The Crash Detectives Season 5 Episode 2

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The Crash Detectives Season 5 Episode 2  #TheCrashDetectives #RealityInsightHub   🎞 Please subscribe to our official channel to watch the full movie for free, as soon as possible. ❤️Reality Insight Hub❤️ 👉 Official Channel: https://www.dailymotion.com/TrailerBolt 👉 THANK YOU ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Transcript

00:00Every serious incident on the road requires forensic examination.

00:08We've got to start asking the question, why is this happening?

00:12Pedestrian's been struck in the cold-off area of this dual carriageway.

00:15The car is filled to stop.

00:17And inside the cordons, dedicated officers take on this challenge.

00:22Clearly, I don't think this came out of the factory sounding like that.

00:26This person's lost their life for whatever reason. We're here trying to establish why.

00:34Only now can I realise that that is actually in the middle of my lane.

00:38Tracking down the evidence.

00:40This is really important. This is key.

00:42To get to the truth.

00:43Once we've got somebody, that's going to put him in the driver's seat.

00:46There's a death on the road.

00:48So we've got to be investigating properly and thoroughly.

00:51This is a proper head scratcher, this is.

00:54All in a day's work for the crash detectives.

01:10Ambulance Service.

01:12Hello, I knocked one bicyclist.

01:16Quick, please.

01:18OK, so I need you to tell me exactly what's happened.

01:21I'm diving.

01:23And, er...

01:24I...

01:25I...

01:26I...

01:27So you've knocked the cyclist off his bike?

01:29Yes, yes.

01:30Can you speak to traffic wheels please and find out whether they've got any cameras on the 840?

01:37Hello, 1926.

01:39There's an ambulance, they're already off at the scene.

01:42And the cyclist is being worked on by paramedics.

01:48That's the driver.

01:49Critical care doctors are now treating a seriously injured woman.

01:55White van, yeah?

01:56After her push bike was struck by a van.

01:59There's a vehicle that's involved in this.

02:01You ready for the index?

02:02It's a box, sort of, with our own wife.

02:04Right.

02:05Earl's speaking to the driver who's got him detained.

02:07Hi.

02:08Hi.

02:09Hi.

02:10Hi.

02:11Hi.

02:12Hi.

02:13Hi.

02:14Hi.

02:15Hi.

02:16Hi.

02:17Hi.

02:18Hi.

02:19Hi.

02:20Hi.

02:21Hi.

02:22Hi.

02:23Hi.

02:24Hi.

02:25Hi.

02:26Hi.

02:27Hi.

02:28Hi.

02:29Hi.

02:30Hi.

02:31Hi.

02:38Hello, everyone.

02:40Hi, wellbeing then.

02:41All right?

02:42aquí

02:43all right?

02:44Yeah.

02:45Yeah.

02:46Do you want to go and have a look?

02:47Yeah.

02:48Yeah.

02:49This is just so smooth, there's no debris on it to make any scratches.

02:52This collision has happened on a concrete road, so the chances of finding clues on its

02:58surface are limited.

02:59what we'd be looking for would be the sort of the scratches in the road surface

03:04the grindings rather than you're not going to get that this is a big black

03:09tire marks on this because there's just not the bitumen to melt and come up

03:16the 52 year old cyclist was out with a group of riders taking part in a regular

03:22time trial event

03:25that bike's definitely involved yeah okay so he's just sort of first on the scene

03:30he's just come across it minutes after yeah okay with no evidence found on the road surface so far

03:39there are signs of disturbance along the verge you start to get

03:45this sort of stuff the fresh grindings on the on the bits of stone where they've all been kind of

03:54ground into each other and I would have if that had been a vehicle traveling over it I would have

04:00expected a bit more but that's that's fresh but there's nothing I could really say was definitely

04:06the van with the driver in custody focus now turns to his vehicle as you can see this is all bent back

04:20here there's a huge amount of damage today to this wing into this headlight you've got this this black

04:28stripe along here which which looks like tire rubber potentially impact marks here you've got these

04:38scratches coming back across here as well strike the yellow paint there to be interesting to see if

04:46there's anything with yellow paint on the bicycle

04:53so this is obviously the part of the the vehicle that's hit the hit the cyclist and for a person to

05:05cause that much damage to a vehicle it's got to have been a a fairly heavy impact

05:11it's very very straight this section of road there's no hard shoulder we've got this edge of carriageway

