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news
Wilmslow Road, Manchester (Google Maps)Cyclist found not guilty after collision with pedestrian, who died eight days later
UPDATE: A cyclist who was charged with causing bodily harm by wanton or furious driving after colliding with a pedestrian, who died eight days later from a brain injury sustained in the crash, has been found not guilty.
23-year-old property manager Cornelius de Bruin was cycling on Wilmslow Road, south Manchester, on 20 June 2020 when he struck pedestrian Ian Roland Gunn as he crossed the busy road.
Mr Gunn, 56, whose injuries were believed at the time not to be life-threatening, was taken to Manchester Royal Infirmary. His health soon deteriorated, and he died eight days later.
Following a three-day trial at Bolton Crown Court, a jury found Mr De Bruin not guilty after almost two hours of deliberation, the Manchester Evening News reports.
Announcing the not guilty verdict, Judge Timothy Clayson thanked the jury for their assistance in the “short but obviously serious case” and gave his condolences to the Gunn family.
The original story can be read below:
A cyclist has denied riding “aggressively and recklessly” in the moments before he struck a pedestrian, who later died from his injuries, and insists that he was travelling at an “appropriate speed” at the time of the tragic collision.
23-year-old property manager Cornelius de Bruin was cycling on Wilmslow Road, south Manchester, on 20 June 2020 when he struck Ian Roland Gunn, 56, as the pedestrian crossed the road.
Mr Gunn, who drifted in and out of consciousness several times while being treated by paramedics at the scene, was then taken to Manchester Royal Infirmary, where his injuries, mostly to the back of his head and his abdomen, were not initially deemed to be life-threatening.
However, his health soon deteriorated, and he died eight days after the collision due to what prosecutor Simon Blakerough described as a “traumatic brain injury”.
> Cyclist who killed London pedestrian jailed for two years
Mr De Bruin has been charged with causing bodily harm by wanton or furious driving following the pedestrian’s death, which he denies.
He told police at the time of Mr Gunn’s death that he “tried to move out of the way but could not avoid the collision”, and while he accepts that he struck the 56-year-old, he did not mean to harm him, the Manchester Evening News reports.
CCTV footage shown on the opening day of the trial at Bolton Crown Court on Monday depicts De Bruin riding along Barlow Moor Road, where he jumped a red light at the junction with Palatine Road, before turning onto Wilmslow Road. Mr Gunn can later be seen in the footage exiting a Tesco Express before attempting to cross the road, when he was struck by the cyclist.
One witness, Peter Clare, claimed that Mr De Bruin was “going very fast” and “at least 20mph” when he passed his Land Rover shortly before the incident.
Clare told the court that he could remember thinking ‘if anyone steps out’ they would collide with the cyclist, and added: “Before I could even finish my thought, he had already hit the chap.”
Other witnesses described hearing the “screeching sound” of Mr De Bruin’s brakes as he attempted to avoid hitting the pedestrian, but that his “momentum” catapulted him into Mr Gunn.
Carolina Orzsic, who was driving in front of the cyclist shortly before the incident, said she noticed Mr Gunn walking “slowly and unsteady” in the middle of the road and that he was looking “ahead and not left or right” as he crossed. Ms Orzsic told the court that she was forced to slow down and turn to the right to avoid hitting the 56-year-old, and that neither man could be blamed for the incident as they “just saw each other at the last second”.
> Government to crack down on “reckless” riders with causing death by dangerous cycling law
The jury also heard that when questioned by police following the incident, Mr De Bruin – who was unhurt – said that his speed of roughly 23mph was “appropriate” for the conditions.
“If cars can go 30 miles an hour why can’t cyclists go 30 miles an hour? Not that I advise to go 30 miles an hour,” he was recorded as saying to police.
Describing himself as an experienced, “intermediate” cyclist, the Dutch-born property developer also told police that he had been riding bikes “all his life” due to his upbringing in the Netherlands.
While being questioned by his defence barrister in court, the 23-year-old explained that he was “pretty familiar” with the road, and was speeding up to reach the cycle lane after determining that there were “no obstructions” ahead.
The cyclist said that he “doesn’t know” why he hadn’t seen Mr Gunn cross the road and enter the cycle lane, and was in shock after the collision.
He remained at the scene until the pedestrian was taken to hospital and spoke with a paramedic who assured him that Mr Gunn was going to be “alright”.
> Jail for pavement cyclist who rode off after fatally injuring pensioner
During the cross examination with prosecuting barrister Simon Blakerough, the cyclist admitted that he “did not know why” he ran a red light moments before the incident and that it was not something he did regularly.
He also claimed that the volume of music he was listening to through earphones was at a “reasonable level” and that he could still hear “traffic and conversations”.
Mr De Bruin, who was on a post-work leisure ride on a familiar loop at the time of the incident, was then asked if he had been “on a time trial and didn’t care what happened ahead of him?”, to which he replied, “No, I did care”.
