RTC ~ Bus

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Tue 17 Jan 2023 16:30
RTC ~ Bus - HGV ~ P Valentine

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newslondon/dozens-injured-a...s

My thought on the above collision ..

Why do people blame conditions for bad driving, is it that they do not want to take responsibity for their actions, or do they really not understand ?


Bad driving in this country has become an epidemic, and the system is as much at fault as the people.

There are no bad roads, only bad drivers who fail to take the road at a speed that is right for the conditions, it has been advertised everywhere the roads are going to be slippery for days, we have been told night temp are going to be -7 ish so any water on the road is going to ice up, and will not be quick to disappear.

Also, bus drivers should know better, there is no excuse for a "professional" driver to have a vehicle end up like this. only today I saw a coach enter the main road from chichester depot, and the driver forgot to turn their hazard lights off, it shows a lack of concentration.

People have to understand that the speed limit is ONLY A LIMIT and NOT A TARGET, I once went to oxford in thick fog, got passed by several cars, further down the road 2 of those cars had ended up in a ditch, I got to my destination, they did not !
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The road is a left hand bend, so the bus driver should have been turning the wheel left, so the bus should be on its right, the kerb would not have flipped the bus on its own, it is simply not high enough.

So I can only assume that the bus driver must have been turning the wheel to the right ? Why when the bend is turning left, the only reason I can think he might have been turning right is 1~~if the bike was trying to pass him on the inside, or 2~~the bus driver was trying to overtake the bike.

I ~~ find the first unlikely because there would not have been enough room, I also find it unlikely that bike would not have waited until after the bend.

2 ~~ Maybe the bike was doing the right speed for the conditions and the bus was too impatient to wait as they often are, decided to pull out and try and overtake the bike on the bend, saw the bike was still alongside when turning back in and had to turn the wheel sharply to avoid hitting the bike rider..

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I am struggling to find any other way other then the 2 mentiond how this bus can end up on its near side ( left )

PS there is no mention of what happened to the bike or its rider.

Edited by HGV ~ P Valentine on 17/01/2023 at 16:38

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Tue 17 Jan 2023 16:41
RTC ~ Bus - Bromptonaut

Is now, when we don't even know the fate of the motorcyclist, the right time for speculation based on a couple of media accounts?

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Tue 17 Jan 2023 16:55
RTC ~ Bus - Adampr

Is now, when we don't even know the fate of the motorcyclist, the right time for speculation based on a couple of media accounts?

Probably not, but I would add that the cones on the road suggest the bus is facing the way it came. As for driving standards, I don't think they're worse, there are just more cars.

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Tue 17 Jan 2023 17:30
RTC ~ Bus - Will deBeast

We have annual tests for cars, but defective vehicles only cause a tiny minority of collisions.

It is crazy that someone can pass a driving test at 17 and never do another day of training, ever. I would be fined and struck off by my professional body if I didn't do annual top-up training, but the most dangerous thing I do in the work day is driving to/from work.

We could make an inexpensive start by making people do the theory test every 10 years, when they update their photo card.

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Thu 19 Jan 2023 15:30
RTC ~ Bus - Robert J.
Insurance premiums tend to decrease as drivers get older, up to a time when reactions tend to slow, usually at 70 plus. Younger drivers are less safe because they take more risks. Most drivers have the skills to drive safely so driver training will not benefit them. What safer drivers have is attitude, something that cannot be taught.
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Tue 17 Jan 2023 17:43
RTC ~ Bus - Brit_in_Germany

Read the Telegraph article (or rather look at one of the pictures) before speculating as to the cause.

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Thu 19 Jan 2023 18:24
RTC ~ Bus - Sofa Spud

It's simply not possible for us to tell from the published photos how the accident happened. This is very often the case. Even if one comes across the scene of an accident, it's usually difficult to work out what caused the accident, since the impact deflects vehicles from their or original course.

Anyone who's been driving for any length of time, however careful and law-abiding they are, makes occasional mistakes, most of which don't result in accidents.

Roads definitely can be 'dangerous' - where they catch out drivers who might think they're being careful but are misreading the information, or are a victim of other drivers misreading the information. An example is blind junctions. What does one do if one finds oneself at a junction where you can't see what's coming from left or right, or even both ways. You can only act on what you see (or sometimes hear) and hope for the best.

