Bristol cyclist critical after crash with car

The BBC news is reporting that "a cyclist is in a critical condition in hospital after being hit by a car in Bristol."

Interesting they chose the phrase "hit by a car"; in London they tend to describe the bicycle as hitting the car, before going on to discuss whether they had a helmet on.

The location was describe as the junction of St Michael's Hill and Horfield Road. We've noted how this isn't that much fun in a car. This collision happened at 22:22 on a Friday, so congestion would be minimal -and there is more chance of cars driving around fast.

Judging by the signs, the collision wasn't with Park Row, it was further up the hill. There's no further details yet on what happened.

Some possibilities:

• Car and bicycle heading down the St Michaels Hill, collision.
• Car and bicycle heading down Horfield Road, collision.
• Bicycle heading up St Michaels Hill, collides with car also going up St Michaels Hill

Those are the normal two vehicles in the same-direction incidents. This junction adds some more, all of which tend to lead to side-on collisions:

• Bicycle heading down St Michaels Hill, collides with car going down Horfield Road, or up St Michaels Hil.
• Bicycle heading down Horfield Road collides with car pulling out St Michaels Hill and heading downhill
• Bicycle heading up St Michaels Hill towards Horfield Road, gets hit by a car going straight up St Michaels Hill

Nobody rational turns from St Michaels Hill into Horfield Road; its too tight. There are other options further up the hill.

The highest risk actions on a bicycle are probably

1. Heading down from St Michaels Hill, where you are exposed to vehicles heading in either direction. Gravity works in the bicycle's favour here, it pulls the bicycle forward and minimises the time side-on to traffic.
2. Heading up towards Horfield Road, where the bicycle rider is curving right and pushing slowly up something steep -any vehicle heading up St Michaels Hill in a hurry may turn over them. It's like a left hook only without the car making the left turn, it just goes straight on (hence faster), even though the road lanes turn rightwards.

On a bicycle, before the building works started, heading up through the BRI car park (the former Terrell Street) was apparently a lower hassle option. Follow the signs to A&E from Park Row, then head out to Horfield Road, or turn right to Marlborough Hill and a final bit of climbing.

 
We have no more details than the BBC article -and wish the cyclist a speedy and full recovery.

Death on Dove Street

Chris Hutt, that known subversive, sends news of a death last Monday.

Police are appealing for witnesses and information after a fatal road traffic collision in Kingsdown, Bristol. The incident occurred on Monday 4th January 2010 at around 10.56am in Dove Street. A Honda Jazz was in collision with a low wall. The 82 year old driver died later in hospital.

This is sad, and it is something that seemed to miss getting coverage in the other local media outlets.

Dove Street is the semicircular road that goes round the 1970s housing block in Kingsdown. We've sent bicycles along here, we've also seen how cars pulling on to Ninetree hill correctly assume they don't need to look for traffic coming down the hill.

During the snows, ninetree became a sledge and snowboard route, not a driving option. Here is the view uphill, Dove Street is just visible to the left. This picture was taken five days before monday's death; things got icier.

The pavement was unusuable, pedestrians were in the road. No cyclists to worry about, just snowboarders and sledgers. Someone had wisely scraped all the snow off a bit of the road at the base, to stop such snow-users ending up on Stokes Croft.

Off to one side, no obvious cues as to whether Y64PNV had chosen to end up here or been forced that way by gravity. The tyre treads implied that the wheels had been rotating, so perhaps this was a parking action.

Visiting Dove Street a couple of days after the fatal incident, police signs are up and some tape is across the road; now broken. There was more tape on the lampposts at the bottom of nine-tree hill.

Otherwise, no details of what happened. Presumably the car started off on Dove street and then ended up on Ninetree hill, which turned out to be non-survivable. Either the driver deliberately went onto that road, or it was trying to park on Dove Street the way the cars above have, and somehow ended up on ninetree hill, at which point there weren't many options left.

It is a tragedy, and we extend our condolencies to friends and family.

More Cotham Hill/Whiteladies Road lorry/bike crash photos

This is the rest of the photo set.

It's pretty depressing to see this, especially on a road that is almost entirely given over to students walking and cycling in to college on.

The lorry was turning in from Whiteladies Road -probably heading inbound (left turn), though it may have turned right.

This is the view from the builders' merchants; there's a small lane before the entrance. The parked cars on the side make getting into the building site a fairly tricky turn; presumably it had to to swing out wide, and somehow a bike ended up on the inside of the bend.

