods due to haulage firms being hit - not saying it's wrong - but it would NOT be popular

mad_scot_rider wrote:

CarlosFerreiro wrote:

Simmo72 wrote:

scrap vehicle tax, reintroduce good ol road tax.
+ charge every vehicle based on weight
bikes pay £2, fiesta £50, range rover + £1000, hell make it £2000.

Engineering research shows that the actual road damage is proportional to the 4th power of axle load. Weight^4

It'd be quite a shake up for society, as then a car would pay roughly 10,000 times what a bike payed, while a large HGV would pay about 10,000 times what a car paid.....

Which would ultimately see the bulk of the additional costs added to consumer goods due to haulage firms being hit - not saying it's wrong - but it would NOT be popular

I wonder if it would, in the end, actually be more economically efficient, in that people would then make decisions based on the correct cost-benefit calculations? As it stands people's decisions are distorted because they pay the cost of these sorts of things in concealed ways.

You have to pay for road maintenance (through council-tax amongst others) regardless of whether you buy goods that are road-hauled, therefore there's a bias towards the use of road-haulage when the market might find some other solution if people knew how much it was actually costing them.

Wouldn't be popular though, definitely.

(I feel the same way about those supermarkets with humungous car-parks. That's valuable land, and someone is paying the cost of that 'free' car-parking - I presume it ends up being every shopper in the form of higher prices, regardless of whether they use the car park or not. Which makes me wonder why we will have a 'plastic bag tax' and not a 'supermarket car park tax'.
But maybe there's a sense in which having such car parks brings more custom, hence economies of scale, hence lower prices after all. But then again it also kills town centre shops. Dunno, can't figure it out, but I think the economics of it all is quite hidden from view)

Yorkshie Whippet wrote:

Slightly off topic. If councils deny all responsibility with regards potholes until they have been told, would a blanket, "your roads are badly and every single one has a pothole" kind of letter surfice?

Doesn't work like that, all councils must have an inspection regime in place, frequency determined by the roads usage, the council must also define what a defect is, this is a serious problem!!.

Basically one of the get out clauses is that the road was inspected and no fault found, everyone, I assume, accepts that potholes will happen and that sometimes there isn't really much the council can do to stop them happening. Hence why it is so important to tell councils if you see something, it could be months before the council's next inspection.

It's got to be worth a try, for the sake of a couple of quid for a tin of spray paint.

Also it will help others to spot the hazard in time to avoid it.

Jonny_Trousers wrote:

Terribly sad.

Talking about those potholes circled by white spray paint in readiness for them being repaired. I've often wondered if you could get away with sneakily spraying around those holes that are deemed minor on the hope that they'd get filled in too.

Would recommend doing that - they mark them to say they are aware....at which point they become legally responsible for repairing them and any damage caused by not doing so - like this.
Imagine this case - council never made aware even though painted as some eejit done it themselves...no claim possible.
Dont do it.