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Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)One driver convicted of cyclist’s death and another cleared after both claimed they were dazzled by the sun
A driver who knocked a Ceredigion councillor off his bike near Aberystwyth, causing him to be hit and killed by another motorist, has been convicted of causing his death by careless driving. Both drivers denied the charge, arguing they were blinded by the sun and did not see Paul James ahead of them.
As we reported on Saturday, James was riding uphill towards a bend between Waun Fawr and Comins Cochon on the A487 near Aberystwyth on April 11, 2019, when he was hit by the wing mirror of Lowri Powell’s car.
He fell from his bike and was then hit and dragged 35 metres by Christopher Jones who was driving behind.
Both drivers told police that glare from the setting sun meant they had not seen him.
Powell told Swansea Crown Court she had done "absolutely nothing wrong" and there had been "nothing she could have done differently."
Asked by the prosecution how she had failed to see James “right in front of your bonnet,” Powell replied: “The lighting coming through the trees and foliage on the side had created a flickering effect and I believe the high visibility jacket blended in with that.”
For his part, Jones told the court he had “tenths of a second” to react after spotting James’ jacket as he lay on the ground.
Jones thought Powell’s vehicle may have already rounded the corner ahead when he hit the cyclist and suggested he hadn’t seen him sooner because of the glare of the sun and because he had been "underneath the shadowing" of roadside trees and bushes.
Professor Graham Edgar, an expert in perception and psychophysics, said that Powell would have had a "line of sight" of more than 300 metres and said he could see "no reason" why James would not have been visible.
In contrast, accident reconstruction consultant Victoria Eyers said that given the low sun and James’ position under the trees, he would only have become visible to Powell when she was 13 metres behind him.
Eyers said her conclusions were based on footage shot by a police officer 48 hours later as she was unable to visit the scene due to coronavirus restrictions.
The jury was told it had to consider whether each motorist’s standard of driving had fallen below that expected of a competent and careful driver and whether that driving had been a cause of James' death.
The BBC reports that Jones was found not guilty, but after five hours of deliberations, Powell was convicted.
Judge Geraint Walters said he would reflect on the case and consider pre-sentence reports before sentencing Powell on October 9.
He added that he would not impose an interim driving ban following submissions from the defendant's barrister.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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How many cases like this do we read about each week? When someone in a vehicle kills a cyclist, but more or less gets away with it?
Those two experts - one said 300 m of vision, the other around 13m. 13m???? Was it thick fog? And her opinion was based on video footage? How does that stack up? And both the criminals are lying through their teeth, if you ask me.
I looked up the sunset time that day - 8:07pm
The collision occurred at 5:30pm. I can't think that the sun was low enough to cause significant glare. The worst example on street view I could find was around the bend from the accident location given in the Wales online article.
Very relevent ponts from both of the above contributers.
I checked out the academic expert witness, He is a university professor with lots of papers to his name, I do not even understand the titles of most of them. There may have been clear line of sight to the cyclist from three hundred metres away, but that does not give us any idea oh his conspicuity. It does say that the driver had some time to see a difficult object.
The Video evidence taken at different time to me is very questionable. Things like contrast, colour rendering, field of vision, etc...will be distorted both by the camera and the monitor used for viewing. Peoples vision varies considerably and no video will not show what a given human being actually perceived. Making a statement of 13 meters visibility from this evidence is claiming false accuracy, is she sure it was not 12 or 14 metres? Or 3 or 300?.
The timing is also interesting, it suggests that the sun was about 10 degrees above the horizon, so it could have been a problem going uphill, but I am also sceptical. (The 10 degrees is a guess, but this could be checked out using an online planisphere)
When you go out on the bike you put your safety in the hands of other road users. When that fails you put your trust in the English legal system. What's the problem?
I really want a jersey that says 'Difficult object' now.
ok, I checked. The sun was at 24 degrees elevation at the time of collision and WSW (255 degrees azimuth).
To put that in context, in January, the sun got to 20 degrees at it's highest point in the day. I can't recall having glare during mid-day in winter, only towards sunrise/sunset where the sun is at only a few degrees above the horizon.
Putting poor driving and observation to one side, I suspect the shadows played a far greater part in this than glare.
