The BBC reports that a female cyclist in her mid-20s has died after being hit by a lorry at London's Bow roundabout this morning.
The as-yet-unnamed woman was pronounced dead at the scene after being attended by London Ambulance Service. The crash happened at about 08:47 GMT.
In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said: "It is believed the lorry was travelling west along the A11, entering the roundabout to turn south towards the Blackwall Tunnel.
"The cyclist is believed to have been travelling in the same direction when the collision occurred.
"The male driver of the lorry stopped at the scene. There have been no arrests."
Ross Lydal of the Evening Standard reports that the woman was not actually on Cycle Superhighway 2 at the time. The notoriously dangerous route has recently been extended east of Bow Roundabout with a largely-segregated lane to Stratford.
Cyclist Robin Stephenson told the Standard about the aftermath of the crash which he saw as he rode over the Bow flyover on his way to work as an IT manager: “The traffic was backing up from Stratford High Street. I went over the flyover and saw a huge number of emergency services down there.
“I commute that way every weekday but don’t use the roundabout - I won’t use it. I go over the flyover rather than round the roundabout. The whole area is just dreadful. The only way that they will fix it is to have full segregation for cyclists.”
The London Cycling Campaign has announced a protest ride this evening at Bow roundabout, meeting at 6pm for 6.30.
LCC's Chief Executive Ashok Sinha said, "Although we don't know the exact circumstances of today's crash, we know it happened just a few metres from where Svitlana Tereschenko was killed in 2011.
"It's unbelievable that we are, again, two years after that death, calling on Mayor Boris Johnson to install cycling and pedestrian-safe traffic lights at Bow roundabout to prevent more Londoners being killed.
"A cyclist-specific traffic lights were recommended by TfL's own consultants before Superhighway 2 was built, but the recommendations of expert consultants, cyclists and pedestrians have been ignored."
The Metropolitan Police are appealing for witnesses who should contact the witness appeal line on 020 8597 4747.
The woman is the fourth cyclist to die on London's roads in the last week, and the twelfth this year.
Last Thursday hospital porter Brian Holt was killed when he was hit by a lorry on Cycle Superhighway 2 at Mile End. Hours later planning expert Francis Golding was hit by a coach in Holborn and died of his injuries the next day. Yesterday a 40-year-old man was killed when he was hit by a bus in Croydon.
Since it opened in 2011, three cyclists have died in collisions with trucks on Cycle Superhighway 2, and three more have died very close to the route while apparently about to join it.
The first was Brian Dorling in 2011, followed just three weeks later by Svitlana Tereschenko, who while not technically on CS2 at the time was at Bow Roundabout, about to use the route to ride west.
French student Philippine De Gerin-Ricard was also hit by a tipper truck when she was killed on July 7 of this year, and on September 15 nursing assistant Maria Karsa was hit by a truck at the Aldgate gyratory, just before the western end of CS2.
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I don't have a problem with the word collision. It takes two to collide and the correct usage shouldn't imply fault on either side. "Crash into" is definitely loaded and suggests the blame lies with the crasher and should be avoided at all costs until the facts have been established.
Maybe the headline is usually reported as "Cyclist seriously injured in collision with tipper truck..." because the injured cyclist is the most important information and should come first?
The other way round doesn't really work for me.
PS. I really appreciate your contributions to this forum, Neil. You talk a lot of sense and I very much admire your ability to remain calm even when provoked by some of the less even-tempered members who post here. Cheers.
Agreed.
The Beeb constantly gives the impression that the cyclist was the active participant and the HGV was the passive.
That isn't impartial reporting.
I too ride it everyday - have done so for the last 16 years. Despite the "improvements", I still ride the flyover every morning. It's more annoying with the segregated cycle lane, but if you move out of the blue cycle lane at Sugar House Lane as you move westbound on the A11, you can cross over pretty safely to get up onto the flyover.
Over and over you hear of cyclists preferring the flyover to the roundabout - and there is in fact a spare unused lane on the westbound side (covered in chevrons). I wonder if anyone has heard of a scheme to make a safe route over the flyover.
At its most interventionist, to keep cyclists off the existing bridge structure completely, it could be a much simpler version of the recently unveiled Dutch "floating roundabout", but at its simplest, some sensible lane painting and staggered signalling to get cyclists safely over the flyover might be smart.
There is nowhere to go northbound or southbound from the roundabout as a cyclist, the A12 is basically a motorway at that point. So the eastbound and westbound movements are the only ones that really matter, and the flyover handles them.
At one point, the High Street 2012 project, that was supposed to redo the entire 6km of road from Aldgate to the Olympic site, was supposed to have something like this in it I thought. In the end, when the Olympics organisers decided to run the marathon elsewhere through London for the Olympics because Whitechapel and Mile End are too ugly for TV, the project was scratched, and only a few shop facades in Stepney Green were redone and the rest of the money went god knows where.
What are some others' thoughts about the flyover?
Taking the flyover means moving from the inside to middle lane and many cyclists would be nervous about that unless very confident and experienced. I'm surprised there is no cycling box prior to the lights on the westbound side. The problem I see is many large vehicles going straight onto the A12 Southbound from the L/H wesbound lane and not seeing cyclists going straight on. Cyclists ideally need a head start here.
