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Queensland driver hits cyclist 04.pngVideo: Australian driver hits cyclist from behind
A driver in Queensland Australia was caught on camera on Friday afternoon driving straight into the back of a cyclist at a junction in Brisbane that dashcam user Andrew Ison describes as “a bit of a mad scramble.”
In the footage posted to YouTube, the driver of a white Audi uses the left of two lanes to try and get to the head of a queue of traffic at a set of lights where a cyclist is already waiting.
When the lights change, she appears to tailgate the cyclist as he pulls away from the lights, and then hits him, knocking him off his bike.
Mr Ison stopped to give assistance and in his comments on the video says: “The bloke looks to be ok - aside from some missing skin and a few interesting bruises. The helmet broke on impact so he was taken to hospital as a precaution.”
According to Mr Ison, the rider is okay and has been given a copy of the footage. He added: “The driver stopped and assisted in every way possible and has been in amicable contact with the rider.”
According to the Courier Mail, police have interviewed the victim. No charges had been laid against the driver, but the investigation was continuing.
Queensland Ambulance Service confirmed that paramedics had attended the incident. They had treated a man in his 40s for cuts and abrasions and taken him him to Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in a stable condition. He has since been released.
Bicycle Queensland CEO Ben Wilson said the incident was “one of the worst things” he had seen in a long time.
“It just looked to me like there was a total lack of awareness on the driver’s behalf,” he said.
“This trend we’re seeing in lack of bike safety is coming from a concentration lapse from drivers when they’re sharing the road.
“A lot of it is because of the growing amount of distractions – like mobile phones – that are in cars now.”
Safe Cycling Queensland director Dave Sharp said road rage incidents against cyclists were “definitely increasing”.
“Motorists have to realise that, unfortunately, they don’t own the roads,” he said.
“If they wait just a few moments for the cyclist to get out of their way, it’s not going to kill them. But their impatience could certainly kill cyclists.”
Or as Mr Ison put it in his commentary on his video: “The moral of the story? If you're driving around bikes - who are legally allowed and fully entitled to use the road - PAY ATTENTION!
“Just calm down and give them room, don't try and chop and change lanes dangerously just to arrive home a car length ahead of where you would have been if you'd chilled a little.”
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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61 comments
Feix,
There's nothing statistical in your response to be honest.
The oz death rate you quote is two or three times ours....is it two or three. Can't be both...also is that per capita or a direct correlation.
You state there's been jurisdictions where helmets are mandatory there's been no improvement...on what basis.. Are there the same number of cyclist or is here an increase due to the thought that "if I wear a helmet it deemed safer" therefore more numbers ride.
What are the circumstances of the accidents.....So many holes in your quote in not entirely relevant.
Simply said I wear a helmet as I feel it's safer but is only relevant at speeds to about 12mph....the average speed at which most non-sporting cyclists ride....above this speed they provide little protection evidently.
[[[[[ Yeah but no but yeah...what could she possibly have been looking at? I mean considering that she was "mobile" at the time...
Just wondering.
P.R.
Similar (but less serious) thing happened to me in London - pulled up at a red light, driver stops behind me. Light goes green, driver runs into my leg. Saw me, but then forgot I was there. What can you do?
No excuse, licence removed, jail time.
Driver had plenty time, space and light to know he was there and is responsible for keeping an adequate gap.
I thought this was going to be a quick banzai undertaking manoeuvre that saw the bike too late, but no, much worse.
Just chuckling at you all arguing... Always happens.
FWIW, she was behind him at the lights so knew he was there, but still managed to drive into the back of him. You've either got to be dangerously incompetent or dangerously impatient to do that.
Take your rose tinted glasses off, it was clear this was malicious and probably much worse.
It's not clear to me.
Sure that happens, but usually it seems to me there's more overt aggression or some sort of history leading up to it, which I don't see here. I'm inclined to think stupidity rather than malice is the problem in this case. But of course I'm just going on my impression from the video- just like you.
It's still clear to me, you need to take those glasses off still.
Wow, just wow.
Lets be clear and cut through all the bull... The driver pulled away from the lights in a way that made it clear they had acknowledged the cyclists presence. This was no SMIDSY.
What followed afterwards is madness. I can only assume, as can we all, that they then decided they would harrass or intimidate the cyclist in an attempt to force them to move out of her way... and things went wrong.
