Tragic end to a top bloke

or, even better, a constant one. Unless you’re running a mobile disco, I guess.

Worse. The point is to get them to notice you, not to see you (which they should be able to cope with once they’ve noticed you in bright sunlight).

I think the oncoming traffic statement simply means traffic passing in the next lane.

You’re rationalising that on the basis he’s telling the truth, rather than it being the first excuse that came into his head…

Given how clearly the following car managed to see what happened, I think it’s necessary to point out that we only have the driver’s word that he was distracted by the glare of the sun rather than something else, or just simply not paying proper attention.

Here’s the driver:

From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103877/Senior-RAF-officer-served-personal-assistant-Queen-killed-van-cycled-home.html

Also more here:
http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/localnews/beaconsfield/9545641.Van_driver_describes_aftermath_of_fatal_collision_to_court/

“I weren’t even looking for a cyclist.” well that explains it then.

I have stopped and turned round when on a pleasure ride due to low sun.
I couldnt see that much and it quickly dawned on me that if I couldnt see fa , then neither could the cars behind me .
A lad at works step dad used ‘low sun’ as a defence to causing the death of a fellow motorcyclist . Got away without charge despite the fact the accident happened at 2 in afternoon . I think they were racing and the first bike slowed faster than expected appraoching a 30 limit, and was punted from behind by the other bike.

I commuted (motorcycle) on the A40 all last year, the sun is in your eyes in the morning and then in the evening.

Now and again you’d see a cyclist on various bits of it, god knows why – its a minimum of 50mph and then hits 70mph as it gets further out.

Its always busy and (not sure why) gets more than its fair share of middle-lane drivers.

I can easily believe his story, that he wasn’t able to see – but if so why not just admit it. But again, why would anyone cycle there…

Driver convicted.

http://www.uxbridgegazette.co.uk/west-london-news/local-uxbridge-news/2012/02/22/a40-driver-guilty-of-causing-raf-officer-s-death-113046-30385100/

Judging by some of the comments on here we shouldn’t ride on country lanes either, as the speed limit is 60 mph. Some of you need to get a grip ffs. Hope this w@nker gets a long jail sentence, but it’ll probably be a 12 month driving ban, licence endorsement, community service and suspended sentence.

It’s sad for both families what a tragedy

Most of you lot have the driver hung drawn and quartered after reading a newspaper report. Instead of posting remarks and pictures on here of him why don’t you all gang up and lynch him in the street?

Nah – I’ll just knock over your strawman instead.

Reporting of court proceedings tends to be fairly accurate, if not necessarily telling the whole story – you only have to read the different versions of the driver’s story to realise he’s being at the least economical with the truth at various points.

Judge John Anderson said: ‘It is common ground in this case that this was a momentary lapse of attention.

For the last 4 yrs I have driven the EXACT route that bloke took – I work opposite the airbase. That bit of A40 is 3 lanes and just before it becomes the M40, it is used by the traffic just like a motorway at motorway speeds. Right alongside is a first class dedicated cyclepath intended to keep cyclists safe and away from dangerous fast traffic.

Instead of using the cyclepath, he was cycling on what is in effect a motorway which the law says he can cycle on. If we change the law so that we can cycle on all motorways. Would you? Or would you think that was plain crazy.

Momentary lapse of attention plus a plain crazy place to be cycling will eventually lead to disaster. But it doesnt make the driver some hateful character. Show me anyone who hasn’t suffered this lapse of attention and I will show you a liar, there but the grace of god.

Save your misplaced vitriol for the like of Carl Whant, who truly deserves it.

Instead of using the cyclepath, he was cycling on what is in effect a motorway which the law says he can cycle on. If we change the law so that we can cycle on all motorways. Would you? Or would you think that was plain crazy.

In fact motorways would be safer as there is a hard shoulder. Some states in the USA allow cycling on the freeway. I’ve done it. Sometimes there is no alternate route. It is noisy but feels safer than many other roads. I still check my mirror constantly though.

you only have to read the different versions of the driver’s story to realise he’s being at the least economical with the truth at various points.

Exactly. The initial Telegraph article reports his initial statement to police officers as

He told the officer: “I literally saw the cyclist before impact and tried to move out of the way. “

and yet the Uxbridge Gazette article quotes him as saying (not sure if this was in court or just to the paper)

“I thought I hit a deer. I never saw anything.”

Thread resurection, the driver was sentenced today:

Driver Sentence

Hmmmmmmmmmm………………

Community ******* service. Unreal.

100hrs of comunity service and 12 month ban. **** great.

“I was very short-sighted, I was struggling to see the brake lights of the car in front of me, so I decided I needed to slow down.

“At that point I was in the middle lane and the sun got worse, so I put a cap on but it didnt help much.

