Cyclist wins £6.1m in damages after driver hit him causing life-changing injuries – driver got £146 fine

mattw wrote:

I don't understand why turning across an oncoming vehicle is not Dangerous Driving; it is certainly "far below the expected standard". Careless and Dangerous Driving definitions are a dog's breakfast.

Hear hear!
Sadly, I think these "how long is a piece of string" definitions - without reference to the actual standard eg. would it cause a fail in a driving test - are not going to change. Unless some administration comes in and changes thar whole system from a "joining a club" style. That's the current model - test once per lifetime, then you're in for life.
U nless you do something extreme like assault the committee (and even then we don’t bar
you permanently). Or voluntarily resign...

The only winners here are the lawyers and the driver. The lawyers have made money they wouldn't have made had the insurance company behaved responsibly and the driver has got away with a derisory punishment for ruining someones life with their lack of concentration when in charge of a potentially lethal weapon, sorry that's wrong, apparently, I should have said just being careless!!!!!!

Not sure having premiums so high that they'll struggle to get insured again is "winning" but I take your point they've probably got off lightly.

Secret_squirrel wrote:

Not sure having premiums so high that they'll struggle to get insured again is "winning" but I take your point they've probably got off lightly.

Will they struggle though, with five points? As far as I can recall from the faroff days of filling in insurance forms for a motorcycle they only ever asked how many points one had, not they were incurred for or any other details of the offence. The online consensus seems to be that 5-6 points will hike your premiums by about 25% compared to a driver with a clean licence, so hardly an insufferable burden.

I asked this question 25 years ago, and they were only interested in particular types of offences.

IIRC in red light fixed penalties, but not speeding fixed penatlies.

The arguments are distasteful, for sure, but they are doing their job by acting in the best interests of their client.

I imagine his insurance will be a little higher, if anyone will insure him.

hawkinspeter wrote:

I don't understand how they ever get away with contibutory negligence for not wearing a helmet if the collision is entirely the fault of the driver. Do stab victims get reduced payouts for not wearing a stab vest?

I don't think that they do get away with claiming contibutory negligence (ref):

Quote:

Griffith Williams J in Smith v Finch found that the impact speed exceeded 12.3 mph and so he could not be satisfied that a helmet would have made any difference. This is a common theme in that no Court (save for in the unusual case of Reynolds) has yet found that a helmet would have made a difference in any particular case. This is not surprising since the high value claims worth litigating are likely to involve serious injury following high impact. The type of accident most likely to give a Defendant an argument on causative  contributory negligence might be the car door opening into the path of a slow moving cyclist who suffers a scalp laceration –hardly worth litigating.

Tom_77 wrote:

I don't think that they do get away with claiming contibutory negligence (ref):

Quote:

Griffith Williams J in Smith v Finch found that the impact speed exceeded 12.3 mph and so he could not be satisfied that a helmet would have made any difference. This is a common theme in that no Court (save for in the unusual case of Reynolds) has yet found that a helmet would have made a difference in any particular case. This is not surprising since the high value claims worth litigating are likely to involve serious injury following high impact. The type of accident most likely to give a Defendant an argument on causative  contributory negligence might be the car door opening into the path of a slow moving cyclist who suffers a scalp laceration –hardly worth litigating.

 

From: https://www.braininjurygroup.co.uk/news/cycle-helmets-law-contributory-negligence/ (the first reference is likely the "unusual case of Reynolds")

Quote:

In Reynolds v Strutt & Parker LLP [2011] the court followed the approach in Smith and held that a cyclist who did not wear a helmet was not taking care for his own safety. The court reduced the award of damages by two thirds. It is important to note that in that case, the reduction was also representative of the Claimant’s reckless cycling when involved in a cycling race, so in a case involving a typical collision on the road, such a dramatic reduction is perhaps unlikely. That said, this does nonetheless serve as an example of what a court may find if a Claimant does not wear a helmet.

In Capps v Miller [1989], the Claimant was wearing a helmet but it was unfastened. He sustained a very severe head injury when involved in a collision. The court held that even though the medical evidence could not show that his injuries had been made worse by the failure to fasten the helmet, a 10% reduction would be appropriate to take the failure into account.

In Capps v Miller the Claimant was a motorcyclist, I think that's of limited relevance.

Tom_77 wrote:

In Capps v Miller the Claimant was a motorcyclist, I think that's of limited relevance.

Thanks - I didn't realise that.

Tom_77 wrote:

I don't think that they do get away with claiming contibutory negligence (ref):

Quote:

Griffith Williams J in Smith v Finch found that the impact speed exceeded 12.3 mph and so he could not be satisfied that a helmet would have made any difference. This is a common theme in that no Court (save for in the unusual case of Reynolds) has yet found that a helmet would have made a difference in any particular case. This is not surprising since the high value claims worth litigating are likely to involve serious injury following high impact. The type of accident most likely to give a Defendant an argument on causative  contributory negligence might be the car door opening into the path of a slow moving cyclist who suffers a scalp laceration –hardly worth litigating.

