Need to prove how slow I am - Insurance

surrey_commuter

So 11 months on from being right hooked at the bottom of Balham Hill (Dinsmore Road jct) the opposition has unearthed an independent witness who says I was "going at least 30mph and never braked" now leaving aside the fact that he has eyes of a hawk and I should be in he pro-peloton how can I use Strava to discredit him?

I know it is not 100% accurate but I can show I am not a racing snake and average speeds on that stretch of road.

All advice will be gratefully received as they are using this to suggest a 50/50 split on grounds of contributory negligence.

mugensi

Go to the full strava website and create a segment for the section of road that the collision occurred on...if its a long hill then use the full distance to show from the top to the bottom of the hill for the segment.

Make it private and save it.

Within 24hrs Strava will update your profile to include your times for that segment. Once you click into it, you can select the date the collision occurred so long as you were using strava on that date. It will show you your average and maximum speed for that segment on that date. You can also show them previous days data also to show consistency.

rick_chasey

Strava flyby can help visualise it for them too .

UndercoverElephant

If you have a lawyer, ask them. If not, get one.

I'm not a lawyer, but I would imagine that it could be argued that your GPS data could have been tampered with, or is inaccurate, but I would hope it would count for more than the opinion of a member of the public. A trained police officer is able to give an assessment of speed and have it hold up in court, but I'm less sure about random people.

surrey_commuter

UndercoverElephant wrote:

If you have a lawyer, ask them. If not, get one.

I'm not a lawyer, but I would imagine that it could be argued that your GPS data could have been tampered with, or is inaccurate, but I would hope it would count for more than the opinion of a member of the public. A trained police officer is able to give an assessment of speed and have it hold up in court, but I'm less sure about random people.

yep I have a lawyer but I am more than happy to do some work to strengthen my hand

surrey_commuter

MugenSi wrote:

Go to the full strava website and create a segment for the section of road that the collision occurred on...if its a long hill then use the full distance to show from the top to the bottom of the hill for the segment.

Make it private and save it.

Within 24hrs Strava will update your profile to include your times for that segment. Once you click into it, you can select the date the collision occurred so long as you were using strava on that date. It will show you your average and maximum speed for that segment on that date. You can also show them previous days data also to show consistency.

that sounds like some good advice. I know it is lawyers being dicks but it must help if I can show that day's and consistency of riding. Fortunately the mighty col of Balham Hill is not as steep on the descent as it is going up

surrey_commuter

Rick Chasey wrote:

Strava flyby can help visualise it for them too .

yep will help them visualise the hour's rest followed by a ride in the police car to St Georges. All happened on the 23rd June!!!

hopkinb

Surrey Commuter wrote:

So 11 months on from being right hooked at the bottom of Balham Hill (Dinsmore Road jct) the opposition has unearthed an independent witness who says I was "going at least 30mph and never braked" now leaving aside the fact that he has eyes of a hawk and I should be in he pro-peloton how can I use Strava to discredit him?

I know it is not 100% accurate but I can show I am not a racing snake and average speeds on that stretch of road.

All advice will be gratefully received as they are using this to suggest a 50/50 split on grounds of contributory negligence.

It's a 30 mph limit on that stretch of road? If you had been driving a car down the hill at 30 mph and the right hooker had driven across your path, would your behaviour have then been contributory negligence? Sounds like sh!te to me. Fcuking @rseholes.

surrey_commuter

hopkinb wrote:

Surrey Commuter wrote:

So 11 months on from being right hooked at the bottom of Balham Hill (Dinsmore Road jct) the opposition has unearthed an independent witness who says I was "going at least 30mph and never braked" now leaving aside the fact that he has eyes of a hawk and I should be in he pro-peloton how can I use Strava to discredit him?

I know it is not 100% accurate but I can show I am not a racing snake and average speeds on that stretch of road.

All advice will be gratefully received as they are using this to suggest a 50/50 split on grounds of contributory negligence.

It's a 30 mph limit on that stretch of road? If you had been driving a car down the hill at 30 mph and the right hooker had driven across your path, would your behaviour have then been contributory negligence? Sounds like sh!te to me. Fcuking @rseholes.

it is all a game. I am pleased he is saying "at least 30mph" without bothering to brake as I rode into the poor soul creeping carefully forwards in his car. Makes it easier to destroy his credibility.

