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Broken bike (CC licensed image by garryknight, www.flickr.com)London's killer roundabout claims another cyclist as woman dies at Bow
The BBC reports that a female cyclist in her mid-20s has died after being hit by a lorry at London's Bow roundabout this morning.
The as-yet-unnamed woman was pronounced dead at the scene after being attended by London Ambulance Service. The crash happened at about 08:47 GMT.
In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said: "It is believed the lorry was travelling west along the A11, entering the roundabout to turn south towards the Blackwall Tunnel.
"The cyclist is believed to have been travelling in the same direction when the collision occurred.
"The male driver of the lorry stopped at the scene. There have been no arrests."
Ross Lydal of the Evening Standard reports that the woman was not actually on Cycle Superhighway 2 at the time. The notoriously dangerous route has recently been extended east of Bow Roundabout with a largely-segregated lane to Stratford.
Cyclist Robin Stephenson told the Standard about the aftermath of the crash which he saw as he rode over the Bow flyover on his way to work as an IT manager: “The traffic was backing up from Stratford High Street. I went over the flyover and saw a huge number of emergency services down there.
“I commute that way every weekday but don’t use the roundabout - I won’t use it. I go over the flyover rather than round the roundabout. The whole area is just dreadful. The only way that they will fix it is to have full segregation for cyclists.”
The London Cycling Campaign has announced a protest ride this evening at Bow roundabout, meeting at 6pm for 6.30.
LCC's Chief Executive Ashok Sinha said, "Although we don't know the exact circumstances of today's crash, we know it happened just a few metres from where Svitlana Tereschenko was killed in 2011.
"It's unbelievable that we are, again, two years after that death, calling on Mayor Boris Johnson to install cycling and pedestrian-safe traffic lights at Bow roundabout to prevent more Londoners being killed.
"A cyclist-specific traffic lights were recommended by TfL's own consultants before Superhighway 2 was built, but the recommendations of expert consultants, cyclists and pedestrians have been ignored."
The Metropolitan Police are appealing for witnesses who should contact the witness appeal line on 020 8597 4747.
The woman is the fourth cyclist to die on London's roads in the last week, and the twelfth this year.
Last Thursday hospital porter Brian Holt was killed when he was hit by a lorry on Cycle Superhighway 2 at Mile End. Hours later planning expert Francis Golding was hit by a coach in Holborn and died of his injuries the next day. Yesterday a 40-year-old man was killed when he was hit by a bus in Croydon.
Since it opened in 2011, three cyclists have died in collisions with trucks on Cycle Superhighway 2, and three more have died very close to the route while apparently about to join it.
The first was Brian Dorling in 2011, followed just three weeks later by Svitlana Tereschenko, who while not technically on CS2 at the time was at Bow Roundabout, about to use the route to ride west.
French student Philippine De Gerin-Ricard was also hit by a tipper truck when she was killed on July 7 of this year, and on September 15 nursing assistant Maria Karsa was hit by a truck at the Aldgate gyratory, just before the western end of CS2.
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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I am sure experience comes into it but equally a good deal of pure chance, I regulary cycle away from the office in Hammersmith after work and the road is totally gridlocked, nose to tail traffic 2 vehicles abreast, beyond riding on the pavement which I don't consider an option it can feel like moving between the cars is a game of Russian Roulette. I've been cycling 30 years but it wouldn't stop a car or bus pulling forward and squashing me against the other vehicles, I do understand people's points about completely novice riders though. Fortunately I don't have far to go before I can take a backroute but it is ridiculous. I don't have the magic answer although traffic is better during school holidays so discouraging that traffic would be a start perhaps. Got knocked off last week by a driver pulling out and count myself pretty lucky to have got away with bruises.
The Robin Stephenson comment to The Standard 'hit the nail on the head'. He won't use the roundabout because it's too dangerous, even if it has got a CS on it. How much risk do you want to take? I'm not sure some inexperienced cyclists can make an accurate assessment.
I'm not a London cyclist but I was driving down the A36 south of Bath at 0630 recently; pitch black and raining. Coming the other way was a cyclist; no high viz and basic lights. I thought, you are crazy - I wouldn't ride on the A36 on a glorious summers day. Obviously he's OK with the risk.
As i see it two solutions, ban hgvs or ban cycles. Or at the least ban the prescence of those groups at certain times of day and night.
Will anyone actually bite the bullet and do it?
This at the same time that TfL is actually asking people to cycle/walk instead of taking the Northern Line.
