Sometimes a single remark encapsulates a whole raft of misguided thinking.
The story of the moral
From the Lancashire Evening Post’s report:
Mike Inkley spent four days in intensive care after a Volkswagen Passat driven by Jabbir Ahmed crashed into him in Church Street, Preston, in July.
Mr Inkley, a 52-year-old photographer, sustained injuries meaning he may never be able to hold a camera properly again, including a broken collar bone, broken shoulder blade, a collapsed shoulder, eight broken ribs, collapsed lungs, a haemothorax, pneumothorax and smashed teeth.
Horrific stuff.
So what did Inkley have to say about it?
“If I hadn’t have been wearing a helmet camera, it would have just been my word against his and he wouldn’t have been prosecuted as there were no live witnesses.
“I would urge every cyclist to wear one, they’ve come down a lot in price now, as have helmets, which I believe should be compulsory. If I hadn’t been wearing one I wouldn’t be here today.”
You might think I’m about to pick up on that remark, but I’m not.
The interesting point is his subsequent comment, one which echoes comments made by others. This is the kicker:
“Any cyclist who goes out without a helmet telling his wife and children he loves them is lying.”
I’ll do my best to explain why this crude moral judgment is as crass as it is vehement, as hypocritical as it is impassioned, and as misguided as it is pithy.
Anticipation
First, let’s watch the video of the incident.
Ouch.
But let’s look in detail at the sequence of events. Here’s the view just before the collision:
And this is the point, over a second prior to the collision, at which the driver moves off from his position partly across the lane:
And, a full five seconds before the collision, this is the point at which the driver first pulls out into the lane before stopping in the position shown above:
At this point, Inkley is clearly looking at a car that is moving into the lane, and still has a little over five seconds to respond to this.
A second later, the car has come to a halt obstructing a significant part of the lane while the oncoming traffic passes.
By this point, four seconds prior to the collision, it should already be quite obvious that the driver’s near-certain intention is to pull out and join the oncoming lane.
More advanced consideration of this situation would also suggest that the driver—likely not considering bicycles or motorcycles—has intentionally blocked the lane in order to mentally remove the need to consider vehicles approaching from their right, and as such is only looking left.
Don’t think I’m blaming Inkley for his injuries; I’m not. He had every right to do what he did, and the primary fault and the legal responsibility is clear: For the driver to deliberately cease considering traffic in the lane they think they’ve blocked is—as has now been legally demonstrated—to drive without due care and attention.
But the first rule of defensive riding or driving is to assume everyone else is driving without due care and attention, and to anticipate accordingly. A car waiting at a side road represents a hazard in itself, let alone one that has already been driven into the lane ahead.
However, Inkley carries on. He doesn’t even perceptibly slow down. He sees the remaining gap and goes for it.
Although not to blame for the incident, he could have avoided it.
Again, to be clear: I am not condemning his actions, even though to me they seem alarmingly incautious. I am condemning his remark, which endows his own flawed behaviour with great virtue whilst attacking those who behave differently.
Morals are not absolute
Let’s just rephrase Inkley’s condemnation of others a little:
“Any cyclist who goes out without the ability and will to respond to a common and highly predictable scenario in a defensive manner, telling his wife and kids he loves them, is lying.
It’s still as crass as the original, and it’s certainly less pithy. But, crassness aside, surely avoiding a collision entirely—rather than having one and simply hoping to protect one’s head in the event—makes much more sense? Far better to think ahead than to think only of your head.
Helmets can help mitigate head injuries. Avoidance can entirely prevent not only head injuries but also “a broken collar bone, broken shoulder blade, a collapsed shoulder, eight broken ribs, collapsed lungs, a haemothorax, pneumothorax and smashed teeth”.
Now, none of this is to say that all incidents can be avoided. This post is in no way trying to say “if you ride wisely you will never suffer a blow to your head”. Even if someone does everything in their power to prevent an incident, incidents such as being hit from behind can occur. Indeed, even if both parties behave defensively, or if there is only a single party, rare mechanical failures do occur. Risk is always there.
But—as I’ve said before—the “if there’s any risk, wear a helmet” argument is totally hollow. Similar risk is always there in other scenarios, not just cycling; and I’ve yet to see a pedestrian suffer serious injury and morally bludgeon anyone who walks without a helmet (or, for that matter, a rucksack), despite the 6,000 pedestrians killed or seriously injured by vehicles each year in the carriageway and on the footway.
