Are decisions like this making public transport impossible in Ireland?

cdebru · 06-05-2014 08:08PM #1

www.rte.ie/news/touch/2014/0506/615613-carlos-tesch/

A Spanish student who was hit by a bus five years ago has settled his High Court action for €9m in damages.
Carlos Tesch from Madrid was only 12 when he was hit by a Dublin Bus in Bray, Co Wicklow on 4 February 2009.
Carlos, who was in Ireland learning English, suffered catastrophic head injuries.

DO NOT QUOTE SO MUCH OF ARTICLES - mod

While I have every sympathy for the young boy and his family, this seems to me to be a case of its someone's fault let's blame the bus company they have money.

The boy darted into the road into the path of a bus coming behind him, the bus was not speeding the supreme court said it was doing at most 40km/h in a 50 zone the court also said the driver acted immediately and did everything he could but that he may gave been distracted by a conversation with a passenger in the seconds before the crash.

Dublin bus are found 70% liable for his injuries the boy is 30% what about the little scumbags that were harassing the kids? Or the people who brought these kids to Ireland and had a duty of care for them and were aware of this harassment, Where is their liability ?

You simply cannot operate any vehicle in the city at a speed that anticipates any child on the footpath can enter the road at anytime, it is impossible. The law has yet again proven itself to be an ass and the principle of its OK sure its a semi state they can pay has been show to rule supreme.

foggy_lad · 06-05-2014 08:17PM

Are you really trying to place the blame for Irish public transport problems onto the shoulders of a 12 year old boy who has been left with Catastrophic brain injury after being hit by a bus?

Public liability insurance is there for just such accidents.

corktina · 06-05-2014 08:34PM

exactly. This poor lad needs the dosh, would you take it away from him? Let's get our priorities right here.

cdebru · 06-05-2014 08:52PM

foggy_lad wrote: »

Are you really trying to place the blame for Irish public transport problems onto the shoulders of a 12 year old boy who has been left with Catastrophic brain injury after being hit by a bus?

Public liability insurance is there for just such accidents.

A bus that he ran in front of, while I sympathize the fault is not with the bus company, it is primarily with,

A the little scumbags that were harrassing the Spanish students

B the company that brought these kids to Ireland and had a duty of care to look after them and was aware of previous attacks on these kids.

It is 9 million euro, end of the day passengers are going to foot the bill with either increased fares or reduced services.

It is this attitude that public liability insurance will pay for it that is driving up costs and forcing businesses to close, it is not a magic pot of money that someone found at the end of a rainbow.

cdebru · 06-05-2014 09:03PM

corktina wrote: »

exactly. This poor lad needs the dosh, would you take it away from him? Let's get our priorities right here.

Of course he needs the money, but that doesn't mean an innocent party to the event should be the one held liable to pay for it.

Like I said 2 parties are primarily responsible those that made him dart onto the road and the company that brought him here and had a duty of care to him while he was here.

If the state feels it bears some responsibility then the state can help out but don't others responsible just because they have insurance.

corktina · 06-05-2014 09:04PM

it was said that the driver was distracted by a passenger.

coylemj · 06-05-2014 09:54PM

This topic has nothing to do with public transport, it could just as easily have been a Guinness delivery truck that hit the kid. Would we then be whining about the fact that us poor drinkers would be paying for the care that that kid will need for the rest of his life?

And trying to offload blame on to the company who arrange for kids to come to Ireland is nonsense, do you seriously expect them to chaperone teenage kids every minute they are outdoors? Get real FFS.

foggy_lad · 06-05-2014 09:58PM

On the day of the accident there were no other children involved and the boy went to cross the road to avoid any repeat of confrontations experienced on previous occasions. Who do you think should foot the bill?

It has always been the case here that if a pedestrian gets hit by a vehicle then the vehicle insurance pays, In this case there appears to have been a distraction to the driver which may have stopped him from recognising the danger that the boy was in earlier.

Gatling · 06-05-2014 10:00PM

Going back a few months to the strike threads haven't Dublin bus payed out 25 million + on accident claims last year alone ,

In this case going by the AH thread driver was talking to a passenger and wasn't taking notice of the young teens bobbing at the side of the road ,to take notice and wasn't prepared to take action to prevent the accident
Very similar to the gob****e who rode a horse into a bus a few years ago and got a big payout

cdebru · 06-05-2014 10:12PM

coylemj wrote: »

This topic has nothing to do with public transport, it could just as easily have been a Guinness delivery truck that hit the kid. Would we then be whining about the fact that us poor drinkers would be paying for the care that that kid will need for the rest of his life?