05:26marking here in a small section of concrete beyond it but nowhere to cycle if you're a cyclist other than

05:34the carriageway so can this help identify a point of impact so it's going to be a bit of a close

05:44examination to see if we can find little telltale scratches on the road surface that's fresh that's

05:52recent it's about the width of a bicycle tire if this is our point of impact then it means that our

06:03van drivers crossed this edge of carriageway marking this rumble strip have you found a

06:13an impact mark yeah there's a potential point of impact um it's that side of the edge of carriageway

06:19marking so it's it's off the lane entirely it's off the lane yeah alongside the left hand side of the

06:25rumble strip yeah so just there something's been kind of almost rotated so all of the carriageway is

06:37swept quite regularly by vehicle tires passing along as it's cleaned essentially this section of the

06:43road isn't all of the dirt that's collected there has been cleaned off the road there are stripes

06:50in it lines that we call call them striations they're indicative of of something sort of being scraped

06:56across the road surface

06:57so at the moment we know potentially where the vans hit the bike and then i can attribute things to the

07:14cyclist and to to the van where i can

07:16we start to get some of the stones from the verge have been brought out onto the road

07:29here

07:36so this is where we start getting the headlight debris

07:38four is quite a recognizable chunk of the mirrored backing of the the headlight and this is this is

07:48sort of sections of um the the glass from the front of the headlight that have been spread across the

07:54road adds a bit more weight to that being our point of impact because if he's traveling this way

08:02all of this debris isn't going to be behind the point of impact

08:15the helmet looks like it's hit the gravel because it's got lots of little indentations in it

08:32there's a lot of scuffing on the saddle there

08:52i think i will have a good look at that when i've taken the photos and come back to it because i don't

09:00want to move it too far from where it is until i've recorded where it is if you see what i mean

09:12i'm trying to think about what i've seen with the bike and what damage there is to it

09:20how that fits in with the van

09:30the problem with this fan is it's just got so many little dinks over its life

09:42so that's fresh so they have come down this side of the uh the van you've touched that

09:59yeah that's that's fresh rubber on there as well

10:04so does this mean that an obvious section of damage to the bonnet can be dismissed

10:09there's no evidence that of it being sort of fresh if you can feel the kind of the grit on the surface

10:16of it um i would have expected that that would be cleaned off it does look like it's old doesn't it

10:22because those dead flies there would have been cleaned away yeah yeah and an inspection of the van's load is starting to cause concern

10:33oh that's very full that is jammed it's jammed packed

10:38is he moving house i don't know what they've said he's doing but there's a lot of stuff in there

10:44suitcases battery chargers wash machine he goes right to the front as well

10:50when we do the vehicle exam we get it weighed yeah because it's gonna be our three and a half tonner isn't it

10:58yeah so we've weighed an issue

11:07have you got the keys for

11:08have you got an abs warning light on and stuff as well abs and a service light

11:19so um whether whether it's breaking is as good as it should be you know yeah

11:31it's passport and wallet what country is it romanian

11:40yeah that's him

11:41i don't think of any she's a local man as well if he's been in and around this area for that long

11:49then you'd expect him to have seen the time trials plenty of times before wouldn't you yeah

12:02are you responsible careless driving today i don't think i am no

12:07okay well i'll take you back a little bit what can you see on that carriageway when you first come

12:12on there i see bicyclists on the on the road all the time i keep it uh i pass few of them okay so

12:24where which lane were you in first time i've been on the lane uh one so you're in lane one yes what

12:30speed you're driving at that point 60 65 okay the van it was fully loaded it's uh you couldn't go

12:39or even if you want to okay as the driver continues to give his version of events

12:49the bike's now been recovered from the scene

12:52this is the rear wheel of the the bike you can see that during the collision it's it's sort of

13:02come apart that's completely split and if you look inside you can see that the spokes are damaged

13:11they've come away from the rim some of them have come away from the hub in the center

13:16um that's pretty catastrophic damage to that wheel

13:24it's obviously a very high-end time trial type pedal cycle

13:31if you look at the shape of the shape of the fork so this sort of blade shape

13:35and the same with everything back here that seat post is is very sort of aerodynamic

13:40instead of your standard drop bars on a road bike we've got this setup

13:50this is where the cyclists would be sort of leaning forward on those holding onto this part get tucked

13:56right forward into that aerodynamic position so this the the end of the bars here you can see both of

