A Death on Brook Road

There's almost no coverage of Brook Road on this site, not because its out of our normal coverage area, but because nothing ever happens there. Apart from one incident where a manic van driver on a phone forced our reporter to jump off their bike and onto the pavement, nothing.

Which is why its so awful to hear that someone died here: Nick Graydon, age 27, died December 9 2017, after injuries sustained from a collision with a cyclist on Brook Rood who had apparently turned into Brook Road from Lower Cheltenham Road.

It happened at 8pm, which is of course dark.

Articles say "he stepped out from behind a van". Which is something we want to highlight, "stepping out from behind a van" is not exactly uncommon in Montpelier: it is also known as "walking around Montpelier". Because key feaatures of the area are vans, people walking, and pavements narrow to nonexistent. As an example, here's a continuation of the previous video, crossing Monty during the primary school run: count how many times somebody steps out from behind a van.

Like we said, we don't know the details. but "stepped out from behind a van" is one of those statements which pushes the blame onto the deceased, like "the cyclist swerved to avoid..."

Anyway, let's see what happens next after this, a tragic death which shocked everyone nearby.

No idea whatsoever

These are from mid sept, just some photos of some vehicles encountered on a traverse of the city, from Monty to the Triangle.

#1: Upper Cheltenham Place 16:02, September 9.


There's a car in the middle of the road; it's go belongings in the back including a childs seat. A PCSO is looking in it. Left hand side of the vehicle is pretty bashed up. No other vehicles "unusally" bashed. No skid/ABS marks. Other than the PCSO, nobody is paying any attention.

@2: Nugent Hill, 16:15, September 9.


A car is on the pavement/build-out on Nugent Hill. Both sides of the car are bashed, the gap between them suspiciously as wide as the gap between the two cast iron bollards just in front of the vehicle.

Again, nobody around. This one looks exactly what you'd get when you were parked on the hill, the handbrake wasn't on (+wheels not turned, engine not left in gear), and the car rolled down the hill. If that' the case, at least it didn't hut anyone or any other vehicle. Provided the engine hasn't been damaged/pushed into the passenger compartment, then the VW polo should already be up and running by now.

Overall then: the background hum of bodywork repairs which keeps the city alive.

Evening Post: not funny at all

The Bristol Post has an April 1st story, Cyclists to escort all lorries through Bristol city centre in bid to reduce speed and improve safety. someone thought that was funny.

More precisely, someone thought that was funny less than eight weeks after a tipper truck killed four people in Bath —something local and awful enough that the BEP felt worth covering themselves. A truck crash in which the driver and the company chairmain have been charged for Manslaughter on. Think about that: if the police not only charge the driver with something worse than "Causing death by careless driving", but even the company owner with manslaughter, there must be evidence of a set of wilful decisions resulting in what even the police consider to be killings. Not accidents: killings.

What those decisions are, we are yet to know. Overloading the vehicle? Maybe. Driving with defective brakes? Quite possibly. Driving down a road with 6.6" signs at the entrance and a use low gear sign later on? Again, highly likely. Some papers have been claiming the width sign had been knocked down -but there are two of them, which kind of makes that statement doubtful. A wilful decision to take a shortcut seems suspiciously likely.



Yet the BEP thinks lorry safety is something worth having a laugh about.


Whoever wrote that article didn't look through their archives for keywords like "HGV and life-changing injuries"



They've certainly never heard the scream someone makes as an HGV drives over them.

On a bicycle, what's likely to kill you is an HGV.

And the Evening Post thinks this is funny enough to make a joke out of on April 1.

Anyone who rides a bike and actually pays for the evening post should reconsider their decision from now on

Anyone who looks at the web site should immediately download the Adblock plugin (Firefox, Chrome) so the evening post doesn't get that advert placement revenue.

As for the Bristol Traffic site? After this post we refuse to place any links to Bristol Post articles. Ever.

 

To the evening post, we want you to recognise that this isn't funny. Anyone cycling around the city fears the HGV, fears it coming up behind you at an ASL. Or even worse: a roundabout. If you've ever felt your bike being nudged forward by an HGV at a roundabout as the driver looks to their right, you'll know a moment of cool terror. Moving HGVs are just bad. You fears them passing, as you look to the side to see if its indicator lights are on, warning you that it's about to turn over you. And that's if you are lucky, if they do indicate.

Please pull the article and post an apology for such a tasteless story.

