Safe Speed Forums

In the circumstances of this particular event, I don't see how any responsibility can be allocated to the cyclists.

It may be that the risks that attach to riding in a group, as opposed to riding in single file, or riding in a larger group as opposed to a smaller group, are greater. Or it may be, on balance, that the risks are reduced.

Either way, it seems to me that any sort of pre-ride risk assessment of the pros and cons of the alternative formations is unlikely to have included the possibility that a vehicle would cross from the opposite lane and plough through the group. The chances of that happening are simply too remote to be quantifiable and the consequences so unpredictable as to be entirely problematic.

I feel very sad about the waste of life; and I feel equally sad that this deeply tragic event has provided a platform for some members of the cyclists' group to attack motorists (and vice versa). That's hardly likely to improve co-operation between different road user groups. It really amount to nothing more than rabble-rousing.

I try.

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No doubt wavygravy is egging them on , or leading the charge - with Paul as his target

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

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OH - i agree - anyone testing the outside temp( open window - stick hand out ) would have pondered if perhaps they should be going slower . But if this road had been surface dressed , moisture would have sunk below the chips and only become apparent if the chips had been missing - and one wheel on tar+ice would have done the job of sending him out of control -- combination of poor gritting/poor maintenance and other things.
Point to ponder ??

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

I've just watched the report of that sad, unfortunate accident and I was amazed to hear, "Nearby residents say they heard other vehicles skidding on the ice during the day." If those other vehicles were HGV's, tankers, buses or coaches, what could've happened then?

I hope that the Secretary of State for Wales means what he says regarding an inquiry into this accident. As it is, I read a few letters in The Times calling for cycling helmets to be made compulsory. When you look at the pictures of the accident scene, you can see that virtually no protection is afforded.

Serious questions do need to be asked, but I fear that again, we'll see that tired old argument that the speeding motorist is entirely to blame.
I sincerely hope this is a turning point and we'll finally see sensible road policy applied as a result of this accident.

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Anyone who tells you that nothing is impossible has never bathed in a saucer of water.

That would be a complete circle - "excessive speed was not involved" -according to the police report .
Serious questions do need to be asked - like "did the police do enough to close this raod off after the othe accident / did the residents complain enough, or would they be listened to if they did /will the highways authotity be blamed " No - in Warks two years ago several towns/roads suffered shutdowns due to snow and failure to grit - the excuses were similar - too wet/ rained after gritting - and infitinitum

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Last time I browsed at a copy if this magazine in Smiths. - I was looking furtively around me!

Last time I felt like that - was aged 16 and reaching for the top shelf mags in the newsagent!

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If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

Wayne . But you forget - Cycling Craft /Road Craft and COAST have not been "peer reviewed" nor has the Highway Code!

But yes - 50 mph may have been too fast and the investigation and reports to date have not told us about tyre pressures and treads either.



However.. do recall driving home as a 19 year old and weather was cold but not icy as such when I set off for home that night. But as I turned left from one main A road into another at some traffic lights in an Austin 1300 (student at time) - this car or me totally lost it! It slid at a low speed - and the only reason I avoided any smash was largely due to fact I'd been on a skid pan one week earlier and managed to steer into it. The car behind narrowly missed the parked cars. Late 70s - and despite it being the "winter of discontent" police closed the road at soon afterwards.

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

Voice of reason indeed. Of course it's up to the investigators in this tragedy. Brakes, tyres and treads of vehicle and bikes will be examined here.

Were they really three abreast though? Packed together? When I ride with our local club or with family we stick to Highway Code Rule 51 - not more than two abreast - single file on busy roads - not riding close behind another vehicle including a bike...

Cannot believe it. I knwo that road and those guys would be local to it as well. Three abreast on appraoch to that bend? Pretty sure I would drop back if riding out with a group here and cannot see these locals riding that way at this point. Have they got this right in the reports?

johnsher mate - agree three abreast about as wide or so as two horseriders abreast - but this is not a road which lends itself well to two abreast on approach to a bend and double whites here let alone three abreast.

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

Ru88ell.

Trouble is - lot chance riding with no lights around here and it is dangerous to do so. We do not have street lighting on a lot of roads in the National Park Does not help.

Also macro climates - not enough riders, drivers, cyclists are aware of this and the signs to look for - though in this case - you don't see black ice until you hit it.

hard to say without an investigation what happened or how it happened.

I feel very sorry for all involved though. The injured father losing his boy like that... and his friends. ... and in all of this no one has thought of the poor person driving the car. He was not breaking the law and was driving along a road and did not feel a slide until he hit it and lost it - and by the most awful of chances - the cyclists were riding along on oncoming carriageway. He must be feeling just as badly as the other relatives. How would you feel? Poor guy...

Some really awful things happen and we cannot make sense of them. Believe me - I know exactly what a black hole means - and these people are all going through one.

They will need an explanation - from the Highways Agency in this case and the police. From press reports from a local Welsh paper - those directly involved are not blaming any victim - including the driver.

