I can’t believe that people are saying this accident could have been avoided... granted I’m no crash investigator, nor ‘advanced trained’ but from the point I would personally consider the BMW to be a dangerous hazard, I count two, at a push three seconds before impact.
Now I know that the following is off the back of guidelines and guesswork, but a quick Google search would suggest that at 30 mph, the bike is covering 13.4 metres a second, at 30 MPH a car needs 9 metres thinking time and 14 metres to stop. On these statistics alone I would be inclined to tell anyone who is banging on about “I could have stopped in that distance” etc etc to jog on – ignoring the fact that the camera might give a skewed view, or the fact that different people have different reaction times/levels of concentration/performance of brakes/experience and so on...
My thoughts from the video:
The green Rover appears to be slowly edging over the junction, almost like they had already seen the bike and were giving way (albeit impatiently), who’s to say the rider didn’t clock that before the video started and already had their mind on that hazard?
The mirror check looked to me more like checking there wasn’t a hidden junction (OP might not know the road) or hazard after the silver Fiesta.
Unless the detail is lost in the video the BMW isn’t indicating, and only starts to move within the ‘4 seconds’ that the critics mention – there’s no way you’d anticipate what the driver does; she could have just decided to pull out of the bus stop and drive straight, it’s only when it’s too late that the problem develops IMO.
If the woman was wearing shades, then I’m fairly certain if you pause the video a moment before impact, it looks like the driver is looking over her right shoulder and not at the oncoming bike – looks like the arm of her shades is facing the windscreen rather than the lenses.
The bike appears to move from the dominant position into a more central position just before impact, it looks to me like the rider may have thought “blimey she’s swinging out wide from that bus stop” and started to adjust their line – again not expecting the BMW to actually pull a U turn in front of them.
Worryingly it seems that some of the ‘advanced’ riders on that Facebook link are watching the video from the camera’s perspective, they don’t actually know where the riders eyes were, to me I would guess he is looking ahead of the red Golf (or Polo) in front, having already decided the BMW sat in the bus lane not indicating any intention to move isn’t a threat, and it’s actually the subconscious that picks up the danger and influences the slight change in direction (maybe pre-empting an impact and trying to protect the body).
Either way, I’m glad you’re ok, all the digs at you will pass, just hope you heal up and get back on the horse (assuming you’re trading the Gixxer in for one
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