Good work mate.
I was just about to do it, I've been out on the bike.
We need to take account of the fact that the road was going uphill, but It's not going to make a big difference.
When I was checking out streetview, I did notice that and wonder if that was where the tragedy occurred as the conditions mentioned do match abit more. However the statement of the initial car " going around a bend" does indicate that even on this stretch, there was a large amount of seconds and distance on seeing the cyclist and she was still doing 50mph in these glaring conditions.
Unfortunately convicting on this is almost certainly incredibly difficult due to "there but for the grace of god go I..."
IMO any collision with serious injury should require repassing a test within 3-6 months to keep your license (ok, at the moment we would need to have extended this for Covid19, but doing an extension for MOT's was easy enough...) and fatalities should be a near immediate loss of license. This shouldn't be affected by court or civil rulings on fault, but be automatic for the purpose of future prevention. Even in the rare case the driver has no fault (e.g. pedestrian commiting suicide by jumping off a motorway bridge, most people (at least according to their defence) suffer PTSD after a fatal collision, and usually have contributary factors (80-90%), retesting to ensure that psychological issues from said PTSD don't affect their driving and any contributary factors were a mistake rather than lack of knowledge/recent training seems logical.
Before someone argues about capacity, 1.6 million tests a year vs >30k KSI's... So retesting all of them (assuming they can actually pass) is only a 2% increase in tests needed... (without allowing for the percentage who are already retested...)
Guilty as hell, if you can't stop within the distance you can see you should slow down, if you still can't stop you should slow down more.....
The cyclist was wearing hiviz so he was doing what he could to help motorists see him.
As a cyclist you are always competing against the background to be seen, you can choose what you wear but you cannot choose your background. Most cyclists think they are more noticeable than they are.
In the photo the light is coming from behind the photographer, and the cyclists are not that visible against the trees. From the description in the article it sounds like both the cyclist and the trees would be silhouetted against the sun, so both would appear dark. To a driver approaching from the opposite direction the cyclist would probably be highly visible.
This begs the philosophical question "Just when is it OK not to see the cyclist?"
To fellow cyclists my advice is: (feel free to disagree), if you find yourself riding into a low sun, remember that the car coming up behind you probably has a dirty windscreen and is going too fast. FEEL AFRAID. This is the time to ride in the gutter, (if you are not going to be seen anyway it's better not to be in the drivers path), sit, up to make yourself as big as possible, daytime lights should help. The condition usually does not last for long, stop for a coffee or take a detour along shady side lanes if possible
My solution to light in the eyes is to have a very high intensity rear light. It gives you have a chance anyway. Unless the sun is overhead I've got my rear light on and hopefully it's stronger than the sun or they notice something.
"I didn't see him m'lord as a red light was glaring in my eyes"
You are dead right, you can't do much to defendyourself in this situation and a bright rear light may help, but as you say you are now competing against the sun.
Why no interim driving ban?
There will surely be one, why not get this killer driver off of our roads as soon as possible?
Claims she did nothing wrong...... Knocks man off bike and causes his death.
Doing nothing wrong would have resulted in nothing. Can't these fuckers just admit they made a mistake?
I bet she'll never admit to doing it.
Hubris; I'm a driver, I've passed a test therefore it must be someone else's fault.
"But it said it was a 40/60/YMMV speed limit!!?"
Failure to use sunglasses in conditions of sun glare is dangerous driving.
Period.
Failure to be able to stop your car in a safe and controlled manner within the distance you can see to be clear is dangerous driving.
The sunglasses are irrelevant.
No. Failing to slow down to an appropriate speed when you can only see 13m in front of you is dangerous driving.
Both drivers hit the human by not driving/looking appropriately. Both should be convicted of the killing unless there is enough doubt that the first collision resulted in not enough time for the second driver to react, which could be possible but not likely as it seems the second driver was also going too fast for how far they could see.
