Driver “spoken to” but not arrested by police after mounting pavement and ploughing through cycle rack, injuring cyclist and snapping bike in two in shocking crash

I've seen motorists veer towards the kerb whilst phone-distracted. And phone-distraction is endemic - just walk any urban pavement during heavy traffic, look at the motorists, 10% of them are on their phones. It's blatant, because there is zero prospect of being caught. It would appear that you can even smash through street furniture and plough into a pedestrian, still the police are not interested.

10% of them are on their phones. It's blatant, because there is zero prospect of being caught
On the contrary, I catch them fairly frequently (admittedly, that's still a very low probability of being caught) but the attitude of Lancashire Constabulary is that it's not a real offence and they refuse to respond or take action unless the offender is somebody they don't like. Bent coppers are the problem.

Maybe a change in the law is required to give the police this power

No, it's a major change in the police that's required. They're much worse than 'useless'

Yes, this should be an automatic suspension of thier license until medically cleared to drive again.

In  1979 I was told by the DVLA to see a silly eye chap in Bath, he said that both my eyes could not see the red dot between 12 & 3, how long did have that problem, might have been since the Menningitues or all your life, so I asked why can't I carry on driving, he said on approaching a roundabout you can't see the vehicles on the right, my answer was my head can turn like yours and I expect other drivers to slow down on approaching these junctions as I do. 7 years later I got my license back, and never did stop driving cars just trucks and coaches. never had an accident either! I have now 80.

Your mistake was not going to see someone in Barnard Castle.

the little onion wrote:

I only say this because I've been a victim of a SMIDSY where the police were extremely quick to tell me that negligence wasn't involved, and to dismiss witness reports of a phone-distracted driver, and overlook the fact that I was lit up like a christmas tree and wearing high vis. It is remarkable how quickly the police can come to the conclusion that there was nothing untoward with an incident, without any kind of investigation.

This is probably the same reason that the official DfT car/bike KSI report has a section at the back basically telling you to ignore the "combined" stats because of the massive bias in the attending police officer's initial assessment. It's probably also why DfT stats (which are currently based on "the attending officer's confidence") show that 29% of car crashes can be attributed to speeding, yet a 2018 study by numerous forces that used actual accident investigation data found it was more like 53%.

Will someone tell Si Richardson of GCN that the cycling casualty statistics for GB are only useful when you have run out of toilet rolls! A year ago Si gleefully announced how much safer our roads are, according to the statistics😡

If it wasn't negligence then what was it?

brooksby wrote:

If it wasn't negligence then what was it?

"just one of those things". The driver "just didn't see you". Which apparently isn't negligent....

Eight minutes for a drug wipe. Though a positive can come through quicker if very +ve.

There does seem to be a spate of people with no medical history of "passing out" but then do so while committing some crime while driving. Then miraculously the condition goes away and their fitness to be licensed to drive is never questioned.

It's the excuse you use as an alternative to  'the sun was in my eyes'

Wimbledon school crash? Spontaneous onset one-off epilepsy event, bookended by total amnesia.

That's true - if it weren't for the incompetence paradox.  Commonly accepted in courts this means you can use your incompetence as a driver as a defense or mitigation - without that actually being an aggravating factor.  Or the need for you to return to face another careless / inconsiderate driving charge.

OTOH they could just use the "Scottish defense" (apparently also used for a long time elsewhere in the UK; in other contexts the "Murdoch response") whereby you say you have no memory of / don't recall the incident in question.  Why give more detail that someone could pick you up on?  Let others worry about what actually happened and why.

It seems the jury very often put the best possible interpretation on this.  Or at least are not impressed by the prosecution apparently harrassing another normal driver like themselves, who was making a vital trip from A to B with no intention of doing harm to anyone.  Works astonishingly well...