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news
Ipley Cross licensed CC BY-SA 2.0 by Jim ChampionCyclist seriously injured at New Forest crossroads highlighted as blackspot after two riders were killed
A cyclist has been seriously injured at a New Forest junction where two bike riders have lost their lives in recent years, leading to cycling campaigners to call for it to be made safer, echoing a previous plea from the charity Cycling UK.
Dave Bensley sustained head and leg injuries when he was knocked off his bike when he was struck by a motorist at Ipley Crossroads, near Dibden, at around 1pm on 15 January reports the Daily Echo.
He had been on a group ride with Southampton Cycling and Touring Club, whose chairman, Paul Raysfield, said: “Dave was thrown about 30ft in the air and landed face down in a ditch full of water.
“We got him out and cleared his airway but could tell he had broken bones. When the paramedics arrived they pumped him full of morphine.
“That junction has a history of deaths and serious injuries,” he added.
He called for a staggered junction to be introduced at the location, saying that it would make it safer by making drivers stop.
He explained: “At the moment motorists think they can see everything - but sometimes they don't.”
The two cyclists who lost their lives at the junction in road traffic collisions recent years were Mark Brummell, aged 53, who was killed in 2012, and Kieran Dix, who lost his life at the same spot four years later.
New Forest county and district councillor David Harrison is backing calls to convert the crossroads into a staggered junction.
Liberal Democrat councillor David Harrison, a member of both Hampshire County Council and New Forest District Council, backed calls for a staggered junction to be introduced, saying: “I think the county council has to try everything to avoid the carnage we have seen in recent years.”
Councillor Rob Humby, executive member for transport on the Conservative-controlled Hampshire County Council, which is the relevant highways authority, said: “Part of the problem is the good visibility and open vista, with drivers approaching the crossroads misjudging the speed and distance of oncoming vehicles.
“We continue to work with New Forest District Council and the police to explore what can be done, including longer term proposals to stagger the junction,” he added.
Both of the cyclist fatalities mentioned above, and the need to make the Ipley Cross junction safer, were cited in 2018 by Cycling UK’s head of campaigns, Duncan Dollimore, in response to calls by New Forest East MP Julian Lewis for it to be made compulsory for cyclists to have bells on their bicycles.
He pointed out that Lewis had previously maintained in a Westminster debate that cyclists presented a danger to livestock despite no recorded instances over the past 15 years of an animal being killed or injured in an incident involving a cyclist, but numerous incidents involving motorists.
"This time it's speeding cyclists without bells that concerns him, but not a word about speeding drivers or the evidence about what presents the greatest risk,” he said.
"If Mr Lewis is truly concerned about road safety in the New Forest he could focus his attention on the collision blackspot in his own constituency, the unsafe junction at Ipley Cross, where cyclists Kieran Dix and Mark Brummell have both lost their lives in recent years, with several other collisions reported to the police."
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
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The small frame, the aggressive posture, lots of standover height.
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You're defending bombing hospitals and refugee camps and starving children.
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At risk of being cynical, and stereotyping the police, it's so they don't have to leave the comfort of their panda cars and pursue on foot when...
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29 comments
It's a junction , stop at the junction make sure nothing is coming . It's that simple . It does not matter where you are in the world . If your not comfortable about a road situation then get off your bike and walk . There are always going to be bad drivers and bad cyclists and bad pedestrians. You have to make decisions for yourself and bring the risks down . People go through red lights ,people pull out without looking etc etc so ride defensively. Just because you have the right of way does not mean you are indestructible. Common sense , don't rely on others just yourself .
You didn't understand what happened did you, but still, you got a bit of victim blaming in.
Common sense; you might like to try it yourself sometime.
Are you suggesting that drivers with right of way should stop and make sure that drivers breaking the law aren't coming, or just cyclists who should stop? And how about drivers who aren't comfortable about a road situation, are you suggesting they get out and walk, or just cyclists? And the drivers who run red lights, pull out without looking etc, etc, are you suggesting that it's only cyclists who should behave defensively, or other drivers?
Or are you just a complete prat? No need to answer that, we already know.
It is a straight road that happens to have two other separate roads come together at the same point. Unfortunately these side roads do not come together at right angles but at an angle that makes them more dangerous from a certain route. But they are also dead opposite each other so a car going straight ahead does not want to slow down if they see the route is free. On a giveway, this is barely acceptble road rules if the road main road is empty. On a stop sign, this is illegal. So as for your first line, I assume that was aimed at the motorists and not the cyclist.