I assume that it wasn't a deliberate act to kill, as the person slowed on hitting the cyclist, rather than run over the person.
However, it was a deliberate acceleration... she didn't creep up and nudge, she hit the gas and accelerated into the cyclist. She can hardly 'forget' the cyclist in front of her.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that that impact was the unfortunate outcome of a deliberate act that went wrong. This should be dangerous driving... she decided to drive that close deliberately... it wasn't careless... it may have been 'careless' what followed afterwards, but that can apply to all dangerous driving incidents.
No one decides to lose control of their car and kill, maim or whatever, it's the deliberate actions that put them into a situation where they lose that control (for whatever reason) which is the dangerous dangerous driving...
It astounds me that no driving offence has been committed here in the eyes of the authorities... doesn't exactly send a positive message about the country to the world.
If i wandered down a street swinging a baseball bat and smashed it round the back of someones head, I would expect that most people would stop viewing it as a piece of sporting equipment.
Where is the evidence that the car was used "as a weapon"?
Accidents happen and people should be punished according to the severity of the incident. You appear to be calling for a public lynching for this, based on no evidence whatsoever. Let the courts decide what is suitable and hold off organising the protest march until then, eh?
I was actually nudged over by a Jaguar a few months ago, while waiting at a red light. I assumed it was accidental, asked the driver what was up and the two meatheads in the car denied any wrongdoing while chuckling away. That was clearly deliberate, just had to wave them on. No damage done, luckily.
Whether this was "intentional" or not, it's pretty clear that this was at the very least incompetent, Careless Driving and the driver should see the inside of a courtroom.
I ride through that intersection daily... apart from the driver being an utter halfwit, there is no reason for this to happen!
Complete absent mindedness. this person should have their licence revoked.
hitting a cyclist in this manner is on par with running into a telephone pole... when you know it's there... when you're diving (and looking) straight at it...
what a pillock
There is nothing absent minded about driving 1 foot behind a cyclist. FML some of the comments of this thread on a cycling site just boggle the mind.
Car drivers aren't all evil people driving around in Boxes of Doom designed to main and kill, and we don't have to assume this is the case because it's a cycling website.
None of us were there when this happened, none of us dealt with the aftermath and none of us know the driver. Going on the information we do have, I find it very hard to believe a female driver alone in a car would purposely go out of her way to potentially kill somebody for no reason, especially when we've heard she was cooperative straight after and has been in amicable contact with the cyclist involved. I'm inclined to give the her the benefit of the doubt as a result, it's very possible that she was focused elsewhere, on a phone, the mirrors, whatever, and thought the cyclist was gone. The tailgating could possibly be coincidental, and happened to be travelling at a low speed before accelerating and watching the slip road to the left. No-one on this forum could possibly know what went on here.
Stop assuming all drivers are evil ffs.
So you believe she wasn't evil, just so stupidly, arrogantly, ignorantly unaware that she managed to run over a large bright coloured object two feet in front of her idiotic head?
Personally I don't care whether you believe such people are evil or simply stupid. Either way they should not be allowed to drive a motor vehicle, ever.
Stupid? In that moment, yes. Ignorant? Again, yes. Arrogant? That's pure speculation. Evil? I doubt it. Idiotic? Perhaps an extreme description but certainly an idiotic display, momentarily.
You'll notice that all these words have different meanings, and aren't freely interchangeable synonyms to promote your militant and extreme mentality.
Personally I would describe someone who uses a car as a weapon against a defenceless cyclist as evil, yes. But you want to believe this was accidental, fine. In that case she was displaying a complete lack of concern for the life of another human being, which I would describe as arrogant, and stupid, yes.
You think I'm militant and extreme because I don't want people who deliberately or by inadvertence drive over a cyclist in broad daylight allowed to continue driving? Really? What would a motorist have to do to merit a lifetime ban in your opinion. deliberately drive into a school playground? Or should the right to a licence never be revoked?
There is no such thing as a right to a driving licence by law. It is a driving permit. Permission has been given for the holder to drive.
The driver of this car is incompetent. But in the scale of things, the incident was one that could be punished with a fine and penalty points. There are far more serious incidents happening on the world's roads of far greater concern.
