Bikers collide with Police car in Buller Gorge (1 December)

[spudchucka]

I have one question. The driver of the campervan that killed 4 bikers (well 3 and a child to be fair)on the same day has pleaded guilty in the court, has surrendered her passport and is awaiting her fate as I type this.

How come it is taking so long for this investigation to be completed?

SCU would have been involved at both crashes, maybe the fact that one driver admitted fault from the start makes the difference?

The camper van lost control and crossed the centre line into the path of the oncoming bikes. The police car was stationary, the bikes crashed into it.

The results of the SCU investigation weren't necessary to determine who was at fault in the case of camper van.

The driver having been charged has accepted guilt and has plead guilty, therefore there is no need to wait for the SCU report in order to prove guilt.

However the SCU report may be required by the sentencing judge in order to help determine why the van driver lost control and thereby assist the judge to determine the level of carelessness and ultimately the degree of culpability involved.

In the case involving the police car the SCU investigation will need to survey the scene and determine at what point the stationary vehicle came into the biker's view and whether there was sufficient available ground to stop without hitting the object if the vehicle had been travelling at a safe speed, (amongst other things). In other words the results of the investigation will be required in order to determine who is culpable.

The detailed SCU examinations can take months to complete, they are very thorough and very professionally done.

[pritch]

Without pre-judging anything, and in this particular instance that isn't easy...
I can't remember the exact words but the British Police motorcycle riding manual warns against getting overwhelmed by the excitement of the occasion and letting judgment take a back seat.

I mentioned this just after writing about standing on the pegs but that wasn't what I was referring to. There had been a (too) subtle change of subject.

The warning in the manual is to Police officers, pointing out that they must remain calm and exercise good judgment no matter how dire (or exciting) the emergency.

I once had to take evasive action near East Cape to avoid hitting a Police ute on the drivers door, he was doing a U turn in front of me. Sure, he likely hadn't seen another vehicle in half an hour or more but...

Normally it's quite difficult to explain damage to your drivers door, it being on the right and all... Had I hit him though, I would not have been at all surprised to hear that I'd been speeding. Whether I had been or not.

I'm not anti-Police, but experience so far has made me a realist.
(I'm still working on that )

I don't think reference to the two second rule is particularly helpful in this instance. The Buller Gorge is quite tight in places and if travelling at the legal limit you would still cover some 56m in that 2 seconds. Reaction time would use up a sizeable chunk of that.

Mind you, this is the first time I've ever seen a hint that bikes in a staggered formation should stay two seconds behind the next bike. So the practical reality is that it's a one second - 28m rule. And proportionally an even bigger chunk of that would be reaction time.

Just as we ought not to jump to condemn the Police officer out of hand, neither should anyone condemn the bike riders similarly.

[Mom]

The camper van lost control and crossed the centre line into the path of the oncoming bikes.

Dont take me wrong here but...

The campervan driver, admitted to veering into the gravel shoulder of the road and over correcting, crossing onto the otherside of the road. SCU investigation reports not needed anymore.

The police car was stationary, the bikes crashed into it.

It appears that the stationary??? car was blocking the lane, while executing a 3 point turn, in a place that oncoming traffic was not left enough time to stop. Lets hope this does not turn into a failure to stop situation.

Mate you are making shit up as you go along here. We dont know what happened! We were not there. How do you know the car was stationary?

I think you should be shhhh now, let the SCU release their findings and then we can argue the result!

[Skyryder]

Bear in mind also that courts can and often do except opinion evidence as to speed of vehicles and sobriety of persons from experienced police officers. I'm not explaining it any further than that.

I just hope that you never ever have to give evidence against me on a visual. I can assure you that you 'will' have to explain further than you can here. That is what cross examination is for.

Skyryder

[Skyryder]

Dont take me wrong here but...

The campervan driver, admitted to veering into the gravel shoulder of the road and over correcting, crossing onto the otherside of the road. SCU investigation reports not needed anymore.



It appears that the stationary??? car was blocking the lane, while executing a 3 point turn, in a place that oncoming traffic was not left enough time to stop. Lets hope this does not turn into a failure to stop situation.

Mate you are making shit up as you go along here. We dont know what happened! We were not there. How do you know the car was stationary?

I think you should be shhhh now, let the SCU release their findings and then we can argue the result!

In some cases a stationary vehicle is deemed not to be at fault. For example if for any reason you enter a controled intersection on a red light and stop in the middle of intersection (stationary) and the vehicle on the green crashes into the red, the 'green' vehicle may not be liable. The reasoning behind this is that the moving vehicle should be able to avoid the stationary vehicle. Not too many people are aware of this............but the cops are. I'm picking that the cop has stated that his vehicle was stationary. Guess on my part but whose going to bet against me? You??

There are many instances where if the vehicle was moving it would be at fault but 'stationary' can shift the liability away from it. I believe that this is the tack that the police driver is betting on, coupled with the fact that he has claimed the bikes were speeding. And Spud is right when he states that the courts accept evidence from officers on this. I'm reading a 'cop out' (pun intended) on this and I'm dammed if I'm going to wait months before expressing my reasoning for it.

This site would be very boring indeed if we all sat back and waited for the official findings.

Skyryder

[KEN]

The POLICE were very quick to nail the 'tourist'
and charge the driver of the camper van,that killed four motorcylists,
But what will happen to the COP that does a
U turn in the Buller Gorge,you watch the police
FUDGE the issue and move on.[and blame all motorcyclists??]

[Skyryder]

The POLICE were very quick to nail the 'tourist'
and charge the driver of the camper van,
But what will happen to the COP that does a
U turn in the Buller Gorge,you watch the police
FUDGE the issue and move on.[and blame all motorcyclists??]

