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Oh s***. our thoughts are with his family and friends.

There have been two cyclists and a pedestrian killed by tipper/skip lorries in this area in the last few years. Hackney council has tightened road junctions and put a weight limit on the canal bridge, it seems the problem has just moved over the border to Tower Hamlets.

When I was there the bike had been moved to the side of the road, a mashed up blue ATB with black and orange panniers. I hope the bike took most of the damage and the rider is ok.
The bus wasn't involved but it had broken down while stuck in traffic jam. The hydraulic oil from the power steering ran out all over the road.

I hope you've seen the doctor now and are getting some treatment and pain relief. Definitiely follow the advice above about reporting and contacting solicitors, also get your bike checked by a shop.
I was hit by a motorcyclist in the same way but with less serious injuries a few years ago. The rider said it couldn't have been his fault because he had had police 'Bike Safe' training. He tried to claim against me for damage to his bike, but got nowhere.

Three weeks ago now, one of our members was hit by a motocycle on Old st. roundabout at about 5.30 pm, Tuesday 10th May. The biker didn't stop so he needs witnesses - can anyone help?

The story about the previous death on the same road is frightening. The driver who failed to stop was sentenced to 100 community service plus 10 points plus £85 ! Why wasn't she charged with 'causing death by careless driving' ?
http://www.getbracknell.co.uk/news/s/2092575_byfleet_crash_driver_undergoing_counselling the comment from the victim's aunt says it all.

This sounds nasty, best wishes for the poor guy.
As ever we have to be skeptical about 'witness' stories. The shopkeeper 'loafheads' spoke to could be the same one who gave a totally misleading story to the E.Standard when Anthony Smith was killed at the same junction 3 years ago.
There is a different story in the comments on the H.Gazette story, I wouldn't necessarily believe that one either.

Join us to be part of the hand in tomorrow.
Now we have many thousand signatures; thank you everyone.

Be part of the HGV petition hand-in team
We need AS MANY cyclists as we can get! Tomorrow morning LCC will be presenting it's biggest ever petition to 4 leading assembly members at City Hall.

This is your chance to do something visable to reduce lorry danger on London's streets. Be part of our presentation team, meet us at City Hall at 8:45am tomorrow.

Please email charlie@lcc.org.uk if you can help. If you have either a red or black LCC t-shirt please bring it along, otherwise let me know you t-shirt size and we will try to have one for you.

See the facebook page: http://fb.me/RnMixDLe

Perception! . . . . . . .
Anyway, back to my reaslisation of a couple of days ago - this thread has nothing to do with wearng a helmet, it has everything to do with helping to ensure that - for the good of cycling and the country - helmets are never made compulsory. My decision to wear one does not alter my belief that it would be a disgrace if they were made compulsory.
You got it!

Now what happened to the Kraking puns?
I thought this thread was going to get interesting today :(

Just had a call about this, cyclist x car. At about 17.40 on Browning st SE17. Sounds serious but rider is moving and talking.

Merge with riders down thread
http://www.lfgss.com/thread65089.html#post2148698

We have just had a call from the tweeter ..... watch this space.
He claims that a friend wrote the story, on his twitter account, as a hoax. If we can find the cyclists knocked over then we will know for sure.

We have more details here http://www.lcc.org.uk/index.asp?Pageid=2258 and have also sent a report to http://www.met.police.uk/roadsafelondon/ who are trying to investigate.

We have just had a call from the tweeter ..... watch this space.

I genuinely can't be fucked with this thread- but I've tried to respond to the thread so many times in the past hour that I feel I must write something:
Will- you're right to pick me apart for the inaccurate use of stats.

Charlie- you've misunderstood the basics of the trials. These are unblindable, rather like the famous Doll and Hill doctors study, however, any medical statistician will tell you that to remove bias (or innacuracy or whatever you wish to term it) in an acceptable way is simple, using randomisation of the sample as one method. I haven't got the time to go read the cochrane study, but i'd be surprised if every attempt to remove bias wasn't made.
Also the most recent meta analysis I could find easily- ie first page of google- was from 2005, also under the 'Cochrane' title......
Anyway this timewaste of a thread is now on ignore.
The nature of the trials is my point. They are 'unblindable' therefore they can never meet the gold standard set up by John Cochrane when he established the review system.
Most of the criticism of the early trials relates to their failure to remove bias, or successfully randomise the cases. The 2005 edition of the review is a re-edit of the 2000 version after they removed the fictional quotes attributed to Mayer Hillman.
The main reason why the predictions from these 20 year old trials keep being repeated is not that they are the best science but they claim the biggest benefit and so are beloved by the helmet promoters and the press.