I don't think for a second she was trying to kill him, or even meant to knock him off his bike. And I'm sure she was very sorry afterwards. I don't think it's very helpful when people say things like "Why isn't this person in jail for attempted MURDER?!"
But the fact is she drove about a foot behind him, and then drove right into him. He was right there. As someone above said, that's like driving into a telegraph pole while you're looking right at it.
As much as a I agree with your sentiments about not rushing to judgement based on a video clip, it's hard to see how there's an excuse for that that doesn't throw serious doubt on whether she should be allowed to drive on the roads or not.
Are you,
the woman driver who deliberately drove into this cyclist?
her boy friend?
her husband,
her brother or sister?
Another moton that sees cyclists as an inconvenience fair game to force off the road?
You are definitely an apologist for the dangerous driver who could have killed the cyclist she deliberately drove into knocking him down.
No we weren't there, but there is some pretty damning video evidence what we can all view which shows the driver tailgate then DELIBERATELY drive into the back of the cyclist. No one is saying or assuming all drivers are evil, maybe a large number but not all ;~) Whether we were there for the aftermath who whether we know this driver is totally irrelevant to what they have done. The footage speaks for itself. The driver should get a very long ban indeed and made to cycle everywhere. Shocking.
Stop assuming all drivers are evil ffs.
A disturbingly high proportion are dangerously incompetent.
I worry about those much more than the "evil" ones.
I think at was a careless mistake after re watching it. Quite often I pull away from cars at lights more quickly. I think she stupidly thought he was going to accelerate more but had already reached the optimum speed. Clear case of being a twat and driving far too close irrespective of the make of car made by some jealous types above.
Careless mistake, are you ****ing blind, tail-gated and then accelerated into the back of him when already close is not a careless mistake it is dangerous driving.
When I'm cycling behind a vehicle and I start catching up, I stop pedaling, when I start getting closer I brake, that's the correct thing to do.
This driver didn't brake, they tailgated and accelerated, no excuse.
It was an example of driver error. I strongly doubt the driver did this deliberately, otherwise the person wouldn't have stopped at scene but would have most likely tried to escape.
I've a car and two motorbikes but I'm not jealous of this driver owning an Audi. I used to say years ago that I'd never own a BMW because they were so favoured by arrogant city boy types or criminals, and driven accordingly. Now I've widened that to include Audis and large four wheel drives. It is a curious thing, but I've noted that drivers of some high end marques, such as Jaguars, tend to behave with more respect for other road users than those in BMWs or Audis.
I wonder what If he wasn't wearing a helmet what other injuries he WOULD have had, helmets are a legal requirement in Oz. Rightly so.
You are a complete and utter moron.
Like your Moronic response Farrell.. Flipping Sponge brain
There are arguments for and against helmets. The arguments against include the fact that motorists treat helmeted cyclists as 'protected' and then said motorists proceed by taking less care and caution.
The effects of cycle helmets is one thing, but mandatory cycle helmets is another matter. Making helmets mandatory makes cycling seem more dangerous than it is really and discourages those who want to cycle. Some of those discouraged will stop cycling, or not start. In an obesogenic society, exercise is very important, and most of us do not receive sufficient exercise. Most people do not realise that the one thing that is more dangerous than cycling, is not cycling. Mandatory helmets may save some lives, but they also cost lives too.
THE NEW ZEALAND MEDICAL JOURNAL - Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association - NZMJ 10 February 2012, Vol 125 No 1349; ISSN 1175 8716 Page 1 of 10
http://journal.nzma.org.nz/journal/125-1349/5046/ ©NZMA
Evaluation of New Zealand’s bicycle helmet law by Colin F Clarke.
Partial Abstract
The New Zealand helmet law (all ages) came into effect on 1 January 1994. It followed Australian helmet laws, introduced in 1990–1992. ...New Zealand survey data showed that average hours cycled per person reduced by 51%. This evaluation finds the helmet law has failed in aspects of promoting cycling, safety, health, accident compensation, environmental issues and civil liberties.
From Conclusions
'This evaluation of NZ’s bicycle helmet law finds it has failed in aspects of promoting cycling, safety, health, accident compensation, environmental issues and civil liberties. It is estimated to cost about 53 lives per year in premature deaths and result in thousands of fines plus legal aspects of discrimination in accident compensation cases....'
http://www.cycle-helmets.com/nz-clarke-2012.pdf
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