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Billie Piper (CC BY 2.0 licenced by vagueonthehow:Flickr)Billie Piper questioned by police after collision hospitalises cyclist
TV star Billie Piper is under investigation by police after the car she was driving was involved in a collision with a 16-year-old cyclist last week.
The 31-year-old, known for her TV roles as Rose Tyler in Doctor Who and Hannah Baxter in The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, was making a U-turn in Goods Way, Kings Cross when she apparently drove into the path of a cyclist.
According to the Daily Mail, the rider was coming downhill at speed. It seems he was therefore unable to avoid a collision with Piper's car.
An eyewitness called emergency services to the scene of the crash, which occurred on the afternoon of Tuesday July 29. Medics from London Ambulance Service treated the rider at the scene for a severe shoulder injury and he was then taken to University College Hospital for treatment.
Piper subsequently pulled out of that evening's performance of the play Great Britain in which she plays a newspaper editor.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "Police were called to Goods Way, King’s Cross, by the London Ambulance Service at 15.56hrs on Tuesday, July 29 to reports of a road traffic collision between a motor vehicle and a cyclist. The driver of the vehicle was female. Enquiries continue. No further details at this stage."
Charlie Lloyd of the London Cycling Campaign said: "When doing a U-turn you are expected to give way to everyone. Every crash highlights the need for all road users to take care."
The Daily Mail claimed there had been calls after the incident for "cyclists to take greater responsibility for their actions and to ensure they wear helmets", because of course, helmets are known to be highly effective in preventing shoulder injuries. However, the paper didn't say who, aside from the Daily Mail's editorial staff, was making those calls.
But as Charlie Lloyd's comments demonstrate there have been calls by actual named people for drivers to pay attention to what they are doing when making U-turns and not drive into the path of oncoming cyclists who are behaving legally. In addition there have been calls for mass media outlets to refrain from blaming victims, even if their entire revenue model is based on that practice.
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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56 comments
Left wing and liberal are two very different things!
And I'd hate to be called a Liberal.
Socialist - fine
Left wing - fine
Human being - fine
But Liberal ........
Not only are "liberal" and "left wing" different things they are antithetical concepts.
Have taken calls from a fair number of drivers who have done the exact same thing as Ms Piper, mostly involving proceeding cars, and with varying degrees of outrage from the caller when I said we would be conceding fault.
If it were a Monopoly game, it would be straight to Fault Claim for the driver, do not pass Go, do not collect year of NCD, pays increased rents for the next ten turns. Cyclist misses the next five turns, gets a Part 36 Offer card from the Community Chest.
The Daily Mail. Meh. I'll decline that particular click, tyvm.
If Billy Piper did a U turn in front of me I'd be tempted to collide. "Could we exchange information now? And your address is...?"
Typical Daily Mail reporting. I wonder if we can post anything on their reporting of the incident.
Must have been a real dilemma for the Daily Mail editorial team. do we go for incompetent woman driver or cyclist not wearing a helmet. Tough call!
Hard work out how some people think, a guy out with our club fell off on a rough stuff track and ended up in hospital with a badly broken femur, I was chided (by a fellow member) for not wearing a helmet as the unfortunate man also dented his helmet!!
Straight to Godwin's Law in 10, a new record by any standards....
Not really. Godwin's law refers to people being accused of Hitler/Nazi rhetoric. We were merely referring to his possible 'celebrity' status.
I wouldn't say that Hitler or Amin were 'celebrities' as such. But I'm sure someone will be along with a dictionary any moment now.
The Daily Mail is a disgusting rag.
As she is sort of a celebrity how can it be her fault? I mean what famous person has ever done anything wrong? Jimmy Saville, Rolf Harris, Idi Amin or Adolf Hitler not a thing wrong er now hang on a minute
Why did Billie pull a f@cking stupid move?
Cause she wants to cause she wants to...
Having read that article, it highlights what is wrong with some parts of society. It is a piece of victim blaming, but what I am not sure is how the helmet will either prevent the accident from occuring in the first place or protect your shoulder from injury?
Maybe some neurosergeon will be able to explain that one away...
So victim is attacked and there have been calls for victims to take greater responsibility for their actions...
Way to highlight in one article what is wrong with privilige
I doubt this very much, seriously, who can't avoid a collision with a vehicle going at a fast walking pace. No source mentioned by The Mail.
Likely she was. 5 mph is a reasonable u-turn speed, but is a slow jog speed so not as slow as you'd think. The rider, though, would have seen the car the other side of the road, then would have seen it pull directly into his path... If he'd been doing close to 30 mph then he'd have had no chance with a car broadside in front of him, a kerb to the right and oncoming traffic to the left.
Didn't you know that the Daily Mail speaks for everyman? (yes, sarcasm)
The story was published at 22:01 and then updated at 23:08. I could hazard a guess as to where those calls were heard, hic...
Is there enough width in Goodsway for a typical car to do a U turn certainly not at the East end or as far as the pedestrian crossing, mid-way
He should have worn that helmet on his shoulder. Or perhaps left it at the point that a car might turn across you.
Helmets, they ward off all sorts of things. Wear one. Helmets are magical.
I guess It is no worse than saying she was at the pub and wearing a short skirt so got raped, or he was walking down the street and had brown skin so only has himself to blame for getting beaten up....
Car executes u-turn in road, and cyclist collides with it. Cyclist in hospital with serious injuries, car driver misses an evening on stage.
According to the Mail, the driver is "understood to have been driving at under five miles per hour as she crossed Goods Way into the PATH of the teenage cyclist who was travelling downhill at a significant speed." <<< setting up the inference that the cyclist was at fault for riding to fast, given that the car was only doing 5mph.
The Mail on Sunday understands that the cyclist was not wearing a helmet. <<< seemingly irrelevant to the injuries sustained by the cyclist, but sets up the line >>> "...there were also calls last night for cyclists to take greater responsibility for their actions and to ensure they wear helmets." <<< which unambiguously seeks to infer blame on the victim, not the driver.
I suppose some people by the Mail, I'm not one of them though.
I'm surprised the Daily Mail didn't also claim that the cyclist was a lesbian on her way to a lesbian sperm bank for lesbians.
was this sperm bank for lesbians, that was used by lesbian cyclists, also owned and run by lesbians and was it also a cause for cancer... I wouldn't want to mistake it for another perfectly innocent sperm bank would I and these are important facts
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