Driving home last night I had one of those horrible what the hell, did I just see that moments. I didn’t see or hear the impact just saw a man appear in the air above a line of cars waiting to turn onto Bacup Road from New Line outside Futures Park as I approached the junction on the main road. As I got closer I could see a man on the ground and a wrecked road bike a bit further away with lots of people rushing towards him.

Just read the cyclist died in hospital this morning Rossendale Free Press.

I couldn’t work out what had happened at the time as all the cars seemed stationary, I think reading the report he must have been filtering down the outside of the stationary cars at speed and collided with an on coming car that had just turned right off the main road. The car that turned right probably couldn’t see him due to the stationary vehicles waiting to turn onto the main road.

It’s going to be a while before the image in my head goes away. I don’t think either the cyclist or the car driver had done anything fundamentally wrong, just shows how vulnerable we are in a collision.

Horrible 🙁

i still visualise that motorcyclist with his arms and legs still in the motorbike position doing a full 360 somersault over the top of the car in front on Skipton Bypass and landing 20 or so yards away flat on his stomach.

stumpjyjon, not wanting to get into an argument as it is a sh** situation.

Someone did something fundamentally wrong, hence a dead person. Cyclist going fast maybe but driver not seeing? Drivers need to look, if you can’t see don’t make the f**king manoeuvre!!!!!

HWC does clearly say cyclists and motorcyclists may be filtering past traffic so pay attention.

It really pisses me off the idea we can kill people through negligence, if it was a workplace the HSE would be all over it! But its only a road “accident” oh well….

mrmo – you have very limited information, so how have you come to the conclusion that it’s the drivers fault?

The car shouldn’t have turned off the main road in case there might be a cyclist he couldn’t see? Should he have sat there all day?

Stop being a tool

mrmo I don’t think assuming the car driver was at fault is very helpful, given what I saw it’s possible the cyclist was over the white line and collided with the car rather than the other way around. As I (thankfully) didn’t see the actually impact I’m guessing as well. For me as a cyclist it made me very aware how vulnerable we are, avoiding a potentially dangerous situation by changing position on the road or reducing speed seems a small price to pay to avoid what happened to this poor bloke.

Having recently done a speed awareness course (courtesy of Surrey Pluce), I was shocked at how openly blasé some of the other naughty boys & girls were about speeding, the HC in general & road craft et al.

Nothing surprises me when it comes to motorists – utterly cocconed in their metal boxes & seemingly immune from serious punishment.

Riding on the road scares the sh1t out of me!

It really pisses me off the idea we can kill people through negligence, if it was a workplace the HSE would be all over it! But its only a road “accident” oh well….

What a stupid comment. This fatal COLLISION will be thoroughly investigated at the behest of HM Coroner. It’s not a recent thing to now call them collisions as ‘accident’ gives the idea that it was just that…and it seldom is. There is generally someone to blame.
RIP to the cyclist involved. Very sad

In principal mrmo is correct, give way to anything already in the minor road your turning into), the situation by the sounds of the OP.

On the other hand, the cyclist shouldn’t be there because he shouldn’t have been overtaking if he couldn’t see the road was clear. At best you could argue that the cyclist was less wrong because he crossed his give way line (the center of the road) first.

An accident is defined as an unplanned occurrence. Generally, no actually, always this is because the outcome is not planned or desired. No one sets out to kill or be killed. We are human, we make errors on the bike and in the car. You can mitigate against your own errors by riding and driving safely, within the margins and to the abilities of other road users to anticipate your actions, not your own mad skillz . This is not failsafe. You cannot mitigate against the errors of others but you can help to potentially limit the consequences by being aware, being smart and not taking chances, particularly ones that have paid off before.

I dunno whose fault this was but in general – filter slowly, folks. I had the closest shave of my life bombing down the outside of a queue when a car driver decided he wanted to do a U turn. He was only looking forward at oncoming traffic. That was the moment I decided to calm down in town.

What scares me these days is some of the main roads people cycle on these days instead of using cross country routes I do 80miles a day driving in the North Cotswolds and the amount of lorries around in the week I just would not go anywhere near these roads maybe its just me.

Just shows how much more dangerous road is than off road. Never hear about any deaths at Cragg or Lee it’s always the road that runs past it thats the most dangerous thing here.

