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BRITCOM 4
  • 22 hours ago

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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 the steel carriageway.
00:15The car is filled for 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 truce.
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, so 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.
00:58The End
01:00514 of you.
01:14Go ahead.
01:15Can I just pass you the driver's details please?
01:17Yeah.
01:18What looks like has happened is the male's pulled into the yard,
01:21coming to work, and it looks like there's a female hit by the car.
01:25Oh, thank you, thank you.
01:27I'm going to come in a second.
01:29I'm going to sit by him.
01:31We'll do a breath procedure, and we'll go from there, all right?
01:39The driver of a black Ford Mondeo is now under arrest.
01:46His car has struck a 34-year-old woman who was riding an electric scooter.
01:53It was an ambulance that we were here first.
01:54Ambulance. All right, we were here first.
02:00So she's been coming from this direction, down this section of road,
02:04at the same time as the Mondeo's been coming this way.
02:07As she's gone past the site entrance just up ahead,
02:11he's turned in for whatever reason, doesn't appear to have seen her.
02:16This is the state that the e-scooter's ended up in.
02:22That's obviously the sort of footplate and the connecting parts of it.
02:33So we've got the handlebars there.
02:35OK, there we go, that's the headlight sort of built into the e-scooter.
02:39The injured woman had been on her way to work.
02:46It could well be, yeah, it could be a protein shake.
02:50She's got her wallet in here as well, just so we know.
02:53She was treated by paramedics on the roadside.
02:56So we had an update from the hospital.
02:58Yeah.
02:59It's life-changing injuries to her right leg.
03:04She has got a bump on her head, didn't have a helmet on, no.
03:06Doesn't appear she had any protective equipment on at all.
03:10With debris scattered across this scene,
03:13it's starting to reveal how the car and rider made contact.
03:18Obviously, we've got our piece of missing number plate,
03:21which is over in the scene over there.
03:24So this would be the first point at which she impacted the car.
03:28So her leg's been on the scooter, so probably a little bit higher than my foot on the floor,
03:34but essentially here.
03:37Her leg has taken the full force of the car hitting her.
03:41So that's caused her to lean over onto the car.
03:46This dent here will be her hip.
03:49And then you can see cleaning marks coming up here.
03:53So indicating she's slid up the bonnet.
03:56And then impacted the windscreen.
04:03The makeup's come off in the glass.
04:08So that tells me that this is likely to be a strike from her face and head.
04:16And she's continued to travel sort of over the top of the car.
04:22Towards the end of coming over the car, we've got a cleaning mark
04:25which comes down to this corner of the rear windscreen.
04:29And the impact on that's caused the windscreen to smash
04:34and then she'll have come off the back of the car.
04:39The damage is a clear indication of the forces involved.
04:42Now Kath wants to know where both vehicles were on the road at the time they collided.
04:51So we've got this mark here.
04:59We can see in the dirt and grit something hard metallic has been pushed down into the road surface.
05:05So this is quite a heavily salted, gritted piece of road.
05:10You'd expect that if it happened last night or yesterday, there would be a layer of grit over the top of it.
05:16So that is fresh. That's happened this morning.
05:21And it's in the right place and it's heading in the direction of our scooter.
05:26That is my point of impact between the vehicle and the scooter.
05:40And there's more to indicate how this collision has unfolded.
05:44If you look at the road surface, there's a lot of fresh scratches in this area,
05:50which is made by all of these little bits and pieces being pushed along the road.
05:55So we can see a whole series of them leading that way,
05:58which shows us the direction that the scooter rider's gone.
06:00This scuff here was produced as the tyre was dragged across the road surface,
06:19which is likely to be at marker three.
06:23So we've got this line going through here.
06:26So that front wheel's just been pushed into the road surface
06:29and dragged along it.
06:35But there's now a question over the distance between the point of impact
06:39and where the car has come to rest.
06:42Because you'd like to think once you've struck something in the road,
06:45you were going to slam on the brakes.
06:48Yeah, you'd think so.
06:51Doesn't look like there's any brake marks, is there?
06:53Nothing that I can see.
06:55Looking at the lack of marks on the road,
06:57I don't think that the position of the car in relation to the scooter is any indication of speed.
07:02I think he's just rolled here after the collision.
07:07The man at the wheel told police that he just didn't see the scooter rider.
07:13As he turned into the yard, he only heard the impact and his windscreen shattered.
07:18But the evidence still needs to be examined from all available angles.
07:28The security office just over there.
07:32Yeah.
07:32I've got a CCTV camera on the pole.
07:37Just round there.
07:37And this is the CCTV from that.
07:40I'm trying to look.
07:41She's got a light on and she's going to make her way down to the point of collision about here.
07:58You could see that bright headlight coming along in a nice straight line.