You reduce your risk as a pedestrian by keeping to the footpath, looking before crossing, being sceptical of indicators, and so on. You don’t simply run in front of cars that are pulling out and wear a helmet in the hope that it’ll help when they hit you. You avoid collisions to the extent where you feel the risk of having one is so low that you don’t need a protective hat.
And the same approach can be taken on a bicycle: avoiding traffic as much as possible, looking, anticipating, and so on.
Trees that don’t fall can’t make a sound
Crucially, there is a very significant problem of population selection here.
Collisions and injuries are newsworthy. Those who suffer them will have had a rare opportunity to perform a real-world test of their safety equipment. Therefore, because it only selects people who have been unable to avoid a collision, the media platform is inevitably skewed towards people who have a relatively low propensity for avoidance and a relatively high rate of valuing protection.
Non-collisions and non-injuries are inherently not newsworthy. Had the above sequence of events have started to unfold in front of someone better at anticipation and more cautious in their riding, there would have been no collision, and no newspaper article in which to say, “I avoided a collision. I didn’t even spend four days in intensive care. My behaviour saved me.”
The people who were able to avoid a collision—including all of those who have done so through making their own behaviour more cautious—are invisible and silent.
It’s very easy to point at a hat; much less so to point at behaviour. And, for many people, no truer is this than when the behaviour is one’s own, which is why people involved in collisions are normally quick to thank their safety gear, but less quick to critique their own actions.
Use it or bruise it
No single tactic is omnipotent, but the most effective way to protect your brain is to use it.
Treat every near miss—or even, should you be so unfortunate, every collision—not as a platform to advocate polystyrene, but as a chance to ask oneself, how could I avoid that next time? And, indeed, how could I influence my local council to build dedicated facilities that would prevent anyone needing to avoid such a scenario again?
Every day, there are myriad opportunities to be involved in the collision that never happened.
Thanks Bez, you are going into a very difficult area here because accusations of ‘victim blaming’ often prevent reasonable debate. And you are taking on two contentious issues at once! I am thinking of a couple of incidents that I would never comment on directly because of this difficulty but they are both relevant so if you don’t mind I’ll mention them here where it’s easier to anonymise the events than on my own blog.
The first is an incident where a driver killed a cyclist through appalling recklessness. The driver went to prison but the cyclist’s spouse is adamantly pursuing a “wear helmets” campaign and it’s very difficult for others to challenge that because of their grief. It’s almost as if the spouse is blaming the deceased for their own death, rather than focusing on the irresponsibility of the driver which puts everybody, not just cyclists, at risk.
The other is a cyclist killed by a vehicle emerging from a side road. The driver of the motor vehicle is to blame because they didn’t pay proper attention but I have a strong suspicion that the cyclist was too close to the kerb and may have survived if they had followed the Bikeability guidance to ride further out when passing a side road. That would make them much more visible, allow them to see further into the side road and give them more time to take avoiding action. There’s a crying need for a “stay out of the gutter” campaign but I suspect that any attempt to use incidents like this to support such a campaign would fall foul of the ‘victim blaming’ trap because our adversarial culture doesn’t allow for nuance.
Incidentally, it sounds as though Mike Inkley didn’t follow the cardinal rule of any tricky maneouvre in traffic, ‘make eye contact’.
I’m always pretty sceptical of that rule.
Firstly, there are so many environmental conditions that can mean all you see in the glass is sky or street lighting.
Secondly, false positives: looking straight at something is no guarantee of seeing and responding to it. You need to wait for an additional gesture.
I just don’t buy eye contact as a reliable tool. More reliable information comes from watching the vehicle’s wheel arches: the pitch and roll of the body and the turning of the wheels tells you far more. And when it comes to the weath of information that that doesn’t give you, you just assume the worst case scenario.
But certainly the only time that proceeding through that gap might approach what I’d call worthwhile would be after eye contact and a gesture.
Fair enough but in practice we are pretty good at tacit communication, ie we tend to ‘know’ when actual eye contact is being made and both parties understand each other. If there are reflections or other conditions that prevent eye contact you just can’t afford to take a risk. Even if the vehicle is absolutely static as you approach, in that situation you can’t rule out a sudden move.