My lawyer was laughing as she read out his statement.

apreading

I would want to check the independance of that witness...

Did either of you collect witness details at the scene? If not then how did they find this witness. If so then why did they not mention this before now? Can this witness be proven to be there on the day in question?

fenix

Is it this segment ? https://www.strava.com/segments/2389722?hl=en-GB

If so hitting 30mph would put you in the top 0.18% of riders this year. Seems unlikely.

veronese68

When I got knocked off I had a look at the Strava speed trace analysis for that and it showed that I went from about 14mph to a dead stop. Is that not clear enough? Can you search for a ride by the date? I can't on my work PC, it's only letting me search for users. There is a drop down arrow to change the search but nothing comes up when I click it. Can a premium user search by date.

fenix

Prseumably the OP isn't on Strava as the GPS trace would be enough ?

surrey_commuter

apreading wrote:

I would want to check the independance of that witness...

Did either of you collect witness details at the scene? If not then how did they find this witness. If so then why did they not mention this before now? Can this witness be proven to be there on the day in question?

all good questions -he was stood outside a hairdressers where he worked. Strange he did not mention it to the police.

UndercoverElephant

Veronese68 wrote:

When I got knocked off I had a look at the Strava speed trace analysis for that and it showed that I went from about 14mph to a dead stop. Is that not clear enough? Can you search for a ride by the date? I can't on my work PC, it's only letting me search for users. There is a drop down arrow to change the search but nothing comes up when I click it. Can a premium user search by date.

You can use the "training log".

apreading

If the police are/were involved then I would ask for him to make a formal statement to the police before you can consider it. That might put him off if he is lying or in any way unsure of what he is saying...

And how is it 11 months later and you still havent established lability? My solicitor appointed by British Cycling had submitted the initial claim for liability within two weeks and from that point the opposition has 15 working days to respond.

surrey_commuter

Fenix wrote:

Prseumably the OP isn't on Strava as the GPS trace would be enough ?

yep I am on Strava - and whilst hope I have most bases covered I wanted to make sure I am not missing anything

not sure whatyou mean by "GPS trace would be enough"

surrey_commuter

apreading wrote:

If the police are/were involved then I would ask for him to make a formal statement to the police before you can consider it. That might put him off if he is lying or in any way unsure of what he is saying...

And how is it 11 months later and you still havent established lability? My solicitor appointed by British Cycling had submitted the initial claim for liability within two weeks and from that point the opposition has 15 working days to respond.

broken shoulder led to a frozen shoulder so wanted to see the extent of the problem

apreading

Surrey Commuter wrote:

apreading wrote:

If the police are/were involved then I would ask for him to make a formal statement to the police before you can consider it. That might put him off if he is lying or in any way unsure of what he is saying...

And how is it 11 months later and you still havent established lability? My solicitor appointed by British Cycling had submitted the initial claim for liability within two weeks and from that point the opposition has 15 working days to respond.

broken shoulder led to a frozen shoulder so wanted to see the extent of the problem

You establish liability before you discuss amount though surely? Thats what my solicitor did. Within 5 weeks, the insurance company had admitted liability, we then asked them to pay for the bike & clothing, which they did within another month or so, and a year later we have just sent in the claim for final settlement, including compensation for injury (including frozen shoulder) and Aviva's private health costs.

surrey_commuter

Fenix wrote:

Is it this segment ? https://www.strava.com/segments/2389722?hl=en-GB

If so hitting 30mph would put you in the top 0.18% of riders this year. Seems unlikely.

more like 4,000 on the all time list

fenix

Slowcoach ! ;-)

Well that must help if you were recording at the time of the incident. You can look at the speed of the activity and show what speed you were doing at the time of the incident.

And that time would fit in with all of the other times you've ridden it ?

I think its a bit of a stretch to think that not only are you an uber fast cyclist - but also an uber tecchy one who's carefully gone back and slowed down all of the other times....

jds_1981

Just find the ride. Click analyse ride and see how fast you were going?

wolfsbane2k

I have this issue ongoing with a 2015 right hook, where I was "going to fast" & "didn't brake",

Couple of points if the "you didn't brake" part is being considered:
1) GPS, unless geeky hi tech versions which aren't normally in phones, utilise a 1 second update rate, and most GPS apps have a "light" smoothing algorithm that they apply over before using or storing the data, as captured in the GPX file.

