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news
Upperkirkgate, Aberdeen (Google Street View)“If he’d stayed in his lane, I would have seen him”: Pavement parking taxi driver banned for injuring cyclist after pulling out without indicating – but barrister blames cyclist’s poor “lane discipline” for crash
A taxi driver who was banned from the roads for 12 months after pulling out without indicating and hitting a cyclist, leaving him with a “horrific” arm fracture, blamed the injured rider for the collision, arguing in court that if “he’d negotiated the roundabout properly I would have seen him”.
Stephen Bennett, a 50-year-old taxi driver in Aberdeen, was parked on the pavement at the top of the city’s pedestrianised Upperkirkgate, after dropping off passengers, when he pulled out in front of cyclist Alan McKay.
McKay, who had turned onto the street from Gallowgate, had no time to react when Bennett merged onto the road without indicating, sending him flying over his handlebars, the Aberdeen Press and Journal reports. The cyclist suffered a “horrific open fracture” to his arm in the collision.
At Aberdeen Sheriff Court, Bennett denied a charge of causing serious injury by careless driving, and instead told the court that McKay had failed to negotiate the roundabout linking Gallowgate with Upperkirkgate “properly” and that he would have spotted the cyclist if he “had stayed in his lane”.
> Screaming and swearing taxi driver cuts off and hits cyclist before speeding away
When asked by his defence counsel Gregor Kelly what procedures he’d undertaken before driving off the pavement, the 50-year-old said: “After my passengers left, I’m waiting to get another job. I’m given another job and check over my right shoulder and there was nothing there.
“I checked my rear-view mirror and wing mirror and forward to make sure there was nothing coming and slowly manoeuvred out doing less than one or two miles an hour, and I hear the thud of the cyclist.
“I didn’t indicate because there was no one else there whatsoever. The cyclist has come just after I checked over my shoulder.”
Bennett claimed that McKay had “cut the corner” and navigated the roundabout in the wrong lane, and if he had approached in the left lane “I would see him”.
The approach to the roundabout from Gallowgate, with Upperkirkgate to the right (Google Streetview)
“He obviously appeared after I have looked over my shoulder,” he continued. “I felt really bad about it. I got out of my vehicle straight away. I was trying to help him, I asked if there was anything I could do.
“I wanted to take his bike home for him or pick his wife up and take her to the hospital. I would have done anything to help him.”
> Taxi driver given suspended sentence for deliberately hitting cyclist who called him a “fat f**k”
While watching CCTV footage of the incident in court, Kelly asked Bennett: “What commentary would you give regarding Mr McKay’s lane positioning?”
“If he’d negotiated the roundabout properly he’d have been behind me and I would have seen him,” the taxi driver replied.
Questioning Bennett, Fiscal depute Claire Stewart said: “I’m going to suggest had you carried out the necessary checks this collision would not have happened.”
“I did carry out the necessary checks,” Bennett said. “It wouldn’t have happened if he’d come round the roundabout the proper way.”
While also providing evidence to the court during the trial, cyclist McKay said that Bennett had failed to indicate before the collision and added that he “disagreed” with defence counsel Kelly’s assertion that he had not navigated the corner properly or kept his “lane discipline”, and that he had “contributed personally” to the crash.
> Taxi association warns drivers of "sneaky" cyclists with cameras catching law-breaking behaviour
Finding Bennett guilty of causing serious injury by careless driving, Sheriff Kevin Duffy told the court: “This is a very unfortunate situation both for Mr Bennett and indeed Mr McKay,”
“The question for the court to decide his whether the quality of Mr Bennett’s driving fell below the standard of a careful and competent driver.
“Looking at it from the CCTV, I have reached the conclusion that while Mr Bennett may well believe he carried out all the checks required, my conclusion is that he didn’t do so immediately prior to pulling out because if he had done so he would have been aware of the presence of the cyclist. Furthermore, he didn’t indicate.”
Following the guilty verdict, Kelly argued that the mandatory driving disqualification would have a huge impact on his client as it would leave him unable to work, and asked the sheriff to keep the ban to a minimum.
Sheriff Duffy disqualified Bennett from driving for 12 months – the minimum length of ban legally required for the offence – and fined him £790.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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63 comments
“I didn’t indicate because there was no one else there whatsoever. The cyclist has come just after I checked over my shoulder.”
No one else is going to observe that a person who struggles this badly with object-permanence has no business ever operating a motor vehicle in public again?
Bicycles do not move sufficiently-fast to make this claim possible, in the physical world that we all inhabit.
I didn’t indicate because there was no one else there whatsoever. Unfortunately, I hit the person who wasn’t there.
“Kelly argued that the mandatory driving disqualification would have a huge impact on his client”
Huge impact. Is that like the huge impact of a 2.4t taxi causing an open fracture of the arm? Or just the impact of the removal of the privilege of driving from somebody who was clearly not competent for the activity and trade which depended on that competence?
Incidentally, it isn’t a roundabout. There are no signs on the approach to the junction; no rotation signs at the junction, and no raised centre around which traffic is directed. It isn’t even a mini-roundabout. It is simply an unmarked junction.
A wonder that the police even prosecuted the driver. There are plenty of police force areas where they wouldn't have even bothered and left it to civil redress only.
Do we have the CCTV footage?
Is a taxi allowed to go down there?
(TBH looking on Streetview, this looks like another of Scotland's "shared space" messes, and this one has only been in for 2-3 years. Everyone should no better by now.)
I don't know the area. Here I believe.