But strangely for you Xena, who loves lots of obscure scientific research, from that certain route the cyclist also does not see the car approaching as it is not at an angle within 90 degrees of them but slightly greater. Most cyclist would not look that far over their left shoulder when approaching a junction on the left (but with all your professional cyclecraft and total perfection in everything you perform, I assume you do and the drivers applaud you for it), so they also do not see the approaching vehicle to be able to take a decision on whether to stop because the driver is law breaking until it is also too late.
So in conclusion, this junction is dangerous at certain conditions. Unfortunately it has lead to 2 deaths and 2 serious injuries widely reported and god knows how many close calls not reported. The council has currently made the minimum effort to make it safer and I believe most of the comments on here is about that.
And to prempt your next line of VB used in another video, "if cyclists know this junction is dangerous, they should avoid it or be better prepared". No, because then the argument could be flipped to mp]otoristsbas well but also people go to new places, it is called exploring and no one knows about dangers at that point.
Imagine for a minute just how quickly the junction would be redesigned if cyclists had killed 2 pedestrians and seriously injured another few.
Scratch that - how quickly cyclists would be banned from riding in the New Forest all together.
Near the town in which i was raised in Ireland, there is a beautiful grassy plain called The Curragh ( with famous racecourse on part of it, Irish Derby every June ), anyway, see attached satellite photo from google maps , they staggered the junction for the same reasons the one in your road.cc article needs to be staggered i.e. multiple accidents - of course it was all car v car, car v motorbike, on google maps, enter "Kildare Flying Club, Blackmillershill, County Kildare" and then zoom out, and just north of kildare flying club you will see junction in question , ( and then click on satellite photo to see old set up which you can still make out )
Did the changes make the difference needed Seagull2?
Mark Brummell was my tutor at university. For him and others to be killed so that drivers can blast through that junction, because the council is too idle or too utterly captured by the motorist lobby to make a simple layout change, disgusts me.
In a modern civilized society, all cars would be fitted with tracking devices, and anyone who ignores stop signs like this would get an automatic email saying they must retake their test before driving again. Their cars would be remotely deactivated when they reach their destination, and wouldn't work again until they passed.
I recognise that this junction looks to be in the "middle of nowhere", and so services might be hard (i.e. expensive) to source, but surely a junction that's seen at least 3 deaths in 8 years passes the threshold for adding a "safety" camera; turn it into a traffic-light controlled junction, with red-light (and speed) cameras. Unfortunately the UK (and Australian) authorities seem only (maybe "mainly") interested in installing them where they can be revenue-positive , rather than genuinely addressing real safety concerns.
In the newspaper comments, someone mentioned that the land around there was "protected" so the changes needed to stagger, add traffic lights or other powered means would not be able to be done currently. However the simple thing of adding two or three brutal speed bumps across the road there would easily reduce the speeds of some of the arseholes filmed and others who have caused the accidents.
The land is protected - by the Court of Verderers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verderer_(New_Forest)
They vehemently oppose any changes to road layouts that impact any land that falls under their jurisdiction. David Harrison and others have been campaigning for years without success to get the layout changed, usually because the Verderers have blocked them. Hants CC also culpable. Guerilla action might be the answer. It's not just this crossroads, there are a couple in the north of the Forest on Roger Penny Way where drivers routinely run them at speed (admittedly Give Way rather than Stop lines on those...)
How about putting stakes in the ground around the junction and tying the NF ponies to them on long--ish chains?
This would block the view on the approach to the junction in an eco-friendly manner and the ponies are stopped from wandering onto the roads.
It's a win-win! Would the Verderers be up for that?
It's not actually that remote. If you look for Ipley Manor Stables in Goolgemaps then the junction is the one with Beaulieu Road, the main road and a supermarket aren't far down the road in the Hythe direction.
Ipley bloody crossroads again. The problem is idiotic drivers who often don't even slow down to cross the main road, let alone actually stop at the clearly marked stop lines. I've had numerous near misses there. The absolute fuckwittery of the driving, takes some believing. Last year I was on the main road, heading from the Marchwood end, towards the Beaulieu end, and as I was approaching that cross roads, I clocked an SUV, approaching from the right side road ( from the heath ). As I approached, he shot straight across without slowing, or even attempting to stop. He missed T-boning me by about an inch I stopped straight away. Then the knob stain decided he was going to stop, and give me a load of mouth. WTAF. It's not rocket science, it's a bloody stop line, not a give way, or nothing at all.
In the newspaper comments, someone posted a link to a YouTube video taken by a cyclist of three minutes of traffic approaching that junction. Of the 20odd vehicles, the only ones to stop were ones who had to because another vehicle was on the junction. A few slowed down to a crawl but didn't stop and several blasted through as if the junction wasn't even there. I hope the footage was sent to the police to action on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyS22YRjZLk
It's Hampshire Police who are about as anti-cyclist / pro-motorist as it's possible to get and going by the insultingly low sentences drivers get if they actually kill somebody, failing to stop at a STOP sign isn't even worthy of a second glance from them.
