The Statement

The first version was spoken at the roadside, eleven minutes after it happened, and lasted under a minute. Eleanor said that the van had come from the left, that it had not slowed, and that the driver had been looking down at something in his lap.

The second version was taken in a room four hours later, by an officer who was careful and who asked, reasonably enough, how she could be certain about the driver's head at that distance and in that light. In the second version the driver was looking down at something.

The third version was a written statement, prepared with help and signed a fortnight afterwards. By then the phrase had become: the driver appeared to be looking downwards. Every word of that is defensible. Almost nothing of the original is left in it.

Nobody in this sequence did anything wrong. The officer was right to test the claim; a statement that will be read in court has to survive questions that the roadside version was never asked. Precision was gained at every step. What was lost was not accuracy but confidence, and the two are not the same thing.

Mr Bright, who represented the other side, put it plainly at the hearing. He read the three versions in order and asked the court to notice the direction of travel. Then he sat down without asking Eleanor a single question, which was the most effective thing he did all day.

Eleanor herself remained certain throughout, and said so whenever anyone asked her directly. The difficulty was that by the time anyone with authority asked, the only version in front of them was the one she had signed, and it no longer said what she meant.

She has thought about it since, and what she takes from it is narrow and useful. The most reliable account of anything is the one written down first, badly, by somebody who does not yet know which parts will matter.