A MOTORCYCLIST suffered 'unsurvivable injuries' after colliding with a tipper truck on the A595 near Askam.
Mark Brian Russell Ebbs, from Askam, died on December 8 after his yellow Triumph motorbike collided with a tipper truck on the A595.
The 48-year-old, who was a member of the Angry Pigs Motorcycle Group, was returning home after clearing out his father's flat, following his death in August that year.
He was travelling along the A595 towards Askam at around 11.45am when he came upon a queue of traffic that was waiting for a tipper truck to turn right onto a small lane.
Eyewitness Michael Morley was driving along the road when he was overtaken by the bike.
He said: "I don't think he was going particularly fast - about 65 miles per hour - but when the road bent to the left I lost sight of the bike until the road straightened out again.
"I saw the tipper truck and saw the bike going straight on. I remember thinking that he was going to go straight into it. Then he hit it with full force."
Assistant coroner for Cumbria, Paul O'Donnell ruled that Mr Ebbs died of "unsurvivable injuries" as a result of the misadventure of overtaking on that stretch of road.
The driver of the tipper truck, Martin Thompson, saw no sign of the bike prior to making the turn but heard a tell-tale scrape a split-second before the impact.
He said: "I started my manoeuvre and checked my mirrors for the last time.
"As I started I kept one eye on my mirror and one eye on the road. I had no reason to think I could not proceed.
"There was nothing in my view at all.
"As my front wheels began to enter the the road I heard a scrape. I had no reason to suspect anything so continued forward a bit.
"Then there was a loud bang like a huge explosion and a flash of debris in the mirror."
Mr Thompson got out of the truck and saw the bike implanted into the side of his vehicle and went round to the back and saw Mr Ebbs under the truck.
As he was contacting emergency services, he was approached by police sergeant Daniel Crake who was driving behind the tipper truck at the time of the collision.
Sgt Crake said: "The truck started to turn so it was at a right angle across the road and all of a sudden I saw, coming out of nowhere, a motorbike.
"Until that point I hadn't seen the bike before. I saw nothing until the bang."
Another eye-witness, Neil Jones, was leaving the brick works at the time of the incident and corroborated Sgt Crake's evidence.
He said: "The bike came out of nowhere. It is as thought it fell out of the sky."
However, forensic evidence from the police revealed a skid-mark and scrape along the road, leading to the scene of the accident.
PC Richard Wiejak, who investigated the incident, believes Mr Ebbs had applied the brakes upon seeing the tipper and may have tried to get off the bike seconds before the collision.
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