CS7 if, of course, really wide and well layed-out all along the route...
Incredibly sad to read of this spate of deaths over the past few days, in London and around the country. As Spatuluk says, it's becoming grimly predictable. A very sad and infuriatingly frustrating set of circumstances.
This is becoming ridiculous.
thelimopit has hit it on the head - "strips of blue paint give some cyclists a false sense of security." Inexperienced cyclists (in the large number of cases) assume that the blue paint is a cycle lane, it's not, there's nothing to stop cars, buses and lorries driving in it/parking over it and you still have to be very aware of your surroundings on a busy road.
RIP, once again!
Considering the exponential uptake in utility cycling in the last few years means a hell of a lot of people.
It is happening now that the roads are too congested, our air quality is some of the lowest in Europe (with associated pollution deaths rates climbing) and TfL/Johnson still refuse to accept that it is their responsibility to introduce measures to curtail motorised traffic, rather than maintaining "traffic flow" at the expense of pedestrian and cyclists lives, and everyones general health.
Not at all. I don't think congestion is the problem, high traffic generally means slow traffic, but you're sending inexperienced people (new cyclists) into dangerous areas (roads) with a false sense of security that it's safe. There's a reason that car drivers go through tests before they're on the road and whilst the majority of cyclists have a driving license, you can get on the busy roads of London on a bike without having any experience of roads at all. Is it coincidence that all these deaths are caused by large vehicles or are inexperienced cyclists putting themselves in dangerous places too (I'm not saying that this is the case this time because I don't know)? It's extremely difficult to drive a big vehicle in London (I would hate to have to do it myself) but I see, every day, people putting themselves in vulnerable positions to save themselves about 10 seconds off their commute (CS7 daily commuter).
Maybe this wouldn't be happening if we had high quality cycling infrastructure.
Almost certainly it wouldn't be happening, but it doesn't need to be happening now either, keep yourself away from large vehicles at junctions unless you know 100% that you can pass them before they start moving. Look after number 1, don't rely on others to do it for you.
4,000 a year in London to put a figure on it, I've never heard about Boris doing anything meaningful to address this. I am coughing daily, I don't smoke, I dont have a cold, it's the crap coming out of diesel hgvs buses, cabs and even motorbikes.
I used to use the flyover when coming in London but since Boris's "improvements" cyclists are forced down to the roundabout.
I personally am not convinced that Boris really gives a shit about cycle safety just his next election.
I too ride it everyday - have done so for the last 16 years. Despite the "improvements", I still ride the flyover every morning. It's more annoying with the segregated cycle lane, but if you move out of the blue cycle lane at Sugar House Lane as you move westbound on the A11, you can cross over pretty safely to get up onto the flyover.
Over and over you hear of cyclists preferring the flyover to the roundabout - and there is in fact a spare unused lane on the westbound side (covered in chevrons). I wonder if anyone has heard of a scheme to make a safe route over the flyover.
At its most interventionist, to keep cyclists off the existing bridge structure completely, it could be a much simpler version of the recently unveiled Dutch "floating roundabout", but at its simplest, some sensible lane painting and staggered signalling to get cyclists safely over the flyover might be smart.
There is nowhere to go northbound or southbound from the roundabout as a cyclist, the A12 is basically a motorway at that point. So the eastbound and westbound movements are the only ones that really matter, and the flyover handles them.
At one point, the High Street 2012 project, that was supposed to redo the entire 6km of road from Aldgate to the Olympic site, was supposed to have something like this in it I thought. In the end, when the Olympics organisers decided to run the marathon elsewhere through London for the Olympics because Whitechapel and Mile End are too ugly for TV, the project was scratched, and only a few shop facades in Stepney Green were redone and the rest of the money went god knows where.
What are some others' thoughts about the flyover?
God, this is becoming a grimly predictable daily occurrence.
So, what were cyclist fatality figures like before the cycle superhighways? Are they causing deaths?
It is possible that they have contributed to fatalities. Like Bow Roundabout, some of the road markings lead cyclists into more dangerous positions. There is also the possibility that strips of blue paint give some cyclists a false sense of security. Some of these junctions are multi-lane and fast moving. I think many cyclists would have avoided them but have followed the blue paint. After all, it is quite reasonable to assume that TfL would have made them safer for cyclists if they were prepared to mark them as cycle routes. Sorry, 'superhighways'.
A case for a corporate manslaughter charge. TfL commissioned studies and then ignored their recommendations. It is disgusting that is has taken deaths and demonstrations to get TfL to consider revising their plans.
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