08:03Nice and controlled speed.
08:04She makes progress towards the scene.
08:10But another camera is also recording as the car driver approaches.
08:16So you see his headlights reflected in this car first.
08:20There they are.
08:21And then he'll come along here.
08:24Starts braking.
08:30As he comes into the shot there, you can see the center line of the road.
08:35And he's already starting to cut across it.
08:41His turning's here.
08:43He's already across onto the off side of the road at that point.
08:46You can see the brake lights are illuminated.
08:52But it doesn't look like he's braking harshly.
08:55He's just sort of gradually slowing down as he moves into the site.
08:59And just at this point, you see her do a little swerve.
09:07She's now leaning away from the car slightly.
09:11I think at that point she's probably realised what's going to happen.
09:16It doesn't look like he's going to be in the car.
09:21While the footage has captured the collision,
09:24it's now raising further questions.
09:27Looking at that CCTV as it is, that light appears to be incredibly bright.
09:36It was about 20 minutes before dawn.
09:39It was not light yet, and yet the scene appears to be quite well illuminated,
09:44even into the background there.
09:49I think everyone who saw it was quite surprised at how obvious we thought the e-scooter rider would be.
09:56And that the collision actually took place.
09:59But enquiries don't stop there.
10:02I want to see it from the driver's point of view.
10:07That might well be very, very different to the point of view of a CCTV camera.
10:10And I think to be fair to all parties, I need to make sure that what I'm seeing is,
10:15as was seen by the people there at the time.
10:17With the driver facing potentially serious charges,
10:25the team have gone back to the scene of the crash to carry out a reconstruction.
10:30The CCTV camera that was recorded the collision is way up there on a pole,
10:41and that's obviously a very different angle to the angle that the driver would have seen it.
10:47Plan is, we'll start at point of impact and work our way back.
10:50I spent a little bit of time working out the maths, working out where the car and the e-scooter
10:57would have been relative to each other on the approach to the point of impact.
11:02We're going to reposition them both at various points, take photographs,
11:07which will show us whether or not the e-scooter rider would have been easily visible.
11:14But the position of each vehicle isn't the only detail that's been carefully planned.
11:21It's important to do the reconstruction at the equivalent time, not the same time of day,
11:25but the equivalent time, so when the sun's in the same position.
11:29This happened in civil twilight, so that's when the sun is between minus six degrees,
11:34so below the horizon, and the point that we've got sunrise.
11:40It is 5.46, so we've got half an hour until hopefully the light should be right to get going.
11:50Getting the lighting exactly right is really key, particularly when we're looking at people's
11:57viewpoints, so that we're producing something that's representative of what happened prior to
12:03the collision. And as the team take up their positions, the pressure is on.
12:09In civil twilight, the light is changing really rapidly. I wanted to get the whole thing done
12:15within 15 minutes, if I could.
12:17So that's point of impact, so now if we move it back.
12:29So the camera was inside the car, and we moved the car and the e-scooter back from the point of impact.
12:40It was a huge amount of work in this case.
12:53But it's absolutely worth it to make sure that the outcome is fair for everyone involved.
12:56And there's good.
13:07Next!
13:11You've gone behind the cars now.
13:13And those cars were there. This whole row was full at the time of the collision.
13:18And now analysis can begin.
13:41So that's from 80 metres. The car there is 80 metres from the point of impact.
13:46And then it's going to be 10 metre increments from there.
13:50So I chose 80 because I was fairly confident that she wouldn't actually be in view at all at 80.
13:57Yeah.
13:58And she isn't.
13:58I suppose the issues we've got here. We've got this row of bollards.
14:04We've got a couple of lampposts. We've got the signs as well.
14:08And that's where our e-scooter rider is going to appear from.
14:12So that's from 70 metres.
14:14You can see the e-scooter. You can see there. We know that that's the e-scooter rider behind that lamppost.
14:26But if you didn't know that, I think that would be really difficult to pick out.
14:29Yeah, 100%.
14:30Confused with all of this sort of reflective road signage, all of these bollards.
14:35So to ask a driver in a dynamic situation at that point to pick out that there's an e-scooter there,
14:41I think, would be almost impossible.
14:45That's from 60.
14:48That's 50.
14:49So I think still quite visually grouped with all of this.
14:53It would have been a really gradual, slow movement out to that position.
15:00A person on an e-scooter is very static.
15:03You don't have any of the biological movement that you would associate with somebody walking or somebody cycling.
15:09And that would have been coming really steadily along the road.
15:12So this is from 40 metres.
15:16I think at that point they start to become a little bit more distinct from the road furniture.
15:23It's a nice dark background now as well, isn't it?
15:25And that's giving really good contrast with this jacket.