And to those persons on C+ posting absurd and unhelpful comments blaming the driver etc etc ...and we know you lurk here!

Please remember that people have died. Some of these persons may even have posted to the site. They even have browsed there in the past.


THE LAST THING THEY WANT TO READ IS A LOAD OF VITRIOL AND VULTURES PECKING OVER THE BONES OF A TRAGEDY IN THE MANNER AS SEEN!

It certainly does not show respect to the deceased, the bereaved families, the cycling club, nor the driver.

Whilst we cannot bring them back to life, the best we can do is investigate the cause to give "closure" to the families and ensure their deaths are not senseless by making sure if the prime cause was lack of gritters, poor police management - then lessons are learned and we try to do better for others in their memory.

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

A quick note about riding in a pack (which I don't, BTW). On a training run it is commonly known as a "chain gang". It allows everyone to ride faster by the less-powerful riders riding in the vacuum behind the leaders. You get the same effect in a car close behind an HGV. It's good practice in bike-handling skills for road-racing whether on the road or a private circuit. The downside is that in the bunch you can't see the potholes or similar hazards in advance and the "pack of cards" effect is likely in the event of someone falling off.

Very well put MM, thank you.
Whether we like it or not, we all have to use the same tarmac as each other, lets work together on the problems and come up with the answers that TPTB are obviously incapable of coming up with.
Cyclists and motorists have a common enemy, and it isn't each other.

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Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

With the benefit of an aerial view of the accident, I have to say the extreme foreshortening caused by the view point of the photograph and the video, throws an entirely new light on the path of the car.

The scale is incorrect, but the general course is correct.
The aerial picture clearly showed the course of the car across the grass verge, boucing off the wall, and across to the final resting point, which the video and still pictures from the ground did not.

I still feel the expanse of the junction is the reason for the accumalation of ice at this critical point, while elsewhere along the road, conditions gave no clue as to what lay ahead.

With regard to the cyclists being bunched up, is this not akin to tailgating, which we often deplore? The separation into smaller groups of two or three with a timed gap sounds sensible to me - and my have reduced the number of casualties in this instance, but the tragedy seems to have been an extremely unlucky combination of circumstances, which had only been avoided earlier, because cars had skidded WITHOUT encountering another group of road users.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

still doesnt really scan (to me) ernest...

how does the car get from rotating anti-clockwise (left hand bend) to rotating clockwise in order to present the left side of the car to the cyclists?


i'm with SS on this, a more realistic scenario to me is an initial oversteer which maybe takes the car onto the hatchings. caught & overcompensated for by the driver (typical fishtailing response) which leads to SS's secondary skid spinning the car into the path of the cyclists.. nose into the wall.. continuing to spin in the same direction back across the road to where it came to rest.

This appears to be the accepted view. I have tried unsuccessfully to find an online copy of the aerial view, as it is clearly more understandable than the earlier pictures, which showed no signs of tracks on the verge, or damage to the wall.

Car fails to turn into the left hand bend, and starts to cross the road in line with it's initial direction as it hit the ice.

Driver is trying to turn into the bend.
The driver sees the cyclists, and has already failed to turn to the left, and so attempts to steer to the right, which starts to present the passenger side of the car to the cyclists, as it turns broadside on.

Car strikes cyclists, as the car continues ontowards the verge, (and driver puts left lock on to try and avoid the wall) the grass is soft, and the wheels finally achieve some (still very little) grip, glances into the wall, with the drivers wing striking the wall.
Front end is directed along the wall, and with left lock the front end pulls out and the car veers across the road coming to rest on the far side.

This is clear from the aerial view, as you can see the car tracks across the verge in a single two stripe shallow arc, which is directed towards the car at rest, and kisses the wall, just beyond the pile of bikes, and just before the bush you can see in the video.
The video shows a piece of spoiler/bumper against the wall. The policemen standing by it mask the scar on the wall, but there appears to be a piece of concrete leaned up next to them.

Somebody posted that the Telegraph had the aerial view, maybe they still have it?
Meanwhile, this shot shows the damage to the passenger side which I believe was the result of impact of the bikes and riders.

Incidentally the verge looks plenty wide enough to incorporate a cycle path! All it takes is money and incentive!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

In my search for the aerial picture, I turned up these contrasting views.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4597746.stm

I cannot for the life of me see how the last statement is relevant.
However thisreport concerns the views of one of the survivors:

Coming from a man who has just seen four of his friends killed, I find his honesty extremely understanding and compelling, and deserving of more coverage than the first contributors!!
His acknowledment that the incident will affect the driver too, displays an understanding beyond many folk.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

hmmm.... ok.. but the front wheels are always pointing left in your diagram!

i can see this presents the assumed correct side of the car to the cyclists but don't really see it giving enough lateral velocity during the collision (i.e. at the point of impact the car is mostly cutting across the path of the cyclists)