For anyone who is interested, my latest blog jas just been posted up on the website. It covers the touchy subject of contributory negligence, not particularly from a motorcyle perspective (although I do touch on it) but from other aspects.
Hope you find it interesting…
I read your blog, interesting, thanks for posting. I have a question which may or may not be related.
A motorcyclist not speeding but did veer slightly onto the wrong side of the road and clipped an on coming car.
There was plenty of time and space on the road for the car driver to take avoiding action but the driver did not deviate from their path or slow down and continued such that the bike clipped them. It transpired that the biker was suffering a pulmonary embolism which caused momentary dizziness. As a result of the accident the biker suffered serious injuries.
My question… If the car driver deliberately did not take avoiding action would that be contributory negligence?
If the collision occured within the car drivers own lane, then sorry, no contributory negligence.
It is reasonable to assume that each rider/driver will maintain their own lane discipline and it is not the duty of the car driver to anticipate a potential medical issue that could cause a crash is heading towards them.
Sorry, no contrib against the car driver.
Pretty much what I thought, although I did hope it would be the duty of drivers to take reasonable action to avoid a collision that they could anticipate due to the trajectory of the vehicles (there was plenty of room for the car to move over and plenty of time for the driver to do so).
As I expected, the fact that the bike had crossed over into the cars lane is the decider, even if only a few inches over.
99% of drivers don’t look beyond the end of their bonnet, so was probably unaware until he got hit and then thought “What was that?” 
You have to make the rules applicable to the thickest idiots on the road, and most don’t even know what the word “Trajectory” means, but even I would expect an approaching bike to be capable of remaining on its own side of the road, and even then if a bike started to encroach into your lane, whilst you may adjust your position a little, you would reasonably expect the bike to return to its own side of the carriageway.
I will use this example as part of my talk tonight if you don’t mind? Thanks 
By all means use this in your talks, although I am not sure exactly what it is an example of?
The thought that crossed my mind was… the car driver was thinking, “Bloody biker wants to play chicken, this is my side of the road, let’s see who wins”. But you’re probably right, the car driver knew nothing about it until too late.
