KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
He must have been going extremely quickly because I didn’t see him. I have footage of the incident if you would like to see it. You can see from the rear footage that he just comes tearing up the road at some speed. After he hit me he came off his bike and has broken both of his kneecaps. I have read that I could go to prison for this offence and I am very scared.
Outcome: This person was charged with causing serious injury by careless driving. He was facing a minimum 12-month disqualification, a community order such as unpaid work, or even prison if the court felt it serious enough.
stretch of the road works, at least two signs had blown over. But it was only from a short stretch of the road works, and the police argued that signs were in place both before and after our client’s piece of footage, and the signs that were still there should have been sufficient to notify him of the speed limit.
When it comes to speed limit signs, the absence of a single or even a couple of signs does not automatically mean you will win. For example, if you enter road works and there are two 50 signs either side of the road, and another few repeater signs, it is not going to be enough to argue that one blown down sign will invalidate the whole limit, especially if you have passed another seven or eight.
But in this case, on reviewing the evidence the court found in our favour. The police had said in their statement that all the signs were in place – whereas our dash cam proved that wasn’t true, and this cast doubt on the prosecution evidence, so the court found our client not guilty. The burden always remains on the prosecution to prove that signage is accurate, and in this case, the court was not satisfied they could prove that.
This could have been very different had we not had the dash cam, because the police would have just had a statement saying all the signs were there, and our client would have had nothing to prove otherwise.
Case 3
Question: I need to be in court for a charge of causing serious injury by careless driving. I had just dropped off a customer and was doing a U-turn. I looked in my mirror and it was clear, I indicated, but as I started the U-turn a motorbike came straight into the side of me.
PHTM MARCH 2025
Despite seeing the footage, the police decided that even though the motorbike was probably speeding, our client still ought to have seen him in his wing mirror. However, the hero in this case wasn’t just the dash cam, but also a well placed ring doorbell from a lady who lived just down the street. The ring doorbell showed the motorbike overtaking another vehicle on hatched markings just a few yards down the road.
We sent both bits of footage to a collision forensic investigator, who did a reconstruction and produced an expert report for the court. When you put the two pieces of footage together, you could determine that when our client checked his mirrors and his blind spot just before completing the U-turn, the motorbike would have overtaking on hatches and so was out of view. And from our dash cam, we further determined he was travelling at about 70 in a 30, meaning our client would have had less than a second to react. And based on that report, the prosecution withdrew.
However, just like with the above cases, this would have been very different had we not had footage. It would have been our client’s word against the motorbike rider’s. And bearing in mind our client was doing a U-turn and a bike had come into the side of him, it would have been very easy for a court to determine that our client must have been at fault.
If you need any advice on motoring matters, please email
advice@pattersonlaw.co.uk or call us on 01626 359800 for free legal advice.
For updates on road traffic law follow us on:
twitter.com/Patterson_law_ or
facebook.com/PattersonLawMotoringSolicitors
69
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76
