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Billie Piper (CC BY 2.0 licenced by vagueonthehow:Flickr)Billie Piper questioned by police after collision hospitalises cyclist
TV star Billie Piper is under investigation by police after the car she was driving was involved in a collision with a 16-year-old cyclist last week.
The 31-year-old, known for her TV roles as Rose Tyler in Doctor Who and Hannah Baxter in The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, was making a U-turn in Goods Way, Kings Cross when she apparently drove into the path of a cyclist.
According to the Daily Mail, the rider was coming downhill at speed. It seems he was therefore unable to avoid a collision with Piper's car.
An eyewitness called emergency services to the scene of the crash, which occurred on the afternoon of Tuesday July 29. Medics from London Ambulance Service treated the rider at the scene for a severe shoulder injury and he was then taken to University College Hospital for treatment.
Piper subsequently pulled out of that evening's performance of the play Great Britain in which she plays a newspaper editor.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "Police were called to Goods Way, King’s Cross, by the London Ambulance Service at 15.56hrs on Tuesday, July 29 to reports of a road traffic collision between a motor vehicle and a cyclist. The driver of the vehicle was female. Enquiries continue. No further details at this stage."
Charlie Lloyd of the London Cycling Campaign said: "When doing a U-turn you are expected to give way to everyone. Every crash highlights the need for all road users to take care."
The Daily Mail claimed there had been calls after the incident for "cyclists to take greater responsibility for their actions and to ensure they wear helmets", because of course, helmets are known to be highly effective in preventing shoulder injuries. However, the paper didn't say who, aside from the Daily Mail's editorial staff, was making those calls.
But as Charlie Lloyd's comments demonstrate there have been calls by actual named people for drivers to pay attention to what they are doing when making U-turns and not drive into the path of oncoming cyclists who are behaving legally. In addition there have been calls for mass media outlets to refrain from blaming victims, even if their entire revenue model is based on that practice.
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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56 comments
Oooh the irony! ……. The cyclist needs a Doctor, Billy Piper needs a Time Lord to go back in time to avoid the collision she caused.
I should imagine she genuinely didn't see the cyclist and I am sure she was worried about the condition of the injured cyclist and is now pretty contrite. I hope the incident has a proportionate outcome.
It is important to distinguish between genuine accidents caused by normal people like you, I and BP and those that are caused by psychotic maniacs whose driving is homicidal and who should be removed from the roads for a long long time and even from the wider population.
Maybe BP is sent on a driver awareness course which for other participants might be worth it ………………..
...brilliant!
bloody hell - some people have all the luck , fancy getting tossed off your bike by billy piper -
Since we are debating helmets again (how did that happen?) I used mine today to deflect a low hanging branch on a cyclepath (I know, I should have been on the road) and it was surprisingly effective. Saved my head from a scalping I feel.
I'm afraid that sort of 'evidence' is simply not robust enough to conclude that making helmet use compulsory increases head injuries. And likewise, if head injuries had fallen, it would not prove the opposite.
If someone wants to force us to wear helmets, or to persuade cyclists to wear them, it is up to the helmet partisans to show that helmets actually cut head injuries. It is not up to me to show that they don't.
There is no country where helmet compusion has cut rates of head injury.
The evidence is nowhere near good enough to justify compulsion.
I do not think that helmets necessarily increase head injuries, and did not claim so, but the figures from real life helmet use certainly seem to show that something is going on which is not allowed for in the idea that a bit of expanded polystyrene will make cycling safer. Real life is a bit more complex.
All this discussion of the effectiveness of helmets has failed to answer the question I asked of Parapaul ( and he has not come back to answer it either).
Cycling is about as dangerous as motoring or walking. Parapaul must know this, he must see more head injuries produced by use of shoes or four wheels. Why then does he single out cyclists as targets for his preaching?
Whether he is calling for compulsion or merely giving advice, he needs evidence, not just understandable emotion.
Here is a snippet from the New York Times.
"
A Bicycling Mystery: Head Injuries Piling Up
By JULIAN E. BARNES
Published: July 29, 2001
"Millions of parents take it as an article of faith that putting a bicycle helmet on their children, or themselves, will help keep them out of harm's way.
But new data on bicycle accidents raises questions about that. The number of head injuries has increased 10 percent since 1991, even as bicycle helmet use has risen sharply, according to figures compiled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But given that ridership has declined over the same period, the rate of head injuries per active cyclist has increased 51 percent just as bicycle helmets have become widespread."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/business/a-bicycling-mystery-head-inju...
I could bore you all by giving evidence from every jurisdiction where helmets are compulsory. The story is the same everywhere. Increasing helmet wearing has failed to make cycling safer.
Oh no, I wasn't asking parapaul for anything I was simply musing like a muttering and mumbling fool nursing a pint whilst sat at the corner table in the snug....