And trying to offload blame on to the company who arrange for kids to come to Ireland is nonsense, do you seriously expect them to chaperone teenage kids every minute they are outdoors? Get real FFS.

Do you think if it was guiness they would have been found liable ? Not a hope this is the twisting of logic to pay out because the courts feel sorry for the poor boy. And because it is a semi state not a private company no one gives a ****. It is magic money that can just be made up out of nowhere.

The kids had been harassed before by the same kids and had to get a teacher to assist them, what did the company do ? Contact the gardai ? Move the children to live in a different area? Provide supervision at the time and area where the previous attack had happened ?

cdebru · 06-05-2014 10:19PM

Gatling wrote: »

Going back a few months to the strike threads haven't Dublin bus payed out 25 million + on accident claims last year alone ,

In this case going by the AH thread driver was talking to a passenger and wasn't taking notice of the young teens bobbing at the side of the road ,to take notice and wasn't prepared to take action to prevent the accident
Very similar to the gob****e who rode a horse into a bus a few years ago and got a big payout

No they haven't

Simple question if the logic of it being the drivers fault holds water was he charged with any offence? Careless driving or dangerous driving ?
No because the supreme court admitted that he acted immediately when the boy entered the road and did everything possible. But you can't possibly stop any vehicle in all circumstances it is not possible especially if someone runs off the footpath on the nearside.

This is the courts looking for an excuse to hold someone responsible and as luck would have it a nice semi state is there to pick up the tag.

boombang · 06-05-2014 10:27PM

corktina wrote: »

it was said that the driver was distracted by a passenger.

I remember reading previously that the conversation the driver had with the passenger concluded some time before the incident. Previous poster has stated that the driver acted immediately. It seems to me the passenger distraction is a red herring.

If the kid needs money to finance his care why do the public authorities in his own country provide it. I cannot see how Dublin Bus has any reasonable liability.

cdebru · 06-05-2014 10:27PM

foggy_lad wrote: »

On the day of the accident there were no other children involved and the boy went to cross the road to avoid any repeat of confrontations experienced on previous occasions. Who do you think should foot the bill?

It has always been the case here that if a pedestrian gets hit by a vehicle then the vehicle insurance pays, In this case there appears to have been a distraction to the driver which may have stopped him from recognising the danger that the boy was in earlier.

How could the driver recognize the danger the boy was in when you claim no other kids were involved ?

The court heard that the boy saw another boy with a hurl hiding behind a wall and took fright and ran into the path of the bus and it is not true that true that if a vehicle hits a pedestrian then the vehicle insurance pays, that is nonsense only if the driver has done something wrong which in this case he didn't. He wasn't speeding he acted immediately and did everything in his power to stop the vehicle but there simply wasn't enough time.

Who should foot the bill is a wider question whoever was responsible which in this case was not Dublin bus, if no one is responsible then it is just one of those things life sucks sometimes .

Victor · 06-05-2014 11:15PM

boombang wrote: »

I cannot see how Dublin Bus has any reasonable liability.

Both the High Court and Supreme Court had the facts in front of them and both disagree.

cdebru · 07-05-2014 12:24AM

Victor wrote: »

Both the High Court and Supreme Court had the facts in front of them and both disagree.

Which is the point ? It is flawed justice and flawed judgments these happen all the time regarding the state and semi states this is just one that made the news.

There is no way any private company would have been found liable, why because the judges would be afraid of closing the business, but this is a semi state so the customers, the tax payers and the employees can pick up the tab.

The really disappointing thing is that a guy that actually saved this child's life because of his professionalism is hung out to dry and told he is 70% responsible for this accident !!!!!
The guy should have got a medal, he did absolutely nothing wrong. It is a disgrace that in order to pay out due to sympathy for the family they don't think twice about the affect on a completely innocent party in telling him he is 70% at fault. A child ran out on to the road and looked the wrong way. It is terrible but blaming the bus driver in order to get money is just wrong.

corktina · 07-05-2014 06:54AM

cdebru wrote: »

Which is the point ? It is flawed justice and flawed judgments these happen all the time regarding the state and semi states this is just one that made the news.

There is no way any private company would have been found liable, why because the judges would be afraid of closing the business, but this is a semi state so the customers, the tax payers and the employees can pick up the tab.

The really disappointing thing is that a guy that actually saved this child's life because of his professionalism is hung out to dry and told he is 70% responsible for this accident !!!!!
The guy should have got a medal, he did absolutely nothing wrong. It is a disgrace that in order to pay out due to sympathy for the family they don't think twice about the affect on a completely innocent party in telling him he is 70% at fault. A child ran out on to the road and looked the wrong way. It is terrible but blaming the bus driver in order to get money is just wrong.

