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news
Motorist cuts corner straight into cyclist (credit - Swindon Advertiser)Mechanic escapes driving ban after cutting corner straight into cyclist
A mechanic has avoided a driving ban after cutting a corner and hitting a cyclist “head on”, in what his lawyer has described as a “minor and momentary error of judgement”.
Clive Anstey, who owns a garage in Chippenham, Wiltshire, was driving to work on the morning of 28 February 2021 when he cut a corner while making a right turn. As we can see in the below video, the 49-year-old crossed into the other lane while turning and drove straight into a cyclist, who had positioned himself on the right-hand side of his lane at the junction, waiting to turn.
Anstey’s advocate claimed that the mechanic “just very narrowly clipped the corner of the T-junction” and didn’t see the cyclist – who was wearing hi-vis clothing and had lights attached to his bike – “because of the low sun”.
According to the Swindon Advertiser, the cyclist, who suffered rib and leg injuries in the collision, was taken to a hospital in Bath for treatment and was left “distressed” and “very shaken” following the incident.
Speaking at Swindon Magistrates’ Court last week, prosecutor Asha Seenauth argued that the incident should be placed in the 'greater harm' sentencing category, which meant Anstey would have faced five points on his licence. As the mechanic had already received seven points for two previous speeding offences, this would have resulted in a disqualification from driving.
> Near Miss of the Day 668: Cyclist almost taken out by corner-cutting driver
Defending the motorist, Oliver Small claimed that Anstey had made “a minor and momentary error of judgement”.
He continued: “The defendant intended to turn right onto Cricketts Lane, and just cut the corner, and didn’t see the victim because of the low sun.”
Small noted that “Mr Anstey accepts that he made an error in judgement for a second or two,” and claimed that he “showed immediate concern for the cyclist and offered to call an ambulance”, which was declined.
The defending counsel argued that the mechanic’s garage would lose contracts if he lost his licence, as he was the only staff member with the correct licence to drive some of the larger vehicles, such as private ambulances, currently under contract.
After pleading guilty to driving without due care and attention, Anstey’s case was placed in the ‘lower harm’ category. He received four points, which allows him to continue driving.
He was instead fined £186 by the court and ordered to pay £1,000 in compensation, as well as almost £300 in costs.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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78 comments
This is standard police and, in this case, court behaviour in trying their hardest to get the driver off. This is exactly how I was hit by a corner cutting driver, and the excuse dreamed up by the police for doing nothing at all was that it was dark and raining- pretty much the same as in this case: drivers can't be expected to know that it's dark, sunny or raining and can just carry on with illegal manoevres even though they can't see ahead- apparently. The statement by the police was that it was only a "momentary lapse of concentration". With that dodge you can get any driver off anything.
Bans are optional?
https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/20239115.bradford-court-hear...
If getting caught speeding at 120mph doesn't 'harm his career', what will?
"needs his licence for work as he’s a police officer - working in road traffic patrol"
I think we can do without drivers like him keeping us 'safe'.
WARNING DRIVERS! Take care on cloudy days, you are not covered by the sun-in-my-eyes defence.
Why would that make a jot of difference? This example has video evidence that the sun was behind the car, and yet somehow the sun defence remains valid.
The sun is coming from right to left as you look.
If you can do a frame by frame, you can see the shadow of the pedestrian matches this.
Whether the sun encroaches on the windscreen is hard to answer.
Is that the grim reaper with a scythe there?
We have a backup! The cyclist was not wearing "bright clothing" therefore was inconspicuous on an overcast day.
Just remember to pair the weather conditions to the people you run down. Sunny? Hit them driving into the sun / take ones in full hi-vis. Cloudy? Hit the grey hoodies. Dark? That widens your options. Rainy / foggy? Open season.
At some point we have to start pushing back on these willfully ignorant sentences that are handed down.
If he had 8 points he would have been given 3 points no doubt. Wouldn't want a dangerous driver not to be able to get behind the wheel of a multi tonne weapon would we.
Perhaps, just perhaps we should be putting the blame and consequences of dangerous driving on the dangerous drivers. The reason you can't work and feed your family and pay your mortgage is because you cared so little about the safety of other road users that you repeatedly broke the law. Its your fault. Its no one elses fault. Suck it up.
This bollocks about low sun, SMIDSY etc should be thrown out as well. Do you know what I do when there is ice on the roads or its really wet? I drive slowly. If I can't see properly I wait until I can or I double and triple check. I don't overtake on blind corners. I don't play the game of "I wonder how long before my shit driving will cause a collision".
Cyclists do this every single time they go out. They make damn sure that what they are doing is going to give the smallest chance of a collision. I don't swing across the road if the suns in my eyes. I don't turn without indicating and checking that there isn't traffic about to overtake me. Why? Because I am the one that will be punished if I make a mistake. Drivers don't give a **** because the punishments for negligent driving are so pathetic. You can quite literally kill someone with your car and get a slap on the wrist. Something has to give at some point.
Many cyclists don't ride in potentially icy conditions because they know the consequences, yet how many of us insist on driving when the conditions are equally more difficult in a car?
I appreciate that I'm late to this party, but how on earth was that "narrowly clipping" the junction?
If any car had been waiting at that junction that he would have ploughed into the front of it, at speed, and I suspect that no judge would have accepted an "oh dear, slight miscalculation" type defence then...
As iandusud has just written,
Highway Code Rule 237.
"If you are dazzled by bright sunlight, slow down and if necessary, stop."
