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news
Drummond Road, Inverness (credit: Google Maps)Driver who blamed the sun after breaking cyclist's elbow banned from driving for 12 months and fined £520
A driver in Scotland who injured a cyclist in a collision before blaming the sun for playing a part in the collision has been fined £520 and banned from driving for 12 months.
Andrew Pearson, of Pendle Crescent in Nottingham, hit the cyclist as they rode home at around 4.15pm on August 12 last year, the collision occurring on Drummond Road in Inverness. The 45-year-old driver admitted a charge of careless driving at Inverness Sheriff Court and was fined £520 and banned from the roads for a year, the Press & Journal reported from court.
The cyclist was "directly in front" of Pearson but he failed to spot the rider, causing a collision which saw the victim flung over the handlebars and suffer a fractured elbow.
While the cyclist was taken to Raigmore Hospital for treatment on the fractured left elbow, Pearson notified police at the scene that he was involved.
At court, a witness said they were travelling along Drummond Road at the time of the collision and saw Pearson pull out across the route "directly in front" of the cyclist. The rider "made an attempt to avoid the vehicle but was unable to do so".
Representing Pearson, solicitor Graham Mann, told the court the driver believed the sun had played a role in the incident as "he looked both ways but clearly had not seen the complainer".
The solicitor did however add that Pearson "accepted that he was entirely in the wrong" and that "it could have been far worse", even if he suggested the offence boiled down to "just not seeing someone that he should have seen".
Sheriff Gary Aitken fined Pearson £520 and banned him from driving for 12 months.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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27 comments
I was clipped by a driver 12 or so years ago cycling up hill into a setting sun and that was their first words. Hopefully, I got through to them, that when you can't see you mitigate by slowing down FFS. They seemed to take it it in anyway until the police turned up and their first words were something like 'the sun was in our eyes too' Fortunately, when they clipped the bars of my fixie, I was thrown into a relatively soft ditch and after a quick check in the ambulance, I was given a lift home. I'm still wary of low sunlight and just last night changed my route to avoid it.
Representing Pearson, solicitor Graham Mann, told the court the driver believed the sun had played a role in the incident as "he looked both ways but clearly had not seen the complainer".
The complainer? I assume they mean the cyclist that was progressing along the road expecting all other road users to comply with the highway code and apply caution towards other road users.
The solicitor did however add that Pearson "accepted that he was entirely in the wrong" and that "it could have been far worse", even if he suggested the offence boiled down to "just not seeing someone that he should have seen". So the defendent's solicitor again lining up the driver's failures with a very clear admission that they do not have the necessary skills to drive and needing only a competent judicary to say cheers easy and remove their driving priviliges for a significant period.
"Complainer" in Scottish law is simply the legal term for the person who alleges that a criminal offence has been committed against them, the equivalent of "complainant" in English law. It doesn't imply any judgement about the validity or the justification of the charge.
The fact that the image is a Street View image, not from the event itself, tells you all you need to know about how much drivers are paying attention to cyclists.
To be fair, from the absence of centre line it looks like the road might be too narrow for two vehicles to pass without encroaching on the cycle lane: https://maps.app.goo.gl/xEuTEcyckLP6McPk6
(to be clear, that's just explaining why the car on streetview might be encroaching on an empty cycle lane, not to do with the incident itself)
correct. the advisory cycle lane marking sadly has no effect and drivers attempt to pass while there is oncoming traffic. such road marking is commonplace around inverness in the unenforceable 20mph zones.
utility access installations also tend to be within this marked area, and the resulting unevenness and hazardous road surface causes cyclists not to use the 'lane' .. which tends to prompt asinine whataboutery.
Apart from the fact that there was no opposing traffic in the Street View image in the article, it's right that nothing implicitly prevents encroachment into the cycle lane.
Equally, nothing prevents drivers using the opposing side of the road where there is no conflict; so there is no reason why a driver has to drive in the cycle lane.
Further problems are that the more recent guidance (backed by the catch-all liability for driving without due care and attention) is to pass cyclists with at least 1.5m clearance. While the clearance is not negated by lane markings, that is a fact lost on some drivers.
Similar 'unpassable' cycle lanes used to exist around Windermere and they have been removed. As far as I could see, they were of minimal value to either drivers or cyclists, in terms of convenience or safety.
Yes, I was thinking of those. Only used them a couple of times but in my limited experience drivers behind did seem to appreciate it was not a suitable passing place! Not sure if the visual cues helped.