I think it was part of this project, starting around 2017.
FWIW totally agree - "shared space" with motor traffic is not the way forward for anything other than "do something" but keep the status quo. (Actually any sharing by different modes without certain critera in place is poor - see the UK's low-ambition conflict-creating "shared use paths" for example).
(Ramble) I'm convinced this kind of stuff is a product of the "good idea fairy". It triggers interest because it's counter-intuitive (less "control" but people are said to "behave in a more human way") BUT apparently (under controlled conditions) it "seems to work" *. Plus it looks great in the visualisation / artistic impression. In those pictures it now looks like a "place" - much nicer than the "road" before! Look - they've drawn in just a couple of cars and the drivers and imaginary happy people are politely sharing! There are children crossing without fear! I feel this is how it should be!
Oh, and by the way it's (relatively) cheap ** and in fact we're not "taking space" from motor traffic so push-back should be minimised...
* Unfortunately reality is less forgiving (as e.g. shown by crash data).
** UK example - Exhibition Road. In fact it's often not cheap at all, and while initially some benefits seemed to emerge this was extremely poor value for the money spent when compared to other possible interventions.
We humans are not mind readers so that is why cars/vans etc are fitted with indicators to tell other road users what you are about to do as you will not see others every time you change lanes, turn on or off a road etc and please do not have all four blinking when parked in a group of other vans etc as it looks like your about to pull out!
What's similarly unhelpful is when people indicate to announce their intention to pull out at some as yet unknown point in the future, when there's a gap in the traffic.
Not sure that that is unhelpful always.
Ashley Neal calls it an 'asking for permission' or similar, which to me seems about right.
If it is a stream or a queue of traffic, that allows drivers to adjust to accommodate the intention.
This isn't about "asking for permission" though. I'm talking about situations where a driver sits there with his indicators flashing, as other vehicles whizz by, or starts indicating just as traffic is about to pass. He has no immediate intention to pull out. Indicating doesn't providing any useful information to anyone if the other drivers can't let the driver out or can't reasonably be expected to do so. It's wholely unhelpful if not dangerous.
when do you think they should start indicating then?
The Highway Code doesn't explicitly say when you should start indicating but it makes it the penultimate thing you should do before pulling away, after checking your mirrors and blindspots and just before making a final visual check all round, so by implication just before you pull out. If one thinks about it, indicating before pulling out should only ever be precautionary because you should never pull out if any other road user is going to have to slow or take evasive action when you do so. If you sit there with the indicator on when there isn't space for you to pull out, you may cause other road users to take unnecessary evasive action which could in turn bring them into conflict with others.
Love the driver's attitude. I had a similar experience when a car came out of a side road, ignoring a "give way" sign, and broad-sided me, and the driver and his wife immediately insisted it was my fault, as I must have gone through a red light (there were traffic signals at another junction on my road, some distance before the side road they had come out of).
Do taxis have indicators? I never knew that - I've never seen an indicator on a taxi. Amazing. You learn something every day
Do taxis have indicators? I didn't know that - I've never seen an indicator on a taxi. Amazing. You learn something every day.
Motorists should always signal when pulling out from the side, turning left or right even if they look and do not see anything - we all have blind spots in our eyes, any light from an object falling on these blind spots cannot be seen.
My point exactly!
A shout-out for Sheriff Duffy. The UK clearly needs a bunch more like him.
If this junction is a roundabout, should there be "roundabout" warning signs?
Who says this is a roundabout? There are no road signs to indicate this. There are no road markings (white lines) in accordance with the legislation.
If you believe the pretty patterns in the block pavement are conclusive proof this is a roundabout, then what do the road markings indicate in the pic below? Should pedestrians do a U Turn in the middle of the road? Or is this a semi-roundabout? The problem is, Highways Engineers can't follow the rule book, and road users suffer for it.
More ammunition for the war on motorists meme.
There was this hard-working poor bloke wot never did no 'arm to nobody, just earning enough to keep his family and aged parents alive, when some entitled cyclist decides to ram his car and sue him. An absolute disgrace and the Sheriff Kevin Duffy is clearly biased, probably a Green and, shock horror, possibly a cyclist himself.
Well done Sheriff Kevin Duffy, long may your good work continue.
“If he’d stayed in his lane, I would have seen him” not "If I hadn't parked on the pavement and pulled out without looking or indicating." Should have got an extra ban for being a prat.
That taxi driver is waging a war on pedestrians.
Whilst the taxi driver parking on the pavement prior to the collision has been mentioned plenty of times, there does not appear to have been any admonishment from the police/court for this.
I'm assuming it wasn't legal as I don't know of anywhere that it is.
I'm glad he got banned for a year.
This will hopefully make him a safer driver and word will get round to his colleagues that they could face similar consequences.
I believe that it's only within London that it's illegal to park on the pavement - everywhere else is fair game, though in theory you could report a driver for causing an obstruction to using the pavement, but good luck getting the police or council interested.
London and Edinburgh, with a Scotland wide ban mooted. When the Edinburgh ban came in it was quite hillarious seeing the stories from parkers who had parked on "their" pavement outside their house...
I think the Scotland-wide ban is now in force: https://www.transport.gov.scot/news/pavement-parking-ban/
Isn't it illegal to drive on the pavement?
Didn't he admit to driving on the pavement?
"Isn't it illegal to drive on the pavement?"
Not always.
Would the exceptions apply in this case?
Don't know. In any case, he clearly didn't look properly before pulling out.
It's only a little bit illegal
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