I think, occasionally, that all this talking and thinking just leads you [not you, me] to dwelling too much on the what could and what might and all that....
While I am anti-compulsion on helmets, I do wear one. That said, I think asking parapaul for empirical evidence is missing the point. Yes, I get that by definition, he sees the injured people not the thousands of uninjured ones, but the story of the guy being sausage-rolled by the truck is a sad and interesting one, and is the kind of thing that crash tests, with or without a helmet, would not replicate. He's in possession of no more scientific data than the rest of us, but I see things at work every day that could be improved or minimised by doing x or y. I don't have any data for that, but guess what? I happen to be reasonably good at my job. Parapaul isn't calling for compulsion, he's relating experience from an increased level of exposure to crashes.
[I've broken my own rule and gotten into a helmet debate darn it, going to be quiet now...]
I relation to the Play Do sausage chap...if he had a helmet on would the extra size that his head would have become and the exaggerated odd oval with peak of a helmet have made this injuries worse? Would he then have been wedged by head and caused neck trauma? What about the chin strap....we simply don't know do we?
I hate the Daily Mail. Teaandkittens is my saviour.
Personally, I think the immigrants are somehow to blame.
To be fair... if I was a paramedic, I'd wear a helmet all the time... because I would see it, I'd see what could happen out there.
In our parenting network, there are a couple of detectives who work in and around child abuse... guess what, their fear of their kids getting stolen and abused is far higher than anyone else's.
In both situations, the truth is that it is really unlikely to happen. Most of us never get abducted, never get dragged under a lorry and turned over like a piece of meat.
Mitigate against the risks by all means if that's what you want... but you have to moderate against real life and statistics.
You don't need to keep your kids locked away in a room to keep them safe, and you don't need to wear a helmet to necessarily stay alive.
I get very frustrated by the 'fear factor' spread by so many out there... cycling is unbelievably safe, get out there and enjoy it.
I think you'll find that the science on helmets and paramedics is inconclusive at best and, if anything, a bit of a red herring liberal plot to deflect road.cc commentators from dealing with little discussed important issues like should lance get his shirts back and are carbon frames safe and shouldn't we all run headless to the nearest bike shop demanding they take our money for a brand new 29er or maybe disc brakes on road bikes and things like that.
All the time? In bed? In the shower? In the ambulance? Probably just as useful in these situations as on the bike...
A rabbits foot in your saddle bag weighs less and has roughly the same protective qualities as a cycle helmet for and adult cyclist. As kid I had a St Christopher medal and a double splash of holy water. Which is even less bother. Cycle helmets might be useful for kiddies that don't weigh very much and aren't travelling fast. They give 50J of impact protection. The impact force calculation is Mass times velocity (M/s) squared over two.
I am 70kg. I travel at around 15mph commuting which is 6.7 m/s. So that's 70 x 45 which equals 3150. We then divide that in half so around 1500 odd Joules of impact.
Ain't physics a bastard when it comes to debunking superstitions like the protection you get from rabbits feet, cycle helmets and holy water.
Oh and before someone says 50J is better than nowt, well yeah OK that's fair and logical as a proposition but about as much use a plastic halloween mask is before being hit in the by fast a cricket ball.
You really won't notice the difference.
Really ? Will a helmet change the outcome for a head-on collision with a motor vehicle at typical velocities ?.. no, almost certainly not. Will one possibly help prevent or mitigate a range of injuries in other circumstances at the speeds you're talking about ?... yes, there is often quite a good chance it will.
If you want to discuss something approaching real impact dynamics then lets do that but I don't personally see that trotting out variations on the same dodgy calculations, then announcing that you've proven helmets don't help, is helping anyone - for or against their use.
OK well British Euro and US Standards for impact protection from a cycle helmet are 50J.
The impact force calculation is a scientific formula.
Just tell me which is wrong?
They provide 50J of protection at best when new and properly fitted and when the impact is oblique. If it is a rotational impact then virtually nothing.
The impact force of an adult travelling at even very moderate speeds far exceeds the impact protection from the helmet. In the calculation I gave you the helmet was only able to mitigate up to 3% of the impact force. Under ideal circumstances.
Wear one if you prefer and it makes you feel safe. Other people prefer rabbits feet and such like to give them that boost. All equally valid. I don't want anyone forced to wear a St Christopher medal or have a rabbits foot when cycling that's all. oh or a helmet. But I don't mind if they have those items with them either. It makes no difference either way.
Very well put.
I remain convinced that many drivers and cyclists put much more faith in the protective nature of cycle helmets than the helmets actually deserve.
Wear one by all means but don't take even the slightest extra chances (for example going a little quicker down hills)'while doing so and don't let the drivers around you come closer than they might if they did not think you were protected (tricky to control aren't they?)