 

As for the author for the article: we extend the offer of a bike ride round central Bristol. The old BEP offices to templemeads should be enough to convince them never to think such an article would be funny. If that's not enough, we'll take them to Bedminster and then down Coronation Road, returning by Anchor Road to the centre, up to the Bearpit roundabout and then Newfoundland Road. If they aren't left a gibbering wreck vowing never to get on a bicycle again, maybe they will write prose so awful in future

Two cyclists killed in Hanham

As has been nationally reported, two cyclists were killed in Hanham on Sunday afternoon. The driver of the car has turned themselves in.

The thoughts and condolences of most Bristolians, whether they cycle or not, will be with the friends and families of the deceased.

Bristol is a much smaller town than London; you end up recognising and becoming acquainted with many people, just because you pass them and meet them more often. For that reason, its possible that one of the regular Bristol Traffic submitters may know of them -or know someone who does. Right now: uncertainty; the only news anyone has are the snippets that come out on the press. On that topic, the Evening Post has shown the decency to turn off comments in their coverage of the tragedy. Having idiots post comments about helmets is not appropriate or welcome.

For those people outside the city who don't know Hanham, well, it's unappealling to cycle through. Kingswood has long had a tradition of being outside Bristol; Hanham similar -and it's not far from St George -one of whose resident's was convicted last year of a "moment of madness" road rage attack on a cyclist. That's not representative of the area; another way to view it is as "a part of the city that is not yet a cycling city".  The A431 may be a more direct route from Bitton to the city centre, but the Railway Path is preferred by cycle. Even there, the Kingswood stretch is the one where you are most likely to encounter a teenager on a motorbike.

There's no reason to speculate on the killing itself, except we will use that term: killing. Someone made some decisions on Sunday that resulted in the death of two people.

Assuming it was the driver who drove off after the crash who made those decisions, the track record of the UK legal system's ability to deliver justice in death-by-car killings is very awful. Sometimes the penalty can be less expensive than a parking ticket.

We've seen the Avon and Somerset police to be supportive of cyclists in the past, what we shall wait to see is if the CPS and judiciary are also supportive. Certainly we don't think that any crime that results in death -even if is "just" a car accident - should be handled by a magistrate alone.

Let's wait and see.

In the meantime, we extend our condolences to those who knew the deceased.

Kate Alison Wrigley - Killed Sept 21, Ashley Road

When these photos were taken in October, flags and flowers marked where another Bristolian was killed walking across a road  - Ashley Hill -on the border between St Werburgh's and Montpelier. She was killed by someone driving a silver BMW -no further details are public at this point.


There is not even a traffic island on this stretch of road. There's one further up, but not a zebra crossing, even though a lot of schoolkids use it.

Here, although it says "20 mph", is a busy and often fast road. Cars heading up the hill are acellerating up something which, by virtue of the walls on either side "feels fast". Certain if you are on a bike, it feels safer to go on the old ashley road, parallel to this.

Kate lived on Milverton Gardens -you can see how pedestrian friendly that is.
If you live here, there is nowhere you can get to without crossing this road or walking all the way down the hill. 


On our last visit, the same cars were parked in the same places. They must be "their" bits of pavement.

Because this is just within the 20mph zone, the anti-20mph people will cite this as an example of how 20 mph zones don't work. Sadly, in this instance -it wasn't enough.

The "moment of madness" defence crops up in London

We see that in London a lorry driver managed to avoid any penalty for reversing over someone in a lorry with the reverse beep disabled, the reversing camera broken and the mirrors set up wrong - by playing the "moment of madness" defence:

Defence counsel Matthew Hardyman told the court his client had suffered from a “moment of madness”

There must be some legal symposium we must attend on "effective use of the 'moment of madness' defence", with speakers discussing how they used to explain various celebrities about engaging in a bit of paid or consensual sex with strangers -which is a key part of Stokes Croft's nightlife- or how they used it to explain some road-rage incident.

I you search for "told the court" and "moment of madness", it does seem to crop up surprisingly often.

In this particular case, however, we have a question for the defence: how you explain the failure of three separate safety devices as "a moment of madness", We'd love to know that -so the next time we get pulled over on the M4 roadworks for having defective lights, brakes, rear tyres and wing mirrors that are montpelier-normal, but which the traffic officer considered "missing".

Can you imagine explaining to the officer asking "why is your vehicle so unsafe" that the decision to drive from Stokes Croft to Birmingham in a vehicle in that state was "a moment of madness"?

It just wouldn't work, would it? MoM is the excuse for "being caught in-flagrante", a bit of road-rage, or "stabbing a relative to death".