Of course watching the oncoming traffic for the same gap that the car driver is looking for will tell you a lot as well. In this case it was all gap at that moment so very predictable that the car would move, plus in this case the windscreen was reflecting the sky so you couldn’t see that the driver was (probably) turned in his seat to look left. So it’s all a disaster waiting to happen.
I still don’t like the common emphasis on eye contact. I find that attempting to acquire it is very expensive in terms of visual and mental attention.
The only time I really seek to acquire it is when I’m at a crossroads, turning right or going straight on, with a car on the opposite side going right or straight on. Someone has to go first and I’m not in a position to gamble.
Its a tough line to tread, If you remember the BBC “War of the roads” documentary there was plenty of onbike footage of accidents, and while it is very easy to watch a video riding where you expect to see a crash and spot all of the warning signs, my gut feeling was most of the crashes could have easily bee avoided by the riders. As above, it is not to blame the victim as they should not need to take avoiding action, but doing so could have saved injury.
Quite.
There is an important difference between making an error that causes harm to others, and allowing oneself to be in a situation where one is at risk of harm from others’ errors.
Of course, there are nuances to every bit of that statement…
Having looked at it again and freeze framing bits, it would seem that the road the driver is turning out of is one way, and because there was no traffic going the same way as the cyclist, he may have assumed that the road he was turning into was one way as well and he could drive on that side.
Good article, and there is evidence that people who wear a helmet have more collisions. They are suffering from risk compensation, think that a helmet makes them safe, because they’ve been subjected to a thirty year propaganda campaign telling them that cycling is dangerous, but a helmet will make you safe, neither of which is true.
The DfT have just consulted on their Cycling Delivery Plan, and one of my comments was that if they really wanted to increase cycling, then they should stop advertising helmets. Similarly with local authorities, any which mandate helmets should not be eligible for funding of cycle schemes.
“Although not to blame for the incident, he could have avoided it.”
I have to slightly disagree with that. You are right to point out that a more defensive rider should have slowed down and somewhat anticipated this. The rider clearly makes no attempt to slow.
But even if it had been a more defensive rider, that had come to a complete stop, the collision could still have happened as the driver has clearly not seen him.
It’s fair to say this situation could have been mitigated and “possibly” avoided, but totally avoided is pushing the assessment too far imo.
I think it’s reasonable to say that with sufficiently cautious behaviour, it would have been possible to avoid all but the most hyperbolic conceivable actions of the driver, such as him simply driving off down the wrong side of the road.
The fact that he’s pulling out is, I hope we can agree, a facile deduction. The fact that he’s turning with quite a wide radius, thus extending his time in the rider’s lane, is less obvious but still quite predictable with experience.
There is a question of how much margin for error you leave: a lot, a little, or—as in the video—none at all. Degrees of caution. You’re right that this is not black and white, but I maintain that unless you concoct extremely unlikely circumstances around the events that unfold above, this collision was entirely avoidable by sufficiently cautious riding.
It’s all hypothetical really. I’ve had similarly situations many times. And thankfully have avoided a collision due to be being cautious and preempting the situation. But it’s about probabilities. You can only say he might have avoided it, or the collision would have been less likely, or less severe. You cant say for certain that it could have been entirely 100% avoided.
“it would have been possible to avoid all but the most hyperbolic conceivable actions of the driver”
I’ve had exactly the same situation where a taxi driver was not looking properly. I came to a complete stop ~ 5m from the junction. But he *kept driving* whilst still looking left. I had to literally jump my bike on the pavement and start banging the idiot’s car. 1 second later and I’d have been knocked over. Despite being a cautious cyclist who had the nous to predict the situation and slow, I was almost toast.
So you avoided a collision, then? 😉
Super writing, as usual.
The only part I have doubts about is where he was looking during the crucial five seconds before impact: the camera’s view is not necessarily where the wearer’s eyes are looking.
You can see earlier in the video Inkley appears to be paying more attention to things either side of him than to the road ahead. Prior to impact he may have been looking at something to his 1 or 2 o’clock. I say this because there is a slight tilt of the horizon and it only returns to level at 19 seconds, which coincides with his scream. I suspect that this reveals his first awareness of the offender’s manoeuvre and that until then his attention was elsewhere.
As you say, still the driver’s fault but Inkley’s apparent lack of anticipation is worrying.
Oh—I haven’t watched it with sound 🙂
The first time I watched it, I felt uncomfortable with the camera movement. By watching the road, I believe I would easily have avoided any collision, possibly by coming to a complete stop.