This is the reason I rarely cycle on the road in the UK these days (unless it’s small section to link up some off road trails). Countless drivers on their phones, bad observation, aggression, thoughtlessness, and little margin for error close passes.

Visibility from cars thanks to thicker pillars & smaller windows is much worse than it used to be 15-20 years ago (drive an old car and you’ll be amazed how much glass there is and how much better visibility you have). Modern sound deadening, increased refinement and more in car distractions have made a lot of today’s drivers seemingly unaware of their surroundings half of the time.

At least if I come off the mountain bike and hurt myself then it’s my own fault and I’ll accept that, but you just hear of far too many cyclists on the road going about their daily business only to be wiped from the face of the earth by some vehicle that they didn’t even see coming. That’s not a risk I’m prepared to take any more so unless it’s just a quick jaunt on the road to the local shop or to visit friends, generally I’ll drive these days.

The amount of near misses I’ve had on roads is unbelievable and I don’t even do road rides – these are just small road sections linking selections of trail on mountain bike rides! I hate to think how many I’d have if I rode road all tbe time.

Sheeit, rode through Bacup on Wednesday evening but missed that section out. Its part of my regular midweek road loop, last two times ive had fools pull out on me when I had priority and they had clear sightlines.

Molgrips – in general I don’t like the idea of filtering outside closing on a junction, especially if its not a light-controlled junction.
Much rather wait my turn.

in general – filter slowly, folks.

Yeah. I don’t really have anything more to add, but the closest shaves I’ve had have been when filtering.

Grannyjone – Don’t confuse road riding with commuting. I ride 7 miles to work and I pass hundreds of cars and filter countless times – lots of opportunities for accidents. Alternatively, I can ride for 30 miles in the opposite direction and see fewer than 10-20 cars. It’s a completely different experience. YMMV but I find my road rides actually feel pretty safe.

It’s going to be a while before the image in my head goes away.

Longer than you think based on my experience in February. I hope you don’t dwell on events too much.

This is the reason I rarely cycle on the road in the UK these days (unless it’s small section to link up some off road trails). Countless drivers on their phones, bad observation, aggression, thoughtlessness, and little margin for error close passes.

Visibility from cars thanks to thicker pillars & smaller windows is much worse than it used to be 15-20 years ago (drive an old car and you’ll be amazed how much glass there is and how much better visibility you have). Modern sound deadening, increased refinement and more in car distractions have made a lot of today’s drivers seemingly unaware of their surroundings half of the time.

grannyjone – Member
The amount of near misses I’ve had on roads is unbelievable and I don’t even do road rides – these are just small road sections linking selections of trail on mountain bike rides! I hate to think how many I’d have if I rode road all tbe time.

In contrast I had a lovely ~30miles in the late afternoon sunshine today, no near misses, no close overtakes worth writing home about, closes I came to an accident was moving off my cornering line to avoid a large manhole cover (in the wet), realising my new line had a pothole in it and having a bit of a drift sideways threading a tight line between them!

All down to confidence and adopting the primary position wherever overtaking in the same lane isn’t appropriate, riding like you’re about to have an accident, either far too aggressively or far too passively is where near misses happen.

Molgrips – in general I don’t like the idea of filtering outside closing on a junction

Yes but don’t forget all the entrances and driveways that aren’t junctions.. that’s what got a mate of mine knocked off too – bombing down the outside of a queue and someone pulled out of an entrance.

I wish I could show the OP and similar stories to the kid I nearly smeared all over the road this evening when he decided it would be great fun to swerve out in front of me. He was lucky i was holding up the guy behind who really wanted to speed. With the way he laughed it off and continued on his merry reckless way I fear he is going to end up a statistic before the summer is over 🙁

Sad times. OP don’t underestimate the impact on yourself. You should speak aboit the incident with someone close to you and maybe get some councelling.

Shit. I saw this crash flagged up on FB yesterday and couldn’t find any more on outcome. Very sad to hear the rider didn’t make it.

RIP.

Look after yourselves people. Pretend you’re invisible: it’s just another cyclist superpower.

It sucks that you had to witness this. Cyclists are more vulnerable than people protected by cars, however bear in mind it is still relatively safe, about one death for every 30 million miles cycled.