Ironically the new kerb separating cyclists from traffic on the approach to the flyover Westbound makes it much harder to merge. I am not a slow cyclist (very proud of my Eastbound KOM), but I don't like that manoeuvre much.
I'll cycle with my family on the new East (Stratford side of the roundabout) bit of CS2, but no way on the roundabout or the Bow — Mile End section. As for Whitechapel/Aldgate… emphatically no. It is not as if there isn't enough space to do it properly, there just isn't the political will. Boris Johnson wouldn't commute like that, and he would surely not let his family either.
It's a legal thing. If charges are about to be or have been laid then biased reporting could prejudice a subsequent trial. That's why the format is to say "x was in collision with" rather than "y hit x". If it has been widely reported that y hit x then y could, quite reasonably, claim that a fair trial would be impossible because of the biased reporting. No newspaper or media outlet would traditionally have wanted to be sued for contempt. Frustrating for a cyclist, I know, but that's why it's couched in such a way.
This is an appalling incident. My sympathies are with the victim's family. And I expect this has brought things back for the previous victims at the roundabout.
Exactly but when its written "cyclist collided with a lorry" that intimates a degree of fault, if the BBC (insert any news channel here) wrote "cyclist was involved in a road traffic accident with a lorry" that might balance the issue, I just wonder who is supplying the information. The trouble is there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of consistency across the board.
The trouble to me is that instead of seeing the tragedy of some bloke dying his daughters not having a dad a mum losing a son, a brother losing his best friend it's brought down to a cyclist VS a vehicle. A cyclist is not a "vehicle" it is not "involved in a collision" it's a human being being hit by over one of metal... I still can't understand that when some people get behind a wheel they seem to see a person on bicycle as just another car rather than some very very real flesh and bones which break very easily.
Some roadie rider once wore a skin suit which was just flesh and bones...i'd love to track that kit down and ride it I wonder if it would make the general public think about the damage a car would do to a person.
It was Mario Cipollini, as shown here: http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/photos/2001/may01/giro1/AFPcipo_muscle_su...
It could work. Research from the university of bath a few years ago showed dressing as a woman, and wearing a wig of long female hair and no helmet made drivers give the rider a wider berth too... I'll leave that to you though. Sadly that didn't work for the victims in London recently.
Another death.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24936942
"following a collision with a double decker bus"
Words fail me.
They don't fail me; CS2 is fundamentally broken West from Bow. Some of the huge expanse of road and pavement should be dedicated to cycling, before more people die. When Boris said he was going to “go Dutch”, that is what I thought he meant — now
I expect him to finally follow through and implement it.
'Is it just me, or do other cyclists feel that the BBC seems keen to report cylists as being in a crash with, crashing into, in collision with, or colliding with, a vehicle?'
They do seem keen to do this. Because it is factually correct. Do you want some Daily Mail-type headline about killer drivers?
It's just you. They're talking from the point of view of the cyclist because that's what the article is about. A crash or collision has taken place and the cyclist has died, therefore "a cyclist has died after a collision/crash with a lorry" is correct. If the lorry driver had been injured and the article was about him, it would be "a lorry driver has died after being in a collision with a cyclist", it's got absolutely nothing to do with blame and the BBC would be wrong to even speculate on blame.
Agree with your comments that stats can lie and this may be a coincidence; a tragic coincidence. Also agree it's a lot about riding in the 'right way' to stay safe. Good points re: these specific accidents and their time of day. That said, I would be really interested to see research that made a full open minded analysis of accidents:
- time
- weather and light conditions
- vehicles involved
- type of cyclist
- position of cyclist in road/ road situation etc
..etc...
Would be very interesting to understand the pattern to inform further changes in infrastructure, vehicle rules and training, cyclist training.
...my only other 'what has changed point' is:
1) Low bright light. I have become very aware the last few weeks how having a bright low sun right behind me makes me more vulnerable. It's part oft he visibility point and another thing to be aware of when cycling defensively.
Nonetheless, all your points on infrastructure are well made. But whatever changes are made people are still going to be hurt, and we should continue to analyse the causes and consider what other interventions can help keep us all safe.
Safe riding everyone!
A large gathering of London cyclists at a vigil at Bow Roundabout last night:
"1000 people on bikes protesting peacefully at Bow tonight. Boris, are you listening? pic.twitter.com/G6SDwY03Rw"
From https://twitter.com/london_cycling
Yes, we should definitely keep an open mind on the causes. I imagine a report into the causes and of the death with be written up in a coroners report, and only then can we truly reflect on the reasons.
Someone above was lamenting about the 'lack' of a response on these deaths. The fact is nothing meaningful can be done until a considered report on them has been done. You only end up making rash decisions about perceived causes…..which does no one any good.
The latest death (today) was the result of an accident at 23:30, again, no particular correlation with the time of day and none with the place it happened.
If I were to pre-empt anything, it would be that we need to improve cycle safety on the streets of London by educating riders. Though the problem is that many will not do so because they don't feel the need to, and I can understand that. Since passing my cycling proficiency aged 9 I haven't done any road safety education in a formal sense.
if a cyclist crashed into a lorry they wouldnt be dead, they would simply bump it (maybe quite hard!) and fall on the floor, getting grazed knees/elbows/hands and maybe a bump on the head!
lorry/motor vehicle crashing into cyclist - thats completely different. thats when the cyclist goes under the wheels and ends up dead
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