Five-year-old boy dies in Belfast after being hit by car while riding his bike

Remember when residential streets were somewhere that children played safely and happily?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-VuB131sFo

Growing up in the 80s we'd often be in the road playing football, kerbie, kick the can etc - just stopping for the occasional car being driven at a reasonable speed.

Sad how times have changed.

A piece in the DM said the vehicle was being driven at around twice the speed limit in an area where the limit is 30mph.

As a parent, my sympathies are with the family of the child.

I would not let my 5-year-old child cycle in the street unsupervised, no matter how quiet. Sad state of affairs to be in, but a necessity. Luckily, local parks have cycling facilities which is ideal. Young children don't have the road-sense to see and hear dangerous situations developing and therefore take avoiding action.

Oh look...more driverless.

*yawns*

I think Matt it has a lot to do with cycling. As a result of this incident, how many parents will stop their children playing/cycling on the streets in that particular estate? In fact how many will allow their youngsters cycle to the school which is a quarter of a mile away and has no main road as such to deal with? I am though convinced that many motorists on the estate will not change their driving techniques as they are all convinced that they are good drivers and it will never happen to them.

This tragic incident only reinforces the misconception that the streets are 'dangerous' and bikes should not be on them. And the motorist continues to be unchallenged about how he/she interacts with other road users.

I was cycling with my six-year-old this afternoon and we stopped at a traffic light controlled t-junction waiting to turn right. We positioned ourselves in the ASL in front of lane two. Lane one turns left, lane two turns right.

The lights turned green and we started off. My six-year-old is a very capable cyclist but obviously wasn't quick enough for the uber-friendly black cab behind who went into the turning left lane to undertake us and turn right across us shouting obscenities as he went.

Some people, eh?

Good point Matt, making streets safer for all people and all activities, not just for driving is key. Getting people to realise that there is an alternative is hard as almost everyone is also a driver. Speed limits need to be enforced too, which is hardly ever done unless a speed camera happens to be in place.

Another very sad story, but I'm not certain that cycling has much to do with it.

The comments seem to suggest that this boy was playing on his bike, not out for a bike ride per se. He could just have easily been on a scooter or kicking a football. The point is that this sort of thing simply shouldn't happen on residential streets.

I do agree with Giff77's comments about the structure of housing estates and associated parking however human behaviour is rather difficult to change. Where I live there are lots of laybys for resident and visitors to park in but the roads are still clogged with parked cars because people want to park as-close-as-possible to their front doors. Even walking a couple of hundred yards is somthing many seem unwilling to do.

I live not too far from where this happened (only a few miles) and have a daughter of a similar age. I'm currently going through the process of teaching her to ride without stabilisers but there is no way on earth that I would let her cycle in the street. There is a speed bump outside our house but the 4x4s just seem to see that as something to help them get air and it does nothing to slow down larger cars such as Audis, BMWs etc.

My condolences go to the family of this little boy.

There had been a few assumptions made by local press which now seem to have been removed. Though the footage on UTV while not graphic is pretty disturbing This tragic incident occurred in a quiet estate that wasn't a rat run. Basically an in and out road. The sooner developers start to design estates that lean more towards allowing play on the streets the better, maybe having communal parking rather than trying to squeeze as many dwellings as humanly possible. I would even go as far as a mandatory 10 mph limit for these particular in-out estates and a 20 for regular side streets.

Stop the child murder.

That's appalling. Obviously we don't know the the facts of this case, but definitely drivers should give plenty of room when overtaking kids on bikes.

I was on a ride at the weekend when someone overtook us on an empty straight minor road on the moors, and was within about a foot of me, my wife, and my two kids (aged 6 and 7). Fortunately they are all good riders, but if one of them had had a wobble then they could have been an accident statistic. The driver seemed oblivious of how close they had come.