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I will be surprised if anything comes of this, given that I've come out of the experience with only "slight" injuries and material damage. But still, it had to be reported. Hit-and-run is a serious criminal offence.
While I waited for the police, I watched other vehicles making a left turn from Piccadilly onto Down Street, including from the outside lane of traffic!
As for my state of shock, discounted scotch is working wonders.
When the scotch wears off I hope the bruises and pain are not too bad. I share your pessimism about police. Unless you can get definite reg number of vehicle they won't act, they won't chase cctv but you might get it from hotel or shop.
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It would be fantastic if they address the serious issue of cycle lane like this;
Or the blindspot of the HGV is coincidentally exactly the same shape as an ASL;

Why is everyone avoiding this?
Hi, just catching up on this thread from abroad. Ed is wrong about this.
The black area around the Keltbay lorry is not the blind spot. That is the area which a driver MUST be able to see in the mirrors of a lorry registered after 2006. Older lorries that don't have to have the forward facing mirror will only show the area to the left of the lorry.
The real blind spot is the area further to the left, say 1.8 to 4 metres out where a driver can't see a thing. That's where people often get hit. There is a serious problem with the false view of the blindspot. I would say that any cyclist hit in the area shown in black (~= ASL) should have been seen by the driver. The crap propaganda from TfL has re-inforced some of the confusion over this. Prosecutors and courts fail to understand the rules and often tend to blame the cyclists.
Having had that rant I don't criticise the changing places police shows that warn cyclists away from the black area, it makes good sense because we cannot trust the driver to be keeping a good lookout and cyclists still get hit in this area, as on thursday. -
I hope the rider is ok.
This crash is at the same place as last year's fatality:
https://www.lfgss.com/thread61903.html -
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Lucas Brunelle, the one trick pony, is a disaster. This was inevitable.
I hate the glorification of that stupidity; the guy who runs the BFF always has a massive boner for his stuff, it saddens me, it is the mirror image of macho boy racers drag racing around suburban streets without giving a single fuck for other people in the environment.
I hope Brunelle is jailed, again, at some point in the future for taking out a pedestrian's teeth. I dont care what "line" the couriers / racers think they can see (half of them pissed or stoned), it's the cycling equivalent of "oh I can drive better after two pints".
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.....Having said that, the collision is still largely the fault of the two individual who have failed to give way.
Quite . . . . . . . . and the driver who didn't give way pleaded guilty and was fined. The second driver who drove straight out of the junction over the top of the cyclist and bike lying on the ground pleaded not guilty. The court found her guilty too.The actual crash sequence is used in tonight's film but not the run over. Originally the film makers said they would show how cyclists used video as a silent witness, how it can be used to lead to prosecutions. They ignored this one (and worse). Without the video the car drivers might have said the rider was all over the road, they could have said that he must have been in the wrong because cyclists are always in the wrong. Just look at the Brunelle film to prove it.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/video/2012/nov/30/war-britain-roads-video-excerpts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/nov/30/cycling-documentary-bbc1-roadIt seems they have put in clips from one of those stupid Lucas Brunelle videos. High quality journalism.
Charlie Lloyd from the London Cycling Campaign also said he was worried by this sequence: "The programme's integrity is destroyed by the use of six-year-old commercial video footage of professional cyclists doing reckless stunts, endangering themselves and everyone else. Showing this as real behaviour is as false as presenting a James Bond car chase as how average people drive to work. The programme makers chose to fan the flames of aggression on the roads, that can only increase the risk for all of us."Actually most of the programme is really interesting, most of the real videos show careless, dangerous driving at its worst. I guess they couldn't find real videos of bad cycling so they intercut the Brunelle clips often and at length. In the pre-final edit version we saw there was no mention this stuff being staged for camera. Journalistic fail.
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to just be a patron, just go here http://signup.microcosm.app/
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Good. It annoys me seeing all the cyclists going down the street despite it being marked as closed off.
The Tooley st area is crazy. When they started the works they just closed it down and set up a poorly signposted 800 metre diversion down the deadliest streets in Southwark.
After a lot of fuss and complaints to TfL several improvements were made letting cyclists go some of the way and giving some escape routes for people who work in the area. As the works change they will move things around hopefully leaving what space they can for us.
Going east from Tower Bridge, I cross into the short contraflow, across the churchyard (cycling permitted) then Crucifix lane. Or you can walk the closed bits to get down to one of the small side streets and through to Bermondsey st.
When I went past last week the police were overexcited, they had called in a van of TSG because they stopped someone they thought might be a real criminal. -
More heartrending details:
Barking and Dagenham Post -
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Poor guy, such a tragedy for his family and friends.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-20404336That is a very nasty stretch of road.
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Another great meeting of the London Cycling Campaign last night. Lots of questions about campaigning on road junctions, lorries and the 2014 local elections. The meeting voted to put our support behind this:
Day of Action for Safer Roads at the Elephant & Castle on Friday 16th November (starts at 8am), ending with a vigil organised by RoadPeace for those killed on London's roads. The vigil will begin at 5pm.
