The law is an ass - and here's the proof...

Ok, so I haven't updated this blog for a while - too much other stuff going on (you know how it is...). But then something happens which incenses you so much that it makes you want to put pen to paper - or finger to keyboard, as it were. This morning that something was a story shared on Facebook by the excellent Fast Bikes team - take a look...

Of course, this is simply a small piece on a provincial news website - few will have read it, fewer will care but those of us who are seasoned bikers know instinctively what has gone on here. In short, this case is a travesty of justice and it beggars belief that an apparently learned judge has come to this particular decision. What it means is that new case law has been created confirming that a motorcyclist travelling IN HIS OWN LANE can be held accountable for a crash involving a lorry that has strayed into the opposite lane. By any measure of justice, that can't be right...can it? Evidently so - as the appeal QC puts it:

“The collision occurred for one reason and one reason only, and that is because the claimant was driving right close to the centre when he accepted that the course should have been a very different one.”

I'm not sure what sort of legal description "driving right close to the centre" is but we'll assume that he means the centre of the lane, close to the white lines. Bikers call this "white-lining" and, despite what this QC would have you believe, as long as you are the correct side of the white line it is perfectly legal - or so we thought. However, the judge in this case disagrees. What we have here is a judgement effectively saying that any insistence that a lorry driver should stay on his own side of the road is imposing too high a standard on him. Yes, you read that right. Forget the fact that this was a Lithuanian lorry driver in a left hand drive truck, used to driving on the right....not relevant. Apparently, we must accept that lorries drift out of lanes and in any resulting accident, the fault will lie with the vehicle coming the other way!

I wonder whether the same judgement would have been reached had it been a car/van etc coming the other way instead of "just" a biker? A bigger vehicle would have no other line to take but if you follow the logic of this judgement, straddling the lane would be perfectly acceptable and there would be no recourse on the lorry driver in the event of a collision. Yes, that makes perfect sense. 

The human cost of this is a biker ending up with the loss of one leg, having to use crutches and a wheelchair to get around - his life ruined. And thanks to this "learned" judge, he is unable to pursue the compentation he should be due.

Like I say: The law is an ass....