Near Miss of the Day 806: Driver escapes punishment after reversing at cyclist and running over dog

nosferatu1001 wrote:

It was also an offence. They had no need to reverse, so they absolutely broke rule 203

and as it is a MUST NOT, rather than should not, then presumably it is part of the legal restrictions. Or at least that is my understanding of the code. If you break a should it is not necesarily an offence, but it could be argued as part of the evidence on dangerous/careless etc. but where there is specific legislation then the words must and must not appear.

Shaun TheDiver wrote:

I'll have a stab in the dark and guess that they didn't report running over the dog to the police. Failure to report this is in itself an offence.

Not quite - you only need to report to the police if you don't stop at the scene and give details to someone who reasonably requires them (s.170 RTA 1988). In this case the driver appears to have stopped and spoken to the quad biker who had the dog. 

It's on road.cc twitter and has been retweeted.

So I downloaded Twitter and opened an account (now I can abuse strangers!  Yay!).  There's a comment from the North Yorks police complaints people that they've got involved as per the "online article".  Any idea which article?  It's certainly not this one!

Could be this tweet

https://twitter.com/roadcc/status/1552282247222509568

or this site news article

Or a retweet or link to this site from anywhere.

panda wrote:

So I downloaded Twitter

All of it? Yikes!

It's on the Suns website in the motoring section.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/19346202/watch-as-crazed-driver-reverses...

from my observations most working sheep dogs are very good at being on the back of quad bikes jumping on and off as required, I think the way it jumps off is another indicator that the 2 drivers know each other as I think the dog is familiar with the car and its driver.

I think the range of interpretations here demonstrate that perhaps one should not jump to conclusions. Another interpretation is that the cyclist's presence was entirely coincidental, the two guys were hurrying off somewhere, the car driver suddenly realised he had forgotten something and was going back for it, meanwhile the quad driver did not know about that and was doing his own hurrying on.

I'm not claiming that's the real situation, merely pointing out the possibilities, and if it came to a court case, that would likely be the driver's defence, so I can understand this as a valid reason for not prosecuting.

Except that even if that was the case, it still wouldn't justify reversing at speed for some distance like that - it would still be clearly dangerous driving.

Yes, but without evidence of malicious intent, on a small country road, it won't be taken further. That's the reality.

That's not the same as it being a valid reason, though - it just means that they're refusing to prosecute dangerous driving despite there being no valid reason.

The accident was mainly caused by the quad going too fast round the bend, and when he saw the car he had to swerve and brake, the dog jumped off as he could not have stayed on the quad in those circumstances regardless of how agile and skillful be might be. If the car had been coming down the road forwards, the dog would have suffered the same fate anyway (and the car would have probably been going somewhat faster). 

But the driver was going forwards before he passed the cyclist.  I'm not an accident investigator but I'd say the causes were:

1.a The driver suddenly stopping and reversing at speed in a narrow lane, round corners.

1.b. The most reasonable explanation for which is he was trying to reach the cyclist.

1.c It appears this was in reaction to the cyclist shouting as the driver passed him.

1.d The cyclist shouted because he felt the driver passed closely at a greater speed than was safe - which the video seems to confirm.

2.a The rider of the quad bike came round the bend at a speed which may have meant they did not have sufficient view ahead for safety - this isn't clear.

2.b The quad bike rider may not have been expecting any oncoming traffic.  This could be either because it was rare here, or if they knew that the driver was in front because they didn't think it was likely anyone would have passed the driver since the road was narrow.  Alternatively or in addition they may have been trying to catch up with the driver.

2.c It's not clear why the quad bike was so far to the left - especially if the rider thought there was no chance of oncoming traffic.  Had they been further right they would have had a better view round the bend.

2.d As it was the quad bike was able to avoid both the cyclist and then the reversing car - the latter possibly due to being positioned far left.

2.e The dog fell / jumped off due to the sudden swerve by the quad bike.

I think we can safely say that #1.a is the biggie here and that only happened because after 1.d the driver chose an aggressive course of action.  After that they were ignoring any safe driving considerations.  The quad bike rider may not have been riding sensibly or possibly even safely but *in this situation* had the car not been reversing at speed (e.g. even if it had been sat there) the probability of an accident would have been much less.

Both vehicles were on a single track road, both driving at more than a speed that represented half their stopping distance based on their vision, so both are culpable. The driver was reversing assuming nobody else was on the road, they clearly would have had limited visibility and were focused on their prey the cyclist. I think the driver did brake a bit before the collision with the dog (lights not easy to see on the footage), but only as an evading manouvre and the car then dips noticably, presumably due to an emergency stop in response to the unknown object that was hit (I doubt that the driver would have seen the dog at that point due to the high rear unless they caught a glimpse out of a side mirror).

I tried Googling around to see if typical car brakes were as effective in reverse - brakes are typically designed to provide the majority of braking effort to the front wheels and I find it unlikely that that arrangement will have been changed in reverse, even with electronic magic, so in the event of an emergency stop, the front wheels are likely to lock up early, ABS engaging and the rear brakes will have a lower braking capacity. Together with odd handling, and poor rear visibility, I suspect the safe reversing speed of a car is a lot lower than what was being demonstrated, unsuccessfully.

You are Mr Loophole and ICMFP.  

The Partygate tone from the top to bend the truth so one key individual always gets off has been set for over two years now: lie after lie, excuse after excuse, interspersed with layers of evidence highlighting the lies or why two things claimed cannot be simultaneously true,  each new lie / distortion layered on top of the last, and then more evidence to contradict.  

