Experience isn’ t everything: Law
s the pilot of a high performance and rather specialist vehicle you probably take pride in your riding, which is good. The risks of riding are well-known; we motorcyclists account for 1% of road users but make up 19% of fatalities, and the peak group for fatalities is young men. The Government’s own statistics reveal that young motorcyclists (16-20) are the most likely to be killed and it falls steadily with a little upward spike which may be accounted for by born-agains (41-55).
If the exuberance of youth is the reason why some young men’s lives are ended, why the mid-life spike? I’m careful when clients tell me they’ve been riding for years when gentle probing reveals they have had long breaks or tiny annual mileages. The possession of a motorcycle licence for many years is not experience and overplaying your experience in a trial scenario is a zerosum game.
APractise makes…
Many hours on a bike make you a better motorcyclist. That said the 10,000 hours rule – if you do anything for 10,000 hours you get to be an expert – is cobblers. I could do 10,000 hours of music training and I would not be Ed Sheeran, let alone Mccartney. But, the more you do something, chances are you’ll get better at it.
Taking into account all of the above, in the event of you litigating over a collision the Court is only interested in the few seconds where everything went wrong, not even the minute beforehand, and even less the 20 years before that. So, if your riding ever comes to be questioned avoid the temptation of giving a hostage to fortune. Witness statements taken by ex-coppers always seem to explore experience. You give away easy cross-examination by wittering on about your many years of experience. If believed it makes no real difference and can come across as either arrogant or complacent. If disbelieved or effectively challenged, you come across as dishonest. It is a dangerous thread for cross-examining Counsel to pull at. Because I am silent on the point of experience it goaded an opposing Barrister to explore this and the first rule of Advocacy is do not ask a question that you do not know the answer to.
Even the judge smiled
My Learned and inquisitive friend asked my client, ‘would you regard yourself as an experienced motorcyclist?’ To which his perfect answer was, ‘I have been doing it for a very long time, I ride about 8000 miles a year, and I have never been knocked off, so I am experienced in as much as I have done a lot of riding, but I am completely inexperienced in being knocked off’. Even the usually stony faced judge allowed himself a little smile.
If you decide to put your experience in as part of your case, then the other side are entitled to explore it by, for example, asking for your insurance proposals setting out what your average annual mileage is. And if you have had the same bike for a few years it is very easy to do an MOT check on it which shows what your annual mileage is.
The legal test is did your motorcycling fall below the standards of a reasonably competent motorcyclist? It is an objective test based on the few seconds when everything went wrong. As your experience is largely irrelevant, let silence be your friend.
‘The possession of a bike licence is not experience’