The second time, I watched it again tracking the camera position/head movements. This view picks out a lot of points that are not quite hazards – someone walking in the road, a car pulling out from a parking space, the oncoming driver comes into my lane. This time, I barely noticed the offending car, and surely would have been hit.
He had every right to proceed ahead and the driver was in a wrong. That’s beyond dispute. Then again, if I rode my bike with the same attitude I would have crashed many times over. I watched this video absolutely stunned that the collision occurred at all as it was avoidable in so many ways. I fully understand that this is drifting into victim-blaming territory but it bothers me that riders like this should be prescribing safety tips.
“I watched this video absolutely stunned that the collision occurred at all as it was avoidable in so many ways”
Me too. I’ve avoided many collisions like this. In fact just last Tuesday I had the same situation, at night, where the driver was looking past me for cars and pulled out right in front of me. Had I not slowed in anticipation of him not seeing me (I ride assuming no one sees me!) he would have cleaned me up as he sped through the intersection. As it turns out. I stop before his lane and yelled at him through is open window to be careful. He was shocked, as he hadn’t seen me at all.
But of course, I’m just a slow poke commuter cyclists without any hi vis and an upright bike, so maybe I don’t know anything.
“If I hadn’t have been wearing a helmet camera, it would have just been my word against his and he wouldn’t have been prosecuted as there were no live witnesses.”
This is disturbing, if true. What would the driver’s defence have been? He’d surely have to argue (a) that he wasn’t in fact turning and (b) that he wasn’t in fact in the right-hand lane: otherwise is it not absolutely his fault for not giving way to oncoming traffic? Assuming he stopped immediately, both things would be demonstrably extremely unlikely from the position of the car in the road – and such a claim would be fairly easy to disprove in any case with the right kind of evidence.
I have to raise the question of car design here. With the turn angle of the car, it’s nice fat A pillar, and the position of the cyclist moving out into the road to avoid the nose of the car – I would think that the cyclist would remain in the A pillar blindspot of the car driver (assuming they didn’t move their head) for most of the time, only appearing immediately prior to impact (too late).
Car driver at fault, but there are other factors at play too, car design, risk compensation, by both driver and cyclist, and road design too (I think that there is a warning sign for two way traffic) but this could have been emphasised by eg painted arrow on the road.
The problem for a cyclist in the UK is that hazards are simply everywhere. Each hazard carries with it a risk of the hazard becoming an incident. By behaviour cyclists can minimise the risks but not remove them, but that takes cognitive effort, sometimes bravery, and is prone to errors eg hazard perception failure. What’s needed is engineering to remove the hazards (thereby removing the associated risks) and thereby lower the overall risk to cyclists (and other vulnerable road users) – we can but dream that backwards UK will someday emulate our continental neighbours .
I was thinking similar things about that video. I wear a helmet (it’s our American safety totem) but also recently got a Go-Pro. You can collect an awful lot of boring footage, but you can also recall events that are worth going over, either to illustrate that in fact most cyclists don’t run red lights, or to illustrate that drivers do that and other things as well — or to review how well you handled various road situations, either well, or with
“upside potential”.
So I have video of a panic stop:
(by-the-way, not sure why anyone would get a loud horn for their bike, you think I had a prayer of doing that one-handed? Horns are bullshit, both on bikes and on cars). Reading comments above, no idea how one might expect me to make eye contact with the driver about to cut across my path, and regarding distractions, note my surroundings and the wheel action for the potholes, as well as the pedestrian off the curb to the right.
In the interest of equal time for jobs-not-well-done:
(Clearly, my helmet saved me there :-).
By-the-way, you Bikability guys, if you’re not pushing daytime running lights hard for bikes, you’re not credible. I have mixed feelings about guilting people to be visible-visible-visible, but given that you’re going to play that game, you have an obligation to follow the research (there’s been research) and promote tested-by-RCT best visibility practices (tested-by-RCT — how many bicycle safety measures meet that standard?)
If the cyclist had been a car, would a collision still have occurred? No, An oncoming car would generally stop at a point sufficiently far clear to allow the manoeuvre to complete. As soon as the turning car is clear to move the driver would naturally look forwards and see what had stopped where, but not expecting something to be inches way.