15:28But again, if that jacket is more reflective than the jacket that she was wearing at the time,
15:34then actually she would be less visible than that.
15:36And this would also have implications for the visibility of the scooter's headlight.
15:42You actually lose the light as well, don't you, because of the reflective jacket.
15:49Yeah.
15:49All you can see is that you can't actually see the actual light itself.
15:53No.
15:54It would be very hard to notice that it's getting closer to you.
15:58But they must consider more than just what the driver might have been able to see.
16:03Do you think from this point they're now just concentrating on where they're going?
16:06Yeah, potentially. I mean, if they haven't noticed by that point, they've kind of visually gone,
16:12well, I think that bit of the road's clear. So I'm just going in through that gate.
16:19If he's travelled that route at the same time of day for a few weeks,
16:22he probably doesn't expect much to be coming along it.
16:25And that would feed into his expectation of what he's going to see,
16:29his expectation of what he's going to have to react to.
16:35Kath has calculated that the driver had between 2.9 and 4.1 seconds
16:41to see and react to the oncoming e-scooter.
16:51But the rider should not have been on the road.
16:55On the approach to the collision, she was riding that illegally.
17:02Obviously, that doesn't absolve the driver from any responsibility in hitting her.
17:08Part of the duty of driving is a duty of care to all other road users.
17:14The driver blamed a momentary lapse in concentration.
17:19He admitted driving without due care and attention and was fined £360.
17:25He admitted that the driver was in front of him.
17:26Perceiving what was in front of him would have been very difficult.
17:32That's a hugely different perspective than what we saw from the CCTV.
17:39Which is why it's really important to do that work to get those answers.
17:42Please manage your thing.
17:59Yes, hello.
18:00So we are calling from BMW emergency centre to report an accident with the motor red in the area of Redland.
18:10We don't have any voice calling with the motor red.
18:12We don't have any voice calling with the motor red in the area of Redland.
18:14We don't have any voice calling with the motor red in the area of Redland.
18:15Nobody is answering.
18:18We need to request police and ambulance.
18:21As we're approaching now, you can actually see the way the motorcycle has ended up post-collision.
18:33There's a male and female on it.
18:36There's a pillion passenger as well as a rider.
18:38Both have been seriously injured and are now on their way to hospital.
18:46Because of the curvature of this road, I've been here several times with collisions.
18:51Different severities.
18:53There's marks, you know, all the way around the box section of Armco.
18:58So, yeah, you've got to try and decipher what's old, what's new with this collision.
19:02As a motorcycle rider himself, he's now trying to understand how the bike has travelled through this scene.
19:14So, there's nothing obvious at the moment of why they've lost control.
19:18They were navigating the tight bend of this slip road to join the dual carriageway.
19:25We've got plastic on there.
19:27You know, you can see there.
19:28We've got scuffing.
19:34We've got this big tyre mark.
19:36That's not a motorcycle tyre.
19:37That's a car, a HGV.
19:40The motorcycle hasn't caused that damage.
19:42That's old damage.
19:49As we come here then, I can see a gravel mark, a mark going through the gravel.
19:54Which is a single narrow tyre mark, which is indicating to me it's a motorcycle tyre.
19:59So, this here, this is the start of it there.
20:02You see it going through.
20:06Extends through.
20:08Onto the chamfered kerb.
20:10And again, these striations.
20:12So, it's what it's indicating to me that the wheels on the motorcycle are still rotating.
20:19The rider may be braking, but it's certainly not emergency braking.
20:24And it's going through all the way to that point there where you've got markings appearing now on the box barrier.
20:30That's fresh.
20:35But they reveal more than just where the bike has made contact.
20:40Let's move this section of Armco.
20:43The force on it has moved it.
20:44But what's significant there?
20:47And we've got this as a tyre mark.
20:49But we've got this mark here.
20:50This is a fresh mark.
20:53It's quite wide.
20:54If you think of the motorcycle stood up there and they start to come in.
20:59And they start to lose it on the, obviously the bend, the left hand bend.
21:04This is probably the rider getting his foot down.
21:06So, probably the bike is now snaking a bit because the rider's trying to fight it.
21:14Again, we've got fresh debris here.
21:16Maybe clothing off the rider.
21:23You've got this mark here, which is probably his right foot coming down.
21:27Because the wheels are now out that far.
21:30So, he's got his right foot down.
21:32So, maybe the bike's going, his bike's going this way.
21:34And he's fought it that way and gone back in.
21:40So, actually treated him here.
21:44The bike's proceeded on his own.
21:46So, he's come to the point of rest.
21:50The evidence is clearly revealing the rider's actions.
21:55But there was also a woman traveling on the back of the bike.
21:59We know the pillion passenger was treated on the other side of the carriageway.
