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Vincent Cullinane (picture via West Yorkshire Police)Cyclist involved in crash with e-bike rider dies in hospital
A cyclist who was involved in a head-on crash with the rider of an electric bike in Leeds last month has died in hospital.
West Yorkshire Police say that Vincent Cullinane, aged 51, passed away in hospital on Tuesday 10 May.
Mr Cullinane was riding his black Boardman bike alongside the A61 East Street at around 5.45pm on Thursday 21 April when the crash happened as the two riders headed towards each other on the pavement alongside the busy dual carriageway.
The 19-year-old male rider of the e-bike, a blue Carrera, sustained what police have described as a minor leg injury.
Officers from West Yorkshire Police’s Major Collision Enquiry Team, which is investigating the case, want to speak to anyone who saw the crash, or what happened beforehand.
Anyone with information is requested to call police on the non-emergency number 101, quoting log 1386 of April 21 or online via their live chat facility.
As we reported last month, a photo of the incident published by Leeds Live in its initial report showed a section of the road, which is a major route into Leeds city centre from the south east, cordoned off by police outside former textile mills converted into apartment buildings.
> Cyclist critically injured after head-on crash with e-bike rider
Although there is no specific signage on the footway at the location where the crash happened signifying that it is a shared-use path, Google Street View imagery from July 2021 shows signs a couple of hundred metres away in either direction which suggest that it does form part of a designated cycle route in and out of the city centre.
Last year, West Yorkshire Combined Authority published the results of a consultation into planned cycle safety improvements in Leeds city centre, with a number of respondents calling for safer infrastructure in East Street and the surrounding area.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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I've rarely had much trouble cycling around Central London, perhaps the odd tourist cycling along the wrong side of the super highway, and the odd encounter with a the 'yooves' that wheelie up and down The Embankment from time to time.
But since lock-down ended, the numbers of near misses and close encounters I've had with Deliveroo/Uber riders on e-bikes has been a more or less daily occurence. I know they're only trying to make a living, I'm getting bored with it. Seems from the comments below that I'm not the only one....
It could have been two careful cyclists caught out by bad infra (or a third party) and could also have been an idiot on an illegal e-bike but we really don't know.
We can make an educated guess that both these riders found their local roads (and drivers) so dangerous that they both chose to cycle on the pavement instead and now sadly one of them is dead.
Whilst I have joined the speculation below, this is the most salient comment so far.
RIP.
I'd note two things here:
-the roads where the collision appears to have taken place are really, really nasty. Twisting, fast, poor sight lines, multiple lanes. Not good for cycling.
-they may have both been cycling on the pavement, BUT this stretch of pavement leads directly into a bi-directional segregated cycle lane.
So there are sound reasons why two cyclists may be on this stretch of pavement, heading in opposite directions.
Were either wearing a helmet how wide is that pavement, did they adhere to the way we should all drive and cycle keep on the left, which way was the bike going, with traffic flow or against it or was one doing a wheely or zig-zagging as a dare like young lads does most times in very dangerous places? One or the other caused this accident to happen. I ride an ebike at the age of 77 plus and can go faster than 16mph even with it switched off with the wind behind me or down hills etc and mine has not been messed with either.
"One or the other caused this accident to happen"
Bullcrap. This assumption that there must be fault is a bullshit view shaded by the in built assumption that bad infrastructure or bad habits cannot be change.
It also has a hefty does of compentation culture about it.
Wonder if they have examined the ebike. Many of the ones I see are rolling along at 20mph+ with little or no pedalling *
* I also own an ebike, so cool your jets.
I agree.
Round here it's very noticeable the number of Deliveroo riders flying up hills at 20-30mph without even pedalling. The police turn a blind (lazy) eye to it but they shouldn't because the vehicles are illegal.
It's the same with eScooters as well.
E scooters for hire in cities are legal though.
The police turn a blind (lazy) eye to it but they shouldn't because the vehicles are illegal
So is driving around with no MOT, but there are loads of those in North Lancashire and the police rarely, if ever, do anything even with photographic evidence. I found that one offending vehicle had an MOT a couple of weeks after my report, but it may have been incidental and not due to police waking up
I'm sure (I hope) it's some form of confirmation bias, but has anyone else noticed that scooters (the legal rental ones and the illegal ones) are being ridden (scooted?) increasingly badly?
