M1 Minibus "Accident"

[jont-]

Personally, I find it hard to believe that the mobile phone use will have been a major part of his not reacting to the stopped vehicles.

/confirmation bias Because accepting it could actually have been the cause of the accident would challenge your own view that phone use is safe?

[Horse]

If not the mobile phone convesation, then what?

The minibus had hazard warning lights flashing and the judge said that he should have been able to see the the stopped minibus for 9-11 seconds, which at a limited maximum speed of 56mph means that he travelled between 711 and 869ft without noticing the minibus. .

'Looming' might hold part of the answer. At long distance an object will remain a fairly constant 'dot in the distance', only popping out when much closer.

Also, expectation is that a vehicle ahead will be moving. Sussex Uni did research on this which led to the police adopting 'eschelon' parking (ie fend), which gives both a wider target (sic) which looks sooner and a visual cue (vehicles rarely travel sideways along a motorway).

The only way I can imagine the driver to have managed to miss the minibus for that length of time would be because he was looking at the phone or fiddling with a satnav while carrying on the conversation...

One answer might be inattentional blindness. Wiki says:

Inattentional blindness, also known as perceptual blindness, is a psychological lack of attention that is not associated with any vision defects or deficits. It may be further defined as the event in which an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight. When it simply becomes impossible for one to attend to all the stimuli in a given situation, a temporary blindness effect can take place as a result; that is, individuals fail to see objects or stimuli that are unexpected and quite often salient.


So put the two together: driver not expecting to see parked vehicles ahead + driver distracted so not putting full attention on the road ahead, so seeing what he expects to see.

[Mr Cholmondeley-Warner]

It being dark, I wonder if it's a possibility that he thought the stationary vehicles were on the hard shoulder? I have to say, I don't think that's really any excuse, especially when we find he hadn't even started braking (and the junction was lit anyway). To my mind he's just as culpable as the other truck driver - there must be some mitigating factor that we aren't aware of. But the court has made its decision, we're not trying the bloke here.

[Horse]

TBH, I didn't know that it happened in darkness, in which case the hard shoulder theory is probably very valid - oh look, I didn't think of it!

There have been many cases of drivers seeing tailights in lay-bys and following them, with fatal consequences.

The expectation is 'hazards = hs', along with inattentional blindness from the phone.

[GTR1400MAN]

Last night there was a massive crash on the A12 heading from Colchester to Ipswich. In the distance you could see loads of emergency vehicles with blue flashing lights. Numerous cars with hazard lights flashing, brake lights aglow. I slowed, braking and using hazard lights and came to halt in lane 2 giving myself about 50yds in front as I was tail end Charlie. The Range Rover behind me was fortunate I did, as I watched him approaching in my rear view mirror, saw the front dip violently as he braked hard and I realised he likely wouldn't stop. I moved forward and he came to an ABS chirping halt behind me. Scary.

[Horse]

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... e_vehicles


An analysis of 'looked but failed to see' accidents involving parked police vehicles
oulder of a motorway or dual-carriageway sometimes claim not to have seen it before the collision. Previous research into vehicle conspicuity has taken such 'looked but failed to see' claims at face value, and concentrated on attempting to remedy the problem by making vehicles more conspicuous in sensory terms. However, the present study describes investigations into accidents of this kind which have involved stationary police cars, vehicles which are objectively highly conspicuous. Two laboratory studies showed that experienced drivers viewing a film of dual-carriageway driving were slower to respond to a parked police car as a 'hazard' if it was parked directly in the direction of travel than if it was parked at an angle; this effect was more pronounced when the driver's attention was distracted with a secondary reasoning task. Taken together with the accident reports, these results suggest that 'looked but failed to see' accidents may arise not because the parked vehicle is difficult to see, but for more cognitive reasons, such as vigilance failure, or possession by the driver of a 'false hypothesis' about the road conditions ahead. An emergency vehicle parked in the direction of travel, with only its blue lights flashing, may encourage drivers to believe that the vehicle is moving rather than stationary. Parking at an angle in the road, and avoiding the use of blue lights alone while parked, are two steps that drivers of parked emergency vehicles should consider taking in order to alert approaching drivers to the fact that a stationary vehicle is ahead.

CW, please think about this (LBFTS) with highly conspicuous police vehicles in the context of the other biker hiviz thread.

[martine]

Last night there was a massive crash on the A12 heading from Colchester to Ipswich. In the distance you could see loads of emergency vehicles with blue flashing lights. Numerous cars with hazard lights flashing, brake lights aglow. I slowed, braking and using hazard lights and came to halt in lane 2 giving myself about 50yds in front as I was tail end Charlie. The Range Rover behind me was fortunate I did, as I watched him approaching in my rear view mirror, saw the front dip violently as he braked hard and I realised he likely wouldn't stop. I moved forward and he came to an ABS chirping halt behind me. Scary.

Nice one Mike - you just saved yourself and the other driver a whole lot of grief...advanced skills strike again.

[Gareth]

I didn't know that it happened in darkness

I'd spotted that from the video in the article linked in the second post of the thread ... and commented then about how that might have made a difference.

Regarding conspicuity of emergency vehicles on the hard shoulder of a motorway at night, I've been caught out a couple of times where there's been multiple with flashing lights, which makes it extremely difficult (almost impossible) to see if the adjacent lane is clear.

The worst instance was on the M40 a few years ago when the matrix signs warned that lane one was closed ahead and that an advisory 40 mph limit was in place. Since it was more than scary keeping to 40 mph in lane one I decided it would be too dangerous to do so in lane two. On approach to the line of flashing vehicles on the hard shoulder, my night vision was so fucked up by the bright flashing lights I had trouble spotting a gap in lane two.

[GTR1400MAN]

Interesting point Gareth about the bright flashing lights. The intensity and number of blue flashing lights the other evening blinded your view. All the emergency vehicles had them on, and the gradual closure of lane one was marked with short cones with blue flashing lights on the top. The lights now are almost painfully intense. The same with the amber ones used at road works and the overhead (poorly aligned) arc/halogen lights used for the actual work to take place. If this much flashing was on the 6 o'clock news they have to read out a warning!

[sussex2]

I agree Gareth and find the over use of lights blinding; coupled often with very little advance warning of the situation which I find a bit odd.
This is particularly the case when I drive the MX5 as my eyes are just about level with the headlights of many vehicles.