All fatal road casualties in UK are taken seriously and investigated. I used to go on site with the Police to review fatal casualties for an area of London, which was a sobering experience, fortunately there were only a couple a year.

If anything is wrong with the system it is that other road casualties are not looked into with any way near as much detail as fatalities, as in reality although speed etc does impact severity, the difference between a fatal and non fatal casualty is largely a roll of the dice.

There is a lot that cyclists can do to try and further sway the odds in their favour by riding defensively. I went for a 1:1 adult cycle training session and it was far more helpful than I thought it would be.

If somebody is experiencing a lot of near misses when cycling on the road then they may be exceedingly unlucky, or more likely they could make their journey safer by changing their habits.

Collisions / vs accident. There was a move within the industry to start calling them collisions about 10 years ago because ‘accident’ indicates all involved parties are blameless. However, a reasonable proportion of road casualties in cities are things like people falling down steps on buses which is not a collision either.

Awful, RIP cyclist and as others have mentioned don’t underestimate the impact on yourself OP. I saw a cyclist go under a bus in London when I was out working. It was the sound that stayed with me and work arranged for me to speak to someone, which helped greatly. All the best

If somebody is experiencing a lot of near misses when cycling on the road then they may be exceedingly unlucky, or more likely they could make their journey safer by changing their habits.

I’ve got a friend that that accurately describes. Not reckless per se or even even arrogant just blessed with remarkably little awareness/imagination. He met with the same fate (although he survived) hitting a car turning right as he filtered at speed. The complication in his case was that he was filtering in a cycle lane (is that even called filtering?) but travelling so fast he was increasing his chances of impact and reducing his ability to do anything about it. He’s had a few more since then.

It’s a terrible waste and I do think about and feel these things even if I’m not good at talking about them. However I do think blame-free discussions about cycling vulnerability and safety might help someone in the future, so I’ll follow on from convert’s post and give another example of a cyclist who didn’t do anything wrong in the law, but could’ve ridden more defensively (even though he shouldn’t have had to ideally).

This mini roundabout in Cardiff was originally a through road on Fidlas Road so it’s quite straight. A cyclist was coming up Ty-Glas Avenue reasonably quickly on a road bike, turning right onto Fidlas Road. Meanwhile a car came down the other part of Fidlas road taking (for them) the first exit, which is a near straight-through. The junction is open and well sighted, so the driver presumably glanced looking for cars, saw none, and carried on at 30mph almost taking out the cyclist who had to slam on and swerve.

Driver’s fault, for sure. But when I cycle, I *always* look down roundabout exits to make sure that oncoming cars are going to give way, and if they aren’t looking at me or haven’t seen me, I will brake on the roundabout. It does happen – and on these suburban mini roundabouts there’s usually enough room to evade when they don’t stop. I then usually give a shout of alarm or warning, rather than anger, and they then look, get a shock as I am alongside them and hopefully will remember next time.

We are vulnerable, and we should feel vulnerable. I didn’t, when I was younger, and I was lucky tbh.

Driver’s fault, for sure. But when I cycle, I *always* look down roundabout exits to make sure that oncoming cars are going to give way, and if they aren’t looking at me or haven’t seen me,

I do the same – until I’ve made eye contact with the driver I won’t assume they’ve seen me and will stop.

I’ve just started riding my road bike down here on the Essex/London border. It’s no-where near as nice as riding the road bike round Edinburgh but so far I’ve only had a few close passes and one idiot van driver who was tooting his horn because he didn’t think I should be on the road at all (of course after he passed me I caught him in traffic shortly afterwards and words were exchanged).

No idea what happened in the fatal accident mentioned but I definitely wouldn’t filter at speed and especially not past a junction. Wouldn’t do it on a motorbike and definitely wouldn’t do it on a bicycle.

Not a nice thing to come across, and not nice for the cyclists family and friends.

Personally I wouldn’t have filtered.

Only last night I saw madness by 2 cyclists. They filtered down the outside of traffic, past a bus, and cut left in front of it to go down a road. The bus had to break hard. It was completely unbelievable.

Can the armchair Incident Investigation Team please give it a rest.

We don’t know enough about what happened and apportioning blame based on ignorance, on a public forum, 24 hours on, is bad form.

This is a cycling forum. How about a little solidarity.