For example, yesterday lunchtime (so, a one hour period in Bristol city centre) I dodged two going through red lights, saw another one being ridden the wrong way in a segregated one-way cycle lane, one being ridden the wrong way on the road, and another couple being ridden on the (not shared use) footway.
During the same period I didn't see any cyclists doing anything wrong...
I was with you until that last sentence !
The trial where I live has a fair share of pavement use, wrong way, 2 on the scooter. Can't say it's worse and the only thing I have seen is less usage.
Oh, yeah, forgot to mention a couple of two-on-a-scooter riders.
(And I suspect I was just lucky that day, that I didn't see any cycling infractions. I do usually see a handful).
I think the e-scooter riders are realising how many traffic lights are purely designed around cars and are making a choice between proceeding through a red or tangling with the motor vehicles when the lights go green.
Since they're not riding bikes, though, I wonder if they also go home and grumble about bl00dy cyclists?
I did overhear a couple in the Embankment cycle lane the other day (stopped at the lights, to be fair) moaning that "F-ing cyclists think they own the place!"
I would argue that many of the ones you see also have a delivery service branded back pack on the rider.
Stated as a Carrera, the only way it would be doing 20mph is under human power. The top speed on the flat with the motor is 15.5mph.
It's academic as is trying to distinguish between the 2. Put simply is was a cycle to cycle accident. The E-bike not having a motor wouldn't have prevented the accident occuring, so why make the distinction.
Unless it had either been modified or it was an unpowered Carrera which had an illegal kit added. I haven't seen anything about the speed the rider was doing, if he did have a modded/illegal bike and was doing 30 mph then that clearly is something that has to be factored into the investigation.
Like dodgy above, one of my four bikes is an ebike and I love it, so no anti-ebike agenda here.
"Put simply is was a cycle to cycle accident. The E-bike not having a motor wouldn't have prevented the accident occuring, so why make the distinction. "
people wish to make the distinction, because if the "E bike" has been modified to allow assistance over 16 mph the it isn't an ebike but rather now becomes an illeagle / unregistered / unisured motorcycle being ridden on a footpath shared use path. The liability implications are huge if it is the latter, and we have all know there are significant number of these in use regularly and if this is one I for one would be keen to see the test case prosecution happen so that these things are taken more seriously.
Unfortunately most food delivery riders will buy the cheapest e-bike going (carrera for example), then chip the motor / control unit so the power is applied no matter what the pedals are doing and allowing for speeds faster then 15mph. There was a picture of one the other day where they didn't even have a chain to maintain the illusion of legality. So your first statement is unfortunately naive.
Oh, is THAT what was going on with that picture?? <whoosh>
First of all, let's assess the proportion of 19 y.o. pedal cyclists regularly doing 20mph compared to the proportion of 19 y.o. ebikers regularly doing 20mph before you leap to an unjustified conclusion.
Yes it's possible to do 20mph on a pedal cycle. That doesn't by any stretch constute grounds to say that anyone doing 20mph on an ebike would otherwise have been doing 20mph on a pedal bike.
And that's before you consider the difference in potential outcome from the greater weight of ebike vs. pedalbike
Most ebike conversion kits weigh in the region of 5kg so this isn't really a factor when you consider that there could be 50kg+ difference in the weights of different riders. Additionally an ebike can be remarkably light these days - at 13kg my Orbea Gain road ebike weighs less than my unpowered MTB.
Although the Carrera Ebike (assuming it wasn't a conversion) weighs 23kgs. But it seems the main damage might have been due to how both riders fell with the unfortunate Mr Cullinane seemingly hitting his head where the other rider didn't land as hard, which assuming no illegality with the ebike, is just one of those unfortunate things.
True but the point stands about differences in rider weight, the impact momentum will be a result of rider weight plus bike weight times speed, so a 70 kg rider on a 23 kg bike will have a lower impact momentum than a 100 kg rider on a 10 kg bike.
I live locally and heard the Carrera was one of these dodgy conversions with a throttle delivering food. A pal lives in the building next to the incident. There's tons of them in Leeds currently, vast majority ridden by Deliveroo / Uber delivery riders causing havoc blasting about on pavements, I'm surprised the Police haven't stepped in to be honest, a lot of them do 30mph with no pedal assist so they're essentially mopeds.