Are you really trying to find excuses for him for doing this long high speed reverse? 

There were no parties... 

It makes me weep to see this sort of ****ing nonsense. I merely pointed out that without any proof of intent to cause harm to the cyclist, all you have in court is careless reversing which would get a minimal penalty and the driver going away laughing. So he ran over a dog that jumped right in front of him - sorry, but drivers don't get penalised for driving over dogs that jump out right in front of them. So, my opinion is, the time and money would be better spent on close pass drivers who normally get away scot free.

And you ask what the quad driver did wrong? Like going so fast round a corner that in the event of having to take avoiding action of any sort, the dog might fall of in front of a vehicle going the other way? Try growing a few brain cells.

Didn't this driver make a close pass at the start though, that's how it all began?

Knowing as I write this the baying mob will rise up with cries of traitor, the fact is that on a narrow road there won't be 1.5m of even 1m of space available. In such cases the car driver should slow and move over - which he did. I agree that he didn't slow enough, but it's not a slam dunk that he would get a penalty if taken up for it.

The fact that the rider was upset by the speed of the pass is actually a clue to the courts that the speed was inappropriate.

I ride with groups on roads similar to this, and you soon get to recognise the three basic types of passes, the considerate, the incompetent and the malicious. The incompetent would not react so badly to being called out, they realise as they do something that it was not ideal, they just don't always have the skillset to realise what they did wrong - they might stop and be aggrieved that there was no room so what were they supposed to do, and when you suggest slowing down might be cross, but the idea that an incompetent driver would attempt to chase down a cyclist doesn't compute. The whole scenario here screams malicious, and while the pass on its own might not merit a talking to, the fact that the driver was enraged by a reaction to his own poor decision making speaks volumes and that is what makes it actionable.

FWIW, I would not have reported the initial close pass on its own, regardless of it being possibly malicious, because if that was my standard, I'd be reporting several drivers per ride. It needs some other factor, like a tirade of abuse when they are aggrieved at my correct riding.

You construct a scenario that can fit the observable facts. But there are various other scenarios that can fit the facts. Unless it can be proved beyond all reasonable doubt that your scenario was the actual scenario, it means nothing. The driver can assert another scenario that also fits the facts, for example, he could claim that the cyclist made a rude gesture and he wanted to speak to him and reprimand him for it , and had no intention of causing him any harm. In all this, in spite of what others want to believe, I'm not saying that the driver was not at fault, I'm simply saying that it's not as clear cut that the driver would get a penalty as severe as everyone else here seems to think. That's my opinion. Having an echo chamber where everyone sings the same song might make you all feel warm inside, but it doesn't create facts.

Ah, you are falling for the layman's interpretation of beyond reasonable doubt which imagines that any old nonsense must be completely disproved. The key word is reasonable. So if the scenario is reasonable, the jury (and magistrates are effectively a jury of peers) are entitled to conclude that a scenario occurred. That others can construct other scenarios does not compel them to disprove the alternative.

So in this case, you might imagine other scenarios for the man reversing, but you are introducing unreasonable suggestions, and of course wanting to remonstrate with someone does not entitle someone to drive what was shown to be as a matter of fact, due to the resulting events, dangerously.

You already to be confusing the requirement of proof for criminal cases (such as malicious intent to cause injury) where the charge must be proved beyond reasonable doubt and other cases where the requirement is on the balance of probabilities. There is a world of difference between "reasonable" as you describe it where you indicate this to indicate the balance of probabilities and "reasonable doubt" where if there is a reasonable level of doubt the charge is not proved. In this case if there is reasonable doubt that the driver intended to cause injury, then the case is not proved. And if all you have is speculation that he intended to cause injury, then ipso facto, there is reasonable doubt that he had such intent.

There you go, inventing stuff again, having previously complained about people inventing facts. Where did intent to cause injury come in - in my post I said that wanting to remonstrate with someone doesn't entitle them to reverse as they did.

Now, is it unreasonable to surmise the driver was chasing the cyclist - clearly the police considered that was the case, so it is not just my interpretation. He might claim he was rushing to turn off a kettle he realised he had left on. Remonstrating is not causing injury, it is a long word for having a moan. It would be unreasonable to suggest that the wild reversing was so he could apologise, so unless the driver could come up with a plausible reason to explain his driving, the magistrates would be entirely entitled to draw their own conclusions from what they saw on the video.

But you seem to have missed the point, you are allowed to have doubts, just not reasonable doubts. So, yes, you cannot be absolutely certain what is in the driver's mind, but any reasonable person would conclude that the driving was instigated by the interaction with the cyclist and he was chasing the cyclist. You can jump through hoops to come up with other explanations, but given the video, they are going to be pretty implausible and regardless, there is nothing that justifies high speed reversing, even if there were some other justification attempted.

Still, you are entitled to your opinions, as I am entitled to think very little of them.

It's rather strange that you think you should comment on my posts and expect me to not continue along the same lines as which I started - which I did. Anyway, this is getting boring.

He could claim lots of things but he would need evidence to support this. Does he have a dash cam to show this gesture ?

Presumably you have read stories of cyclists being killed or injured where the driver says they thought it was a deer which wasn't accepted as a scenario.

And the response to the supposed gesture needs to be proportionate and legal.

JimM777 wrote:

the fact is that on a narrow road there won't be 1.5m of even 1m of space available. In such cases the car driver should slow and move over wait behind until there is sufficient space to pass, or the cyclist pulls over to let them through - which he did didn't.