Establishing who is at fault in any road accident can be complicated. Where motorcycles are involved, and are taking advantage of their size and manoeuvrability to overtake other vehicles, it can be harder still. Neil John, a biker and a solicitor at King’s Lynn firm Ward Gethin, summarises two important legal cases on filtering in the last 18 months.
Last year, the Court came down clearly on the side of a biker who had been overtaking a queue of slow moving traffic. Acar driver in the line of traffic decided to make a U-turn to leave the queue. He initially pulled to his left, and then swung out to his right to make the turn. The motorcyclist was travelling in the same direction as the queue but travelling part way across the opposite carriageway, with both his headlight and indicator on. He was riding at 40-45 miles per hour in a straight line. He had been in that position for around half a mile. The Court decided that the driver was negligent in making the U-turn without looking properly to his right and that the rider was not to blame as there was nothing he could have done to avoid the collision. The car driver was found completely to blame.
However, another Court decision in May 2007 was less biker-friendly. In this case a car driver was turning right from a side road across a scooter rider’s path. A truck was seeking to turn left into the same side road, but couldn’t do so while the driver was there because it was a narrow side road. The driver of the truck had slowed to turn left and to allow the car to turn out of the side road. The scooter was overtaking the truck, which was still moving slowly, when the collision occurred. The scooter’s wheels were either on, or almost on, the white central line of the main road. The Judge criticised the scooter rider for choosing to overtake a line of slow moving traffic in busy conditions on an urban road which he knew to have a number of road junctions. His view was that the car driver had waited for a gap in both directions, was proceeding slowly and cautiously, and had taken no chances. The Court’s view was that the car driver was not at all to blame for the accident.
Both these cases will provide useful precedents when it comes to considering future claims involving motorcycles which were filtering. If you have been involved in an accident of this type and need legal advice you can contact Neil on 01553 660033 or via the website.
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