The day will be based in the space outside the London College of Communication.
Any support gaining paper signatures during the day would be very welcome.Online petition is:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/safer-roads-at-the-elephant-castle/signatures.html
If you can encourage more cyclists to come along to support it we would be very grateful.
Thanks Alex
We also had elections for the new members of the LCC board of trustees. The five winners are:
Rachel Aldred
Suzanne Fogg
David Love
Melanie Grech
Claire WrenThree of the winners had been co-opted members of the board. They had been brought in last year to provide special skills and increase diversity. Now we have a 50-50 gender balance. Forum favourite Oliver Schick just missed out, coming 6th out of 18 candidates. Hopefully he will continue to take and active part in steering LCC policy.
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If you're over the line, then there's nowt you can do about it sadly.
All the 'legal advice' here is absolutely right. You have no chance.
But there are issues about proportionality and the discretion that police officers always have about what action to take. What does the OP mean by "just over the line" does it mean a bit of the front wheel, half of the bike, all of the bike? Was there a reason for being just over the line? Was there a lorry or bus whose driver would not have seen you if you were behind the line? Had you made your intention to stop clear, with one or both feet on the ground (*)?
None of those considerations will get you off but it may be worth a polite letter complaint to the police, adding point "A) I'm a student" but not B) or C). I assume it was the City of London Police, if it had been the Met you could have copied the letter to your assembly member.We have raised the issue of police discretion and proportionality at the Cycle Safety Working Group meetings with the police, particularly to do with the refusal of most police to enforce the same law against motorists who drive into ASL bike boxes. It is also extremely rare for any police to prosecute a motorist for being "just over the line". The police believe passionately that prosecuting cyclists who jump red lights is the most important thing they can do to reduce casualties. When a cyclist has clearly stopped just over the line that reasoning is harder to justify.
(*) Most police should be able to see that one or two feet on the ground was a clear indication of a cyclist stopping. Only a few of them will recognize the mechanical and spiritual purity of a track stand in the same situation.
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Really Camilla should learn how to write lovely stories about beautiful people on bikes, just like Deborah Arthurs in the Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2232383/Samantha-Cameron-cycles-Westminster-Pinnacle-bike.html -
good selection of comments coming in :
BIGOT!
Where to start with you bile filled extremist rant?
LAZY, DISHONEST JOURNALISM.
BLAMING DEAD PEOPLE
OH DEAR
It's another ill-informed diatribe by someone posting only to gain advertising evenue for her employer...
CONGRATULATIONS!
On publishing yet another ignorant, waste of space, anti-cycling article straight out of 'The terrible journalist's guide to writing an article about bicycles': http://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/the-terrible-journalists-guide-to-writing-an-article-about-bicycles/ -
The traffic light looks similar to this:
http://marrickvillegreens.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/bike-crossing-light.jpg
I assume this means you are allowed to cycle across?
Yes you can cycle up to it and across. I often go into the junction on green and then turn left towards Tower Bridge. That not what the designers thought of. It is high risk because eastbound motors cut across the route or do ueys - but I think it is a lawful move.(marickvillegreens - whatever next? I will be landing near there in a couple of weeks. Where's a good place to hire bikes for a week or two in Sydney?)
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PoPo at the end of the CS3 by tower gateway forcing everyone to get off their bikes and walk 3 meters to either the other cycle path or the road, or pay a £30 fine.
Have city police not got anything better to do than enforce what is at its worst a very minor infringement, and should not be either.
I suspect that one person on a bike was being a dick and made it worst for the rest of us.
Rant over.
Ha! People told us about this last week and that popo had warned about ticketing everyone on Monday. We sent a few emails to the cycle task force police at TfL because the signs say you can ride everywhere at that junction. They came back to me yesterday to say they had had a word with the local SNT police and PCSOs, giving a lesson on cycling law.
As a result they backed off and said they would only ticket people behaving badly and breaking other laws - harassing peds etc. So it seems we forestalled a massive show down with hundreds of cyclists appealing against tickets, and all winning. That's what you pay us for.It seems they have had a lot of complaints from peds. It makes you wonder how anti-cyclist enforcement often gets to the top of local police agenda. but that's another rant.
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causing some ripples on twitter
Quite some ripples. My guess is that if they left the ride-smart.org site up for 24 hours there would have been a boycott of the brands that pay Karmarama a fortune to keep on advertising. The original site and signs around London were the worst sort of deliberate victim blaming I have ever seen.
Road.cc analysed the content then explored the background to these ads. I wonder who paid for it all, and why. Good work at advertise-smart.org
Saw a rider down at about 11am on Tooley street just past Druid st opposite City Hall. He had a very bloody nose and office workers were supplying him with tissues until the ambulance arrived. He had been going west on the temporary contraflow lane and seems to have come off trying to go up the curb - there is about a 3cm ridge on what looks like a dropped curb just by the sign saying "cyclists dismount and use the footway"