“The sun was as low that day as I have ever known.

“The only way I could get the sun out of my eyes was to put the sun visor fully down, but I would have been blinded by that, so I put it on an angle.

“I could see people flashing me for going too slow so I decided to go into the inside lane and remember looking in my mirror for motorcycles.

“All of a sudden I felt a bump.”

What a complete crock of shit. I’m not one to get emotional about these situations and I’m family of a victim in similar circumstances. But I hope the fat **** has a **** heart attack and dies.

The self-employed delivery driver told how the crash had left him needing counselling and had stripped him of his happy-go-lucky personality.

****

“The sun was as low that day as I have ever known”

Did the Earth shift slightly on its axis that day then? 😕

After what sugdenr wrote, I thought I’d look on streetview. Whatever the rights and wrongs, I don’t think I’d cycle on that bit of road more than once.

A40 street view.

sentencing is the minimum penalty for causing death by careless driving.
I wouldn’t ride down there, wonder if the judge took into account the cycle lane he could have been using.
tragic.

Just because there’s a legal right to be there doesn’t make it sensible. Bikes should be banned from DC’s, we’ve no use for them and drivers on the whole aren’t expecting cyclists to be there. If that means you’re 30 seconds slower in the tuesday night TT*, or have to find a quieter route home so be it. You wouldn’t tell a kid to go play football in the road, so why do cyclists seem to think it’s sensible to ride down what are essentialy motorways in all but name? Argueing that cycling on DC’s is fine, it’s car drivers who are at fault sounds like argueing that Ammerica’s gun law’s are OK because gun ownership doesn’t kill, idiots do. So the sensible thing to do is ban the thing that’s a stupid risk.

Sory to hear someones died but riding on DC’s is like playing Russian roulette with someone else shooting, only they don’t know the rules, the guns loaded, the bullets weigh several tons and you’re just hoping they miss.

There are some bits of DC on otherwise unassuming road we would be banned from though e.g the B4100:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=gaydon&hl=en&ll=52.123656,-1.402574&spn=0.014202,0.024676&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=7.063324,12.788086&t=v&hnear=Gaydon,+Warwickshire,+United+Kingdom&z=15

There are some bits of DC on otherwise unassuming road we would be banned from though e.g the B4100:

Possibly, but;

* Someone behind a desk in some council department has decided that the road is fast enough and busy enough, etc, to justify making it DC. Which are probably criteria that would justify not cycling on it.
* IF cyclists were banned from DC’s, or at least a review of roads from which bikes hsould be banned was carried out, then the same review could highlight which DC’s need a cyclepath bypassing them.

Most of the sections on the B4100 (just sticking with an example I know) are there because it used to be the A41 and it went DC on some hills to allow safe overtaking of slow vehicles. As it’s now been effectively bypassed by the M40/A34 traffic levels are much lower (and safer)

Just because there’s a legal right to be there doesn’t make it sensible. Bikes should be banned from DC’s, we’ve no use for them and drivers on the whole aren’t expecting cyclists to be there. If that means you’re 30 seconds slower in the tuesday night TT*, or have to find a quieter route home so be it. You wouldn’t tell a kid to go play football in the road, so why do cyclists seem to think it’s sensible to ride down what are essentialy motorways in all but name? Argueing that cycling on DC’s is fine, it’s car drivers who are at fault sounds like argueing that Ammerica’s gun law’s are OK because gun ownership doesn’t kill, idiots do. So the sensible thing to do is ban the thing that’s a stupid risk.

Sory to hear someones died but riding on DC’s is like playing Russian roulette with someone else shooting, only they don’t know the rules, the guns loaded, the bullets weigh several tons and you’re just hoping they miss.

the key to the above basically sounds like this bit ‘drivers on the whole aren’t expecting cyclists to be there’. So drivers need to get used to cyclists being on the road, in a nutshell. Your ‘analogy’ of kids playing football on the road is just comedy.

The principle is correct, of course. Drivers should be better at driving and anticipating hazards. All efforts should be made to make them better.

But we can only work on the basis that this isn’t the case, and isn’t likely to be the case in the immediate future.

I’m teaching my kids to cross bigger roads safely at the moment. One of the key things I keep saying is to assume that every car driver they encounter is an idiot who hasn’t seen them, unless proven otherwise, and make decisions accordingly.

The same applies to us.

Theres already a framework for banning bikes on dual carriageways in the form of motorway restrictions, which also bans 50cc scooters, horses, mobility scooters, pedestrians and other slow moving things.

Plus DC’s covers everything from 30mph urban roads to 70mph ones almost identical to motorways.

the key to the above basically sounds like this bit ‘drivers on the whole aren’t expecting cyclists to be there’. So drivers need to get used to cyclists being on the road, in a nutshell.

