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news
Police tape (CC licensed by freefotouk on Flickr)Police said cyclist was doing 38mph when he was involved in fatal collision with pedestrian
The inquest into the death of a pedestrian hit by a cyclist in Derbyshire has been adjourned after the cyclist questioned the police’s calculation of his speed. A forensic collision investigator said that Craig Bond had been riding at 38mph in a 30mph zone when he hit 79-year-old John Beach when the latter stepped into the road to cross.
The Derbyshire Times reports that Beach died in hospital on April 18, two days after he was hit.
Bond and his friend James Holmes had been cycling on Nottingham Road, Ripley, at around 5pm when the collision took place.
"He stepped out in front of me,” said Bond. “He came out of nowhere. I couldn't have done anything to prevent it."
Holmes, who was travelling in front, said he saw Beach emerge from in front of a stationary car.
“The pedestrian came out with his head down,” he said. "I shouted to him 'watch out'.
"I managed to avoid him and Craig attempted to go around the pedestrian but he continued to walk into Craig's path. Craig tried his best to avoid him."
The man who had been in the car at the time said Beach, “had his head down and at no point did I see him look.”
PC Lee Simpson, a forensic collision investigator with Derbyshire Constabulary, analysed CCTV footage and calculated that Bond had been travelling at an average speed of 38mph.
The speed limit on the road is 30mph.
"I can't believe that – it's got to be incorrect,” said Bond. "I can't imagine doing 38mph on my push bike."
Holmes estimated that the two cyclists had been travelling at about 20mph.
Bond's wife said Strava indicated his speed 'at the point of impact was 18mph'.
Coroner Sarah Huntbach adjourned the inquest to allow police to carry out further investigations.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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Anyone in the Chesterfield area with nothing better to do on a Thursday afternoon?
The inquest is resuming on Thursday 19th December at Chesterfield Coroner's Court. Bizarrely (?) at 3pm, so I can only think that the coroner isn't expecting much debate to go on. Perhaps they have already seen the review of police evidence re the cyclist's speed?
Would go myself, but too far away unfortunately.
I think a lot of it has to do with the motor centric nature of the police force, I'm guessing that the forensic collision investigator drives everywhere, has probably not cycled since childhood and whose investigations up until this point have been of motor vehicles.
38mph in a car is nothing, I mean even small cars can reach 100mph, some much, much more. Just a slight press on the go faster pedal (maybe going up a gear).
On a bicycle 38mph is very difficult to attain let alone maintain. Pushing hard in top gear. I would need a very big hill, and because of my low gearing would have spun out long before, relying entirely on gravity overcoming the massive amounts of wind resistance at anywhere near that speed. This should have alerted the forensic collision investigator, and maybe resulted in some serious double checking before the giving the evidence in a court of law.
Is this guy an expert witness? The 'forensic collision investigator' will have been on some courses and gained qualifications, but is studying CCTV to establish an estimated speed one of them? This should have been confirmed at the inquest before he gave evidence.
Just look at all the controversy in football with VAR and that's with cutting edge technology. I presume that the CCTV footage was taken from town centre cameras, tho' I could be making a presumption there. Would love to see the footage the calculations are based upon.
Sounds like they have made the right decision to adjourn the enquiry for more investigation given the 38 v 18 mph figures.
I've never known strava to record my speed under by 20 mph certainly.
I'm sure the extra time will find that the cyclist was at a more reasonable speed.
How difficult is it to compare strava/gps data of both cyclists to the "Calculation" carried out.
I'd be pretty confident that if both sets of gps data showed the cyclists travelling at approximately the same pace then I would suggest that the collision experts calculation is fundamentally flawed.
Also 38mph, on a downhill which according to Map My Ride is pretty short with an average gradient of -6%, that is balls to the wall flat out pedalling for most cyclists.
Looking back at some of my strava data in the past, I know where I have been hitting high 30s, even for a short period of time its been as a result of some pretty steep downhills, a fair bit steeper than -6%
I've seen The Capture. I no longer trust CCTV.
That's very interesting.
reminds of the death couple of years ago of an elderly guy (rip) in St Kilda, Melbourne down under...struck by cyclist on a light controlled crossing...local press initially claimed cylist breaking speed limit...wrong they quoted the speed limit for an adjacent similar named section of road...police used the cyclists garmin record to check speed at point of collision and used the gps time "stamp" to correlate with the ped' signals electronic record showing that the cyclist had a lengthy green light at time of collision and and clear the cyclist of blame despite some witnesses stating ped' had a green light and others saying had a red light...didn't stop the coroner persuing a line of questioning that seemed to imply that having a bike intended for "racing" somehow contributed...never seen that with a driver and a car that can operate at well above any possible speed limit
https://www.bicyclenetwork.com.au/newsroom/2019/07/01/inquest-into-death...
https://www.thesenior.com.au/story/6240836/red-signal-seen-in-fatal-vic-...
I'm must say that 'when it comes to cycling' I also do not trust the police.
I've experienced a low knowledge of both the law regarding cycling and a basic understanding quite a few times from them over the years.
I'm not surprised about an assumption of a pretty implausible high speed in this case.
Seriously, 38mph sounds, though not impossible, rather improbable.
Not good to hit a pedestrian, though, at any speed. And a tragic outcome.
You would have thought that anyone calculating a speed would, having come up with a figure, consider if it is realistic.
So I would have thought '38mph?, f**k me, that's FAST. Doesn't look right to me'.
No mention what injuries the cyclist sustained, colliding at '38mph'.
The newspaper article describes the motorist witness as first seeing the pedestrian and then the accident happening 'so fast', but no suggestion how fast the cyclists were travelling at. If I saw two cyclists in a built up area, overtaking stationary cars at 38mph, I would defo notice and comment on it.