Agreed. Of course not being able to see the collision in front if you were the following car means that you didn't leave enough stopping distance
Very similar to the collision that killed my former colleague David Irving. Driver who knocked him off was acquitted, and the following driver who ran him over wasn't even charged. Low winter sun was the primary defence, full details of whole court case were recorded by Southampton Cycling Campaign here https://www.southamptoncyclingcampaign.org.uk/2014/news/1888/ (including the judge instructing the jury that driving into glare is not a criminal offence - Day 6)
David was on a hybrid with lights and reflectors, wearing an orange hi-viz jacket and reflective ankle bands. Routinely ran lights in daylight. Wife and three kids left bereaved a week before Christmas.
As per usual, the whole thing was based on David's actions and finding suitable excuses for the driver, and not just from the defence. Judge in summing up victim-blamed David, collision investigator had NEVER RIDDEN A BIKE.
In the interests of context, the road where it happened is not frequented by cyclists, as an experienced cyclist I would never ride it because its a complete racetrack full of heavy vehicles. The sun at that point and that time of year is blinding when the road is wet and in you're three lanes of 40mph+ traffic jockeying for position to try and skip ahead of queues the other side of the flyover. There's a shared-use cycle path to the south but depending on where you're coming from it's not particularly accessible. David wasn't local and might not have known it was there as this was years before a joined up network existed in Southampton.
Sorry to hear about your colleague and the victim in this story. Regarding glare from wet roads/low sun. I don't actually own a pair of these as they are expensive, but as I understand it, polarised lenses on glasses cut glare out or at least reduce it. Why aren't car windscreens polarised?
I get very nervous when riding towards a low sun because of cases such as these.
I actively consider it when setting out and vary my departure times accordingly. I try to avoid E/W routes when the sun is low and will ride primary if hedges are placing me in shadow. Also ran a rear light when I was commuting (dynamo lights so no issues with remembering to charge it).
At this time of year it's particularly bad for the school run. What also doesn't help is dirty windscreens. Dust and grease build up inside windscreens over the summer and now that cars are so well sealed they don't get rinsed by internal condensation on cold mornings. There's no excuse for not cleaning them but drivers are basically lazy. We're also heading into single headlamp time because they've not used them over the summer and hadn't realised half the car needs taking apart to replace them.
Just slowing down if you can't see the road ahead of you clearly would probably good starting point.
This. How is it that defendants do not incriminate themselves when they claim that environmental conditions rendered them unable to see, they recognised the fact, and yet nevertheless continued to drive blind, not stopping until they killed someone? It beggars belief that this is a defence!
How is it that defendants do not incriminate themselves when they claim that environmental conditions rendered them unable to see, they recognised the fact, and yet nevertheless continued to drive blind
There is a long history of this:
https://thecyclingsilk.blogspot.com/2012/06/coach-driver-acquitted-of-charges.html
If I remember rightly, these 2 brothers were dead by the side of the road when their mother went past in a car. The expletive deleted jury found the bus driver who killed both of them 'not guilty' because the windscreen washers had been left unworking for ages before and the sun was in the driver's eyes.
As far as I am aware (and somebody can correct me) having an empty washer bottle can result in points.
I was delivering in London a few years back, and I failed to check the bottle before I left. Gradually due to the weather, the filth on the windscreen built up to such an extent to make visibility difficult. I did the only thing I could, and went and spent a quid on a couple of litres of water.
I cannot conceive of why you would continue to drive in that condition without taking action.....
Yes - I would say it is mystifying except of course it isn't because it happens so often and is thanks to our ludicrously driver-centric view of the world. No driver would think to use the excuse that their headlights weren't working if they hit someone in the dark, yet the 'dazzled by sunlight' canard is rolled out with depressing regularity, and all too often it is believed. At least there was a conviction in this case, even if it's the usual depressing tale of the prosecutors going for careless driving as an easier win than dangerous driving, which this very much seems to have been.
The road is pretty straight leading up to the hill where the tragedy took place. (took the image as this area based on the one from Walesonline and the fact a bend was mentioned). Nothing that should have dazzled them suddenly so either they were dazzled along the length or they were not paying attention from a distance away.
Going by the image there was more than enough time to determine hazards and spot other road users. Also if there was an issue with the sun dazzling the drivers I struggle to see why they didn't ease off on their speed per guidance in the HC. But I forget. Once people are in possession of a license the HC becomes a distant memory.