You don't know that, you don't have all the facts. The Court has all the facts and you should accept their judgement.

Boskowski · 07-05-2014 07:09AM

I think the policy of blaming the vehicles driver every time a pedestrian is involved in an accident is mad for sure. If we'd all be driving according to the law if there's potential for someone irrationally stepping out onto the road we'd all be crawling at 10 kph through urban areas. I don't agree with the decision therefore, not in that way anyway. If I was that bus driver I'd be in bits but I don't think I'd feel responsible.
Having said that I also feel it's a good thing he gets support. It's not your typical case of compo chancery. Absolutely not.

Nothing to do with shortcomings in our public transport system though. Fail to see that sort of conclusion. It happened to be a bus could have been you or me lets be honest.

boombang · 07-05-2014 07:31AM

corktina wrote: »

You don't know that, you don't have all the facts. The Court has all the facts and you should accept their judgement.

I agree with your first statement, I can only make my judgement on what I read in the papers etc. However, that does not mean that the courts necessarily got the decision right or that I should simply accept that they're correct.

bambergbike · 07-05-2014 08:03AM

Boskowski wrote: »

I think the policy of blaming the vehicles driver every time a pedestrian is involved in an accident is mad for sure. If we'd all be driving according to the law if there's potential for someone irrationally stepping out onto the road we'd all be crawling at 10 kph through urban areas.

In urban areas, a huge amount of the time a typical journey takes is not moving time, it's stopped time - waiting at lights, stop signs, yield signs, in traffic tailbacks. Accerating up to 40, 50, 60 or 70 km/h on the clear stretches of road where it is possible to do doesn't usually make journeys massively faster because this stopped time stays the same or even increases. I make nearly all of my urban journeys by bike and I have often left one point and arrived at another in exactly the same time as a car driver making the same journey even though I didn't accelerate up to seventy at any point and they did. Constant acceleration and braking just endangers vulnerable road users, gets drivers to the next red light or tailback a bit faster, and results in wear and tear on vehicles and poor fuel economy.

Having a default limit of 30 km/h in urban areas would make a lot of sense (town name sign at entry to town = 30 km/h speed limit). There would be plenty of streets excepted from such a default (with higher limits), but we could put a blanket limit of 30 in first and then sort out the exceptions and pay close attention to how we make these excepted major roads safe for higher speeds (grass buffer space between pedestrians and buses, for example).

I'm not going to comment on the specific case - the courts had the facts and I don't - but in general, if a driver is driving at 30 km/h and sees a potentially dangerous situation ahead, he can easily slow to 20 for a few seconds until he gets past the gaggle of children or whatever. It would obviously be easier for a bus driver to drive at 30 in a street with a limit of 30, so I would agree to some extent with the argument that the bus driver was just doing his job as best he could within the environment he had been given to work with. But we can and should change that environment, because the alternative to widespread 30 km/h speed limits in urban areas is either to put up with too many severe injuries and fatalities or to lock vulnerable pedestrians up and not allow them out. Children, the elderly, people with disabilities such as sight and hearing problems, anybody walking home after three pints. Of course pedestrians should look and listen and take care, but the penalty for being a bit careless in an urban area (or, for that matter, a bit blind or a bit deaf) should not be death or massive injury.

foggy_lad · 07-05-2014 08:46AM

corktina wrote: »

You don't know that, you don't have all the facts. The Court has all the facts and you should accept their judgement.

Not just one court though but also the appeals court!

cdebru · 07-05-2014 10:10AM

foggy_lad wrote: »

Not just one court though but also the appeals court!

So what's your point ? Courts are always correct and their decisions are above questioning ?
Just as an example that courts are not always correct in this country no matter how many times you have been through them, Nicky Kelly comes to mind.

I don't care how many courts this went through it is a flawed judgment based on sympathy rather than facts.

cdebru · 07-05-2014 10:17AM

bambergbike wrote: »

In urban areas, a huge amount of the time a typical journey takes is not moving time, it's stopped time - waiting at lights, stop signs, yield signs, in traffic tailbacks. Accerating up to 40, 50, 60 or 70 km/h on the clear stretches of road where it is possible to do doesn't usually make journeys massively faster because this stopped time stays the same or even increases. I make nearly all of my urban journeys by bike and I have often left one point and arrived at another in exactly the same time as a car driver making the same journey even though I didn't accelerate up to seventy at any point and they did. Constant acceleration and braking just endangers vulnerable road users, gets drivers to the next red light or tailback a bit faster, and results in wear and tear on vehicles and poor fuel economy.

