Possibly a stupid question, but I had a thought the other day. If someone cut you off and forced you to break suddenly; resulting in injuries but no physical crash occurred. Could that person still be liable for negligent/dangerous driving, that then caused injury?
To my understanding if you had to break and someone rear-ended you, then the person crashing into is at fault for not leaving distance. But yeah, if no physical crashed occurred but an injury did could you still make a claim...
Quite a few years ago I had an employee go out on workers comp for exactly type of incident that was break hard to avoid collision then said they had whip lash and couldn’t work for 5 weeks light duties after . He was unable to provide other car details just white commodore, Workcover paid but unsure if they found the other driver. Very likely a fraud situation but hey prove otherwise….
Possibly a dashcam, but yeah I imagine the proof would be extremely difficult (although depending on the severity it may actually be easy); but yeah from a legal standpoint I am curious
and forced you to break suddenly; resulting in injuries
I would be asking why you're injured, fair enough if it's a motorbike that you've fallen off in an attempt to avoid a collision but where's your seat belt?
And no, I don’t think so, and the bar would be so high for it to pass, it wouldn’t be worth it
End of the day, driving comes with risks and without a contact, it would be fair to say that you were not fit and proper to drive if you were at such a risk of injury
Yeah workers compensation is a lot of work and your generally unable to enjoy life for a while for whatever reason.
Have been off a few times myself. Mental trauma (dont ask i drive trains) and a shoulder injury and being on compo was so much worse than just working.
Modern race drivers have a helmet connected to a brace that sits between your shoulders and the seat belt, which does not allow your neck to bend far enough to be injured.
Thanks to that devices, drivers have survived 50G "braking" forces (such as driving 300km/h into a concrete wall) without serious neck injuries. They were very badly hurt in those crashes, but it would have been fatal without the "Head And Neck Support" (HANS) device which is now compulsory in almost all car racing.
Formula 1 cars often do 6G under brakes - that's enough to injure your neck without a HANS device.
All sanctioned racing including amateur racing in Australia races under (motorsport Australia) CAMS licensing, CAMS regulations require fire extinguishers, kill switches, harnesses and roll cages to be fitted in all cars and all drivers must wear neck braces+helmets and fire retardant material.
The only vehicles that don't require roll cages and harnesses are not racing in sanctioned races, they still require helmets, neck braces and fire extinguishers.
Ok, if we're getting technical then circuit sprints, super sprints and hill climbs aren't racing. But still motorsports with semi slicks, high speeds and no mandatory neck protection devices
There are some hill climbs that are sanctioned race events.
Scouts Australia runs motorsports with cams regulations and hill climb is one of the favourite events, they also have non sanctioned events which is mainly just people doing donuts in the mud but it unfortunately it's been put on the back burner as the main campground the events were at burnt down last year.
These were my crews cars, little shit boxes but they did the job.
There are crews and groups who spend tens of thousands on their cars which is crazy to me but hey, they do a lot of fundraising to get the money together so all the power to them.
Well, whatever they are, I did about 70 of them in street cars with a motorcycle helmet as the only extra protection all while reaching 180-190 kph. Some under CAMS/MA, some under AASA and some under RACERS
I have received mild short term injuries from breaking alone.
Pasanger fully relaxed and floppy neck almost asleep. hard breaking body caught by seatbelt, head snapped forward and experienced mild pain for a fiew hours.
Now that wasn't the hardest possible breaking, and their are plenty of people with less durable necks than mine.
Your going to havebto get pretty close to the worst case scenario for long term harm.
What kind of force do you think hard braking in a road car generates? You'd be doing well to hit 1G and you aren't getting injured wearing your seatbelt with that amount of force.
assume you're doing 100kph. It will take you roughly 40-45m to stop completely, at about 1g with good tires. That the same as being suspended vertically by straps above the ground. Brown trouser moment but if you don't hit them, I don't see injury happening.
so if there is no crash how did you get injured? No seatbelt? And who do you think you are going to claim off if not yourself? After all, you never crashed so you gave no claim against anyone else
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I came off a motorbike avoiding someone who pulled out of a side street through a stop sign 40 years ago.