The correct response when asked by the police why your van or lorry is unsafe is "I am a donor to the Conservative party and a part time magistrate". Works every time.

Followup on the "R242AAC incident"

We've been keeping an eye on the Times's Cities Safe for Cycling campaign.


We weren't that worried, because their manifesto was all about infrastructure. Such projects take years and can be put off on the grounds of the "the economy is in crisis -all we can afford is more bypasses".

What they had left out was the one thing that could have made our life tangibly worse straight away -demanding anything resembling enforcement of traffic laws. Today we can drive into ASLs on the phone, speed around the city, park in bike lanes, sound our horn behind cyclists. The underpeople may view all this as harassment, but it is what we need to do to get by in our city. There isn't room in the city for bike lanes, not when short term parking is so critical; stopping behind ASLs costs us seconds when the lights change, and mobile phones reduce the cost of congestion.

We need to break these outdated highway code laws to keep the city moving!

What's  concerned us recently is not just that the times is giving cyclists more publicity, but that they are slowly starting to look at enforcement:

• Put onus on drivers, says cycling world champion Mark Cavendish.
• Tougher sentences demanded against drivers who kill cyclists

That's a danger -a legal system that actually enforces the outdated rules. Of course, for that we will need judges that care about cyclists -which we are fortunately a long way off from having, and a police force that forwards cases to them.

The latter is something we all fear, obviously. Which is why it is so reassuring to look at the Cycling Silk's blog and see that in London, the police, sensibly, refuse to do anything. Indeed, the unit set to to focus on road safety, Roadpeace, are leading the way in this refusal to do anything.

Similarly, up in Glasgow, the one surviving cyclist, Magnatom, has actually been surprised to discover that the police won't do anything about HGVs nearly running him over at roundabouts.

It is critical that this unofficial policy remains. The growing popularity of helmet and handlebar cameras means that the things we used to do with impunity, now become videoed and stuck up online. If the police acted on these videos, then it would be worse than when the speed cameras were turned on.

Which is why today, we have some bad news for all important people in a hurry. Bristol Police do seem to care about the cyclists.

As regular readers may recall, last October we covered an incident where the car R242AAC nearly ran over a cyclist at a mini-roundabout.
 




The cyclist had complained to the police, who were trying to track the driver down. However, the driver had been successfully using the "don't reply to the letters" gambit, along with the "hide under the sofa when the police come by" tactic. It looked like they would get away with it.

Sadly for him, just before the time limit ran out, the police uploaded his registration number to the "cars to stop" list  on all the police cars, and within a week he'd been pulled over, forced to acknowledge he had been the driver, and pulled into court for "driving without due care and attention"

Now, at this point the normal my word vs their word argument would come out, and since the cyclist is trying to prove guilt, it's hard for them to make any defensible claims about our driving. And here is where those helmet cameras really hurt.

The driver had done what we'd do: deny all charges. But as soon as the video was shown to them, they realised that the usual denial tactic was doomed, and changed their plea to guilty.

We'll cover this in more detail shortly, but the key thing to bear in mind is this:

Not only are cyclists filming their journeys, the police in Bristol are acting on their complaints.

This is chilling. At least is hasn't got as far as London or Glasgow yet -maybe we should all move there.

This is why we use a van

Over in London the militant tax dodgers are asking the hard question "why are lorries and HGVs allowed in our inner cities?" An interesting question, but here's another one " why do tax-dodgers cycle on the roads that the HGVs have to use? There are plenty of back roads. In Bristol you can recognise them because they have hills on them. If the cyclists go down Gloucester Road or the A4 and say "there are lorries there", well, there are alternatives: the hills of Montpelier, Totterdown and Clifton. HGVs do not normally go there.

Except today, when the BBC has some footage of an HGV getting wedged in the hairpin at the top of Clifton Vale.

We've looked at this problem before.

1. On the way up, if you can't see anyone in front of you, go for it. 
2. On the way down, hang back enough to get a view, and go for it if nobody is obviously coming up. But swing wide before even beginning the turn in, or you won't be lined up to take the next corner

You can't do this in an HGV -which is why we deliver our "adult entertainment products" to the Clifton area in the official Bristol Traffic white van. It takes the corners, and if it gets a couple of scrapes on the way -not only does the van not look any worse, but it doesn't leave anything more incriminating than some white paint.

