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Video: Russian cyclist walks away after being run over by skip lorry

Amazing escape for 17-year-old woman who walks away after driven over by skip truck

Being hit by a lorry or other large vehicle while you’re riding often results in serious injury or even death, which makes this dashcam clip of a 17-year-old Russian girl surviving a nightmare hit from a lorry as remarkable as it is stomach-churning.

According to the Express, Artem Droukov, 24, was driving behind the skip lorry when it ran over 17-year-old Natasha Balova in the Russian city of Zelenograd near Moscow.

Dourkov said: “I was driving behind the skip lorry when I saw this teenager get knocked off her bike and then run over.

“I thought she would be crushed flat but instead the truck bounced into the air and after lying on the ground for a short while screaming, she got up and really gave the driver a mouthful.

“I couldn’t believe it. She walked a bit unsteadily out of the side of the road and sat down and told him what she thought of him.”

Balova was taken to hospital — after making it very clear to the driver what she thought of his astonishingly dangerous driving — and found to have escaped with just bruises.

Her bike, however, was completely wrecked in the collision.

Police say they are considering charges against the driver.

Cyclists vs HGVs

In the UK, heavy vehicles are disproportionately represented in crashes resulting in deaths and serious injury of cyclists. In London they make up just 5 percent of traffic, but are involved in 50 percent of cyclist fatalities.

HGVs have also been cited as being disproportionately involved in crashes with female cyclists. On the whole, men are the victims of most cycling fatalities and sustain more serious injuries than women.

According to an NHS Choices report on cycling safety published in February this year, males are 1.4 times more likely to be killed and 1.7 times more likely to be seriously injured than females.

 

However, the report said there is evidence that women in the UK have a greater risk of being involved in a collision with an HGV than men.

It said: “The latest study into London's cycle hire scheme found that women were twice as likely to be involved in a fatal collision with an HGV, despite making up just 30% of the scheme’s participants.

“One theory is that, somewhat counterintuitively, this increased danger is actually due to women being less willing to take risks.

“A leaked TfL internal report suggests that women are less likely to jump red lights, meaning they are more likely to get caught in an HGV’s blind spot.

“One UK researcher has argued that many women wrongly perceive that overtaking an HGV on the left-hand side is less risky, possibly because they believe sticking close to the curb is safer. The researcher did find a statistically significant trend in women reporting to be “left-side overtakers”.”

However, it seems clear in this case that Natasha Balova was simply riding down the road and the truck driver didn’t avoid her or slow down enough to miss her.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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16 comments

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williamhawkes92 | 9 years ago
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This is why I really hate lorry's, busses, coaches, tractors and anything that has a trailers attached to a vehicle because sometimes people forget the length and cause accidents like this.

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sfichele | 9 years ago
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Utterly remarkable and exceptionally fortunate.

It looks like she is turning left and the impatient idiot driver decides to overtake her

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Docroddy | 9 years ago
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Miraculous. The bike took the weight of the lorry and then gets spat out. Horrible piece of driving.

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DrJDog | 9 years ago
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The lorry is empty, so there'd be very little weight over the axles, especially the rear ones. If it'd been carrying a full skip, I imagine this would have had a different outcome.

Was she waiting to turn left? Difficult to tell how it happened from the video.

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levermonkey replied to DrJDog | 9 years ago
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DrJDog wrote:

The lorry is empty, so there'd be very little weight over the axles, especially the rear ones. If it'd been carrying a full skip, I imagine this would have had a different outcome.

Was she waiting to turn left? Difficult to tell how it happened from the video.

Watch again. Both front and rear wheels go over her so the fact the wagon is not carrying a skip is irrelevant. Skip wagons are constructed so that the load is carried by the rear axle with very little load transfer to the front axle (except under braking). Lets numberwang!  16

Assume empty skip wagon weighs 8Te and that there is a 60:40 split front:rear.
So working for front axle. 60% of 8Te is 4.8Te. Divide by 2 to get wheel loading = 2.4Te. Assuming contact patch of 0.06 square meter that gives you a loading of 2.4/0.06 = 40 tonnes per square meter.

Ok! A lot of assuming but I doubt I'm far from the truth. What we know for certain is that this girl is tough.

Is it wrong of me to be strangely aroused by her?  105

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JamesJ | 9 years ago
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Can trucks really drive over people and leave them unharmed? I remember seeing something similar on TV years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g7jEyonsqs

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Airzound | 9 years ago
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Either that truck is very light or she is very very strong.

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rich22222 | 9 years ago
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"Police say they are considering charges against the driver"
even given the incredibly clear evidence of dangerous driving? Sounds like they care as much as in UK.
She was lucky the truck was empty.

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WolfieSmith | 9 years ago
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How she walked away who knows? Did the bike shield her from being crushed for that split second. After today's shooting down of an airliner I imagine skip lorries are not Putin's primary concern.  2

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Matt eaton | 9 years ago
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"A leaked TfL internal report suggests that women are less likely to jump red lights, meaning they are more likely to get caught in an HGV’s blind spot"

This certainly gives a lot to weight the the old argument that jumping red lights is often safer than waiting for green. I wonder how far this would get you with the police if you were stopped RLJing.

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Housecathst replied to Matt eaton | 9 years ago
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Matt eaton wrote:

"A leaked TfL internal report suggests that women are less likely to jump red lights, meaning they are more likely to get caught in an HGV’s blind spot"

This certainly gives a lot to weight the the old argument that jumping red lights is often safer than waiting for green. I wonder how far this would get you with the police if you were stopped RLJing.

The police aren't bothered about the safety of cyclists, just showing to motorists that we get stopped and fined every so often too.

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OldRidgeback | 9 years ago
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She had a very lucky escape. Skip lorries do pose a particular threat to other road users in this country and this appears to be the case in Russia also, though I know the death rate on the roads in Russia is also worryingly high.

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notfastenough | 9 years ago
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How on EARTH did she walk away from that?! She looked to have been in primary position, but he leaves it far too late to move out, and then doesn't move anywhere near far enough. She may have moved out just before the impact, but if he'd left a decent gap it wouldn't matter.

I'd love to hear a translated version of what she said to him!

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jacknorell replied to notfastenough | 9 years ago
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notfastenough wrote:

How on EARTH did she walk away from that?!

Every Russian I've ever met is harder than nails...

Good to see someone walk away from something like this.

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Scoob_84 | 9 years ago
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That's a scary video, probably one of the scariest I've seen. Its a miracle she's alive and her fate was completely out of her control.

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Wolfshade | 9 years ago
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It must be a fake, I didn't read any comments to the fact that she wasn't wearing a helmet!

But seriously, it is a very worrying thing that happens across the world  2

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