Originally Posted by
Si
He wouldn't have only had 2 seconds though, would he? He would have had double that: Same reaction time, and more than double of 'doing' time.
No one is blameless here. TBH it feels pretty crass to be arguing semantics when a guy's life has been lost, but at the same time it fuels discussion. I'm not anti biker in any way at all, however, to me, if you insist on doing a ton coming up to a junction, no matter what you are in control of, you're going to have some seriously bad luck at some point. Yes, the driver shouldn't have gone, but at the same time, it's not unreasonable to expect him to make judgements on what the speed of the motorcyclist appeared to be (remember, humans are, atrociously bad at guessing speed)
To say it would make no appreciable difference is way off the mark to me. Plus the fact that the impact speed would have been MUCH lower. Crap extrapolation (as my A level physics was appalling) but if we say that he had 1 second to react, and 1 second to perform a manoeuvre at 100, then surely if he was doing 50 he'd have the same 1 second to react, and 3 seconds to slam on the anchors. I'm not too up on braking distances for motorbike, but I would have thought that slowing from 50 to 0 in 3s isn't unachievable, is it? Certainly a lot more realistic than 100 to 0 in 1s.
Stopping distance goes up with the square of speed doesn't it? Or something like that? So it would take 4 times the distance to stop from twice the speed.
Most of us drive enthusiastically on the roads, but most of us are sensible enough to say 'junction coming up, I'd better back off a bit, and at least cover the brakes'.
EDIT: Quick Google and some fag packet maths suggests car stopping distances are about 125ft from 50, so you're looking at 500 from 100. I am NOT solely blaming the rider here, but the world is full of morons on vehicles, anticipating that in predictable scenarios is surely part of good road craft?