One of the few benefits of dipping in and out of the helmet debates over the years is that I have learnt a great deal about the quality of 'research' from reading most of the articles and detailed commentaries on them. I was educated in the sciences and have worked as researcher.
Jeez notes the Cochrane Collaboration, a research review from 2000. Even then the 'best evidence' came from studies, by the same authors who wrote the review, completed a decade before in the late '80s and early '90s. At that time helmet wearing accounted for between 3% and 10% of the populations studied.
20 years later these studies are still routinely used to promote helmet wearing. Strangely the predicted benefits have never been validated by wide scale epidemiological evidence.
The first edition of the Cochrane Collaboration made it clear that none of the studies reviewed met the Cochrane gold standard of being a double blind case controlled study. I suspect that John Cochrane has been spinning in his grave continually for the last decade.

It seems to me that you should not wear a helmet if -

(1) you genuinely believe that you will take greater risks if you wear a helmet and you cannot control this. [Poor excuse IMHO].

What about if, despite what you may genuinely believe, you subconsciously take slightly more risk because you feel safer in a helmet? That is what the risk compensation theory claims.
This behaviour modification is easy to demonstrate in everyone (except psychopaths). It is harder to prove that it always happens, but for my money that is the best explanation for the failure of widespread helmet use to deliver the casualty reduction benefits predicted 20 years ago.

TO advise someone to NOT buy a helmet for me is inexcusable.
TO advise someone TO buy a motor vehicle for me is inexcusable.

Ed, though I don't give a flying fuck whether you ride a helmet or not, Actively advising people, in a bike shop, to not buy a helmet is stupid, and actually quite irresponsible.
It is also irresponsible to sell someone a helmet by claiming that they offer anything more than low level protection against low speed falls. The seller should also explain that if wearing a helmet gives the cyclist confidence to ride a few mph faster, or to try tricks they wouldn't do without a helmet then the net benefit is zero.
I have also heard shop assistants in London lie about helmets being compulsory just to get a sale.
I am not sure which of the above is worse.

I wonder if there's any data out there that indicates the actual cause of death of cyclists - i.e head injury or broken neck?
The research is full of attempts to quantify percentages of head injury vs. other injury but data is sketchy and classification even more bizarre.
You could read all the research at cyclehelmets.org and still not reach a conclusion - apart from the one you started out with.

They are useless against small arms fire.

In 20 years of weekend social rides around the home counties my group of friends have had two gunshot wounds, one serious, and one (minor) head injury.
This scientific research is ongoing.

Another fatal crash on a minor road that is hard to explain.
Cyclist dies after collision with parked car in Newington Green
Grief over footballer Gavin Taylor killed in cycle horror
R I P Gavin, our thoughts are with your friends and family.

Really sad and sorry about this. My thoughts are with her friends and family. Also the cyclists on this route who witnessed the scene.

Helmet law enforcement varies in Oz from state to state and town to town. In Melbourne they gave $140 instant fines to every user of the new bike hire scheme who didn't have a helmet. In Sydney about 20% don't wear helmets, sometimes you get stopped by the police and told to get of the bike and walk, if they catch you riding away then you are in trouble.
A few years ago I was in Armidale, NSW, not long after a helmeted teenager died after being hit by a car. The police and local pollies had a massive crack down on 'dangerous' un-helmeted cyclists. Later in Byron Bay we hardly saw any helmets on the fairly high number of cyclists.

Note: the only official Raid Pyreneen is the one from Cyclo Club Béarnais Cyclotourisme you send them about £10 and a stamped (french) addressed envelope. They send you the route info and a card to be stamped at shops along the way. You also get official labels for your bike. When complete the ride you send them the card and they send you a medal.
Everything else you do yourself - you don't have to pay £100s to a poncey tour operator who will rush you to their schedule and and find the worst food along the way. The Cyclo Club Bearnais have only just caught up with the 20th century, I hope they never make it to the 21st.

If you want to be close to the monsters, Tourmalet, Aspin, Aubisque then you should be a bit further west. Velopyrenees is well into the mountains near Col de Bales. Outside the French holiday season mid Jul - August it is easy to find accommodation in small hotels, everyone likes cyclists. The regional tourist offices have all the hotel info.
I have done both versions of the Raid Pyreneen booking hotels a day in advance for a group of six, or on the fly when going solo. The touriste route with 28 cols in 10 days was the best trip ever. Choose any section of this west of Prades and you can't go wrong.
Top tip: if you stay at Hotel Tech in Arrens, eat somewhere else.

Yes, good news and a great relief.

I think - not 'life changing' is a little bit hopeful. This guy is going to need a lot of support getting his life together after such an experience.