RTC on WLR

Showing we are more timely than the Evening Post with a publishing process that involves shipping paper in from outside Bristol -and so getting stuck on the M4- here are some pics of a collision between a BMW and a Toyota (Auris?) on Whiteladies Road from 08:10; twenty minutes ago.
 
The front of the Toyota looks toast, the airbags haven't deployed so it looks like a low-kinetic energy event.

The BMW bodywork has come out a lot more unscathed, though we suspect that if the driver took it to the BMW dealer in St Philips it would be the one coming out costing the most. The driver (belt and white shirt) was holding something up to the top of his head, implying he'd bashed it on the wheel or windscreen. That reg of BMW may not have airbags, and the driver may not have had a seatbelt or helmet. Yet as this is clearly a below-12mph crash, a cycling helmet would have reduce injuries.

 
The two people with rucksacks are a cyclist on the left and possibly a pedestrian on the right. It'd be tempting to blame the cyclist, but that's not the case, he pulled over after the event and was either being a witness or offering medical support.


What happened? The BMW RJ52AEM was crossing Whiteladies from Oakfield Road. At this point you need to pull across the road to get to West Park if you are heading across Bristol; this is a nice little west-east rat-run option from Clifton to Cotham that avoids the St Pauls Road/Tyndall's Park Road junction, where the traffic lights manufacture congestion.
 

You do need to pull out fairly aggressively as the gaps are quite tight. The main provider of gaps is actually the zebra crossing -whenever a pedestrian uses it the outbound traffic halts in a queue and there's an empty space on the other side of the road; once you get over that outbound lane you can go quite fast over the road, down west park and you are in Cotham Hill in a flash.
Today it went wrong. Looks like either the BMW pulled out expecting the Toyota to give way, and it didn't. Perhaps one or other weren't looking, perhaps the right-of-way negotiation process failed.

Either way, hope all is uninjured and that both are insured. Photos available to either party on request.

Moments of Madness

Last month we covered how the bus driver accused of deliberately running over a cyclist outside the magistrates court was in court over the incident.

The news is now out that he's been sentenced to 17 months in jail after pleading guilty to dangerous driving and GBH, which, given the video, was hard to defeat with the "I didn't see him" defence.

The video is pretty awful for anyone to watch: if you want to know what it looks like when a bus sideswipes someone on a bicycle -when the bus isn't even going that fast.


The evening post says that the bus driver, Gavin Hill, has been disqualified from driving for 30 months, and will have to take an extended driving test afterwards. Apparently the action was "a moment of madness".

Well, we hope that Phil isn't suffering long-term consequences, and that the outcome does provide some reassurance that society frowns on such explicit attempts to cause death and injury.

Now, let us turn to today's other "moment of madness", this time by one David Lowrey, of Kingsway, St George, where the Evening Post says:   A VIOLENT motorist beat up a cyclist by the side of the road before getting someone to lie for him as he tried to escape conviction..

When we heard the "someone to lie for him" phrase we checked to see if David Lowrey was on the coalition cabinet, but no, he was someone who started a fight with someone on a bicycle who had the audacity to make some kind of gesture to the car as the car encroached into the cycle lane.

Again, "a moment of madness", this time with four months jail; no mention of driving penalty or what penalty he or the "independent witness" get for trying to pervert the course of justice (*)

If these court cases weren't in the papers on the same day, the "moment of madness" defence might sound somewhat realistic. As it is, it comes out looking a contrived.

For that reason, we had a look around to see where else the "moment of madness" defence had cropped up.

• Ron Davies, welsh secretary, robbed at knifepoint by a some people he went down to Clapham Common  with"a moment of madness"
• Sir John Guielgud, set up by the police who actually had undercover police trying to entrap men seeking a bit of discreet consensual sex, again "a moment of madness".
• Hugh Grant getting caught paying a prostitute for a bit of entertainment in a public lavatory while on a business trip without his wife.

There we have it then, two separate scenarios where defence lawyers recommend the "moment of madness" defence

1. You've rammed or assaulted someone on a bicycle and want to make it clear that normally you are a safe and docile driver and suddenly "a moment of madness" came over you. You didn't mean to cause physical injury and hope to be let off lightly.
2. You got caught by the police engaged in some outdoor sex act which the legal system at that time and place considered illegal. You want to imply that the fact the police caught you with your trousers down was not because you do it very often but because you "had a moment of madness" and you were very unlucky. You also don't want your political/acting/religious career ruined, so you have to pretend it was somehow an accident.