The court also heard yesterday how Mr De Bruin got in touch with the police the day after an appeal was launched to find the cyclist following Mr Gunn’s death.
“One of my friends, they saw the news on the BBC News,” he said. “They told me about the tragic accident and I thought it was the right thing to do. To come forward and say that I was involved in the accident.”
> “You’re not going to prison for this,” judge tells teen cyclist who injured pedestrian
During his closing speech, prosecutor Blakerough again suggested that the 23-year-old was “on a time trial” at the time of the incident, and was “racing himself on a powerful racing bike” at 23mph while listening to music on a busy road.
He argued that the cyclist had displayed ‘wanton and furious driving’ by “burying his head in the sand to what was an obvious and serious risk”.
During his closing speech, Mark Fireman pointed to Mr De Bruin’s history of no convictions and argued that the cyclist was “well within the speed limit” and that his use of headphones was no different to motorists listening to the radio while driving. He also stated that the cyclist’s running of a red light “800 metres away” had no bearing on the tragic incident.
He told the jury that what they “are dealing with a good man” who “handed himself in because he knew it was the right thing to do”.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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161 comments
What is a powerful racing bike if it does not have electric assistance? A cyclist can be considered reckless and dangerous if they are travelling at 23mph but a driver going that speed in a 30mph might be accused of likely to cause an accident because they are going too slow. The genuine road traffic offence commited by the cyclist was jumping a red light, everything else is a 'we must throw the book at them because they are a cyclist'. Didn't the hospital do an MRI on the victim when they were brought in, seems odd they only discovered a traumatic brain injury after he died 8 days later. It would be an interesting to know if every driver involved in the death of pedestrian has been prosecuted versus every cyclist involved. I'm sure I've heard 'tragic accident' a lot to describe when a vehicle hits and kills a pedestrian, move along nothing to see here.
A "traumatic brain injury" covers a very wide range of severities. And the brain is an extremely complex organ, meaning it is not always apparent what the consequences of a traumatic brain injury will ultimately be.
Some people suffer extremely severe TBIs and make a full recovery. Some people suffer, as in this case, what appears to be a relatively minor TBI and it turns out to have tragic consequences.
To cast aspersions on the hospital, without any knowledge of the particular medical circumstances - or indeed of what actions the hospital did or didn't take - is distasteful and inappropriate.
The NHS missed my TBI and 3 fractured vertebrae after I was hit by a car driven by an 80 year old.
Admittedly, they where dealing with a host of other complex injuries as well, and I wish them no ill.
My thoughts and sympathies are with the family and friends of Ian Roland Gunn.
A very sad case, but it feels incredible this went to court as the riding was not really reckless (or wanton and furious).
Pretty unlikely that a coviction would be the outcome, and bearing in mind the court backlog at the moment a strange priority for the CPS.
"himself on a powerful racing bike"
Unless assisted with an electric motor, one cycle is no more powerful than a kids trike. It's the rider that makes a bike go faster
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/cyc...
I have just read this link and I think it gives a clearer picture of what happened. Sadly, if I have understood what happened correctly, I have to conclude that the cyclist was going too fast for the conditions. Not wanton and reckless though. The jury took 2 hours to decide.
Same story as already reported in the road.cc though.
Pretty close but the link says he undertook the landrover rather than passed it which I had read as overtaken, my bad. The other difference is that Mrs Orzsic had time to tell her daughter that she would have to slow down after she had seen Mr Gunn which implies to me she thought she had more time to do so than I had imagined from other accounts, so she must have seen Mr Gunn a lot earlier than I had imagined.
I assume the cyclist was undertaking Mrs Orzsic as she slowed down and as Mr Gunn appeared from in front of her car. I may have got this wrong but if that were the case then the cyclist should have seen Mr Gunn unless Mrs Orzsic was driving some huge vehicle. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been going fast in that narrow cycle lane between parked cars and slowly moving traffic especially if the car on my right was slowing down for no reason that I could see.
Any way, that's my take on what is a very sad case. All conjecture on my part I acknowledge. Also, fair play to the cyclist for stopping at the scene until he had been assured that Mr Gunn would be OK. More road users like that would be very welcome
Unless they ended up travelling at the same speed, so that the cyclist and the motorist ended up travelling next to each other, hence obscuring the pedestrian from view. 'Constant speed; constant bearing' - isn't that a thing?
Ultimately, we don't know what happened. The only points uncontested are that the pedestrian was (allegedly) crossing the road without looking, and that the cyclist (who had RLJ half a mile earlier) was travelling at below the much vaunted legal speed limit.
An interesting choice, considering he was doing 23mph, more likely is the landrover had just/was passing him, and then hit the brakes. If the vehicle to my right suddenly hits the brakes, now I am at fault for undertaking?
