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Cyclist dies after Ludgate Circus collision last Friday - police appeal for witnesses

26 year old woman succumbed to injuries received in collision with tipper truck

The female rider involved in a collision with a tipper truck at Ludgate Circus on Friday October 17 has died of her injuries.

A City of London Police spokesman said that the 26-year-old woman had been attended by London’s Air Ambulance and London Ambulance Service after the collision, which officers were called to at approximately 11:30 on Friday morning.

This morning she died at Royal London Hospital with her family at her bedside. Her name has not yet been released and the family have asked for privacy at this time.

The driver of the lorry stopped at the scene. He has not been arrested.

This fatality brings the 2014 cyclist death toll in Greater London to 11, though one involved no other vehicles. She is the first female cyclist to die on the streets of the capital since Venera Minakhmetova, who was killed by a lorry at Bow Roundabout on November 13 2013.

On April 4 Victor Manuel Ben Rodriguez was killed at Ludgate Circus when he as hit by a left-turning truck. The junction is is earmarked for improvement as part of the north-south 'Cycle Superhighway' currently under consultation at Transport for London.

Cycling campaigners have pointed out that the planned segregation of cycling and motor vehicle use at this junction would make collisions such as these virtually impossible,

Detectives from City of London Police are investigating and are appealing for witnesses to contact them on 0207 601 2222.

[An earlier version of this story erroneously gave the 2014 death toll to date as 10.]

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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5 comments

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bikebot | 9 years ago
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I had business in town yesterday, and passed through this junction on the way and on return. Although I'd of course heard about the accident, I didn't make the connection that it was again this junction where it had happened.

Anyone that rides in London knows that it's not just a matter of design but the type of traffic that makes these junctions dangerous. Both times I went through yesterday it was mostly a sea of taxis, which although some in zone 1 can be quite belligerent, don't block my field of vision. I was safe because I had a full 360 view of all the traffic around me.

All too often, that road is filled with nothing but high sided vehicles, vans, lorries, tipper trucks and buses. The traffic is slow moving so of course the cyclists filter. It's very easy for the less experienced (and even the experienced) to suddenly find themselves somewhere they don't want to be.

To be clear, my comments don't relate at all to this incident, and I wouldn't want to comment on a specific accident except to pass on my condolences. They're just observations from a London cyclist.

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SPAM Naval | 9 years ago
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thats terrible, thoughts with her friends and family

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Airzound | 9 years ago
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RIP.

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Edgeley | 9 years ago
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It is a rubbish junction. How many more people have to suffer to prove it?

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don simon fbpe | 9 years ago
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My thoughts are with friends and family. RIP.

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