22:04So, we know at some point she's separated from the bike.
22:08It's actually breached the barrier and she's landed on this side of the carriageway.
22:12But it's at what point she did it.
22:19We've got this abrasive mark, which is fresh.
22:22So, I'm now looking on the barriers.
22:26Is there any other evidence?
22:28So, if something had dragged over here, you would expect something gathering there, but nothing.
22:32All I can see is like a shade of blue coming through, extends through.
22:38That's her helmet.
22:43So, at some point her helmet has come into contact with the road surface.
22:51I'm surprised I haven't seen any fibers, but if she's wearing black they'll be hard to see.
22:58So, whether at this point it's just her head in connection with the road surface until she comes to a point of rest here.
23:03The 45-year-old woman and 47-year-old man were on a biking tour from Sweden and were just six days into their trip.
23:26Nice bit of kit.
23:271250cc.
23:29You can quite clearly see he's a newish bike.
23:31It's well looked after, it's clean, the chrome is sparkling on it, the tyre's in very good condition.
23:38At this moment in time, I'm not suspecting a mechanical issue that has caused them to lose control.
23:45But there is something missing from the rear of this bike.
23:51Here's his panier, look.
23:55This is the one that would be associated with the offside of the bike.
23:58And damage to this luggage box could show more about the dynamics of this collision.
24:05I'm just trying to do a bit of a mechanical fit.
24:10So, you've got these linear marks.
24:12So, as it's coming across, I don't know if you look inside, you've got the makeup of the bolt system on the barriers.
24:18You can see where they've snagged in and caught.
24:22It's more of a sledging across the top of the barrier.
24:25So, this has continued from 9 through to 10 to 11.
24:37As the bike is leaning now, that's the way the bike has remained coming through.
24:42In fairness, he's tried to fight control of it all the way.
24:45It's probably between 22 and 23 that he has now come separated from the bike himself.
24:53The wheels are still rotating.
24:55And then, he's actually furrowing through the grass verge of the mud.
25:00So, he's splaying it out.
25:01And this means a possible cause of the collision can now be ruled out.
25:11At no time has the bike gone onto its side.
25:14So, a good indication that, you know, there's no great speed involved here.
25:18We've just gone drastically wrong.
25:22But the bike detected that it was out of control.
25:25Hello, we are calling from BMW Emergency Center to report an accident.
25:31And activated a key safety feature.
25:34We don't have any voice calling with the motorway.
25:38The motorcycle has sent an automated signal to BMW saying he's been involved in a collision.
25:45With the injured rider failing to respond to the operator's call, the alarm was raised.
25:51The cleverness of the system is that it's actually given a coordinate of where the bike is in Raglan,
25:58in Wales.
26:00It's directed all the emergency service to this location.
26:04I think due to the way the rider reacted to the incident,
26:08with the added weight of the luggage and the pillion passenger,
26:12quite clearly, he's an experienced rider.
26:16So, just why was their journey cut short in this way?
26:20I did notice that the road surface at the time was in very poor condition.
26:25So, as you can see, it's almost like a piece of corrugated metal.
26:31With HGVs, as the vehicles are now tracking around the bend,
26:35there's no steering on the rear axle, so the tyres are straight,
26:38but they're actually scrubbing across the road surface,
26:41so they cause this corrugation of the road surface.
26:45Certainly, as a motorcyclist, you wouldn't be travelling in lane one
26:47because of the poor state of the road.
26:52And therefore, you'd be in lane two.
26:55But that lane also has its hazards.
26:58As the vehicles are travelling round, anything coming off the road is being pushed out
27:04to the outside of the bend, so that's why you're getting that formation of gravel and grit.
27:10Over time, it builds up until you've got a depth of it.
27:13Probably the one vehicle you don't want to be on to travel through that debris is a motorcycle.
27:20It's called the edge of debris.
27:28And there's no coming out of there.
27:35To have that amount of potholing and debris on the road surface,
27:38and for that to be a sole causation factor of the collision is relatively rare.
27:46While the debris was swept away,
27:50it was a longer road to recovery for the bikers themselves.
27:55It could have been a very different outcome due to the technology on the motorcycle.
28:03It got help to the people who needed it a lot quicker than if they were trying to describe their location.
28:10The riders were treated for pelvic and leg injuries
28:14before returning home to Sweden for further care.
28:17I suppose the riders, motorcycle users, being involved in that level of collision
28:22and sustaining those injuries probably would never get back on a motorcycle.
28:27But their experience hasn't dented their passion for biking.
28:32It was credit to them that they're back on a bike
28:36and they've continued what they were doing prior to this incident.
28:47This planning was a successful activity for SEMI-ipperatra
29:06SEMI-weo
29:11SEMI-irro
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