| Author | Message | ||
     Smitty808 |
Some of you may have seen my post last week about losing my friend to a bike wreck. A car ran a stop sign pulling into a state highway, and he hit the car at 60mph. I work at the local Honda dealer, as a service tech, and today one of our local police officers came down to see if we could tell him if there was a way to tell exactly how fast the bike was going just before the time of the accident. My service manager asked why, and he said they think he was going too fast, and the accident may have been his fault!!!! It's a good thing I didn't get to talk to him....or I wouldn't be typing this now! I would be in jail!! Call me crazy....but if the damn car wasn't in the middle of the highway....the accident wouldn't have happened, no matter what the speed!!! There were witnesses that said he was going 60, but it doesn't matter what they say...because he was on a sport bike, and therefore must be evil! If he was on a Harley, or a Japanese cruiser, it wouldn't be like that! I have seen several bad wrecks here in town involving them....and it's the cars fault! Whether it was or not. Time spent trying to witch hunt my dead friend could be better spent I am sure....like writing tickets for people running stop signs! Sorry for the rant, but I am pissed. | ||
| Wyckedflesh |
Smitty, witnesses or not, there are proven methods of calculation that the accident division of the PD uses to determine speeds that all has to do with physics. The only time it gets really confusing is if the vehicle was acclerating hard at the point of impact, then the numbers get thrown off a tad. The situation may be, with out hearing the witness' accounts of what happened, that your friend did an aggressive evasive manuever where he gassed it and tried to evade the car unsuccessfully. So when the cops do the math, it LOOKS on paper like he was speeding, when in reality he hadn't been. He was simply trying to save his life. So now the cops have these figures that aren't coming out right because he was accelerating, they don't have a comparison of how fast he was going before he started to accelerate and are still trying to figure up how fast he was going when he hit the car, add the extra momentum for the acceleration and you can see how the math starts falling apart. Trust me I have been there, as in been the victuim of this type of invetigation. | ||
| Madduck |
It is now standard practice in car accidents for the investigating officers to download the information in the cars "black box" to get the last 10 to 30 seconds of its history. My guess is the officer was just following up to see if such a thing exists with motorcycles. It was probably not personal just one of the things they do now in accident investigation. Anything with EFI probably has such a device and it collects a surprising amount of information. | ||
| Jb2 |
Paul, you are right but it still seems(to the folks left behind) an effort placed in the wrong direction. Funny thing was when my Dad was killed on his bike they did a drug and alcohol test on him but not the driver of the car. They also spent an extensive amount of time trying to determine Dad's speed and very little effort on the car sitting in the middle of the road. The accident investigators assured me that their effort was to prove Dad was doing everything right because the insurance company would fight for a reduced benefit if they could prove he was partially at fault. Well, the insurance company(Progressive) did just that, had their own experts comb the notes, reconstruct the crash and with held all money until they realized they were up against a brick wall. So, in the end, all of the police investigation aimed at Dad paid off, I guess. It did seem, at the time, like they were looking under the wrong rocks. (Message edited by jb2 on May 18, 2005) | ||
| Blackbelt |
I know that this is a Crappy time, and not the best of situations, but remember the Police are just trying to figure the situation out and were not there to see the accident. They have only what the witnesses say, and if the majority of them are Grey haired old ladies then 15 mph is too fast, and Motorcycles are EVIL! at least that is the look i get in my neighborhood. LOL Just try to be patient and see what comes of it. i know it sucks, but just wait... could turn out for the better. | ||
| Newfie_buell |
Its all part of their investigation. | ||
| Paint_shaker |
What Newfie said.... All angles need to be investigated to rule out or prove stuff... | ||
| Madduck |
Smitty, This is likely to get worse. Any accident with a fatality has big time criminal consequences, especially if you happen to have caused the fatality. This is all new to you but it is not new to investigative team. Been there, done that and nothing good will now result. Rule one is to avoid prison at all costs. The process to accomplish this is to blame the victim, screw over the investigating office for bungling the crime scene and lastly using everyone you ever met or are related too to mitigate your sentence. Pray for a busy news week so the press doesn't deeply involve itself in this tragic event. They can make any situation a thousand times worse. ala Terry Schiavo. Take care of you and yours and best wishes as you work thru this tragedy. | ||
| Johncr250 |
Smitty, i`m sorry for your loss. Many times people always critize the police when they don`t understand why they do things. If the police are going to take criminal actions against the driver in court, the first question from the defense is going to be how fast was the bike going. What if in court the defense comes up with a hoky witness that says the bike was going 100mph? Its one witness against another. The next question is what did the police due to determine the approximate speed of the bike? Did they rely on witnesses that might of made a mistake or use calculations from the scene. Next question, was there a problem with the bike, stuck throttle? All it takes to dimiss the case is a few simple questions like that to possibly throw some doubt in. If you don`t believe me on your next day off walk into a courtroom (they are open to the public) | ||
| Court |
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| Steve_a |
It can be damn difficult to calculate the speed of a bike in an accident like this, and most police departments don't have the expertise to do it accurately. But they can preserve and document the crash so someone down the road can put the pieces back together. The sad thing is that a number of left-turning-car/"motorcycle with right-of-way" crashes are at least in part due to excessive speed of the motorcyclist. There are accidents where the motorcyclist was way over the limit, and the car would have readily cleared the rider's lane if the rider had been going anywhere near a reasonable speed. The witness statements don't suggest that this was the case here, but the police wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't look at that possibility, if nothing else to rule it out. Physical evidence used correctly generally trumps witness testimony, because witnesses don't always get it right -- all you have to do is to read the depositions taken in a big civil accident case with many witnesses, and notice that they frequently disagree about basic facts. But the most important thing the police can do here is document the accident. I hope they took scene photographs, because the positions of rest of the vehicles and their orientations are very important to reconstructing the accident. | ||
| Littlebuggles |
Can't remember if it was a bike mag or msf training but I reread it several times to commit the info to memory - stated most (75-80%) mutli-vehicle crashes involving a motorcycle are caused by the automobile driver turning left (across the bike's path of travel) due to the driver's failure to either see the bike or the driver's inability to properly estimate/calculate the motorcycles speed. Kid ran a sign, probably failed to see the motorcycles at all. The way I see it too many people are too wrapped up in themselves to pay attention to what they are doing when they drive. I was in a crash caused by the auto driver miscalculating not only my speed but the traffic I was traveling with, due to traffic to my side I had no escape route. Normally I avoid this spot in traffic but you don't have much control starting out from intersections controlled by lights. Good witness and good/thorough investigation quickly convinced the insurance company their driver was at fault. I hope things go as well in this case, but as others have said, with the loss of your friend comes some pretty heavy consequences (legal and otherwise), a good investigation will make the difference... Hang tough Smitty, it will be resolved eventually. -Mike |