 

Wasn't there one reported a here a few months back where a woman was knocked off her bike by a HGV, sustained head injuries and recieved a reduced payout because she wasn't wearing a helmet? I only remember it because of how insufferably smug Martin was about it.

Edit: The case I was thinking of occured in Ireland, which explains it.

hawkinspeter wrote:

I don't understand how they ever get away with contibutory negligence for not wearing a helmet if the collision is entirely the fault of the driver. Do stab victims get reduced payouts for not wearing a stab vest?

Exactly, headgear, hiviz or lights have no part in the causation of the collision. Wearing of these things is not a legal requirement and is irrelevant to the case. I find it very sad that this contributory negligence is not immediately dismissed by the judge on the grounds of logic and we have to rely on neurosurgeons and such to refute that it would have made different to the injuries when the injuries were solely caused by the drivers actions.

When I first came across the concept of "contributory negligence" I was quite surprised - it came across a lot like "victim blaming".

I can understand taking some responsibility and liability for behaving illegally or wholly unreasonably prior to an incident, but not if the behaviour was reasonable and legal.  The key word in that is "reasonable" and I sometimes wonder if moves to make high visibility and helmet use a legal requirement is motivated by a desire to remove ambiguity and so make it easier to allocate blame to the cyclist.

Maybe it can cut both ways though.  Many cars can be fitted with an anti-collision system.  Can failing to equip a car with such a feature, or failing to activate it or heed it, count against the driver and make a penalty harsher?

As for this case, the way things are worded it seems that but for the expert witness testimony of the neurosurgeon the claim for compensation may not have been successful - despite the driver behaving illegally prior to the collision.

C3a wrote:

When I first came across the concept of "contributory negligence" I was quite surprised - it came across a lot like "victim blaming".

I can understand taking some responsibility and liability for behaving illegally or wholly unreasonably prior to an incident, but not if the behaviour was reasonable and legal.  The key word in that is "reasonable" and I sometimes wonder if moves to make high visibility and helmet use a legal requirement is motivated by a desire to remove ambiguity and so make it easier to allocate blame to the cyclist.

Maybe it can cut both ways though.  Many cars can be fitted with an anti-collision system.  Can failing to equip a car with such a feature, or failing to activate it or heed it, count against the driver and make a penalty harsher?

As for this case, the way things are worded it seems that but for the expert witness testimony of the neurosurgeon the claim for compensation may not have been successful - despite the driver behaving illegally prior to the collision.

Yeah, the idea of reducing the insurance companies' liability because a cyclist (legally) wasn't wearing a helmet seems wrong to me. If someone is more vulnerable, then that indicates that people should take more care moving around them - if you walk past someone using crutches, then most people would be careful to leave them enough space as causing them to fall over would likely involve causing more injury than to someone who can walk unassisted.

The root problem is motornormativity and well funded legal teams working for insurance companies that aim to reduce the responsibility of drivers. It's well worth joining Cycling UK to at least get some level of legal assistance when trying to get compensation for a collision.

This is unlikely to be popular but I assume that by 'weasal lawyers' you mean lawyers representing their client's interest and on their client's instructions. Perhaps you'd prefer a lawyer representing you in a tight spot to have no regard for your instructions, interests or needs. It would be an error to conflate what professional representatives say on their client's behalf with their personal views.

I agree with what you say, it is a lawyer's job to get the best outcome for their client and they can't be blamed for that. The real weasels, I would say, are the insurance companies who know there's no real argument against making the payout but launch a case anyway in the hope that the claimant will settle for a smaller sum or even get so discouraged they will give up entirely (I have been told by people who have worked for insurance companies that this is standard practice). Look at this case, untold stress for the claimant and his father, hundreds of hours and doubtless hundreds of thousands of pounds wasted on all sides, then before it can go before a judge they make a tacit admission that they haven't a leg to stand on and offer £6M. Why didn't they offer that at the start? They're experts, they must have known that the not wearing a helmet line of attack wouldn't fly and just hoped they could scare a brain-damaged man into accepting lower compensation by making him scared that he might go to court and get nothing. Bastards. Well done his family for refusing to be cowed, not everyone is so lucky to have people who can do that for them.

I would have put another pithy, anglo saxon word before the word 'Bastards' but other than that you're spot on!

I agree with 'weasel lawyers' because they are part of a broken system. Same with the insurance industry. I'm now four years in to a non-fault claim, that my wife sustained lifelong injuries from and our car destroyed. My daughter, over one year for a claim where a driver crossed her path and she was thrown across the road, bicycle destroyed. Uninsured losses for another; four years and counting. 

The insurance industry is quick to take one's money, hike premiums, but when it comes to claims...takes years. 

Added to this the CPS going for the weakest prosecution, so that the driving judge and jury will support it.