Another example of how roads can be dangerous is the old fashioned 3-lane single-carriageway A roads. Where these roads exist now, they usually have 2 lanes for one direction and one for the other, but the middle lane used to be the 'overtaking lane' for both directions, aka the suicide lane. The reason these roads were so dangerous is two drivers going in opposite directions could see the middle lane was clear to overtake, and both pull out at the same time, leading to a head-on collision.

Edited by Sofa Spud on 19/01/2023 at 18:36

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Fri 20 Jan 2023 20:01
RTC ~ Bus - Robert J.
Can’t disagree about dangerous 3-lane roads. Unless it was something stationary or very slow moving I don’t think I would overtake at all on one of those. Thankfully there doesn’t seem to be too many left these days. As to the difficult to see out of junctions, an advanced driving instructor advised me years ago to turn the radio off, roll the windows down and listen.
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Fri 20 Jan 2023 21:01
RTC ~ Bus - badbusdriver

Can’t disagree about dangerous 3-lane roads. Unless it was something stationary or very slow moving I don’t think I would overtake at all on one of those. Thankfully there doesn’t seem to be too many left these days.

Plenty on the A96 Aberdeen to Inverness road. They are on hills and only vehicles going uphill can overtake.

The only one I can recall where cars going either direction were allowed overtake was in the Shetland Islands on the A970 west from Lerwick. Don't know when it was changed, but overtaking is now also only for vehicles going uphill (heading out of Lerwick)

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Sat 21 Jan 2023 10:20
RTC ~ Bus - Bromptonaut

Plenty on the A96 Aberdeen to Inverness road. They are on hills and only vehicles going uphill can overtake.

That's still fairly common I think. In effect it allows a crawler lane.

The only one I can recall where cars going either direction were allowed overtake was in the Shetland Islands on the A970 west from Lerwick. Don't know when it was changed, but overtaking is now also only for vehicles going uphill (heading out of Lerwick)

Around 30 years ago there were a few stretches on the A5 in Northamptonshire. Rarely drove it without witnessing a near miss.

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Sat 21 Jan 2023 11:58
RTC ~ Bus - RT

Plenty on the A96 Aberdeen to Inverness road. They are on hills and only vehicles going uphill can overtake.

That's still fairly common I think. In effect it allows a crawler lane.

The only one I can recall where cars going either direction were allowed overtake was in the Shetland Islands on the A970 west from Lerwick. Don't know when it was changed, but overtaking is now also only for vehicles going uphill (heading out of Lerwick)

Around 30 years ago there were a few stretches on the A5 in Northamptonshire. Rarely drove it without witnessing a near miss.

And Warwickshire - I miss those 3-lane roads as I could make good progress on them - but most drivers were/are too stupid to use them safely.

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Sat 21 Jan 2023 13:18
RTC ~ Bus - Sofa Spud

Plenty on the A96 Aberdeen to Inverness road. They are on hills and only vehicles going uphill can overtake.

That's still fairly common I think. In effect it allows a crawler lane.

The only one I can recall where cars going either direction were allowed overtake was in the Shetland Islands on the A970 west from Lerwick. Don't know when it was changed, but overtaking is now also only for vehicles going uphill (heading out of Lerwick)

Around 30 years ago there were a few stretches on the A5 in Northamptonshire. Rarely drove it without witnessing a near miss.

And Warwickshire - I miss those 3-lane roads as I could make good progress on them - but most drivers were/are too stupid to use them safely.

It was only safe to use the middle lane of the old unrestricted 3 lane single-carriageway roads when you were sure there was no more than one nearby vehicle coming the other way. Many A-roads had sections of this type of road up until the 1970's. Thereafter they were either converted to 2 lanes (which is why some A roads are unusually wide) or had double white lines separating the directions - with 2 lanes one way and 1 the other. Some bad drivers used to play 'chicken' in the middle lane on those roads, since neither direction had right-of-way, trying to force the oncoming driver to be the first to pull in. A middle lane hogger in those old 3 lane A roads was a much more dangerous animal than today's ones, found on motorways, who are a mild nuisance at worst.

Edited by Sofa Spud on 21/01/2023 at 13:28

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