2) Garmin, and likely Strava, apply yet another visual smoothing over the top of this for display purposes on their graphs, which means that an app/web site screen shot, no matter how zoomed in you are, is likely to support the witness statement that "you didn't brake"

Working around it will show that you have geeky skills, or friends with geeky skills, which might count against you ( although when used with the comparision on the segment, unlikely to do so...)
To work around the latter, Get the raw GPX file for that ride. (Strava premium allows download) or direct from garmin if using that & analyse / plot distance, and therefore calculate speed over each second in Excel if you can ( I can type out line by line instructions if you want)

Hint: You'll need this to work out distance between each update.: http://lost-species.livejournal.com/38453.html

So fight both parts, individually:
1) Use strava to show that doing 30mph on that piece of road is nigh on impossible.
2) Use strava to show your average speed on that piece of road is significantly less using the personal segment piece
3) Use strava to show that your speed on the day was in line with the average ( or wherever it shows)
4) Use the as close to raw as possible GPS to show that you did brake, if you had more than 2 seconds notice.


In my case, it showed that I had scrubbed 8mph off my 21mph speed before the collision over 2 seconds, and also proved that the skid mark left in the cycle lane was very likely mine...

Edited to add: If you didn't have more than 2 seconds notice, refer back to the highways code for thinking distance...

apreading

^
Great post Wolfsbane,

wolfsbane2k

Also - note the following for strava vs garmin time.
https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/art ... my-Garmin-

If you've got a speed/cadence sensor fitted, that's significantly more accurate than GPS, because nobody smooths that raw data, but strava doesn't use it.

Again, analysing the GPX file for speed from a speed/cadence sensor is very easy.

wolfsbane2k

apreading wrote:

^
Great post Wolfsbane,

Thanks.
Just part of the day job... ( gps geek)

bigmat

Sounds like the defendant is taking the piss. How could the witness judge how fast you were going, or know whether you braked or not. All he can really say was "I thought he was going at least as fast as a car" and "he didn't appear to slow down". No way he can prove you were speeding, and you can show how unikely it was that you were. If you have a Strava recording of your ride it should show exactly what speed you were doing? My recent off shows me at 28mph, very shortly before zero (ouch!) not that any other vehicles were involved. Anyway, I too would query independence of witness and would not be surprised if he went away as soon as giving s signed statement / evidence in court is mentioned. Sounds like your lawyer had the appropriate response (laughing).

jds_1981

Whether you braked or not - is that even relevant? Last time I went over a car bonnet I didn't have time to brake.
This site has 25mph thinking time of 8 metres. http://www.brakingdistances.com/25Mph

awavey

wasnt PC Gambles "expert" evidence you needed at least 5 seconds to react to anything happening on the road in front of you, so thats 55metres thinking distance at 25mph.

but I dont get, why is random witness claim on speed even permissable? have they been calibrated and certificated to measure speeds accurately, nope, so why is it even something you have to disprove even ignoring wtf has it got to do with it anyway even if you couldnt disprove it, I accept they may not be aware you have GPS information,but its a perfectly legitimate speed to be travelling at.

even lets say you were travelling at excess speed, ok I know technically it doesnt apply to bicycles so bear with me isnt the highway code written in a way that says the onus is on people to avoid accidents as best they can anyway, which is why even if the traffic light is green you cant just automatically drive into the idiot jumping the red light and go well my light was green.

cougie

Why wouldn't a witness be permitted ? I was going to give evidence once.

Out walking a car came up a street - engine straining - really over the top - he was going flat out - so doing easily 50 or so in a 30 zone. Houses all the way along and junctions etc.

He realised the road ran out too late and in braking twatted the car into a lampost. And then ran off.

Now I have no expertise​ in judging speeds but you can tell some things. He was well over the limit and driving irresponsibly.

jds_1981

cougie wrote:

Now I have no expertise​ in judging speeds but you can tell some things. He was well over the limit and driving irresponsibly.

Generally reasonable, but I feed the general public are terrible at estimating bike speeds. You'll hear 30/40 mph bandied about.