Nice advisory cycle lanes there (broken lines) - what do they mean? Absolutely nothing!
Even mandatory cycle lanes are pretty much "waste of paint" IMO.
Never mind cycling even - that place looks like "through traffic needs addressing at network level". I'd guess people would vote for not having tankers thundering past only a couple of metres from their front doors! (Yeah I know this is completely standard for a lot of the UK...)
Not sure there's an easy solution to that - that's one of the main routes through the central Lake District and I assume the tanker would be delivering to places along it.
I never said it was easy! Hence reference to "completely standard for the UK".
The "solutions" would almost certainly very expensive, problematic in terms of space / changes to people's routines. But I think it's worth actually asking the question (as if we didn't know this is "normal"): "is it sensible to have a (major) through-traffic route with large commercial vehicles going through a residential area? (And on what was (presumably) originally a cart-track and is now no further from houses?)"
And "is it sensible to have that traffic going at 30mph(+) (I don't know current limit but presumably 30mph?) where children might be out of the door onto a narrow pavement? If not is that because... it's a major through route?"
And presumably this isn't already a motorway (or similar sized route) exactly because terrain is difficult and it's going through a national park? (We couldn't possibly ruin the place like that ... no, we'll just let all the vehicles try to get through on the old road... which at least has the very small consolation of limiting traffic because congestion?)
All for challenging the assumptions and status quo. But this isn't just a through route, it's a "to route" - the topography means there's little flat-ish land, and this road (and the commercial vehicles on it) are supplying those residential areas built along the valley. There's the A6 and M6 for those going further.
Indeed - but again these are perhaps questions we should keep asking. Even if the immediate answer is "well we are where we are" or "how on earth will would we find money or time to change that?"
In the UK by default a to route is a through route (except for some cul-de-sacs). In some other places though that less generally the case (see also "monofunctional roads" and (for residential areas) use of one-way streets).
How does that compare with here - how does that change things? Was it always that way? (No). Does that change things for the better - or rather - what are the pros and cons? What if any of that could we benefit from here?
4.15 pm in August: even in Inverness the sun is still going to be pretty high in the sky. What direction was he looking, to claim it was in his eyes?
You say "even in Inverness" – actually it would be higher at that time on that day than it was in London, sunset Inverness 14/8/24 21.01, in London on the same day 20.24.
Not higher, just in view longer. At 1615hrs, the height of the sun would be 35.76° in Inverness, but 36.78° in London.
The sun in the incident would have been at 235.15°. If the location is the one in the photo in the article, the sun would have been slightly further right than the direction of travel from which the cyclist was coming for the driver and, I think, above the height of the bungalow to the right.
If only raising one's right hand as a salute would shield the driver's eyes from the sun to see the road clearly...
It doesn't say that he was driving a Tesla…
I stand corrected.
Your shadow in London will be shorter
235.15° being the azimuth and 35.76° the elevation for the non astronomers.
Basically South West and just under the half way 45° angle up in the sky. So yep just above rooftops
Been riding lately with it at 22°-25° on a similar bearing and it's felt sketchy as hell.
Bit of amateur sleuthing (it's a slow workday): if the picture of the top of the article is the location of the incident, the buildings to the right centre of the picture are about 40 m away according to Google Maps, if we give the buildings a generous height of 5 m (they appear to be bungalows) then the angle from the corner to the top of the buildings is about 7°, so the sun would be five times higher than the rooftops, i.e. in no position to be directly in the eyes of somebody looking along the flat plane of the road.
Surely blaming the sun is not mitigation but confirmation of guilt?
Not mitigation, but distraction. What reason(s) would you come up with for a presumed lack of concentration?
He came out of nowhere?
Blindspot?
I don't think - 'clearly going over the speed limit, so I taught road tax dodger a lesson' would work!
I think it would be fairer to blame the moon - as in "my client is a loony".
Must be an April fool. Seems like about the right punishment for once!
Driver was a long way from home though... Nottingham to Inverness.
Best April Fool story so far, someone using the "sun" defence, in Scotland as well, and actually not getting away with it!
Hopefully it wasn't just a totting up of points.
This should 100% be the minimum sentence for this sort of thing though. You are admitting that:
A) You are incapable of seeing well enough to accurately decide if its safe to complete a manoeuvre
B) Admitting that you can't drive to the conditions and pulled out despite knowing that your vision was seriously impaired.
This is what baffles me about the excuses that judges accept. They are admitting they are a bad and dangerous driver and the judge takes that as a mitigation in their sentencing.