Nasty Collision

[courty]

I witnessed a nasty accident yesterday.
The people were saved by side impact protection/curtain airbags.
The front seat passenger was battered and bruised and in shock. I really hope she will be ok. I think she will be.
I was following two seconds behind in a 1970's sports car with my 23 year old daughter in the passenger seat. If that van had hit us, she would be dead.
A sobering thought.
A large hire van drove straight through a STOP junction at about 35 miles an hour and T-boned a family in a Nissan Qashqai travelling at about the same speed on a B road.
The van was invisible until a split second before impact because the lane that intersects the B road comes uphill, sunken in a tree tunnel.
The driver of the Qashqai did nothing wrong. He was driving carefully, had slowed slightly (to about 35mph in a national speed limit) and then was taken out by this van, no time to react.
Excessive speed had nothing to do with the accident.
I assume the van driver (hire van driven by Roma gypsies) was unfamiliar with the road, following a Sat.Nav.and not observing signs or junction markings/talking to his passenger/not paying attention.
I know that Nav. maps often do not distinguish priority at junctions.
Quite often I will go for a drive and enjoy my sports car, so to speak, but yesterday we had been on a family outing (my wife was following me in her car, five up) and we were just bumbling home through the lanes after a countyside walk.

It underlined to me that sometimes things happen that you have no control over. The driver of that Qashqai could not have done anything differently to avoid that, except stay at home. He did have his wife and kids in a modern car, and that is what saved them.

[heisthegaffer]

It is indeed a Sobering thought and never nice to see a car accident, especially one like that so close to you. Maybe you're in mild shock yourself?

It is a wonder how effective modern cars are at protecting occupants.

[courty]

heisthegaffer said:

It is indeed a Sobering thought and never nice to see a car accident, especially one like that so close to you. Maybe you're in mild shock yourself?

It is a wonder how effective modern cars are at protecting occupants.

I have been driving since 1986. You know that these things happen, but to witness it in front of you, and to be the first person to help in the aftermath takes some processing..
Three Cop cars and a single paramedic roared up simultaneously from three different directions after ten minutes. I was so glad to see them.
Our city no longer has an ambulance base, so it was just the one medic there when we left after twenty minutes. I think it was just broken bones and bruises, but that would be a long wait if more than one needed urgent care. As it was, one guy from the van had to lie in the road with his leg snapped in half all that time, we covered him in a blanket, that's all we could do.

[Drawweight]

Had that happen to me with less serious consequences.

I was travelling along a B road in my milk van heading towards a crossroads as I did most days of the week when a car just shot straight across in front of me. I didn’t even have time to react and clipped the rear end.

It was an old guy and the first thing he said when he got out was ‘you were going a bit fast weren’t you’ I honestly don’t know if he’d seen me and thought he had time to make it or he just didn’t know that he was supposed to stop.

Fortunately his son (I think) had been following behind and he just took over and it all got sorted out in the end.

That was one of those junctions with the layout and elevation of the road if you didn’t either know it was there or see the signs it would be very easy to miss.

[Ian Geary]

In 25 years of driving I've never witnessed or been in a serious collision (been side swiped and flung over the bonnet of a car on my motorbike though).

I guess it's on the long list of "it won't happen to me". I think action films/TV don't help as they give the idea obstacles can be swerved around, when in reality physics takes over completely.

Just been reading an old copy of "modern classics".
Improvements in car safety have come with big increases in weight, and power, and therefore complexity.

Much as I love the idea of an old 80s or early 90s car for simplicity, I think I'll stick with my 1800kg 5 series for family duties, and constantly diagnosing what the hundreds of error codes mean.

[Johnnytheboy]

Driving once near Bruton I watched a Mercedes completely fail to notice a give way sign at a crossroads and shoot through the 2-3 second gap between two cars on the B road he shot across at 40-50 mph.

There but for the grace of God...

[neutral 3]

I came across an RTA @ High Beach Epping Forest in the late 70s. A lady front passenger had gone through the screen of a MK2 Escort.

[Starfighter]

Courty - what do you have?

Some older cars can be retrofitted with some level of side protection. The Spritfire, Herald and GT6 being an example.

[Enut]

OP -'Excessive speed had nothing to do with the accident'?

Surely travelling at 35 mph through a give way junction was excessive speed?

I have been on the scene of a major accident outside my property, sadly fatal for the speeding driver involved, it's not very pleasant and does make you think. As my father used to say 'speed doesn't kill, inappropriate speed kills.'

[MitchT]

I have a 22 year old E36 3 Series (a 30 year old design) which I've owned from new and love. It needs a few thousand pounds spending to get it to top condition and I'm very keen to do so. However, I sometimes wonder if I'd be better off putting the money towards an F32 4 Series coupé as I'd more than likely walk away from a collision in that which would have far more severe consequences in the E36.

[Centurion07]

Enut said:

OP -'Excessive speed had nothing to do with the accident'?

