Whose usually to blame in an accident - a car driver or a motorcyclist?

chippie_minton

Kinda depends who's fault it was.

terrellfastball

Depends on who wasn't paying attention or doing something stupid.

philip_g_marshall2003

Difficult to tell without the full details.

Often a car driver will not look properly and miss a bike.

But then again some (not all by any means) motorcyclists do very dangerous things and only have themselves to blame.

Twisted_Ace

According to U.K. Government statistics (collated from information provided by the police and R.O.S.P.A.), when a motorcycle has an accident involving another vehicle, 75% of the time the other vehicle is at fault.

chris at hornchurch

depends if you are a car driver or a motorcyclist really.
in each case each side blames the other.
car drivers typically blame motor cyclist for improper us of road and speed etc while motor cyclists will always say the car drivers do not look for them and have pulled out in front of them ( even if they are doing 80 mph in a 40 zone)
it's a question of human bias. The reality is often a mix of both with blame not entirely on a single party.
sadly the motorcyclist often comes off worse.
Police reports where an accident scene is investigated will normally be fairly accurate and apportion blame fairly.
the perceived outlook for this car-motorcycle event is at the moment trying to encourage car drivers to look out for the motor cyclists. so one could say in a sort of official way the car driver is therefore mainly to blame. It is not quite that easy though as if you ever loo seriously at motorcyclists driving habits you can see why they are also a danger to themselves. next time you see the road marked off with long herring bones and you see a motorcyclist see if they use it as a overtaking or even acceleration zone.
so in answer to your question.. the official outlook is that the car driver will be to blame first.

Rich

depends what happened obviously, bit of a retarded question.

Crazy Dog

Almost, but not always, the car driver. It really depends on the type of accident.

This link may be interesting: http://www.youclaim.co.uk/Motorcycle%20accident/motorcycle-accidents-analysis.htm

Drama Queen

Impossible to say without details, probably more often than not the driver hasn't seen the biker. I have a bike and cars pull out in front of you all the time..

mungo

car drivers every time.they never see anything on two wheels

Acka

Car driver

The car driver says "I didn't see him"

The biker says "ouch"

UCANTCME

What ever the police report states, thats who will be at fault.

oli c

when a bike is involved then it is usually the bikes fault, yes there is the point that a car driver says i didn see him but if the bike wasnt coming down the side of him into his blind spot then it wouldn of happened anyway. lets face it you dont buy a bike to drive at 30mph and sit in traffic do you. it pisses me off because bikers always go on about how bad car drivers are but the simple fact of the matter is they should abide by the rules just like everyone else and if they want us to give them the same room as we would a car then they shouldn pull into a gap a car cant pull in, there all a bunch of hypocrits who think they rules they want everyone to go by dont apply to them. but statistically cars are involved in more accidents this is because there are so many more cars than there are bikes

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