AY56AEP, for the databases

Note this closing scene here: the road is closed and yet still a white van tries to get past the police car; ends up being waved down by the police and made to/helped to back out onto Whiteladies Road, then go down a block before turning off. This may answer some questions about delivery van driver literacy, else "Police Road Closed" doesn't apply if you are just on your way through quickly.

Cycling too fast!

We have another complaint about bicycles, not the usual pavement, tax avoidance or clothing issues -one that is not taken up by the mainstream press yet.

Some of the cyclists in our city are simply cycling too fast!

They sprint along our streets, down the hills, and eventually, into our cars. At which point we, the drivers, get the blame for pulling out without looking -whereas its clearly these tax-dodging underpeople's fault for sprinting round the city creating accidents.

Take this view of Nine Tree Hill, secretly recorded. The tax-dodging lycra-lout is going down the hill so fast they barely have time to brake for the car that pulls out of the side road without warning

The driver was lucky that they managed to accelerate away -only their reflexes prevented a major accident. And you know who would get the blame don't you? The driver -always us. There's even some EU legislation which would make such blame assignment automatic, which is another reason to oppose the EU.

Fortunately, we still have the police on our side. Here is a photo of Dru Marland's collision where a car turning right from Worcester Road onto College Road, turned into Dru, who was going along College Road with the right of way, turning right.

We were worried that after this incident, it would be the car that got the blame -when if the bicycle had not been there, there would not have been any accident!

The police have finished their investiation, and here we are pleased to announce that they will not be citing the driver, paritally because Dru "was riding too fast", according to a witness.

We now hope that since the police have reached this conclusion, Dru will be compensating the driver for the damage done to their bumper, with additional compensation for the damage to their reputation.

Troy Atkinson update

We've recently seen some more comments on our page covering the death of Troy Atkinson by a hit and run driver in April.

It turns out there was progress in the driver's prosecution: Mohammed Ahmed, 19, of Eastville, plead guilty on Friday to :

• taking a vehicle without consent
• causing death by dangerous driving
• failing to stop at the scene of an accident
• driving without insurance

He took a car that wasn't his, ran over Troy Atkinson at Cabot Circus, then drove off. The court case is covered in the BBC and Evening Post. There's not much to add on the case except that one teenager is dead, another teenager's future not going to be what they dreamed of.

What we can do is get a quick video of what it is like to travel down Cabot Circus from one of our instrumented cyclists,. We believe this is the route that Ahmed took.

The BMW the bicycle is tracking is driving fairly sedately down the road, looking for somewhere to pull in. You can see pedestrians running across the way of this car, including at 0:19 a small child calling back to a parent on the other side of the road -if this journey had a risk of a pedestrian running out, this would have been it.

At 0:55 there's a wave of pedestrians heading out of Cabot Circus towards Quaker's Friars; they've had to wait for a bus and a car, and are now sprinting across the gap between those vehicles and the bike. There may be a build out, but there is no zebra crossing and shoppers are expected to wait patiently. Note how the pedestrians wave a little thank you to the cyclist for stopping, they are clearly grateful.

The junction which Troy was crossing when he was hit is at 1:17-1:20.

This video was taken on a weekday morning, admittedly during half-term. It's a mixture of shops, buses, pedestrians and cars, and you have to look at it and think "is this a good mix?", and "if so, why don't pedestrians have right of way at any of the crossings?" Yes, there are bits of a speed bump there, but why no zebra crossings? Why on a weekend do crowds have to queue up waiting for a moment to sprint across the gap? The only possible explanations are (a) to remind pedestrians of their place in society and (b) FirstBus resisted the idea of zebra crossings.

As well as mourning and remembering Troy, then, consider this: what if this road was made bus, bike, taxi only? And pedestrians get zebra crossings on all of the build outs?

Like a police state, only funnier

We have stated before, and we will repeat it: this site is a community effort to build a community version of an oppressive police state, with the goal being friendly and more humourous. Less "Orwell", more "George", and we will do that in partnership with Google and Yahoo!, and use logos like cuddly toys to make everything seem friendlier.



This week's contributions, then, are a New York Times article on how Apache Hadoop is commoditising Petabyte-scale datamining. It is, and you should all give the yellow elephant the respect is deserves. When we start our large-scale datamining experiments this is the tooling we will use, though for some reason the NYT didn't ask us for any quotes, or use our plans as an example use of the technology.

Meanwhile Google, provider of free storage for the blog, has just added Bristol to streetview, with a lovely photograph of a bike-on-bike collision in City Road.