14:02them they they would be attached to the end of there they should form a straight line so at some point

14:08those bars have dug into the ground and that end has snapped off

14:18these yellow bits here these are the brake pads it's got these sort of deep rim carbon wheels which

14:24means you need to have a particular compound on these brake pads it's not the sort of thing your

14:32average cyclist or your average commuter would be riding it's been specifically set up to be exactly

14:38right for her to be able to to ride this bike this is a woman who's serious about her cycling

14:44but there's also some less obvious damage we can see that we've got this mark on the tire this white colored scuff

15:03this is this is what the rest of the rim looks like this lovely smooth edge here

15:07and we suddenly get to this section in line with this mark and we've got this this angular edge it's

15:18chipped away this damage still needs to be linked to evidence found at the scene so cath's going to

15:27reconstruct the moment of impact between the van and the bike thankfully they had all the specifications

15:34was built yeah back to what she would have had so this is exactly her size and measurements her size

15:40measurements because they built the previous bike on the night of the crash damage caused during the

15:48collision was captured on camera when i looked at the van i could see that there was a there was a mark

15:54on the front bumper since then some repairs have been carried out to the van

15:59but combined with evidence gathered at the scene there's still enough here to work with

16:07i don't have most of that mark but this bit here yeah is the very top section of that yes that mark so

16:14we can use that we can see from the scene photos taken at the time that's that's sort of straight up and

16:19down there

16:19this is going to tell us exactly where the vehicles were

16:31and what they were doing in relation to each other at the time of the collision

16:36that is where that mark would have been okay

16:39so that's going to be the point of impact there

16:50i see it i i give a space i take myself around like that to pass her

17:01if she was falling into his path that would be a diagonal line across the bumper so she was upright

17:14traveling approximately in line with the van at the time of the collision you see that can i

17:22presume about this so she wanted to work with the ball the same thing yeah yeah yeah yeah the

17:32same thing are the situations like that when you do that type of movement uh

17:37the parcel is moving and you can hurt uh uh knocking i know you say a knock

17:41Like that, exactly like that.

17:44OK.

17:53I stopped the van, yeah.

17:56It's better to show you.

17:58When I'm coming from the van, I'm looking from that side

18:03and I don't see nothing in my back.

18:07And I go around and when I see that the headlights are broken,

18:15I'm looking and now I have a straight vision.

18:20And I see that the bicycle.

18:26So just where was his van at the moment he collided with a cyclist?

18:31If it was where these scratches were found, it didn't make sense.

18:37That mark was outside of the lane,

18:42which would seem to me to be a strange place for an experienced cyclist to be in that circumstance.

18:49So Kath now wants to know how the bike moved during the collision.

18:55The van driving through that back wheel, essentially,

18:59would have caused the back wheel to come off entirely at that point.

19:03We've got this scalloped yellow mark here on the bumper.

19:16And there was another mark at this point at the scene.

19:19So we would have had the brake calipers and brake pads,

19:26that would all have been exposed after this point.

19:30So that is the back of the bike being lifted up into the air.

19:36And then the whole thing would have had to been off the floor to get to about that point.

19:49Then we had that mark on the road,

19:51the only mark we identified on the road at the scene.

19:56After it's been lifted up, the van would have passed by this point

20:00and the bike has come back down onto the road.

20:07We saw the damage to the front wheel that that caused

20:14before tumbling to where it ended up.

20:17With a clear idea of how the bike was struck, focus now turns to the lead-up to the crash.

20:27And Kath suspects those final moments could have been captured by the cyclist herself.

20:40I could see that there was a mount which appeared to be for a cycle computer.

20:45And that told me that there might be an extra piece of data here.

21:05If one had been attached to the bike, it could have been recording the ride.

21:10But in the darkness, it couldn't be found.

21:16Officers returned and they did a proper search in daylight.

21:21And they found a cycle computer.

21:24She can't tell us what happened.

21:32But this might be able to give us those answers that she's not here to give us.

21:37The readings are a clear reflection of how this ride ended in tragedy.

21:47You can see, at this point, we've got the distance doesn't increase any more.

21:55The altitude stays the same.

21:58The orange line, the speed here, drops to zero.

22:02So this is the point at which the collision occurred.

22:08The cyclist had been riding in the time trial event for just nine minutes.

22:15You can see here she's got up to a maximum speed of just over 13 metres per second,

22:22which is going to be about 30 miles an hour, which is impressive for a cyclist.