Succinct and to the point. I'd run a poll on this but with two injured bikers one seriously it would be in poor taste.


Skyryder

[Usarka]

The police car was stationary, the bikes crashed into it.

where did you get that evidence from???



or is that speculation?

I heard he was turning.

and we cynically dont think the cops will treat the driver like anyone else....

[edit]
you think its bad blaming the cop before the evidence is out, dont you think it might be worse blaming the guy(s) who are seriously injured from this without knowing any evidence?

[puddytat]

If the cop had time to see how fast they were going why did he turn in front of them????

Everything looks fast when it is going crash into you.

a very good point

[erix]

bummer....hope the cops ok.

lol, good one.
not matter whose fault, just hoping everyone involved is ok.

[Sanx]

OK. This is beginning to piss me off.

• Speed was a factor in the accident. Namely, the fact that the cop was near enough stationary on the wrong side of the road round a blind bend. Even if he was moving whilst doing the three point turn, he was moving at pretty much 90 degrees to the road, therefore his relative movement compared to that of the bikers was near enough nill.
• Trying to judge, by eyesight alone, the speed of an object coming towards you is bloody difficult. Calculating speed relies on either a time / distance measurement or the dopler effect. As only the former is possible using the human eye, the cop would have been relying on his mental measurement of the speed of the object approaching him. The smaller the distance over which one can make an observation, the greater the margin of error. As the bikers did not have time to come to a stop, or at least scrub a significant portion of their speed off before impact, then the distance was pretty bloody small. Any suggestion therefore by the cop involved that these particular bikers were speeding is laughable, and his assertion should be treated accordingly.
• Spudchucka et al have suggested that we all wait until the SCU investigation has been completed before commenting further on the causes of the crash and apportioning blame. Sorry, too late. The investigating officer has already said that 'speed was a factor'. This was without the benefit of the results on the SCU investigation and as the bikers had not been interviewed at that stage, his sole source of information was the cop concerned. And I've already mentioned, the cop concerned was in no position to estimate speed to any level of accuracy. Should the investigating officer have kept his mouth shut and not immediately tried to blame the injured parties for the accident, Spudchucka might have had a point.
• The fact that this officer is back on the road is indicative of the seriousness with which the Police are treating the case. Even if the officer is not 100% to blame for the accident, there should be enough doubt about his decision-making and risk-assessment to remove him off the road until such time as the SCU has fully determined the cause of the accident.

The manner in which this accident is being treated smacks of arse-covering. The investigating officer has publically pre-empted the investigation's findings. To make a comparison, if a detective says publically at the start of an investigation that "We haven't actually examined the scene or any evidence yet, but Mr XYZ did it", then any resultant court case would be laughed out of court. Why is this incident any different?

[terbang]

The manner in which this accident is being treated smacks of arse-covering.

Which could easily become an orchestrated lytany of lies...

[terbang]

Lets think about that for a second shall we?..................................

The bikes weren't in view when he started turning, he was halfway through the move when the bikes appeared...............

Would be my best guess, speculatively speaking.

Speculatively speaking, on the above, you could say that he may have chosen to turn in an area with very limited visibility. Speculatively speaking, turning in the middle of a narrow bend without adequate visibility could have played a major part in this accident.. Speculatively speaking, you could say that our friend, in his endeavours to enhance road safety, played a large part in degrading it.

Very easy for us all to say, yeah lets wait for the report. The aviation community did that back in 1979 with the Erebus crash and got a report that had been heavily slanted by the then Muldoon government. All to keep their national airline's name pretty. The huge outcry that went all the way to the privvy council revealed all sorts of crimes and cover ups, documents shredded, houses ransacked just to name a few. It was an absolute cover up. However the origional, in question, report still stands as the oficial today. Many still believe that a lot of the white-washed latent failures, that allowed that aircraft to crash, are still with us.
I'm not saying that people interfere with an investigation, but rather monitor it and ensure that it is being conducted in the true spirit of an investigation (Police investigating police arouses my suspicions). The aim is to find out what really happened regardless of who is involved. In other words to learn from our and others mistakes with a future proofing, preventative frame of mind...

[spudchucka]

I just hope that you never ever have to give evidence against me on a visual. I can assure you that you 'will' have to explain further than you can here. That is what cross examination is for.

Skyryder

If you give expert evidence you would expect your expertise to be questioned by the defence. But don't worry, I don't work in traffic and haven't dished out a ticket of any sort to any poor soul in over a year so there is no chance we'll be meeting in court any time soon.

[spudchucka]

The campervan driver, admitted to veering into the gravel shoulder of the road and over correcting, crossing onto the otherside of the road. SCU investigation reports not needed anymore.

I'm not sure what you are saying / asking here. What I said was that the SCU reports aren't need to prove guilt as she has already accepted responsibility and plead guilty. The reports will still be produced, the sentencing judge will require them and they will also be used at the following coroners enquiry into the cause of the deaths.

Mate you are making shit up as you go along here. We dont know what happened! We were not there. How do you know the car was stationary?

I'm not making anything up. I've been to hundreds of crashes and have completed crash investigation course, (not to the SCU level though). The pictures of the scene that I saw showed the car with its front wheels well off the edge of the road and in fact they appeared to have dropped down slightly into a ditch. If it wasn't stationary at the time of impact it would have been very close to it.

I think you should be shhhh now, let the SCU release their findings and then we can argue the result!

I think everyone should do that but as long as we have the self appointed experts painting the wrong picture I'll keep bringing some balance to the situation.