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By Cessna571
#1906785
This from the BBC News.

I’m failing to see how that barrier swung round, through the car windscreen, narrowly missing the child, without any damage at all the A posts.

With the massive gouge up the bonnet, it’s almost like the BMW has driven into it.

Image
By rdfb
#1906792
Looks to me like the barrier was open such that the car would have driven past the pointy end, except that the barrier had swung out and the driver either didn't notice, hadn't left enough stopping distance or the barrier had suddenly moved such that there wasn't enough time to react. The barrier was free to swing, so after punching a hole in the windscreen, the windscreen itself pushed against the barrier and caused it swing further.

So yes, I think the car was moving, but nothing in the article contradicts that.

(it's at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-l ... e-60916538)
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By TheFarmer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1906796
Looking at the photos, I don't think the barrier was moving at all. I think it was driven into, and the visual angle it was at as the car approached it (end on) made it very difficult to see. Had it been swinging, there wouldn't have been such a linear mark up the bonnet, and such a neat hole in the windscreen.

Either way, it's lucky nobody was killed.
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By rikur_
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1906800
@Cessna571
My instinct is similar to @TheFarmer - i.e. approaching it perfectly end on at eye level it may have been hard to spot - just like converging traffic in VFR! I think you would have been more likely to spot it had it been moving.
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By lobstaboy
#1906811
Local council run dump. As the news item says, the barrier should have been secured. This is why elfin safety gone mad lives in local councils - their employees can't even open a barrier and secure it properly.
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By eltonioni
#1906812
Side note; Journalists have a weird choice of reporting language when it comes to cars. It's as if a vehicle is sentient, not that a person is doing it.

It's always car collides with cyclist. It's never car collides with bicycle or motorist collides with cyclist.

It would be ridiculous to see man collides with hammer or child dies after hitting bullet, so why do we get away with it when we're doing bad things in a vehicle?
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By lobstaboy
#1906821
It's worse than you imply I think. 'Collides with" has a sense of lack of responsibility - it absolves the car (and by extension it's driver) of any blame.
The way it's reported starts with the assumption that the car driver is innocent, which thus subtly implies that the cyclist or the child on the zebra crossing was at fault.
Woke snowflake me, or what?
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By rikur_
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1906845
lobstaboy wrote:It's worse than you imply I think. 'Collides with" has a sense of lack of responsibility - it absolves the car (and by extension it's driver) of any blame.

If I recall correctly, Road Traffic Accidents became Road Traffic Collisions in police parlance, because 'accident' implied the absence of blame. I think the result is that you can have an RTC that isn't really a collision in the English language sense of the word.
By avtur3
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1906849
lobstaboy wrote:It's worse than you imply I think. 'Collides with" has a sense of lack of responsibility - it absolves the car (and by extension it's driver) of any blame.
The way it's reported starts with the assumption that the car driver is innocent, which thus subtly implies that the cyclist or the child on the zebra crossing was at fault.
Woke snowflake me, or what?


Interesting you should make this comment, I have taken exactly this point up with a local media news room. They reported on an accident, where a cyclist died, and stated the "cyclist collided with a van", as you say there is a sort of implied sense of blame when stated like that. Where had the report said the cyclist was "in collision" a van it may have read differently. The point being the cyclist was later found to have been hit by the van, the cyclist was completely innocent. An initial description of "a collision" would have left it open to a later finding of evidence, one way or the other.
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1906901
Our airfield has an identical ‘A’ barrier except it’s dull red oxide colour and fades into the hedge surroundings.
If it’s not clipped open it spontaneously swings back right into the path of an approaching vehicle and stops, end on and all but invisible at mid windscreen level .

It would be dead easy to drive into it and skewer the car even more so if a moron saw it start slowly to swing , tried to ‘race it’

And lost . :roll:

Nah, that geezer was fast asleep and drove onto it.
The clue is in the radiator badge

The barrier is not guilty. :wink:
Last edited by PeteSpencer on Thu Apr 07, 2022 10:33 am, edited 3 times in total.
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By kanga
#1906902
<linguist nerd drift :oops: >

In slight analogy, I recall reading many years ago an article in an academic linguist magazine about how the Russian language allows or even promotes a sense of 'victimhood'. For instance, where English says 'I have a headache', and French and German similarly use an equivalent of 'I have', in Russian the equivalent expression is 'for me the head hurts' (and equivalents for other ailments and body parts). The author suggested that this helps the sufferer feel that s/he if the innocent victim of a malign head.

Possibly marginally pertinent to the current Ukraine situation and to the readiness of many in Russia to accept the Putinesque misinformation: Russians are theinnocent victims because they always are, as nations and individuals ? :?

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