There you have it then, two situations where the "moment of madness" defence crops up. Can we note, then, that for the second of these sets of legal cases, nobody gets hurt. In fact, most of the participants in the situations seemed, at least to an extent, engaged in consensual acts. Whereas nobody volunteers to be run over by a bus at the bearpit, or head-butted by a complete stranger.

Either way, it's become a bit of a cliche. Please, defence lawyers, come up with some new phrase.

(*) On the topic of independent witnesses, can we remind everyone that not only do ex-spouses turn on you, but if you are having someone pretend to be a complete stranger so as to devalue the line up evidence, remember that as covered in Ugander et al., The Anatomy of the Facebook Social Graph, it's fairly easy to determine if the pairwise distance between you and the independent witness is only one or two hops, or the you are both parts of the same clique of acquaintances. Less formally: you can't say "I have never met this person" if you keep identifying each other as friends in facebook photos.

Update: for anyone in the mainstream media who is not actually appearing in the Leveson inquiry or in a 1:1 meeting with Don Murdoch, trying to contact us -please read more than one article on this site, especially the media corner, before emailing us. You will discover that you wouldn't consider us a serious and unbiased news outlet. Which, coincidentally, is exactly how we view the television and printed news outlets. 

Bus News update : driver in court, Wed Jan 4

Back in April, we posted about a bus that apparently was deliberately driven into a cyclist.

The court case against the driver is scheduled for Wed 4th January, at Bristol Crown Court No 7, at 11:00 or later -more details welcome. We'd also hope the cyclist involved has recovered.

Unlike the Evening Post, we do cover such things, and would welcome a full summary to bristol.traffic at gmail dot com, where it will make its way online.

On a more positive note, nobody on a bicycle or on foot was killed while walking or cycling round Bristol in 2011, which is an improvement on previous years, and makes London's terrible statistics even more significant, from the sixteen cyclists to the  many pedestrians, including one who was apparently killed by an HGV driver convicted of killing a cyclist only a year earlier.

Bristol has -despite some serious incidents- a better year. We also wish everyone that 2012 continues to not only have the same -zero- pedestrian and cyclist deaths, but that the number of injured drops too. If there is a difference between London and Bristol, it is that the police here are more supportive.

Happy 2012 from the Bristol Traffic team. 

Railwaypath Ghost Cyclist

We've been using the term Ghost Rider to describe someone who chooses to die on a bicycle, usually by RLJ-ing. The last video of someone on a bike crashing into a pedestrian causes us to look at the rest of taypet21's video collection. This person is a threat to the rest of the city. really.

Look at this video where he crashes into someone walking down the railway path. It's like he sees the women, and rather than try and slow down, he speeds up and runs into the screaming. If this was us, we'd destroy the evidence rather than put it up on youtube

Broadmead bumping

A video reaches us of an incident at the bike path crossing rupert street to the horsefair where the cyclist crashes into the pedestrian and they both come off.


Nice swearing. If we cycled, we'd swear like that too. One point though: there are no lights controlling pedestrian crossings of the bike path, and so that highway code about giving way to pedestrians probably kicks in. The other: this was predicable. There is no point putting a camera and a horn on your bike if you aren't going to look at where people are walking and whether they are looking at you.

Crash by the pump house

video up on youtube; no more details yet. This is by the Cumberland Basin flyover; that right hand lane is how you get over the bridge; the straight on lane is to the portway. There is a newly painted bike lane up to the old bridge (leading you to the Nova Scotia pub), but no give way markings for the cause.

Hope all is well.

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.

Respect buses

Contributor "TH" sends their second photo of a car/bus conflict. The car loses. Remember that.

This is St James Barton Roundabout, judging by the Primark in the distance. Apparently the bus was on the way to LHR, hopefully they didn't miss their flight, and DV51YYM didn't sustain too much damage.

Speaking of buses, here's a video from London of someone on a bicycle making a mistake.

Hipster Trash Compactor - East London from jssjmsvckry on Vimeo.

This video is doing the rounds of the international cycling sites, and should be shown to all schoolkids as a "what not to do" video. What they did wrong was not "try and slip between the gap of the car turning right and the bus that was pulling out having just got a green light". No, their mistake was earlier. It was "not slowing down for the junction". Approaching a set of lights, there are three states it can be in: red, green or changing.

Red: cross traffic with RoW at speed. If lucky, survive. Drivers get pissed off.
Green: vehicles pulling out hit you, especially large red ones. Drivers get pissed off.
Changing: either of the above.

