trashbat wrote:...there is no requirement or duty of care or any kind of onus on them to be that expert. Not being that highly insightful person doesn't automatically increase blame/responsibility/whatever when someone else wrongs you.
I am sorry - we will have to disagree...
while at a conceptual level you are are right that the rider doesn't have to be an expert - it is only correct in isolation...
once you put it back in the context of that situation then the rider has to accept some responsibility for what happens... they are expected to be expert enough to consider the outcome of their actions on other road users - otherwise they should not be on the road - same for all road users.
the rider does not have to filter - just because something is legal doesn't mean you have to do it, or even that it would be right to do it
and if the rider does choose to filter, then they need to do so properly and with due care and attention to other traffic...
As we saw on the video the rider just kept repeating that they were filtering and that filtering is legal - so what?!
The driver could equally have argued that he was just driving forward and driving forward is legal - it is an irrelevant argument.
I am sorry, I have a lot of respect for most bikers, and I do understand that they are more vulnerable than other road users, however they can also be very entitled and aggressive / over-assertive - I have seen too many examples of justifying bad riding based on 'it is filtering' as though that somehow gives the rider carte blanche, and means that all car drivers are now in the wrong and should move out of the way because 'I am filtering' - and?! - they still need to observe the rules of the road, they still need to analyse and understand what others are doing, they still have to take responsibility for their own actions...
Yes, it is possible that the car driver suffered road rage and if so, not acceptable - and the solution here would be more education of drivers to understand about bikes & filtering - however there is no sign that he was cross - more bemused and surprised!
Or it is possible that he misjudged where her foot was - in which case we need to also ask why, having assertively overtaken a whole queue of traffic the biker felt a need to hold up the car / not move off in a timely manner?
I think that there is a comment above that the biker eventually leaves the scene turning left... if so - why was she filtering up the right-hand side of the traffic? That would be bad riding would it not, moving from assertive to agressive... looking again at the video - at 3.12 it is clear that she is indeed turning left, into an area where had she been turning alongside the cars she would have been in the hatched area - sorry that is bad riding, and it is interesting to see that bit of the video has been edited to remove the majority of the turn... yet it is a t-junction and therefore she is either going left or right, and clearly not right - so all in all, not a wise set of choices...
I think this is a clear indication of a biker who believes that as there is a 'right' to filter, she will use it - without really thinking through the consequences or even what would happen once the lights go green and she is now on the right-hand side of traffic and needing to turn left... into a hatched area...
I am not saying that it was a good outcome - no-one would want to see someone else being injured... but I do think that actually there were errors made by the rider and the whole premise of the video is 'I was filtering' therefore I was right - nope, while filtering is legal, you still have many responsibilities around how you do it and how you ride, and it would appear that some of those responsibilities were forgotten...
I am not anti-biker by any means and go out of my way to make space for them and let them past etc. - but all road users must take responsibility for their own actions, we do not live / drive / ride in a vaccuum...
Alasdair