Hitting and killing a New Forest pony is a call for ponies to have hi-viz.
Hitting and injuring / killing a cyclist is a call for all cyclists to be banned from the roads.
Failing to stop at a STOP sign? Meh, Hampshire Police wouldn't even look up from their breakfast.
Classic case of too much visibility leading to a false sense of security. There was a houseowner who decided to help motorists by trimming his hedge, which obscured vision at a junction, so they had to stop and look. When he did so, they drove faster, didn't stop and there were lots of collisions. Same at a roundabout somewhere in the west country, where there were a number of collisions because drivers didn't slow down because the visibility was good, so they installed large baffle boards which obstructed vision; the drivers slowed right down or stopped, collisions much diminished.
The approaches to this junction are so wide open that it might take a lot of boards to achieve the effect, but it would still be a lot cheaper than staggering the junction.
Having read the post from Dave's friend on the paper's website, it is clear that the driver made no attempt to stop, and probably didn't even slow down, hitting him at 40mph. Best wishes for a full and speedy recovery.
Bez has discussed this very junction in his Beyond the Kerb.
https://beyondthekerb.org.uk/collision-course/
https://beyondthekerb.org.uk/collision-course/
The angle that the roads intersect mean you can be driving at a steady speed along it and an object (like a cyclist... ) travelling at a steady speed on the intersecting road stays at the same virtual point in the vision. If that point is behind the A-frame of the car, you will literally never see it.
There was a serious air crash in the USA casued by exactly this phenomenon. A civvi light aircraft got a bit lost and flew straight into the side of a commercial airliner - neither one saw the other as their angle of approach meant that each was hidden behind joints in the windows.
Also, the comments in that Daily Echo. Oh God. Standard New Forest anti-cyclist diatribe. Honestly, most of the people in the New Forest need taking out and shooting.
Those comments prove that some people are completely unfit to behind the wheel.
Whereas, in the story (https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/18170097.christopher-godwin-jailed-hit-...) about the little girl cycling on the pavement with her Mum who was seriously injured by a drug driver they're all "Burn him". I'm genuinely amazed no-one has posted "Her fault for cycling on the pavement, irresponsible mother, yadda yadda"
This is a classic case of the eyes look, but the brain sees. There's an official term ( I forget what it's called ) where your brain decides what is important info coming from your eyes, and what can be disregarded, in order to save energy. If your approach to an object means that the object effectively stays still, the brain ignores it, it's effectively invisible. Fighter pilots are trained to move their heads around, and slightly vary speeds, when doing tactical flight training ( dog fighting) in order to stop this happening. It's the same with driving, shifting your head position, or changing speed slightly, may mean something that was being ignored by the brain, is suddenly recognised. This however is not what happens at this junction, it's just utterly shit driving, and ignoring stop signs.
It's CBDR - Constant Bearing Decreasing Range, Pilots and Seamen are taught about it in training
There was a great article about this written by an ex test pilot. I'll see if I can find it and post a link. However, the effect of the pilot/driver/whatever moving their head or varying their speed can be acheived to a greater or lesser extent by ourselves as cyclists. On the approach to a junction, or any interaction with anoter road user, I sit up as tall as I can, drag the brakes slightly and, wherever practicable, move out into the lane a little further. The combination of all of these aids in the being noticed. Never a perfect solution, granted, but I do the same in the car when I'm approaching junctions, for the same reasons.
Isn't this the junction that is a classic case study for design ?
Also a classic for constant speed constant bearing ?
I ride past this crossroads every workday on my commute. Despite the mandatory stop sign I estimate only 1 in 10 cars come to a complete halt, a few slow down but in most cases cars take absolutely no notice of the signs and rumble strips that have been installed - in fact I regularly see cars speeding up as they approach the crossroads in order to get across before I get there.
Our local MP will provide absolutely no support in having a staggered junction installed , Julian Lewis has proved by his actions over the years to be one of our most anti cycling politicians - he is a total bell-end who is re-elected every term in a constituancy where a donkey wearing a blue rosette would get elected.
This junction is on my daily commute as well and you're estimation matches my own. Motorists simply don't stop there despite the clear signs to do so.
Knowing the sad history of that junction, I always approach it with some trepidation and have started exploring other routes to see if it can be avoided.
I imagine just sticking a cattle grid on either side of the crossing road, ahead of the junction where it crosses, would have the affect of slowing cars more than current measures do. And there are plenty of those in the Forest.
Not in my experience. Long gone are the days of drivers slowing for grids - or fords for that matter.