Having a default limit of 30 km/h in urban areas would make a lot of sense (town name sign at entry to town = 30 km/h speed limit). There would be plenty of streets excepted from such a default (with higher limits), but we could put a blanket limit of 30 in first and then sort out the exceptions and pay close attention to how we make these excepted major roads safe for higher speeds (grass buffer space between pedestrians and buses, for example).

I'm not going to comment on the specific case - the courts had the facts and I don't - but in general, if a driver is driving at 30 km/h and sees a potentially dangerous situation ahead, he can easily slow to 20 for a few seconds until he gets past the gaggle of children or whatever. It would obviously be easier for a bus driver to drive at 30 in a street with a limit of 30, so I would agree to some extent with the argument that the bus driver was just doing his job as best he could within the environment he had been given to work with. But we can and should change that environment, because the alternative to widespread 30 km/h speed limits in urban areas is either to put up with too many severe injuries and fatalities or to lock vulnerable pedestrians up and not allow them out. Children, the elderly, people with disabilities such as sight and hearing problems, anybody walking home after three pints. Of course pedestrians should look and listen and take care, but the penalty for being a bit careless in an urban area (or, for that matter, a bit blind or a bit deaf) should not be death or massive injury.

In this case the driver was well under the speed limit, was not involved in anything other than driving the bus, acted immediately and did all in his power to avoid a collision, and imho saved that child's life but for his professionalism the parents would have only a grave to visit.
His reward is to be dragged through court and found to be 70% responsible for someone running of the near side footpath while looking the wrong way.

murphaph · 07-05-2014 10:25AM

I think when a vehicle strikes a pedestrian there is pretty much always some blame apportioned to the driver, no?

My mother hit a guy about 20 years ago. He was completely drunk and wearing all black/dark clothes and facing away from traffic on a rainy night on an unlit, twisty road. my mother never even hit the brakes-saw nothing of the man until she'd hit him.

Luckily he survived and made a full recovery (possibly because he was so drunk he was like a rag doll apparently) and of course my mother's insurance paid out, but in reality she had no chance of seeing him unless she was prepared to drive at 10mph....which none of us do. It's a chance you take as a motorist that a pedestrian may act recklessly in this way. It's the same here in Germany (for children at least). If a child darts out from between parked cars or whatever, the driver will be automatically found partially liable even if we all recognise that he had no chance to stop.

Sad story for all concerned really.

corktina · 07-05-2014 10:38AM

it's why you have insurance....

cdebru · 07-05-2014 11:29AM

corktina wrote: »

it's why you have insurance....

It is why insurance is so expensive in this country, If that accident had happened to the child at home in Spain not a hope they would have got that money in Spanish courts.

schemingbohemia · 07-05-2014 11:41AM

I can't find the link at the moment but I remember thinking at the time of the High Court decision that the way the Judge determined the bus driver should drive would mean that no bus would ever get anywhere on time.

The Judge held that the driver should have slowed to a crawl the moment he saw students on the footpath as anything could happen and the driver should expect the unexpected. How can one possibly drive to a schedule in those circumstances? The city would grind to a halt if everyone drove in such a way. It seemed to me to be a typical non-real world judgement.

I've no problem with the amount awarded, I do have a problem with the 70% fault finding of Dublin Bus, as the Supreme Court found that the driver was driving at 40km/h in a 50 km/h zone and that the driver reacted immediately.

corktina · 07-05-2014 11:43AM

cdebru wrote: »

It is why insurance is so expensive in this country, If that accident had happened to the child at home in Spain not a hope they would have got that money in Spanish courts.

then you should thank your god you live here! (especially if a child of yours ever had the misfortune this guy did.)

cdebru · 07-05-2014 12:58PM

corktina wrote: »

then you should thank your god you live here! (especially if a child of yours ever had the misfortune this guy did.)

Nonsense this country can not continue to pander to people based on sympathy, and I can guarantee you once bus routes are tendered out to private companies these massive payouts where no fault has been realistically shown will no longer happen.
No way a private company could afford insurance under those conditions and no way courts would force them to pay out under these nonsense rulings.
Seriously how would you get insurance or how much would insurance cost with this nonsense it is only possible for DB because they self insure up to €2 million on a single incident. But given this nonsense you would have to wonder what effect it will have on future premiums and what the excess will be.

bambergbike · 07-05-2014 01:04PM

murphaph wrote: »

It's the same here in Germany (for children at least). If a child darts out from between parked cars or whatever, the driver will be automatically found partially liable even if we all recognise that he had no chance to stop.