22:27So she would have been near maximum effort for those nine minutes.

22:36She was very fit, very fast.

22:40She was a very able cyclist.

22:43What drew your attention to the cyclist?

22:51She had in the back as lighting for which I remember.

22:58We know that she was using an incredibly bright flashing rear light.

23:04You're actually doing this with your hands.

23:06Yeah, yeah, yeah.

23:07So is it flashing light?

23:08Yeah, yeah, yeah.

23:09OK, so what colour was that light?

23:10Red.

23:11Red?

23:12I think you're red.

23:13Red.

23:15It was set to an irregular flashing mode,

23:20which would make it more visible than a regular flashing mode

23:23and more visible again than just a static rear light.

23:28But a detail in the data is also adding to how visible the cyclist would have been.

23:35Yellow line we've got is altitude.

23:37You can see that it's climbing, so clearly she's cycling uphill.

23:41It's by no means as dramatic as the graph makes it look, but she is cycling uphill.

23:47And we can see that the very last bit of cycling, she is just accelerating very slightly.

23:54Because we know that she's accelerating, she must have been pedalling.

24:08Pedalling, so biological motion, draws attention.

24:11And it's one of the things that would have made it easier for any driver following her to be able to see that she was there.

24:24So just what could he see as he sat at the wheel of his van?

24:33This is a Vauxhall Movano, which is the same as the van driver would have been driving along this section of road.

24:39It's quite high up.

24:40You've got a much better vantage point than you would have in any of the cars that are going past us at the moment.

24:45So you've come to the first people who are cycling, what have you done there?

24:52I'm looking in the mirror, I put a signal, I'm going, overtaking it.

25:02So we've got a cyclist in lane one, so I've come right over into lane two to go past.

25:06There's absolutely no reason for me to be in that lane with him.

25:13So you say overtaking him was you going up the lane one and the lane two, yeah?

25:16Yes.

25:18Probably not the whole vehicle in the lane two, but I've been to the half in the lane one, half in the lane one.

25:27OK.

25:29But as she retraces the driver's journey, she knows that at the time of the crash,

25:34his van was not in a roadworthy condition.

25:38It was also half a ton overweight.

25:43And from this position in the cab, she's made a key observation.

25:48We've got a huge, huge view, hundreds of metres ahead of us available.

25:56Is it a straight road?

25:58No, no, it's straight road.

25:59Straight road, is it?

26:00Straight road, yeah, yeah.

26:01Yeah.

26:02So your visibility...

26:03100%.

26:05In fact, the driver could have seen at least 500 metres of road ahead.

26:11This section is asphalt and we can see up ahead, the road changes to become concrete, much lighter coloured.

26:21We know that the cyclist was wearing dark blue clothing and it would have provided really good contrast with that light coloured road surface.

26:28At 60 miles per hour, the cyclist could have been within his field of view for 18 and a half seconds.

26:38We're now half a mile from the point of the impact, that very last closing up to the point of the collision.

26:50It's very possible that by this point the driver would have had the cyclist directly in front of him.

26:56From the time you saw the bike?

26:57Yes.

26:58Or the female?

26:59Yes.

27:00Or the flashing light?

27:01Yes.

27:02Is there some sort of time distance you can give us?

27:06How long did you have that?

27:07Seconds.

27:08Seconds?

27:09Seconds.

27:10Okay.

27:11How much space did you give yourself from the front of your van to the back of the bike to start doing a manoeuvre?

27:23Around two metres, something like that, like here to the wall.

27:32To the wall?

27:33Yes.

27:34So from where you're sitting to the wall.

27:35Yeah, yeah, yeah.

27:40He had 18 seconds at least in which to see her.

27:46She was doing everything that she could to be safe, to be visible.

27:52Can you give us any reason why you saw the cyclist but collided with the cyclist?

27:59Don't know. Don't know why. I don't know what happened. I really don't know why.

28:07I ask myself, I will ask probably the whole life, what's happened?

28:14The driver denied causing death by dangerous driving.

28:20But he was found guilty and sent to prison for four years.

28:24He believed that he'd given her enough room.

28:29That is an absolutely catastrophic misjudgment.

28:34And an innocent cyclist has paid for that misjudgment with her life.

28:39The driver's the driver's the driver's the driver's the driver's the driver's the driver's the driver's the driver's the driver's the driver's driver's.

28:44Transcription by CastingWords

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