My turn for an accident.

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Fri 22 Jan 2010 19:29
My turn for an accident. - daveyjp
2.45pm today I'm quietly making my way along the main road of a local town approaching a set of lights at a T junction.

Left hand lane was solid, I was in the right hand lane which was clear to the lights. I'm approaching a box junction to allow egress from a minor road on the left. A car emerges into the gap left by the courteous driver in the left hand lane. Driver wants to turn right so looks left, he fails to look right as he probably forgot it's two lanes he's crossing and hits the rear wheel arch and wheel of my car.

Very little visible damage (slight dint in rear arch and alloy is damaged) as he set off from almost a standstill and hit me plumb on the rear wheel after a couple of metres, but I suspect rear geometry may be out.

At least he was insured - young lad paying over £2k a year for his 10 year old Polo!

I'll see how good LV really are now.
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Fri 22 Jan 2010 19:37
My turn for an accident. - Devolution
Unfortunate. :-( It seems a pretty straightforward scenario, though. Did the lad admit fault at the scene and put his hands up? Wouldn't like to be on the end of his next insurance quote!
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Fri 22 Jan 2010 19:46
My turn for an accident. - Old Navy
A similar thing happened to me, I stopped at a light controlled pedestrian crossing immediately after a junction to my left. The driver coming out of the road to my left saw me pass in front of him but continued to to look right for traffic as he pulled out not realising that I had stopped, and he drove into the side of my boot, (VW Jetta). I believe a similar thing is common at roundabouts, moving off while looking right and ramming the car in front which has not moved. Glad he was insured, he will be in for a shock at renewal time, still best to learn on a minor bump but preferably not with us!

Edited by Old Navy on 22/01/2010 at 19:48

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Fri 22 Jan 2010 20:07
My turn for an accident. - Devolution
I believe a similar thing is common at
roundabouts moving off while looking right and ramming the car in front which has not
moved.


I'd say it's the most commonest of low speed rear end shunts. (High speed ones being when motorway traffic grinds to a standstill...)

What I find odd is that so many pedestrian crossings are placed several yards from junctions. Near me there's a left turn off of a roundabout and one car length later is a light controlled crossing. This is a fairly common occurence.

This leads to similar shunts, where a driver queueing to turn left, sees the car in front move forward and turn left, and then forgetting all about that car, drops forward, actively looking right. It's peak time and survival of the fittest, so seeing a gap he/she floors it and turns left, only to find the original car stopped at the crossing only yards in front. I know that the immediate cause is still down to the driver, but judging by the lack of some people's abilities to focus on more than one hazard, it does seem road planning doesn't help. Presumably the crossings are there because it's deemed that's where people would most likely be trying to cross the road to go "straight over."

The other similar scenario is where the junction turns immediately onto a zebra crossing, and somone who initially goes to zoom across in their car, spots a lingering pedestrian who hasn't started to cross, but stamps on their brakes, where the person behind misreads and had started to speed up.

Edited by Devolution on 22/01/2010 at 20:08

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Wed 17 Mar 2010 14:34
My turn for an accident. - b308

I'd agree it looks at first glance a rather daft way of situating pedestrian crossings... but there is a logic to it... history dictates that all the shops tend to be situated around the crossroads therefore situating the crossing a hundred yards down the road will mean that people don't use them and try to "dodge" the traffic at the crossroads... probably ending up with more accidents...

Edited by b308 on 17/03/2010 at 14:34

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Fri 22 Jan 2010 19:48
My turn for an accident. - Bill Payer
How fast were you going? Bit rash to just drive straight across the box, to be honest.

We put a liitle claim through LV when someone bumped the back of wifey's car. The did ask us to take the car to their authorised repaired but didn't make a fuss when I said I wanted it fixed at out Honda dealer. The car was still driveable but if it wasn't then taking it elsewhere delays their inspection and authorisation. One thing they did do which surprised me is they waived the excess - I expected to have to pay that and reclaim it.

We did get a call from the other persons insurer but they wouldn't talk to me - even though the car is reistered and insured in my name so I've no idea what they would have said.
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Fri 22 Jan 2010 20:45
My turn for an accident. - daveyjp
I was doing no more than 20 - it's a busy part of town and the lights were on red. I estimate the front of my car was at the edge of the yellow box just as he reached the edge of the gap left by the other driver.

I had time to blow the horn, but by then I'd passed the front of his car and he had decided nothing was coming so had started moving off.
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Sat 23 Jan 2010 15:35
My turn for an accident. - notathletic
Sorry to rain on your parade but if you had time to use your horn then obviously you saw him coming out and he was presumably to the front of you when he started to emerge. If you had time to take a hand off the rim of the steering wheel and place it on the horn then you had time to brake.
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Sat 23 Jan 2010 15:53
My turn for an accident. - daveyjp
"then obviously you saw him coming out"

I did, but only when I saw the front of his car emerging in front of the stopped car.