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It appears that someone heading to Stokes Croft has gone straight into someone crossing the road on their own bike. Google have managed to snap the collision mid-wipeout, and you can just see the unhelmeted rider about to hit the ground, while the other rider, the one apparently going across the road, manages to bail out standing, which is a slick little move, though his bike does come out on the bottom of the pile, which is less good.

Given all the cars are waiting at the lights, there is distinct likelihood that the cyclist in the bristol-chic fluorescent top was running the red light. For all ghost-riders out there, remember, we only put up photos of those who get captured on film, so please carry your own helmet cameras when you choose to run-the-reds on or near the A38.

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If you were involved in this collision, we would love to hear the full details. Please email us at bristol.traffic at gmail dot com.

This is how it ends. Mark Pointer, died 2009

Up on the downs, where the road across the park, Stoke Road, meets Ladies Mile, there's a sign post covered in flowers.

The one at the top says "to my dear brother, taken too soon, love your partner in crime -your ever loving sister Nicky/Richard"

What happened? According to the Evening Post, Mark Pointer, age 36, was on a motorbike which collided with a Vauxhall Vectra. The car driver was treated for shock; the motorcyclist didn't survive. The police have a sign up asking for witnesses. That's all we know.


Somebody died here. Mark Pointer's brother and sister are mourning him; so are his friends and the rest of his family. For the rest of their natural lives, they are going to remember him, and often think "if only..." -if only he'd not gone out at that exact date and time, if only he'd taken a different route, if only the car had done something different, if only Mark had done something different. Those regrets are pretty hard to cope with; there's no easy way to avoid them, and often its mixed with guilt -"if only I'd ..." Sadly, it's too late for any of them -someone died motorbiking over a park in Bristol, and regardless of the underlying causes, they are gone.

Bristol doesn't (yet) have a Ghost Cycle program in operation. We need one for motorbikes as well as bicycles.

The Chipping Sodbury Job

Regular site visitor Westfield Wanders points us to some of his winter pics, namely a car hitting some ice in Chipping Sodbury, and coming off the road

This must have been pretty scary

What is even scarier than hitting the wall is what is on the other side

A 6 foot drop.

Fortunately, driver and passenger were able to walk away. A few more mph of speed on the approach to the bend and it might have been a different story.

Hiver sur la rue des champs des putains

Our contributor TG manages to get up and over l'alpe des neuf abres, and in six minutes is viewing trouble on Horfield Road. Someone has put a warning sign up. Clearly it is discouraging traffic. It is also making the cusp of the hill extra tricky for the little car that has just managed to get all way up the steepest stretch.

Just to the left of that photo is this scene, where somone has managed to skid into the railings. While normally those railings appear to be an inconvenient bit of anti-car council planning, there to stop you parking on the pavement, today they keep the pavement and the car separate with reason.

That car going past this crash, carrying on down the hill has its brake lights on, as they say in the French Alps "les feux touristique" - tourist lights. You should be using engine braking down here, not the brakes, though with ABS they are somewhat better at stopping than they used to be.

Hiver sur l'Alpe des Neuf Arbres

Contributor TG sends in this photo from 08:17 this morning on the junction of nine-tree-hill and and Stoke's Croft. Looks like the car went into sledge-mode and just slid down the hill, going over the kerb to stop people contraflowing, and then down the final stretch before coming to a halt into the one-way sign. Hope they were OK and that nobody was walking up at the time.

As someone who regularly contraflows this road on a bike, I find the one-way kerb setup and signage inconvenient, and must be pretty bad for any pedestrian trying to get a wide pushchair up here to find a one-way sign in the middle of the pavement. Today, when the alternative stopping facility would have been traffic in Stokes Croft, the sign came in handy.

Nick Abraham, climber, died January 6, 2009

Today, in Westbury on Trym, the funeral will be held for Nick Abraham, who was killed while cycling on the A4 Portway earlier this month. Nick Abraham the climber.

There isn't really a cycling "community" in Bristol -there are groups that follow their own niche -road work, BMX, fixed wheel, MTB, etc, but for most people it is just a transport. The loss of a cyclist is an abstract "that could have been me" thought for most.

There is, however, a very strong climbing community. Winter evenings and weekends spent at Undercover Rock in St Werburgh's drinking tea, eating chocolate flapjack and staring at overhangs graded F7a while you wonder if you will get up it or end up ignomiously hanging upside-down with the rope wrapped around your leg. You get to recognise the regulars, say hello to them in the wall, or the pubs nearby -the Farm and Miner's Arms. On summer evenings, Avon Gorge, as you communicate by tugs with the climber on the other end of the rope, traffic noise getting in the way of shouting. You see a lot of the A4 portway and the traffic on it, before you end up, with the other climbers, at the Avon Gorge Hotel for a beer afterwards. Summer weekends: Stanage Edge, Pembroke, the Gower. Then there is the Alps, which are where, along with caving and scottish-winter-ice work, that objective danger lies: danger that you cannot entirely eliminate.

