In the news

Who pays for things like crash investigators in a case such as this?

For the prosecution I assume it's essentially the taxpayer.

For the defence would this only be funded if they qualified for legal aid and have to be self-funded (possibly through insurance if you have any) otherwise?

Or are the majority of experts a Single Joint Expert rather than representing either party?

My dad is an RTC investigator. He is paid by CPS or insurance companies.

In the case of a defender I assume it's paid for by the defendant's legal team. But, I don't know now that legal aid is basically defunct.

My dad is an RTC invesigator.

@crashton? On here?

I know why the prosecution keep going on about the social media comments post the collision, which are largely irrelevant in terms of his guilt or innocence

They're a contemporaneous note from the time, so on first sight they would be useful and may be relevant depending what they say.

Without knowing the exact comments it's hard to make a judgement. But if they corroborate or contradict other statements he made or makes during the trial that could be relevant. They could indicate his intentions / views on the safety of the bike, such as whether he knew or believed there could have been a risk. The references they keep making to that fixeh video might indicate that he thought it was fine to ride everywhere like he was in some alley cat promo video.

But I agree with the sentiment in relation to the papers. It's pretty much positioned as "awful young person didn't give a fuck he killed someone". Which even without seeing the comments I'll go out on a limb as saying is an oversimplification.

That's the point i was trying to get at about time and distance. Not Gravity..

At first I think I would of questioned the expert about if an experienced rider could stop quicker than he but looking at his achievements he is capable of action without thought and that level of zen is what fixeskiddin is all about so i hear.

For an irrelevant but coincidental comparison to get a number the stopping distance compared to thinking distance. This is from highway code for cars

Stopping Distance
20mph 12 Meters / 40 Feet

Thinking distance is double the stopping distance at 20mph. Thinking distance should be comparable no matter what vehicle one is driving I would imagine. We know that in that example graph the stopping distance is 12M so the thinking time has to be > than 12M.

12M is 1.5 Seconds time when you are doing 18mph.

As mmcarthy said before he lost his decimal point, the expert bobby managed to go from 8m per second to 0 in 3.2M or about 3/4 of a second at a constant rate of declaration (so it was either that time or quicker). Given that he has to think about breaking for more than double the stopping distance he basically stopped in half a second from 18mph.

Most people would still be thinking about breaking in that 3/4 of a second and perhaps even twice that length of time.

Either he wasn't going 18mph or he was but he was going to a known stop point in which case i would question if the comparison is relevant.

I've found this to be the case. If I need to slow down quickly, it's an application of back pressure so quickly it does occasionally become a skid.

My dad is an RTC invesigator.

@crashton? On here?

I liked this

Pretty much my questioning a page or two back. Isolated tests cannot be comparable to real world events unless all known variables are replicated within a suitable margin of error.

No way you can replicate successfully an 'oh shit' moment.

Not even scarface could do 10g in a tesco carpark in less than a second.

In other news, I was lambasted for my negative words toward the BBC a short while ago, likening it to clickbait.

How about this wonderful use of language:

...kind of screwed...

Insane. Dismal journalism.

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The idea that you can testing a stopping distance in a car park with somebody that knows their being testing and then compare that to somebody on a busy street who need to react to large numbers of moving objects all around them (many of them inches away from kill them) is moronic and it scares me that the defence don't appear to have done much to debunk it.

Sounded to me like the prosecution's opening argument and cross-examination - don't think the full defence argument has started yet

As @h2o says. I really hope when it is the turn of the defense, there is opportunity to show the holes in static testing. I'm a first class graduate of art, not physics, and I don't believe that the prosecuting argument to a lay person is sound. We'll see.

The BBC have taken a terrible turn for the worst in recent times regarding clickbait headlines and shoddy / meaningless "journalism".

If you look at the top 10 most read section of the BBC throughout the day, you can see the headline change for certain stories as they A/B test ever more clickbait-y headlines to drive more views.

I had a whinge, on here, about their complete dereliction of responsibility to report at a higher level than other titles, recently but i don't think they've read it.

Your post didn't have an exciting enough title, clearly.

An aside story....

When my dad did his bike test back in the day there was an emergency stop section. They did the test in a housing estate and then my dad had to ride around a bit of it while the envidulator hid behind behind a random car or bush. He'd then jump out forcing the emergency stop.

The £5K commuter club!

I am so pleased I don't have to commute, especially to/from/in London.

I wonder how many of these people could save significant sums by cycling:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40936050

£5k suggests there coming some distance, I know it's £5k plus from one of my local stations Portsmouth and southsea, I ride a lot but wouldn't consider that kind of commute.

I've moved out to Herts and try to do the full 27mi commute twice a week or so, at least during summer.

Bishops Stortford is only up the road and would be about the same distance. I've been a bit lazy this week, so should really do the next two days by bike, but depending on traffic it's between 1hr35 (clear roads, green lights and tailwind) and 2hrs each way, so it's not really that practical as an everyday journey.

I've got a Brompton which I used four or five days a week in winter from Tottenham Hale down to Victoria, but if I'm doing the big commute a couple of days a week I tend to just ride the tube the rest of the time.

I'd much prefer to cycle a shorter distance every day, as I did in London. It'd be especially nice if it was all country roads. I like my job but keep thinking I ought to start looking for something closer to home...

£4.8k gets you to Cambridgeshire, a mere 40mins into Kings Cross.

I've been thinking about that for a while; most public transport services only become reasonably priced if you buy season tickets. I reckon it creates a tendency for season ticket holders to get their money's worth by then using public transport as much as they can to justify the expense to themselves.
How about an even more reasonably priced season ticket for, say, any three days a week. The rest of the week you'd have to get on your biek.

I saw something on this a while back, it related to people who worked from home a couple of days a week wanting a reduced season ticket.

Campaign for better transport I think.

I'd like that option, would be really handy.

I dispute whether having a brake would have done anything. I seem to recall he said he rode close to the victim and she stepped back into his path. The details don't matter, a similar thing happened to me earlier this year, and I've got two disc brakes, slammed them on, then skidded along, clipping the bloke, the thing that would have prevented my (minor) accident, and his would have been a lower incoming speed IMO.

From the 1987 NYT article posted a couple pages earlier:

Usually, the bike then skids up to 20 feet before halting completely. As a last resort, the rider can grab the front wheel with his hand.

WTF? Anyone ever tried this? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Would have been 'interesting' if the crash investigators had tested this 'technique' as well...

#handsarethenewdiscbrakes