Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike56
It is surely impossible to legislate against accidents? All the legislations are redundant unless there is a body, in place, to (hate to say it..) police those laws! With some 20,000 police vacancies (just to return us to where we were!) there will rarely be anyone of authority in the vacinity of an offence. Cameras don't work.
Also you cannot legislate against the downright stupid or the dedicated lawless!
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The big thing is, in most cases there is a cause of the accident. Why are two (or more) vehicles trying to occupy the same piece of tarmac at the same time? Do they know something the rest of us don't about the time-space continuum?
Presumably not so which of those drivers wasn't paying attention to the road and what was happening? Was it a sudden "rogue manoeuvre" by one of the colliding vehicles? If so, why?
Was the vehicle committing the rogue manoeuvre actually trying to change lanes and the other vehicle not letting him in for some unknown reason?
These are just a few of the variables on just one common RTC. There are so many others i could be here until Doomsday typing hypothetical questions about what went wrong. This is where the insurance companies come in and Accident Investigators, whether they are from the local constabulary or just the insurance companies.
The fact remains most accidents are put down to human error. The question that raises is why was that error made? Lack of concentration, experience, knowledge or were they distracted?
There are obviously other situations where even careful, alert driving could not have mitigated the collision. An example i saw on an insurance claim form some 15 ish years ago was the response to the question "What could you have done to prevent the accident?"
The response was "Stayed in bed". Sounds facetious, sarcastic almost but nevertheless it was true. It was a head on collision caused by both vehicles skidding on black ice at a T junction. It wasn't quite a T, can't remember the exact shape of it but the bottom line was neither vehicle could arrest their progress from 5-10mph each and hit head on. Both vehicles airbags deployed, injuring both drivers but no other injuries sustained, except to the vehicles, both written off due to excessive deformation of crumple zones. Both new/near-new as well.
That was beyond human control, it was down to nature overcoming the friction between tyres and road allowing both vehicles to proceed unchecked into the other. Had a similar one myself some 30+ years ago, also both new/near-new vehicles. Driving along a narrow, icy road at 15-20mph (which one PC suggested was too fast for the conditions but as i pointed out, any speed would have been too fast in reality), the back of the car hit some black ice and neatly pirouetted in the road causing a head-on collision with an oncoming car.
The driver of the other car (recently retired) advised the police i was driving at least as, if not more, carefully than her so there was no allegation of dangerous driving on anybodys part, just a mess of insurance to sort out. Also the driver of the other car had a heart condition so wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was taken to hospital for checking but all was good once she settled down.
Bottom line is if all drivers paid attention to the road and actually concentrated on what they were doing, what other people were doing and what was happening in general, there would be much fewer accidents.