How did the court evaluate the claim of 'low sun'?
Was the route taken across the junction towards the sun at the time of the offence?
That can't be a blanket get out of jail card without any evidence...
The shadows on the ground indicate the driver was driving into the sun. The length of the shadows however doesn’t suggest to me that it was particularly low.
I you sure it says that? I think you'll find it says "If you are dazzled by bright sunlight, drive on the wrong side of the road, taking care to carry as much speed through the junction as possible."
This man has proven himself to be a serial offender who has failed to change his behaviour. He should lose his licence, pure and simple. It affects his work? Too bad. If his work involves driving then clearly he needs to be doing a different job. After all what employer would employ someone as a driver with his record? No one and for good reason. I am so sick of this "get out of jail free" card being played.
What I find strange is the claim that:
'Mr Small said that the married father-of-two’s garage would lose two contracts if he lost his driving licence. He said that CAMS services private ambulances, with the defendant the only employee with the correct licence to drive the vehicles.
He also said that the garage look after minibuses for a school with children with behavioural issues, with Anstey picking them up and dropping them off at school.'
What happens when he goes on holiday? What happens if he gets ill?
Seems once he'd got to 7 points, then he should have taken action to ensure there was no single point of failure.
Let's hope he doesn't get hospitalised by a driver making “a minor and momentary error of judgement”.
If I could identify the school, I'd be asking why they were prepared to employ such a driver and whether they had been asked whether they were consulted on being the reason why a driver who should have been banned under normal circumstances was claiming exceptional hardship for others.
How many employers would consider this driving record a reason to dismiss an employee, yet because of behaviour entirely within his own control... Bah! I could go on, and probably will, mutter, mutter.
They are not employing a driver, they are employing a mechanic but he goes and picks up the Vans rather then having them dropping them off. The question is was the contract awarded on needing the vans being picked up from the school or was that an option he added in.
Swindon Advertiser seems to indicate he is a "popular" mechanic. I wonder if will now lose work over this case, especially using the school as a reason to escape the ban.
Ah, misunderstood it. Rather odd that someone being unable to fulfill a role at a company should be the reason to keep their licence when the company should be able to employ another suitably qualified person. It does not imply that the person should be sacked, though being unable to drive on a public road might limit their ability to fulfill the full duties of a mechanic.
1:27 into this weeks Dashcam video. I heard Oliver Small thinks the corner was narrowly cut.
Swindon Adver is my local paper and this story didn't even make the main news page on the website, first I've seen of it is via the link in this article. Just goes to show how low news-worthy this is given the seriousness of the crime.
If you actually open the SA article, they've included a picture of him on a sit-down lawn mower with a beer can in hand. Can't make this stuff up.
You could write to the editor of the SA but he won't accept any responsibility for fostering dislike for cycling. He prefers to mention a crime in terms of A Cyclist did .., rather than A Criminal did ... So conflates cycling with bad action despite no causal relationship of any kind.
Irresponsible media fosters irrational hate crimes!
It is utterly ridiculous to claim "a minor and momentary error of judgement" for an incident like this. By definition, almost every time a driver collides with a cyclist it's the result of "a minor and momentary error of judgement" but the reality was that the driver clearly had no problem with maneuvering to the wrong side of the road and proceeding in an unsafe manner while he couldn't see because the sun was in his eyes.
Thats clearly 'greater harm' as he proceeding to the wrong side of the road, knew that he could not see, but proceeded anyway. Therein lies culpability rather than misfortune.
My reading at this point is that the degree of harm is what makes the difference, not the act, which sends the message that drivers are really immune from serious punishment, given that when most actually kill somebody the consequence is little more (and as reported here, often less) than this.
No wonder we feel like second-class citizens.
Exactly, "minor and momentary errors of judgement" that kill someone if one were running a restaurant or a building site or a clay pigeon shooting range would lead to the severest sanctions, both financial and criminal, but when driving a car, something which should demand at least as much skill and training as any of the aforementioned, they are forgiven, seemingly on the basis that as driving a car, even though it has even greater potential to be lethal, is a mass participation activity it's unreasonable to expect the training, safety standards and skills of all operators to be consonant with that lethal potential.
This junction is the turning into his works premises. He must have driven into it thousands of times. To think that he only cut the corner this once is beyond the realms of belief.
I bet if a property had CCTV covering that area and we could see how he turned into that road every morning for a week, his defense would collapse.
So what this tells me is that I can ride into a ped and knock them down and it will be treated as minor. Righto
It's about time that "momentary error of judgement" was no longer used as an excuse for bad driving, but as an example to others, illustrating how important it is to stay alert, when in charge of a lethal piece of machinery.
If the driver was blinded by the sun, then that is more reason to slow down, make extra observations, and be very careful to take the correct line when negotiating a junction.
As for the "Minor" part - heaven knows what constitutes "Major" in the sad, addled, corrupted mind of the advocate (or magistrate, for that matter)
If your job depends on having a driving licence, then you should be even more careful than other folk - and that's before you've accrued 7 points.
What on earth is wrong with the judicial system?
Two things at least:
The laws
Social norms.
The government did announce a comprehensive review of road law so many years ago that I've actually forgotten exactly when, and it is socially acceptable and condoned to drive fast and carelessly.
Probably nobody has noticed expect me, but the guy was driving a Nissan Skyline GTR - a seriously high powered, seriously fast car (pretty good going for a mechanic).
Not suggesting his poor driving has anything to do with him owning a car that's too fast for the road, but, you know...
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