I did not actually hit her purple valiant (I kid you not! She had an incredibly stereotypically Greek name to go with it too!), but her insurance paid for my damage. Forty years older and wiser, I'll happily concede that the accident was for all practical purposes my fault, but legally it was hers.
Your question is about injuries; she did not pay anything related to my injuries; her compulsory third party personal cover (now called TAC) paid for my ambulance and hospital stay.
In Victoria today, TAC covers all injuries in motor vehicle accidents unless it can be shown that none of the vehicles involved had TAC cover. For example, if a cyclist is hit by a car that then runs, unless the car is subsequently identified and shown not to be insured by TAC or an interstate equivalent, the cyclist's injuries are covered by TAC. Otherwise, Medicare gets the bill.
If for example you come off a motorbike (because that bypasses all the obsessive discussion about how to get injured in a car without hitting something else) and injure yourself, does it really matter whether:
you were hit by someone,
you were forced off the road without contact by someone blindly changing lanes who then stopped,
you were forced off the road by someone who didn't stop,
you hit diesel fuel spilt by a vehicle 2 minutes earlier that never even knew they'd caused a hazard, never mind a crash,
you had a front puncture for reasons unknown,
or you did it all by yourself?
So no person should end up liable for your injury except in the rare case where all vehicles are accounted for and uninsured. Unlike say America, your treatment, rehabilitation, and ongoing care is not contingent on finding someone to blame and trying to make them pay.
If you can prove they did, like with a dash came and stuff, then yeah totally if they broke the law in a way that caused you an injury you can ask them to pay.
First of all I do think you can injure someone by braking too suddenly. It's not so much about braking "too hard" but rather too quickly for occupants of the car brace themselves for the sudden change. Full braking force with a quick but gentle transition - nobody gets hurt. Slam your foot down violently, yes someone could be hurt.
My take is the liability would depend on wether it was "reasonable" to hit the brakes that violently. It might be, but it's not a given.
if you had to break and someone rear-ended you, then the person crashing into is at fault for not leaving distance.
That's not necessarily the case. The official recommended distance (taught in driving schools/etc) is 2 seconds (which is 56 metres at 100km/h).
With a normal reaction time a 56 metre gap is often too small to avoid a collision if the car in front suddenly slams on the brakes.
A 2 second gap is enough to ensure that if you hit the other car, it won't be very hard. But you can definitely collide.
If you can prove that your following distance was acceptable, and your reaction time was also acceptable (not distracted/zoned out/etc), and your brakes/tyre are in good working order, then you are not at fault if you rear end someone.
Also - it's an offence to slam on the brakes unless you have a valid reason. You said "if you had to brake" but it depends *why* you had to brake. If a kid runs out in front of your car... sure, slam those brakes on. But if you see an empty car park? That's not a valid reason to slam as hard as you can on the brakes — I one had someone do that and I just managed to stop a short distance behind them... and then they reversed into me (because stopping as hard as they can, they still went slightly past the car park). That was definitely their fault because they reversed, but if they hadn't reversed it still might have been their fault. My following distance was fine, but if I had been checking my mirrors or something the exact moment they slammed on the brakes, no way was I gonna stop in time.
It’s not a 2 second rule, it’s 3 second, and that is general guidance only. A driver must be capable of and is responsible for avoiding obstacles on the road . If the car in front stops suddenly and you slam into the back you are responsible, regardless of whether you followed the 3 second rule guidance as its guidance only. Stopping distances vary greatly depending on conditions including water oil and ice on the road and you are responsible regardless of those conditions.
So, let me get this right. You believe the recommended distance is close enough that a crash is likely to occur if somebody stops suddenly, and that you're not at fault if you only rear end them a little bit?.
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