Quote:
A MOTORCYCLIST was taken to hospital in a serious condition after a smash involving a car carrying a mother and her two children in Walkden.
The 31-year-old local man suffered head injuries and was treated at the scene after his red and white Honda motorbike collided with the car at the junction of the A580 East Lancashire Road and Old Clough Lane.
A 39-year-old local woman driving the blue Volkswagen Touran Sport, along with her four-year-old daughter and two-year-old son, were also taken to Hope Hospital in Salford.
Her children were treated for injuries but they were not believed to be life threatening.
Police closed the Manchester-bound carriageway of the A580 at its junction with Walkden Road following the accident at 7.50am today.
It re-opened at noon.
My sister Jazz lives not too far from this junction. She tells me that the T-junction with the A580 is wide but not subject to SMIDSY and usually very easy to turn into A580 as lights with the A575 do help. If jammed in rush - drivers usually do a zip merge filter as normal per Jazz's husband who sometimes uses that road on his commute of a morning. He was held up in the aftermath of this. He had to drive past the clear up. He says the police were very efficient at keeping things moving under the circumstance of getting the commuters on their way at the time. He reckons the car was pulling out when the motorcyclist was accelerating from the traffic lights with the A575 based on what he thinks he saw without rubber necking it - but he was more focused on negotiating a busier than normal jam at the time of course.