Your tricky legal questions answered

QSurely it’s clear who is at fault for overtake crash?

My brother was riding his Suzuki GSR600 last summer when he was involved in an accident. The police report finally arrived a month ago and his solicitors have said that the likely liability bracket is between 0% and 100%. This hardly fills him or me with any confidence that they know what they are doing. He had been following two cars for some time. Then the road straightened out so he went to overtake both of the cars, but just as he set off the car in front also went for the overtake and my brother crashed into him. How can this be my brother’s fault at all as he was already making the overtake? Surely he will get 100% compensation? Tyrone, email

AFault will depend on a number of factors. Was the driver in front aware of your brother’s presence behind him and for how long was he aware as this could lead to a finding that it was reasonably foreseeable that your brother was likely to overtake. Did the other driver

‘Did the driver indicate and look in his mirrors?’

indicate or use his mirrors? Did they in fact go for it at the same time? Was it simply just an unfortunate “accident”? Could your brother be criticised for not realising that the car was likely to want to overtake and for trying to overtake two vehicles at a time? These are all questions that may be answered by looking at the witness evidence but this is very likely to be a case of shared blame.