"and he was presumably to the front of you when he started to emerge"

No he was to the left of me obscured by a queuing car.

Unfortunately the law of physics means that 1.8 tonnes of metal travelling at just 15-20 mph still takes some time to stop. I hit the brakes and used the horn as soon as I noticed he was looking left and hadn't seen me, but the momentum I had carried my car in front of his and this is when he hit me.
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Sat 23 Jan 2010 16:26
My turn for an accident. - Bill Payer
You (at least I) agonise about these things and it's hard to imagine how it could happen, yet it still does. I drove around a great big pothole the other day yet still managed to drop a rear wheel into it. No idea how!

The only thing about your accident is that I would be annoyed with myself for not exercising more caution crossing the box. But then you could have stopped, only for you and the other driver to both set off at the same time and still hit each other!
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Sat 23 Jan 2010 16:27
My turn for an accident. - jbif
daveyjp: this is how it might look from the young lad's point of view:

I was emerging from a side road in to a box junction in to a space left clear by a considerate driver in lane 1. As I gently eased along, I saw a car coming through in lane 2 which was going fast enough to get past the box junction such that I could then safely cross the lane 2 of the box. However, the driver in lane 2 panicked when he saw me edging out of the side road; he braked hard and he sounded his horn. I am a new driver and I admit that the sound of the horn caused me to panic too, and made me blip the throttle rather than brake. So I could not avoid clipping the rear of his car as he came to a stop blocking the box junction.

If the driver in lane had not panicked and braked, and instead he had just carried on at his normal speed, he would have gone past the box, thereby not blocking it, and there would have been no incident. Had he not sounded his horn, I too should have calmly applied my brakes. Instead he caused me to inadvertently blip the throttle. I blame him mostly although I admit a little blame lies with me too.

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Sat 23 Jan 2010 16:29
My turn for an accident. - Bill Payer
I blame him mostly...


He might do, but his insurance company would find his account most amusing. It's always somebody else fault.
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Sat 23 Jan 2010 16:35
My turn for an accident. - jbif
He might do, but his insurance company would find his account most amusing. It's always somebody else fault. >>


His insurance company would love him for it; after all they usually make it a condition that the policyholder should not admit any liability!
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Sat 23 Jan 2010 17:27
My turn for an accident. - Manatee
This business about not admitting liability is often misunderstood and misconstrued, sometimes wilfully.

There is a difference between giving an honest account of the facts ("I was waved out and thought it was clear but there was a car coming and I crashed into it") and a lie ("It was clear and I had plenty of time, she must have been speeding and it wasn't my fault" which is what the woman who crashed into my wife said.).

If people were to give a truthful account the facts would usually speak for themselves.
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Sat 23 Jan 2010 17:20
My turn for an accident. - Manatee
My wife had an accident in almost identical circumstances in 1989 or so - the only difference being the absence of a yellow box. We were unable to recover the excess :-(
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Mon 15 Mar 2010 15:23
My turn for an accident. - daveyjp

As we have been offline so long I can now provide an update.

Car was collected the Monday following the accident, it was in for repair for three weeks.

I had heard nothing from the insurance company for a few weeks. I then received a call to say they were going for a 50:50 and I needed to fill in a claim form.

Spent a day getting all the relevant facts together including photos, maps, Google Earth images etc etc.

Submitted claim form and two page statement.

Received a call two weeks later commending me for the thoroughness of my claim and asking if I was prepared to go to Court. Needless to say I was. Five minutes later I received another call to say the other party had accpted 100% liability.

Cheque for excess arrived last week.

All in all about 7 weeks to settle. Whilst my contact with LV was minimal they must have been saying the right things to the other party.

A

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Wed 17 Mar 2010 11:53
My turn for an accident. - Cliff Pope

We are constantly being exhorted to look ahead, read the road and traffic flow, watch what the cars further on are doing, anticipate, anticipate, anticipate.

So it's a curious paradox that doing exactly that can sometimes (eg when trying to make a brisk entry into a busy road) lead to one of the commonest causes of low speed rear end shunts.

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Wed 17 Mar 2010 13:04
My turn for an accident. - Andy P

This reminded me of a bump I had many years ago. T'was on the car park at a local shopping centre. I'd pulled in and stopped behind another car while someone was emerging from a space. A young lad decided to reverse out whilst failing to notice my car was behind him. Luckily the only damage was a very slight dent at the top of the rear nearside wheelarch. It's amazing the things some people can't see.

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