Of course you can go for the higher rated SNELL rated ones and get up to 90j of protection.
Finally - Whichever standard you go for make sure you always crash correctly so as to get the maximum (albeit tiny) benefit from your helmet.
Perhaps I now need to don my helmet to deal with the flak from this posting!
Neither - what is wrong is your model of a particular type of impact (your full weight effectively stopping on a dime directly on the helmet) that does not take into account other types of impact being used to make sweeping statements and general conclusions.
The calculation is for one particular type of impact which would put the maximum stress into the helmet (full body mass applied at the velocity of the bike). If I hit a wall directly on my helmet at those speeds and stopped completely, I wouldn't expect a cycling helmet to fully protect me - but that circumstance is not the only reason for wearing one.
If you honestly believe that a rabbits foot is equally capable of preventing cycling injuries as a helmet, i'd suggest you do not understand the range of injuries that cyclists face or the effect of slowing down the head during impact - even when the helmet structurally fails. Even if we restrict our discussion to skull impacts, rather than e.g. lacerations and bruising, then a helmet which breaks during an impact has not necessarily magically failed to effect the impact dynamics.
Ok she made a mistake and someone got hurt. Let the law do it's job.
However there seem to be comments that scoff at wearing a helmet while cycling. Fair enough most cycling injuries are to the shoulders and hips but please don't go out without your lid on.
I cycle a bit. I also see cyclists after they fall off. Being a paramedic I see what can happen and how 'lucky' some injured cyclists are. It's not luck. It was their lid that saved them.
If a truck hits you head on that helmet will ... do bugger all but smash to bits.
If however you get knocked off or just lose it and fall off then any head impact will be absorbed by the lid.
Incident. Real. A guy (no helmet) goes under the back wheels of a truck the other day and squashed his foot and bust his leg. Should have been the end of it but as the wheel went over him it locked up and it spun him against the floor (think rolling a sausage of Play-do kind of thing) so his head hit the floor a few times. Just his head against the floor. No neck injuries so the force wasn't so very great really and it's just the weight of his head. The helmet would have prevented or at least massively reduced the gross brain injuries the poor chap now has.
Don't scoff at the helmet wearers and don't ever think you are going to protect yourself properly without one if you do have a spill. And if you think it won't happen to you ... it probably will.
We all have to use the roads together, play nice people.
Do you ever see, in the course of your work, head injuries suffered by people in cars? Or pedestrians who have suffered brain trauma in accidents, on the road or elsewhere? I am pretty sure you do, and probably more of these than cyclists.
So, I ask, do you recommend foam hats for car users, pedestrians, or alcohol drinkers? If not, why not?
You seem sure that the lid saved the cyclists who were lucky, do you have any basis for this belief, besides your personal conviction?
@ Parapaul
The vast majority of people who are against helmet compulsion are not against people wearing helmets, many of the people against helmet compulsion laws wear helmets regularly.
The problem of helmet promotion and compulsion is that it scares people off of cycling. This outweighs the benefits of helmets to the countries health by dozens to one.
Rather than insisting people wear helmets, would it not be better to try and prevent them from ending up underneath lorries in the first place.
And last but not least, are you advocating that car occupants and pedestrians wear helmets? No? why not? that would save far more lives.
I once brought the Daily Mail into my home by mistake.
I needed some newspaper to line our compost / kitchen waste bin.
So I picked one up from the communal recycling. Took it upstairs, lined the bin, only to realize what I'd just done. "ONE IN THREE HOUSEHOLDS ON BENEFITS" or some other nonsense, staring up at me.
I couldn't stick it, had to put it out for recycling again.
So, at least round here, Daily Fail is officially not even fit to line a box full of rotting vegetable matter.
I saw that headline. Neither of my neighbours on either side are claiming benefits which means that I must be on benefits! Who the hell is taking my benefit money?!?
My dad was inhospital last Christmas and asked me to get him a copy of the DM. I can only put it down to the morphine he was on. I felt really dirty buying it and was tempted to get him a copy of Razzle instead.
You'd probably have got fewer dirty looks with a top shelf mag!
I'm sorry John, but you've let yourself down with this:
"In addition there have been calls for mass media outlets to refrain from blaming victims, even if their entire revenue model is based on that practice."
Please try and rise above the ignorance of others and trust your readers to make these sort of subjective calls themselves. The article is filed under News, yet this sentence reads as opinion. Surely you can write an opinion piece or blog post to vent your frustration.
I am not defending the Daily Mail or the content of their article, but I expect better from Road.cc.
Road.cc eh? I suspect they're standing up for cyclists.
The event daily mail.... does not even make acceptable emergency toilet paper. Does any one actually read it? And believe it!?!
Didn't realise so many roadcc posters were left wing liberals?!
I didn't realise roadcc attracted so many tea party members
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