I actually had a similar experience while driving the other week. In Ghent to watch the 6 Day, I stopped to park. The road was single lane, tramtrack behind a high kerb to my left, layby on my right. I was going to reverse into the space in the layby. When I stopped there was nothing behind me. As I reversed, the front of the car swung out to the left, right up to the raised kerb. I was of course looking into the gap I was reversing into. Suddenly there was a cyclist on my right, being squeezed between the car and the high kerb – he’d tried to overtake as I did this manoeuvre. Stupid. I wouldn’t have as a cyclist. Naturally I was apologetic. But I really don’t think I did anything wrong. There comes a point where road users have to be aware of what certain, slightly unconventional, manoeuvres entail.
It’s quite worrying that cyclists are so quick to criticise car drivers for not appreciating the cyclist’s situation, yet somehow cyclists seem (or choose?) not to appreciate the motorist’s position. All the more surprising given the incredibly high percentage of adult cyclists who are drivers. It makes me wonder how they drive!
The road from which the driver is emerging is indeed one-way and the vehicles parked on the right are illegally parked on double yellow lines. All of which componds the problem for the driver but does not excuse him, and that’s why he got 9 points, though I would argue for a ban or at least a re-test,
Just one specific observation on his comment about wearing a helmet. I don’t want to get into a debate about whether helmets offer any benefits (I’m sure they do, in some but not all circumstances) or whether cyclists should, or should be compelled by law to, wear them (definitely not the latter), but a helmet is only any use if it is worn correctly. If worn incorrectly, it can be worse than useless.
I see daily people cycling with helmets which are only loosely strapped, or tilted back on their heads, or on top of some other form of hat, or indeed in a few cases not even strapped up at all. Some of these practices, if not all of them, totally negate the benefits of wearing one.
I don’t know whether Mr Insley had his helmet correctly fitted (and it probably makes no difference anyway, as his injuries were bodily, the closest part to his head to be injured was his shoulder) but he had a camera bolted to it.
I am prepared to bet good money that this practice, while it may have other uses such as gaining evidence of drivers’ bad behaviour, totally negates the benefits of the helmet as head [protection, and perhaps even makes the situation worse than no helmet at all.
Michael Schumaker, in a somewhat different context, suffered life-changing head injuries despite the fact that he was wearing a helmet. From the reports I have since read, his doctors attribute the severity of his injuries nevertheless to the fact that he had a camera mounted on the helmet.
A fair bet that the rearranged teeth wiould probably have been avoided or mitigated if no helmet was worn. Looks as if he either ‘froze’ or clipped the car in a way that stopped him rolling, so rapid deceleration from c.15mph to 0mph and fair certainty of breaking bones. Bust my hip that way, failed to be rolling when I hit 20-0mph instantly, energy all went into left side – mainly my hip
Relax, tuck-up & roll and you’ll come out with bruises,
It’s easy with hind sight but I agree that looks like an easily avoidable accident from the cyclist prospective, that being said it was the drivers fault.
I’m amazed at the injuries, in know you have to take people as you find them but this looked like relatively slow speed glancing blow followed by landing on the road. From the list of injuries I was expecting a dreadful accident and nearly didn’t watch the video for that reason. I had simular incident 6 months ago but went across the bonet of the car and landed on the road. I guess I must have been very luck to ride home afterward with little more than a bruised chest. The door/side panel of the car had more damage than I did.
By 0:18 I would have decided to stop – the car is already 1/3 way across my side of the road. He only paused to give way to the green Rover to pass (there is nothing coming the other way behind it). There are parked cars opposite the emerging vehicle so he is likely to straddle the centre of the road.
I wouldn’t take riding advice from the person who filmed this, while the preachy helmet compulsion bollocks would be enough to convince me that he’s as ignorant as he is reckless.
Never, ever rely on eye contact. Even if I think they’ve seen me, I don’t know whether the person has really registered my speed and trajectory. I also don’t know how good their eyesight is and must assume it is poor.
The earliest clear indication that a vehicle is moving from rest is to watch the wheels.
A poem from the days when new fangled steam powered craft were causing carnage on the UK’s waterways. I often think of it when I cycle to and from work, college, hockey etc.
Here lies the grave of Mike O’Day
Who died defending his right of way.
The case was clear, his will was strong,
But he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong.
I hope that the guy recovers and can cycle and photograph again with full mobility.
I look at the video and shudder. Yes, I like to think I would have anticipated the situation better – but I might not have. A few seconds of looking elsewhere, having another thought in my head – it could have been me. Or you.
