Tandem,
After 30 odd years of service I unfortunately have become a bit crabby in my old age and therefore find my self with far less patience than your good self. I have never professed to have any sort of expert opinion or, for that matter first hand knowledge of this incident, in fact I was preparing for a night out on a tiny island 3 miles of the coast of Belize when it happened. But I did know the guys involved, Kev had been in my house but a few months earlier and the others I knew from my time around the bazaars.
All that I have ever asked of JP and the like is to give me conclusive evidence to support theirs and the boards conclusions which so far they have been unable to do. I am off to work this morning and I guarantee that if I took a straw poll from the pilots and crewman gathered there with regards to cloud base and visibility there would be a fairly wide spectrum of opinion, and if I then compared that data with that being given by our met office what chance do you think of EVERYONE being in agreement?
The thing that really sticks in my craw with all of this is the complete intransigence of those who came to this conclusion in this unjust case and the few in here who continue to support it. Like many others in here I have my own opinions as to what PROBABLY happened and in my heart of hearts I suspect that the BOI's finding are quite probably correct.
But where I differ from JP and the like is that my mind tells me that no matter what I THINK happened there is NO HARD EVIDENCE to support my theories and therefore there is enough doubt in my mind to suggest that the wrong verdict has been passed.
A few months back my son was involved in a road traffic accident, after coming to the front of some queuing traffic he pulled out to overtake a slow moving tractor. Unfortunately for him an impatient driver had decided to overtake from about 5 or 6 cars back and there was a coming together. Fortunately for my son he had 3 friends traveling in the car with him and as he was returning from playing football two other cars with players in them stopped to assist. Luckily no one was hurt and at the scene the other driver admitted full liability, admitted to driving to fast and admitted to being in a rush to get to a train station. No brainier thinks I but in the eyes of the law I am WRONG. In a conversation yesterday with an insurance company appointed solicitor I was advised that all the written evidence we had provided stating the other drivers confession was useless in the eyes of the court. Whilst admissible the district court judge would simply treat it as hearsay and it would have little or no bearing on the outcome. The only thing the court would take into account were eye witness accounts of what happened and even though the 3 guys in the car with my son fitted that category their testimony would be useless as they were facing forward and could therefore offer no conclusive opinion as to the exact cause of the crash. The advice was to drop the case as the most likely outcome based on the available facts was the case being dismissed to a lack of eye witness evidence.
Now JP and the like please tell why, if the burden of proof required in the case of a simple RTA is so clear and so specific, how on earth were the BOI ever allowed to reach their LEGAL conclusion with what is nothing more than hearsay as evidence?