There was further frustration last week for all those who are frankly sick and tired of being expected to drive on their own side of the road, when it emerged that the BMF are kicking up a fuss about a very sensible, and hopefully precedent-setting court decision last year which declared that to require lorry drivers – and hence, by logical extension, the rest of us – to remain on their own side of the road when cornering is to “impose an unacceptably high standard on the driver.”
This is quite obviously a very fair a just conclusion for Lord Justice Richards (presiding) to have arrived at. It is only a shame that he did not add that to expect drivers to remain under the drink drive limit at all times is to impose too high a standard of sobriety.
The fact that the lorry driver in question happened to collide with motorcyclist Robert Whiteford of Soham, Cambridgeshire whilst straying a tad into the opposite lane – as Jonathan Watt-Pringles defending QC for the lorry driver’s Lithuanian employers quite rightly argued – happened “for one reason and one reason only – because the claimant was driving [sic] right close [sic] to the centre” of the road.
The fact that Mr Whiteford lost a leg as a result of being allegedly too close to the white line denoting the limit of his side of the road is clearly unfortunate – but hardly grounds for over-severe censure of only-human lorry drivers.
Hopefully the BMF will see reason and abandon their misconceived campaign, leaving the rest of us to drive wherever we see fit without having to worry constantly about fuss-making motorcyclists getting in our way with their unstable insufficiently-wheeled machinery and fragile bodies.
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