There was no good outcome here, once the idiot chose to hit the junction at speed. The only unpredictable outcome was that someone else was videoing it. Speaking of which, isn't it a pity the cameraman didn't pull over and talk to the loser, because if you are going to be filmed doing something that near-suicidal, your face should be immortalised round the world.

Remember, both car drivers and cyclists: larger craft have right of way.

Gloucester road bike v car times 2

An indymedia posting from BristolCyclista -a regular reader of our site, judging by their comments- about two bicycle-related incidents on Gloucester Road one day this week

I was concerned to see two cyclists lying on the road being treated by paramedics as I cycled to work today. The first one was near to The old swimming pool and the other was just a bit further up next to the Junction with Bryland Avenue.

Does anyone know what happened?

It's a crazy world out there and we would all be a lot better off if we al showed considerably more tolerance an patience towards other road users.

I hope that all concerned make a speedy recovery.

BristolCyclista

We'd also be interested in any details, and hope that anyone who was injured wasn't seriously injured, and that they recover fast.

Bus news

FYI

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: murphy_le_chat
Date: Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 12:47 PM
Subject: [Bristolcyclingcampaign] Bus news

 

I've just returned from visiting a friend in the BRI who's just had an operation to put a 10in plate in his left shin, which was badly broken when a bus drove at him last Tuesday, outside the new Magistrates Courts.

I have chosen those words carefully. He is an experienced cyclist, well used to the difficulties of cycling in and around Bristol for many years. His route to work takes him from Bond Street, across the 'bear pit' roundabout, and across towards the BRI.

Last Tuesday, a bus on his nearside rear, drove very close and just touched him as he was riding round the roundabout. Shortly after, he stopped in front of the bus and 'had words' with the driver. He then continued on his way to work, thinking the incident was over, and had reached the Magistrates Court when the bus pulled alongside and deliberately turned sharp left, into him. His bike is written off. He has a broken leg, broken left wrist (which also has a plate) and a broken right thumb.

The entire incident was captured on the Courts external CCTV, and there were several witnesses. The case is now in the hands of the CID, and I understand the driver will be charged with causing Grievous Bodily Harm, and using the Bus as (an instrument? weapon..I forget the term). Clearly the case is under investigation so I don't know the implications of giving any more detail. The bus wasn't operated by First Bus. Strangely enough, news of this incident doesn't seem to have reached the Evening Post. Or maybe I missed it.

Are Car Solutions Ltd sponsoring a bike lane?

just east of the M32, Car Solutions Ltd specialise in "injury claims and replacement vehicles"

Custom must be slow this week, as someone appears forced to park their 4x4 FY07BOU in the bicycle only contraflow and pavement in the hope that a collision with a passing car or pedestrian may result in a good claim or two.

But without insurance, what good is that? This is why we demand that all pedestrians that walk on the pavements our road tax funds to have registration numbers and third party insurance. And that the police roll out ANPR cameras to detect pedestrians whose insurance has expired.

Those people wondering where pedestrians would keep their registration numbers are missing another part of the plan: the compulsory helmets. 

Roundabout work #3: WR08ADK pays the wing mirror tax

Here's the next in our St Michael's Hill Roundabout series, this time looking at how a single cyclist trying to use the route can cause mayhem and destruction.

Normally when the bicycle/wingmirror collision is discussed, it is the cyclist complaining about how they get hit by a car in a hurry. Nobody ever looks at it from the motorists perspective. We may have damaged a wingmirror, but do the cyclists ever compensate us? Most aren't even insured.

Take this scene from a video of our secretly instrumented cyclist, apparently as the car squeezes past them at the traffic island, the car's wing mirror bashes against their handlebars.

The vehicle WR08ADK is lucky to escape from the enraged cyclist, who will probably commit more acts of violence against their Toyota Aygo, and again, without cyclist insurance, it'll be the motorist who picks up the bill.



We would say the motorist's insurers, except for one small detail: WR08ADK doesn't appear in the insurance database. Askmid denies it, while the AA refuse to give it a breakdown quote, "the car is not in the database", they say.

By not being in the database that this car driver not only has to pay for their own vehicle damage, be they wingmirrors or that caused by pedestrians, they cannot even get breakdown cover from the AA. This is unacceptable.

(Incidentally, this isn't a case of misreading the reg #, the car was seen cutting in front of a bike on Cotham Hill last week. It's a car whose # isn't in the database, a "ghost car").

(update: replaced Toyota Auris with Toyota Aygo. Nimble round town, though the wingmirrors and body coloured bumpers put it at a disadvantage when parking or working narrow streets).