I think there’s a risk of some sort of circular argument here, if cyclists don’t normally cycle somewhere (irrespective of if they have the right), then by default then drivers aren’t going to expect them (however much we’d like them too). In much the same way as I’m sure most drivers wouldn’t expect say a horse rider on a dual carriage way.
Of course that doesn’t absolve drivers from being attentive though, and I disagree with the concept of a ban on dual carriageway access.

the key to the above basically sounds like this bit ‘drivers on the whole aren’t expecting cyclists to be there’.

No. It doesn’t. The whole sentencing is a disgrace and there is no excuse for the driver not paying attention, but to not comment on why the rider wasn’t using the purpose built cycle path would be one-eyed.
I don’t think that bikes should be banned from DCs personally but I do think that they/we should be forced to use cycle lanes if they are there.

I don’t think that bikes should be banned from DCs personally but I do think that they/we should be forced to use cycle lanes if they are there.

I think I’d also require such legislation to state what standard the cycle lane was. Plenty of them are pretty rubbish.

Fair point. Further to this, legislation should also severely punish drivers for parking on cycle lanes. Cycle lanes should never have a bus stop on them either. That’s not a cycle lane; it’s a gutter.

I don’t think that bikes should be banned from DCs personally but I do think that they/we should be forced to use cycle lanes if they are there.

Not my local one, but not too dissimilar;

Where are the ‘cyclists remount’ signs? surely one can’t just keep dismounting.

That’s just poor planning which probably doesn’t surprise any of us and why cycle lanes aren’t taken seriously. Let’s be fair though, they’re not all like that. Also are cycle lanes seen as a bit “wussy” by roadies?

Also are cycle lanes seen as a bit “wussy” by roadies?

the usual arguments are that they generaly follow the pavement not the road, so as in the photo above have 101 give way lines and driveways to negotioate. And where they form part of the carrigeway they tend to fill up with all the detrius that car wheels brush off, but puncture bike tyres.

Absolutely tragic loss of human life but as others have said you wouldn’t catch me riding that stretch of road in a month of Sundays, let alone at rush hour cycling due west into a low sun. Fair enough if the cyclist was not local but commuting from Bucks to RAF Northolt he must have known what the road was like & that there was a perfectly good cycle lane there too.

Wish they’d give it a rest with the over emotive reporting too, I mean what does “was hit with such force he was propelled into a cycle lane on the other side of the road” mean? – the cyclist certainly wasn’t thrown across 6 lanes of traffic & there isn’t a cycle lane on the north side of the road, so knocked across the verge & onto the cycle lane would do.

TINAS – I wouldn’t advocate any sort of banning or forcing the use of cycle lanes as there are plenty of cycle lanes that are more dangerous than using the road.

I’ve only just seen this thread and I’m disappointed with the sentence the driver received but to be fair I don’t know all the facts presented at the court case to make an informed judgement of my own.

I was unfortunate enough to be at the scene of the accident less than a couple of minutes after it happened although I didn’t actually see the impact, it was obvious that the rider had been hit with a tremendous amount of force so I don’t go with the “over emotive reporting”. FFS someone died on their way home from work!

Of course the rider could have used the cycle path, I would not cycle on that bit of road, but the driver should have paid a lot more attention and the court backed that up with the verdict of “death by careless driving”. It was the drivers fault.

I spend many hours a week driving in London due to my job and the standard of driving that I witness at times can be appalling and IMO a lot of drivers see cyclists as an inanimate obstruction to squeeze past if they believe the gap is big enough rather than a living father/mother/daughter/son that they will seriously hurt or worse if they clip as they try to squeeze past. Sometimes that gap is just not big enough and drivers need to show more patience (half the time there is a queue of traffic a couple of hundred metres up the road to stop their progress). It isn’t cyclists that should be changing the way or where they ride, it is attitude of drivers that need to change.

To change the attitude of drivers and improve standards of driving would take years and years even with a government that would support such a campaign. Will it ever happen, I doubt it. I’m far from anti car and just my t’penth worth.

My sympathies go out to the family and friends of the deceased.

Also are cycle lanes seen as a bit “wussy” by roadies?

the usual arguments are that they generaly follow the pavement not the road, so as in the photo above have 101 give way lines and driveways to negotioate. And where they form part of the carrigeway they tend to fill up with all the detrius that car wheels brush off, but puncture bike tyres. [/quote]

Not seen as wussy, I don’t think. Just woefully unsuitable for riding a bike on. On the couple of road rides I’ve been on with ERC, the cycle path alongside the A198 NSL dual carriageway between Port Seton and Longniddry ignored completely because it is in such bad condition.

Also, how come double quotes come out fine in the preview, but look pish on when posted to the thread?

piha,

+1, well said.