Just heard the news!
http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/motorsport/39959770

I’m speechless.
Get well soon Nicky.

Hideous accident, hope he manages to get through this and make a full recovery. The car is a mess for a collision with a cyclist so it sounds like a fair bit of speed was involved.

Not good news, looks like he has suffered severe brain damage:

https://www.motorsport.com/wsbk/news/hayden-suffered-severe-brain-damage-in-accident-907484/

When will inflicting injury on pedestrians and cyclists start being treated like careless use of a firearm.

It kills more people each year and needs something done about it.

Do we know the driver was at fault here?

According to Italian website GPone the investigation is on going but one report said it was a head on collision. The car and bicycle have taken quite an impact and so unfortunately may of Nicky Hayden.
News is not forthcoming but it is not that surprising given how critical his injuries are.

real shame, poor nicky, wish him well. bit ironic though for someone who hurtles round a track at 200mph on two wheels to be seriously injured on a push bike at sub 30mph. fingers crossed he recovers

🙁

thegreatape – Member
Do we know the driver was at fault here?

Reasons for hitting a cyclist:

1. Didn’t see him. Blind people should not drive. Driver at fault.
2. Didn’t look. Careless people should not drive. Driver at fault.
3. Looked, saw him, ignored him. Arseholes should not drive. Driver at fault.
4. Cyclist is suicidal and casts himself under vehicle. Cyclist at fault.

Dunno about you, but I think someone like Nicky Hayden is unlikely to be No 4. What are the odds on the other choices though?
(Feel free to add some more)

Here’s a pic of the car. Notice the side the impact was on in a lefthand drive country.

Those are all certainly possibilities, and I agree, the fourth is an unlikely one. Despite moderate googling I’ve not yet seen anything that gives much detail about what happened other than it was at an ‘intersection’ – whether that’s any sort of junction or the US style crossroads I don’t know.

I was discussing with an Italian mate (who is also a big WSB fan). Shockingly he has a very blasé attitude towards cyclists on Italian highways & suggests it’s a ‘normal’ risk that any cyclist is consciously accepting 😮

Hope Nicky recovers though reports & photos indicate it was a hard hit 🙁

It will be interesting to find out what really happened.

And I do accept it might not be the drivers fault in this case, my comment was aimed more at the generality of what is happening.

We are losing too many of our best to the sort of people who regard us as objects that need to be disciplined or of no consequence, and drive close to us in a manner they wouldn’t do with another slow moving vehicle, eg a tractor. When did you last see a motorist do a punishment pass on one of those?

Terrible news.

As someone who has been a mountain biker for the last 7 years and started road biking in the last month it really is a stark contrast how potentially dangerous it is compared to MTB.

On a 28 mile ride on Tuesday not only did I manage to fall off, doing more damage to myself than I’ve done in 7 years MTB, I also encountered 2 cars cutting me up and an HGV driving very erratically maybe 1-2m behind me.

You need to have your wits about you all the time and it doesn’t matter how good a rider you are, even the smallest lapse of concentration can result in an accident. This is of course the same in MTB but the difference being trees, rocks etc don’t move; on the road you simply can’t account for what other road users are going to do.

Hopefully Nicky will make a reasonable recovery given his injuries.

my comment was aimed more at the generality of what is happening.

We’re singing from the same hymn sheet in that regard.

It’s crazy the anti cycling rhetoric in the papers in the uk at least. The daily mail bunch seem to think cyclists are fair game. Close passes, YouTube vids of people knocking cyclists off because they slowed them up, it’s crazy. Imagine someone knocking a pedestrian down because he dared to cross on a red light at a zebra crossing and make the motorist slow down.

I bought a do it all gravel etc bike a couple of yrs ago and had it set up for road use. I gave up on that and put fat tyres on it after someone in a car slowed down and “instructed” their 10 yr old kid to lean out of the window and throw their bag of half eaten mac Donald’s dinner at me, nearly knocking me off. I just use roads to link gravel tracks these days and keep off the, when I can. I did get the number plate of that guy and the police did go and speak to him as he had “history”.

I even got a close pass last week towing my toddler in a bike trailer as I dared to link 600m on a b road between two gravel tracks in Dorset. That really hacked me off and I wish I had a bike cam or. Could have found out where the idiot lived.

It is totally unclear what happened. The driver says he didn’t see Nicky, but looking at the crossroads it is hard to know what did happen.

The following statement regarding Nicky Hayden’s current condition has been released today, 19 May 2017, at 19:45 local time (GMT +2), by the Maurizio Bufalini Hospital in Cesena (Italy).

“The clinical picture of Nicky Hayden remains unchanged. His condition is still extremely critical.

He is still in the intensive care unit of Cesena’s Maurizio Bufalini Hospital and the prognosis stays reserved.”

eg a tractor. When did you last see a motorist do a punishment pass on one of those?

Oh, only pretty much every day…

Never ceases to amaze me that, even in ultra-rural Dumfriesshire where tractors on the roads are a fact of life, there are still d!ckheads that’ll try it.

2 tonne sh!tbox vs 5.5 tonne tractor pulling a 2.5 tonne trailer loaded with 8 tonnes of grain/straw/feed/soil/stone.

Yeah, c#ck it up and that’s really going to end well isn’t it?!?

Muppets.

Reasons for hitting a cyclist:

At the risk of a flaming what about…

5: Cyclist misjudges road layout and runs a junction.

I am painfully aware that most motorists treat cyclists like bollards to be brushed passed to save themselves a second, but sometimes everyone makes an error of judgement. Without the facts, it’s just speculation.

There will have been, over the course of human history, one or two instances were the cyclists was at fault. They will be the minority, but it will have happened.

At the risk of a flaming what about…

5: Cyclist misjudges road layout and runs a junction.

Agreed, that’s a possibility and it’s pointless drawing conclusions before…the conclusion of the investigation.

But everyone is an expert…or a bit of a vigilante in epicyclo’s case.

“Get them” (in Stewart Lee’s best impression of the average angry man).

Can we lose the exclamation mark in the title?

ScottChegg – Member
5: Cyclist misjudges road layout and runs a junction.

Agree.

Junctions are one place we’re we’re most at risk.

But when we’re on the same road, a cyclist cannot be killed or injured if a driver allows sufficient space.

Simple as that. And most drivers do allow sufficient space and are considerate. We need to stop those who don’t.

Yes, get them !!

Poor bloke. RIP.

Awful news.

Awe bloody hell.
That’s sodding awful news.

I’ll never forget him backing it into a corner and spinning the rear up in MotoGP.

Bye Nicky, I loved watching you race.

What a needless waste of a great talent and good guy.

We all drive. Try not to be that driver.

RIP

Continues here:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/nicky-hayden-rip