Alternatively, the traffic was moving slowly and the cyclist was travelling faster than the traffic in the cycle lane.
That was my take.
Was Mr de Bruin actually cycling in the narrow green cycle lane anyway? It just says he was riding on the road.
I find it a bit inappropriate to compare car speed limits with bicycle speeds. Urban car speed limits are set not just bearing in mind that drivers will manage to brake, but mostly that with 20 or 30mph, pedestrian injuries will be somehow controlled.
A pedestrian killed by a cyclist is a very sad incident, yet very rare and bicycles are not required to have speedometers, so any conversation about speeding bicycles is I think a little of the mark.
The only problem somehow connected to speeds, that is not easily solved, is that bicycles can have huge disparities in braking distances. Just try braking with an old 10speed road bicycle with dented steel rims and super long reach caliper brakes (I don't consider brakeless fixies as controlled vehicles) and hop on a hydraulic braked mountain bicycle, whereas a modern Porsche will not brake that much better than a rusty Beetle. Just try to respect yourself and others and treat you with decent brakes!
But someone driving an old car will drive it very differently from someone driving a modern performance car - they know that their brakes are not as good, and will drive accordingly.
The same rules apply for bikes - someone will ride their whizz-bang modern hydraulic-disc-braked steed very differently from someone on steel rims with rod brakes, for example.
At least - one would hope that they would
And I give good odds there are a fair few older motorbikes whose brakes make old bicycles stopping power look impressive (let alone a modern hydralic disc setup)...
Fairly sure there are a bunch that used drum brakes because they are less susceptible to overheating when trying to stop a motorbike that weighs significantly more than rider + bicycle; Yet speed limits were set at least partially based on braking distances when these were a lot more common than they are now...
Right - no way an old, unservoed, narrow tyred beetle will brake much worse than a modern, servoed, wide tyred, ABS managed Porsche.
I've driven both - you have no idea what you're talking about.
You know, I completely misread cyclisto's post! I thought they'd said that a Porsche will brake much better than a Beetle (rusty or not).
Unservoed cars are a distant memory now, I doubt if I have ever driven one and they are a tiny percentage on roads now. But I have driven cars with bad brakes and managed so survive even having fun.
Having riden though old road bikes on 23c tires the experience was kind of terrifying combined with the fact that I started them both at the top of a 10%+ grade descent. But even with modern well serviced road bicycles with 23c tires and caliper brakes, there is a huge difference from a MTB with hydraulics. And having been rear-ended on a group ride (fortunately only material damage) from a road bike while I was riding with V-brakes and 32c, I don't trust much this caliper brakes/23c tires combination for daily commute.
The problem with bicycles is that they have very different tire widths for the same weight according to their type.
What the heck is a "powerful racing bike"?
It's like ebikes - they're all restricted to 250W, but each year they are more powerful than before, apparently.
One with WVA or MVdP sitting atop it.
an e-bike has the awesome power of a couple of lightbulbs or 10% of a domestic kettle, other bikes are powerless completely.
There's a power limit but no torque limit.
jeez, glad you cleared that up for all of us
I think you need to replace your lightbulbs, 120w bulbs are so last century.
Might save you some money too.
My thoughts too
This is my manor. I cycle that road once a week on the way home from Fletcher Moss parkrun (hush now...) via the Aldi on Wilmslow Road.
23mph. From the accounts given, the collision occurred approximately 60-70 metres north of the Barlow Moor Road/Wilmslow Road junction on or around the northbound murder strip before the left hand turn into Aldi. Someone do the maths on this, but accelerating to 23mph from a slow or standing start in 60-70 metres seems very quick (the left hand turn from Barlow Moor Road is quite sharp and has traffic lights).
The pedestrian would have been approaching from the right, as he had been shopping in the Tesco Express on the east hand side of the road. The Nissan Micra in front of De Bruin driven by Ms Orzsic had had to swerve to avoid Mr Gunn, and it would seem that Mr De Bruin's view of Mr Gunn was obscured and only visible at the last moment.
My sympathies for Mr Gunn's family, but if he's going to walk "‘slowly and unsteady’ in the middle of the road and that he was looking 'ahead and not left or right' when he was crossing the road", it would seem unjust to paint someone else as the author of his demise when he was only been visible to the cyclist immediately prior to the collision.
Fortunately, the jury for saw through the prosecutor's attempts to appeal to anti-cycling prejudice (headphones, powerful racing bike, on a time trial), and justice was done.
Let's be clear - the 23mph thing is conjecture on the part of a witness. Given that drivers/witnesses routinely over-estimate the speed of 'speeding' cyclists, we shouldn't take it seriously.
I'm regularly told that cyclists exceed 30mph on the canal towpath near us....!
Reminds me of the meeting SGlos council had to discuss the chicanes they had put on the Bristol/Bath path, where one guy stood up and said cyclists were doing 60mph along it.
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