Nothing about Plebs?
He's just become more extreme, as Tories in general are wont to do. They're all scoff-law desperados these days, you know.
i dont trust the police on anything. I was going to work one morning, passed probably 600 cars on a main road. Passed panda car and then held primary through a pinch point, with painted ''cycle lane'' on my left. Went left straight after, cop car beeped, guy cop leant out window pointing at the cycle lane. Sauid'' cycle lane there mate''.
No thought given to the fact the cops had just been obstructed down to zero mph by hundreds of single occupants in cars, no consideration given to the fact the gap was too narrow at that point. Dont trust cops, and certainly not those who dont know the laws or reasoning behind cyclists positioning.
It's all very interesting reading about the speeds. Casual (basic) observation would suggest you would be standing to achieve that kind of speed. Also analysis of the posture leading up to the event. Cruising on the flats turning occasionally to look at his mate or hunched on the drops laying down the power.
This is a inquest not a trial.
There is a question of credibility about a piece of evidence. The inquest has been paused to allow the evidence to be checked. Let's see how it pans out before we take a position.
It might go wrong, then again it might just work it's way to a well balanced outcome. We should show some patience.
38mph is balls out pedalling downhill speed. What a load of rubbish.
Sadly this has illustrated a very common trait of the elderly (imo). The head down, won't look seems fairly common amongst those you end up having to brake for.
As for the Strava use here....I guess this is one time you don't want that KOM.
Careful! I'm an 80-year old, active cyclist (and obviously pedestrian) and object to your sweeping ageism.
In MY experience, people who walk out in front of you come from ALL age groups. What they have in common is 'don't hear anything so the road's clear'.
In my experience, the people who wander around, looking down, oblivious to their surroundings are almost always looking at their phone.
A very common trait, but more likely of the young than old.
Phone Zombies is the phrase. The amount of times I've had to raise my voice for them to look up whilst walking on the footpath just before we bump into each other.
Im sure a little examination of the cctv and other evidence will reveal a glaring error
Ta boredcircuits, that is sort of doable. Bit spiny, but not unacheivable.
Still takes a bit of doing.
No reports of the cyclist being heavily injured, coming off at close to 40mph is going to cause some nasty injuries. That's road rash removing more than just skin.
Just to compare, that's the speed Froome was doing, actually a little less, I mean he hit a wall, but the same amount of energy involved.
The forensic collision investigator has one ultimate job, to give good evidence in court, getting things wrong wouldn't look that great.
"Bond's wife said Strava indicated his speed 'at the point of impact was 18mph'."
Am I missing something? Bond is the accused, and has Strava data for the ride? Why don't they look at that for his average speed immediately leading up to the incident.
OK, Nottingham Road in Ripley is HERE
The story doesn't say exactly where along the road it happened so I'll take the Strava segment
https://www.strava.com/segments/8678783
and assume it was along there. It's a descent (not a very steep one) and the fastest time along there, which has stood for 4.5 years is 35.5mph. A couple in the low 30's and then a batch in mid-high 20's. As it's only a short section, (0.3 miles) GPS errors may come into it a bit (most GPS only record once every second) but it's open road so there shouldn't be ghost echoes or blind spots off tress, buildings etc so I'm going with maybe 90% certainty that those speeds are accurate.
So to do 3mph MORE than that is highly unlikely.
If it's the B6441 stretch of Nottingham Road (leading down to the roundabout) then there's no Strava segement on that descent and it looks narrower and busier with parked cars, pedestrian lights etc so seemingly less chance of a speed like that.
There's somethign really not right about that calculation.
The newspaper article covered it more and here it is in Street view. This Strava segment probably covers it better as well. https://www.strava.com/segments/4164278. Remember the segments read average speed and people have hit 38-40 mph if you look at the analysis.
However as I stated earlier, stationary cars with people inside of them and the time of day would probably indicate a traffic build up at the lights which is probablly why the pedestrian crossed. If the cyclists were travelling at KOM speeds alongside traffic on chevrons, towards lights, then they do deserve to be charged. However I suspect it is more likely that either the Police made a mistake or picked up the higher speed elsewhere and they were slowing for the junction.
You're right, it's a slightly different segment, further away from the roundabout than the one I posted. I'd say there's an error with that KOM though.
KOM is 43mph but the next fastest are 4 people on 36.1mph average and then a load of 34mph's. It's a short section so less prone to a big spread of times and the idea that there's one outlier that's 7mph quicker than anyone else is insane so I reckon that KOM is false - probably GPS error. Happy to believe the 36.1's and high 34's, they're all consistent.
I found the guy on Strava too - not going to link to his profile but a quick look through his rides shows he's done some 13-16mph average speed road rides with a max up around the mid-30's. Never anything higher though.
For those two reasons, I'm still calling BS on the police estimate of 38mph - it's at the very top end of what would be reasonable on that segment and it's a higher maximum speed than anything he's posted on Strava before.
There's an error in the police calculation somewhere. Let's hope that the inquest gets it all sorted.
In Shocking to No-one news: Police are mostly bastards and hate cyclists.
Really ? Take a breath before you post nonsense like that . You do cycling and cyclists generally no favours with that sort of thing.
You'd be better off recommending that the police take a breath before submitting nonsense evidence like that. They do the police service no favours with that sort of thing.
(However, I do agree that blaming all the police for the behaviour of a few incompetents is not really appropriate)
I see you are part of the anti police opinion which often prevails on here.
"Police are mostly bastards and hate cyclists". Think about that . A lot of police probably ride bicyces sometimes, its nonsense.
The person came with a number on reviewing cctv . It may be right it may be wrong . that would be for a court to decide.
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