Because there is danger out there: one of the founders of the wall never came back from a caving trip, there are other people in the British climbing community, known from those places you end up on weekends, that end up not returning from a trip to Chamonix, lost in snow or ice. The climbers do live with that, do have to live with getting that phone call telling them that some of their friends and climbing partners are no more. This is not a sport, it is a lifestyle, one that does have danger, danger which caution with ropes and teamwork can effectively eliminate from cliffs like the gorge: non-friable limestone with good protection. All the subjective danger can be removed there, which is why it is a safe place to learn, to play with your friends, to teach your kids.

Sadly, it is clearly not a place to cycle safely. And so someone who was part of the Bristol climbing community will now have to live on only in memory of the climbers, his friends and family. They -we- will remember him, and hopefully soon someone will climb a new route in the gorge, a new way over the portway, and remember "Little Nick" by naming it after him. Nothing else would be more apt.

Steve L, undercover rock member #536.

Cyclist killed on the A4 Portway

As announced on the news, a teenage cyclist was killed on the A4 portway today, January 6. The BBC has some sparse details. This is very, very sad. Nobody should have to die that way.

Centre stage at Cabot Circus

Just before Xmas, someone in a Ford Puma coming off the M32 approached Cabot Circus a bit too fast and ended up in House of Fraser, after bouncing off the roof of an Audi waiting at the lights.

The Puma driver ended up in Critical condition at the BRI and went on up to Frenchay for intensive care, the driver of the Audi also ended up at the BRI for chest injuries. The E.P. has some photos. and more text, using the term "accident" as they invariably do, showing a weak understanding of the concept of causality.

This is pretty messy and hopefully all involved will recover; we look forward to the result of the police investigation. What is clear is that the Puma must have been moving fairly fast to travel in the distance and manner that it did. Late at night that whole stretch of dual carriageways between the St James Barton Roundabout, St Pauls Roundabout and templemeads often have cars nipping around very fast on it. The roads are generally structured/styled for fast driving, but it is still an inner city, with junctions, lights and other road users. Which makes for a fairly dangerous combination.

One thing to look at here is whether the new junction changes at the end of Cabot Circus help things or not. It's clear that whoever designed the turn-left feed from Bond Street at the Newfoundland Way junction didn't consider bikes -or other vehicles- running lights, or they wouldn't have given it such atrocious visibility when you look right. When you get a green light, there's no way to see if anything decided to run-the-red without pulling out.

The other thing to consider is how that Dagger-into-the-City, the M32 contributes to excessive speed in the city centre. On a weekday commute the jam begins at eastville, so cars reaching the core have been doing 10mph for 15 minutes. Late at night you can do M4-to-Cabot Circus in 6-8 minutes, at which point your expectations of viable speeds are pretty unrealistic.

RTA at the harbour

Chris Hutt mailed this in: "This is from this evening 5 pm down outside the Museum of Bristol. A female cyclist has come off when crossing the rails where the points are. She and her husband are staying at the caravan park at the other end of the floating harbour, visiting Bristol (perhaps encouraged to cycle on the basis of the cycling City news?). Injuries turned out to be minor and she was eventually able to walk away"

The Evening Post recently had a two page special from some visitors to the city staying at the same caravan park, complaining about the bikes cycling along the mixed-use bits of the harbour. Perhaps this week's will have some other visitors, complaining about the quality of those mixed use bits of the harbour. The underlying problem is that railway tracks are slippery in the wet, and you really need to cross them at right angles rather than slide up alongside them -that drops you: hard, but according to Chris, fixable. The ongoing building works don't help as they constrain the route, and then there is the car access and parking which is viewed as essential to retain, forcing cyclists and pedestrians into a limited bit of the route -the place where things go wrong. And there is no north-of-harbour alternative yet.

bit of a prang

Josh Hart's study into road use showed that even on roads with medium traffic parents worry about their kids being allowed out -the issue being not just traffic density, but speed. Here however is one of the benefits of main roads: kids love to come out and look at RTAs -especially if they happen early enough that bedtime doesn't get in the way.

The Jaguar was reversing into the parking space, the Fiesta coming down the hill too fast and went into the back of it. It came off worse. The Jaguar has bit of duct tape on the back while the front of the fiesta looked fairly damaged. The little one found the insides of the engine quite fascinating.


