Tuesday, January 12, 2010

No justice...

A driver 'may have fainted at the wheel' when she killed a cyclist.

Driver Tracy Johnson "had been talking on her mobile phone minutes before the impact but said she could not recall the crash".

Really?

So let's look at this in a little more detail. If she had never experienced a faint before, the chances of her experiencing her first one at this precise point in time are pretty slim. If she had experienced such a faint before, this is clearly a medical condition that makes her unfit to drive, and should have been notified to the DVLA and her insurance company.

What is really worrying is that, according to the reports, no doctor has demonstrated that she has any predisposition to fainting, or has any abnormality that would cause it, or has any history of it, or has since reproduced it. In other words, this is pure supposition, based on no evidence whatsoever. She is reported to have 'possibly fainted'. Well anything is possible I suppose. What is also possible is that a well-organized and imaginative legal team has cooked up this excuse. I look forward to it being used in the future by other mobile-phone using distracted drivers.

So the message is clear. If you hit a cyclist, be careful to act like you're not in control of the vehicle (which shouldn't be hard), just plough on for a few yards and hit something solid (not too solid now, you don't want to hurt yourself) and stagger out saying "What happened?"

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