Surely travelling at 35 mph through a give way junction excessive speed was the reason for the accident?

I have been on the scene of a major accident outside my property, sadly fatal for the speeding driver involved, it's not very pleasant and does make you think. As my father used to say 'speed doesn't kill, inappropriate speed kills.'

FTFY.

[Paulm4]

A few years ago I saw the aftermath of a head on collision between a Mk1 Golf and a modern car. It was on a NSL A road and the tourist in the modern car were driving on the wrong side of the road around a blind corner. The entire front of the Golf looked like tinfoil that someone had scrumpled up, the modern car had damage but limited to the crumple zone.
The Golf driver was alive but seriously injured, it was surprising that he wasn't dead tbh.
It made me think about car choice for a long time after that, my summer car is an 80's Volvo, considered safe at the time but probably a deathtrap compared to modern design.

[Dr Jekyll]

Enut said:

OP -'Excessive speed had nothing to do with the accident'?

Surely travelling at 35 mph through a give way junction was excessive speed?

I have been on the scene of a major accident outside my property, sadly fatal for the speeding driver involved, it's not very pleasant and does make you think. As my father used to say 'speed doesn't kill, inappropriate speed kills.'

What would be a non excessive speed for going through a STOP sign without stopping when another vehicle is about to pass through the junction?

[Enut]

Dr Jekyll said:

Enut said:

OP -'Excessive speed had nothing to do with the accident'?

Surely travelling at 35 mph through a give way junction was excessive speed?

I have been on the scene of a major accident outside my property, sadly fatal for the speeding driver involved, it's not very pleasant and does make you think. As my father used to say 'speed doesn't kill, inappropriate speed kills.'

What would be a non excessive speed for going through a STOP sign without stopping when another vehicle is about to pass through the junction?

That is the point I was making.

[Kawasicki]

Enut said:

Dr Jekyll said:

Enut said:

OP -'Excessive speed had nothing to do with the accident'?

Surely travelling at 35 mph through a give way junction was excessive speed?

I have been on the scene of a major accident outside my property, sadly fatal for the speeding driver involved, it's not very pleasant and does make you think. As my father used to say 'speed doesn't kill, inappropriate speed kills.'

What would be a non excessive speed for going through a STOP sign without stopping when another vehicle is about to pass through the junction?

That is the point I was making.

If the van had driven through the junction at 20 mph then the resulting crash would have been less dangerous.

[Centurion07]

Kawasicki said:

If the van had driven through the junction at 20 mph then the resulting crash would have been less dangerous.

It was the not stopping that was the issue, not the speed.

[Kawasicki]

Centurion07 said:

Kawasicki said:

If the van had driven through the junction at 20 mph then the resulting crash would have been less dangerous.

It was the not stopping that was the issue, not the speed.

Speed was a factor, it determined the severity of the resulting accident.

[courty]

Enut said:

OP -'Excessive speed had nothing to do with the accident'?

Surely travelling at 35 mph through a give way junction was excessive speed?

I have been on the scene of a major accident outside my property, sadly fatal for the speeding driver involved, it's not very pleasant and does make you think. As my father used to say 'speed doesn't kill, inappropriate speed kills.'

Obviously, any speed other than starting from 0mph from the STOP line was excessive.
I meant that neither vehicle was being driven with excessive speed per se. Imposing a 40mph, or even 30mph limit on that section of NSL road would not have changed anything.
Other than closing the junction to moving traffic, or imposing a, say 5mph speed limit along both roads would possibly have mitigated the collision. The cause of the collision was failure to observe a STOP junction, hence the van travelled through it at speed, probably 30mph, maybe 40mph.
The van came from nowhere in a flash, it was visible maybe for four or five metres before the collision..even 20mph covers four metres in a flash...not easy for me to judge the speed, it looked like a missile strike, but over such a short distance it was difficult for me to approximate the speed..anywhere between 20-40mph I would say, probably 30mph, which is fastish for a single track lane I admit.
The Qashqai was travelling at about 35mph, and I generally take that junction/corner at 45-50mph, so he was driving ultra carefully.

[Centurion07]

Kawasicki said:

Centurion07 said:

Kawasicki said:

If the van had driven through the junction at 20 mph then the resulting crash would have been less dangerous.

It was the not stopping that was the issue, not the speed.

Speed was a factor, it determined the severity of the resulting accident.

Severity of the result is not, and has nothing to do with, cause.

Excessive speed did not cause the van to carry on when he should've stopped.

There was no excessive speed to cause this crash. It was caused by the van driver not paying attention.

[irocfan]

Ian Geary said:

Much as I love the idea of an old 80s or early 90s car for simplicity, I think I'll stick with my 1800kg 5 series for family duties, and constantly diagnosing what the hundreds of error codes mean.

this ^^^ I'd love an early 70's TransAm/Camaro but a car with the structural integrity of a paper bag is a worrying thought (and I'm one of those who thinks a hammer is a complicated piece of equipment! )