Nobody hurt, all is well. There have been requests for a pedestrian crossing on this road, and even a speed camera, but no, there is no perceived risk.

the price of parking

One of the pressures for driveways in Bristol is that it gives you somewhere to park. The other is that you can more sure your car will be there the next day. Here, on Upper Belgrave Road, by the edge of the downs is evidence of what can go wrong.

Next to to the cyclist illegally cycling on the downs is a parked Corsa, first in the line of cars of residents on the houses on the other side of the road. This is an odd road: cars coming up from the Oortway will have had a chance to zip up Bridge Valley road, and with the park on one side, it doesn't feel urban. Some drivers come up here pretty fast.

And clearly someone one was coming up too fast, not paying attention, and -presumably at night- ploughed straight into the back of this parked car. Hopefully nobody was hurt, and the residents heard the sounds, came out to investigate, and got to exchange insurance details -with an insured driver.

It would be useful to have some data on average and peak vehicle speeds up Bridge Valley Road and along the edge of the downs. And perhaps instead of "improving" the blackboy hill junction with lights, add lights and red light/speed camera to the junction at with Ladies' Mile road, so that cars get to slow down, whether they want to or not

Coronation Road Crash

We have a photo of the flowers left on Coronation Road at the site of Friday's fatal motorbike/lorry collision.

There's also a letter from his sister; it is very sad. Clearly, he will be missed very much by his family. It should not have come to this.

Motorcycle Rider Billy James killed on Coronation Road

There is a new blog documenting parking and traffic issues in Southville: http://southvilleparking.blogspot.com/

It's already a better source of local road news than the BBC or Evening Post, which is why it is so sad to read its coverage of a fatal motorbike/lorry collision at the junction of Coronation Road and Dean Lane. The comments by people that knew him say that rider's name was Billy James, He will be sadly missed by all of his friends in Highbury and Kings Crescent estate and by all whom had the pleasure of knowing him.

Sometimes on this site we are bit unhappy about motorbikes using our parking facilities and bike lanes, but the harsh truth is that bikes and motorbikes are equally vulnerable to collisions with motor vehicles, to cars pulling out while you go along a road with the right of way, to anyone else out there making a mistake. And lorries -which Coronation Road suffers from- pretty much guarantee that when something goes wrong, it's the two wheeled vehicle user is in deep trouble. It was just along from here, at the roundabout, that I had a lorry drive over the back of my bike, and it was terrifying: the lorry edging out looking right for a gap, me, in front of the lorry, having my bike first pushed into the junction and then, after jumping off the bike, having it go under the lorry wheel. Lorries are dangerous. It doesn't necessarily mean that they are bad drivers, only that the whole vehicle's design isn't appropriate for city streets. And when something goes wrong, its the pedestrian, the cyclist, the motorcyclist and even the car driver who comes out worst.

Today, we have a new name to remember, a Bristolian who came out worst against a lorry: Billy Joy. Billy, we didn't know you, but we will think of you whenever we pass this junction.
-SteveL and family.

Mountain Biking Considered Dangerous

Robby Golbin, of Psyclewerx - best high-end MTB shop in the city- won't be doing much technical off-road for a while. Because on a recent trip over to one of the welsh "resorts" he managed to come off, dislocate a shoulder, tear lots of ligaments and three muscles. He's got a rather large set of stiches on his shoulder slowly healing, his arm in a sling and a wrist bound up to stop nerve damage. Which shows why its dangerous to go off-road on your own, even if it is normally pretty safe.

What is impressive -and is very impressive- is that he is still cycling to work. One handed. Getting off the bike and walking across junctions. That is dedication.


So if cycling near Cotham Hill, stick your head in and wish him well. And wonder whether you'd be up to cycling while healing from such injuries...

Bristol Cyclist killed in North Somerset

The police are reporting that a cyclist was killed on Tuesday in a collision with something being pulled by an oncoming Landrover, in the village of Norton Malreward. This is pretty sad, and marks the second bike-related fatality this summer. Perhaps it is time that the Bristol Cyclists adopt a Ghostbikes style memorial process, though the fact that the bike would probably be stripped within a week kind of lessens the impact.

Meanwhile, Redland police promise to be tough on cycling, and tough on the causes of cycling. Or as they put it, The police will take a robust stance in relation to cycling offences whenever the opportunity arises. That's very reassuring, as it reassures the locals that their cars won't be scraped by bikes when parked on the pavement.