Four points, in no particular order:

1) Ireland doesn't technically have presumed liability and Germany does, so the legal situations are not directly comparable, although the results in this case may to have been similar enough. I think a similar German case might not have gone through so many different courts, in German law, the situation might have been a bit more cut and dried. Presumed liability would be worth introducing in Ireland, but the case for it would have to built carefully and methodically.

2) Liable, not guilty. In civil law rather than in criminal law. This isn't/shouldn't be about aportioning blame to a driver who really may not have had much of a chance to react under the circumstances. It's about making sure that the bus company bears the risks that the bus presents to third parties. One person is killed or injured every day in London by a bus - buses are large, heavy and dangerous, sometimes more dangerous than they need to be, and it's only fair for bus companies (and indirectly bus passengers) to pay for the damage they cause. Even if it was just caused by the buses being there, not by them being driven dangerously or carelessly. If they hadn't been there, nothing would have happened. Bus passengers get the benefits of the buses being there, so it's not unfair to offload the disbenefits on them as well.

3) A bus thundering past children at 40 km/h in close proximity to them doesn't sound like a safe situation. It's obviously to the driver's credit if he could legally have been going even faster and wasn't, but if the driver was operating in an inherently unsafe environment, then that environment needs to be changed.

4) Lower speeds in urban areas would prevent some collisions altogether. But, perhaps more importantly, they would mitigate the consequences of others. 30 km/h, about twice the average speed of rush hour traffic, is a sensible half-way house between "speeding" and "crawling" along that would have minimal impact on journey times.

cdebru · 07-05-2014 01:06PM

schemingbohemia wrote: »

I can't find the link at the moment but I remember thinking at the time of the High Court decision that the way the Judge determined the bus driver should drive would mean that no bus would ever get anywhere on time.

The Judge held that the driver should have slowed to a crawl the moment he saw students on the footpath as anything could happen and the driver should expect the unexpected. How can one possibly drive to a schedule in those circumstances? The city would grind to a halt if everyone drove in such a way. It seemed to me to be a typical non-real world judgement.

I've no problem with the amount awarded, I do have a problem with the 70% fault finding of Dublin Bus, as the Supreme Court found that the driver was driving at 40km/h in a 50 km/h zone and that the driver reacted immediately.

Exactly it would be impossible to operate any kind of public transport on the basis of this judgement, buses would literally have to move at walking pace for most of the journey. Making it completely useless to most people.

cdebru · 07-05-2014 03:54PM

bambergbike wrote: »

Four points, in no particular order:

1) Ireland doesn't technically have presumed liability and Germany does, so the legal situations are not directly comparable, although the results in this case may to have been similar enough. I think a similar German case might not have gone through so many different courts, in German law, the situation might have been a bit more cut and dried. Presumed liability would be worth introducing in Ireland, but the case for it would have to built carefully and methodically.

2) Liable, not guilty. In civil law rather than in criminal law. This isn't/shouldn't be about aportioning blame to a driver who really may not have had much of a chance to react under the circumstances. It's about making sure that the bus company bears the risks that the bus presents to third parties. One person is killed or injured every day in London by a bus - buses are large, heavy and dangerous, sometimes more dangerous than they need to be, and it's only fair for bus companies (and indirectly bus passengers) to pay for the damage they cause. Even if it was just caused by the buses being there, not by them being driven dangerously or carelessly. If they hadn't been there, nothing would have happened. Bus passengers get the benefits of the buses being there, so it's not unfair to offload the disbenefits on them as well.

3) A bus thundering past children at 40 km/h in close proximity to them doesn't sound like a safe situation. It's obviously to the driver's credit if he could legally have been going even faster and wasn't, but if the driver was operating in an inherently unsafe environment, then that environment needs to be changed.

4) Lower speeds in urban areas would prevent some collisions altogether. But, perhaps more importantly, they would mitigate the consequences of others. 30 km/h, about twice the average speed of rush hour traffic, is a sensible half-way house between "speeding" and "crawling" along that would have minimal impact on journey times.

Your use of hyperbole " thundering " to describe a speed of less than 25mph takes away from the rest of your post to be honest.

Other than that the fact that the bus exists does not make it responsible in and of itself for the actions of other people. If he ran into a tree could you sue the owner of the tree ? Same logic if the tree didn't exist he couldnt run into it.

Where does personal responsibility come into it ? If I run onto the road then the primary responsibility for anything that happens is mine , unless there is someone or thing that caused me to run onto the road. If it is someone that is too young to take personal responsibility then the responsibility doesn't pass to society as a whole. And it particularly doesn't fall to someone minding their own business and obeying the law who has not done anything dangerous or contributed to the accident other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Are decisions like this making public transport impossible in Ireland?

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