The turning radius of the car is also strange. It really looks as if it is pulling out onto the wrong side of the road. This reduces further the available stopping distance, and makes it hard to dive for the left (which would be my usual tactic in that situation).
Yes, the cyclist’s comments on helmets are crass, insensitive and misguided. But I’d cut him some slack; he’s been through a traumatic experience.
However, I absolutely buy into the idea that we need to examine our actions, to understand how we can best avoid being hit by other inattentive road users. That was my instinct on this occasion.
https://chillikebab.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/it-happened/
I also applaud you tackling this issue, and appreciating the nuances. Having any kind of nuanced debate about these incidents is very hard.
However, ultimately it reveals why people dislike cycling. if it requires that level of focus and attention to prevent getting injured, it’s too hard and scary.
I want bicycle infrastructure that allows me to ride along and enjoy the scenery, think my thoughts and enjoy the wind in my hair. I don’t want to have to put 100% of my mental effort into staying alive.
I think this is true—
—but alludes to a more significant issue: they’re choosing cars instead, which require that level of focus and attention to prevent others getting injured.
Very good point. Something similar on Ian Walker’s blog.
—
And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present you with the nanokilling. Every mile you drive, you commit 5.8 nanokillings. Drive 12,000 miles in a year and you’ve committed 69,600 nanokillings, or 0.0000696 killings.
So clearly, the typical individual is fairly unlikely to kill over the course of their driving career. Let’s say someone drives 10,000 miles per year for 50 years. 50 * 10000 * 5.8 = 2,900,000 nanokillings, or 0.0029 killings. This means you’d need to get together with about 344 other people before you could be reasonably sure that, collectively, you’ve managed to kill somebody.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? 345 people isn’t really that many. There’s probably that many within a few streets of you. And there are a lot of streets in the country, aren’t there?
—
http://bamboobadger.blogspot.ie/2013/11/are-you-nanokiller.html
Quite a lot has been said about the driver’s line, effectively into the left lane rather then the right lane he was heading for. But having watched the video, I don’t think it makes a lot of difference, once the driver decided to go some part of the car would have been in the cyclists path. But the driver probably thought he had blocked the lane already, which was true for 4-wheeled vehicles. So while he was entirely wrong, it’s always good to remember that UK drivers just don’t expect to meet a bike.
I think the personalisation of Mr Inkley is wrong, there are lessons to be learnt however the driver was clearly in the wrong (as proved in court). There were certainly some lessons, where if you removed the road and other drivers from the video one could see the threat slow down to know which way to maneuver. How ever that road is so narrow, cars parked on the wrong side of the rode on double yellow lines (is that legal) and another car crossing the median strip. Based on that I think he should have gotten of the bike and walked as your A1 would be much safer to ride on!
One thing that happens in New Zealand is they report on cycle deaths in the papers, huge uproar, coronar spits out about lights fluro helmets etc etc but nothing about how it actually happened and how it could have been prevented..Posting videos like this can be put to greater use in order to ride to survive.
I think I’d have slowed down but not enough and would still have been hit coz the nobber in the passat cut the corner so much and drove the wrong side of the road for so long.
I find Mr Inkley’s inflammatory helmet comment rather annoying.
Great article, agree wholeheartedly with your assessment
Just seen this.
It looks to me that in addition to risk compensation due to the wearing of helmet there is additional factor of cyclists with camera on their cycles seen to get into situation of having avoidable accidents.
There is a PhD here in psychology of mistakes
What evidence would suggest that using a camera makes a collision more likely? Bearing in mind that you don’t see videos of collisions from people who don’t use cameras.
I have just come across this post and was involved in the case and the prosecution. The only things I can add is that the car driver “Mr X” didn’t stop at the scene and parked 100 metres away, stood there and watched. He then ignored Mr Inkley when the paramedic arrived and was seen messing with Mr Inkley’s bike. When the traffic officer spoke to him he stated 2 things at the roadside: firstly that he had been driving in his lane when Mr Inkley hit him and secondly that he didn’t go to see how Mr Inkley was because 2 members of the public were there and he didn’t need to bother. Mr X then later completed a sworn police statement in which he again stated that he was driving on his own side of the road when Mr Inkley hit him. His declaration to his insurance company also stated that he was on his own side of the road when Mr Inkley hit him. His insurance company were shocked at the video and prosecution and instantly admitted liability.