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news
Joshua Fletcher (Gwent Police)Teenage cyclist killed after being hit by speeding driver was “distracted” by headphones while crossing road, inquest concludes
A 16-year-old cyclist, who was killed after being struck by a speeding motorist while crossing a busy road, was “distracted by headphones and was not wearing a helmet” at the time of the fatal collision, an inquest has concluded.
Joshua Fletcher, a talented rugby player who was studying to be a mechanic, was killed on 16 October 2020 when he was hit by driver William Davies on the A48 Southern Distributor Road in Newport. The teenager fractured his skull and suffered diffuse cerebral injuries in the crash, and was pronounced dead at the scene.
An inquest at Newport Coroner’s Court heard that, following multiple tests by police investigators on the stretch of road, the driver was travelling at 8mph over the 40mph speed limit at the time of the collision.
However, the inquest concluded that the 16-year-old’s death was also caused by Joshua deciding to cross the road “when it was not safe to do so” while listening to music on his earphones, with Gwent Police’s forensic collision investigator Richard Wyatt telling the court that his “main concern is that Joshua didn’t have a helmet on”.
The court heard this week that Joshua was riding his bike home from college when he crossed the A48’s eastbound carriageway at a set of traffic lights. However, the 16-year-old was deemed by investigators to have “misjudged” the second set of lights in the middle of the road, and chose to cross while only motorists in the filter lane were stopped at a red light.
According to an investigation carried out using reconstructions and dashcam footage, Mr Davies would have first seen Joshua emerge from the filter lane 4.2m (13.7ft) away from the point of impact.
Southern Distributor Road
PC Wyatt told the court that the motorist had managed to react within 0.26 seconds, a reaction time described by the forensic collision investigator as “really quick and almost instinctive”.
Caroline Saunders, the senior coroner for Gwent, added that “it would not have been possible for Mr Davies to stop any quicker.”
Nevertheless, Saunders also noted that had Mr Davies – who was driving at 48mph when he hit Joshua – “been travelling at 40mph prior to when that footage started, he would have been travelling at a distance of three metres per second slower, so he would have missed Joshua.”
PC Wyatt responded: “Yes, but that is purely hypothetical.”
The officer went on to explain that the 16-year-old was wearing earphones inside his hoody, which were playing music from his phone, and that he was not wearing a helmet.
“My main concern is that Joshua didn’t have a helmet on,” Wyatt told the court.
> Inquest hears how cyclist died after freak collision with lamppost
In a statement read to the court, Mr Davies said that he believed he was driving at the 40mph speed limit and that his view was “unobstructed”.
He said he blinked and saw “a boy on a bike” and that he did not have “any time to react”.
A motorist stopped at the traffic lights also told the inquest that they saw Joshua “pedalling at quite a rate” with “his head down”, and that he “didn’t seem to be aware of the danger he was in”. Another eyewitness claimed that the teenager was “going at a fair rate stood up on his pedals” and that his “personal interpretation was that the cyclist misjudged the traffic lights”.
Recording a conclusion of a road traffic collision, Ms Saunders said: “On the balance of probabilities the excess speed at the time Mr Davies was driving has more than minimally contributed to Joshua’s death.
“That said, it is clear that Joshua decided to cross the busy road when it was not safe to do so. He was distracted by headphones and was not wearing a helmet.
“Joshua’s death was caused by a combination of factors: Joshua failing to cross the road safely, him not heeding oncoming traffic or the traffic lights, and the excess speed at which the car was being driven.”
Paying tribute to her son in a statement read to the court, Joshua’s mother Terri Fletcher said: “He was a happy, joyful, caring young man and he was dearly loved by all of his family. His aim was to become a mechanic and he’d applied for an apprenticeship. He was a lovely boy who would do anything for anyone. I was very lucky I had a lovely relationship with him.”
> “Simple mistake” cost cyclist his life when he swerved to avoid van, police officer tells inquest
Shortly after Joshua’s death, local resident Paul Flynn wrote to the leader of Newport Council, Gwent Police, and local MPs Jessica Morden and Ruth Jones, urging them to review the safety of the road.
The lack of safety measures for cyclists in the area was underlined on 2 November 2020, just weeks after Joshua was killed, when another teenage cyclist was hospitalised following a collision involving a driver on the nearby East Dock Road.
14-year-old Codi Gulliford’s mother Christine said at the time: “The road is so dangerous, you would think that after young Josh dying a few weeks ago people would be more careful.”
The director of Sustrans Cymru, Christine Boston, said the incidents demonstrated a need for rapid change.
“One of the main barriers is around safety and the fact that there’s no safe space,” she said.
“There will need to be a lot of investment in cycleways so that there are more segregated routes for walking and cycling.”
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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43 comments
Adult breaking law designed to protect people from potentially lethal machines with driving licence (which the law says means they are trained to a high enough standard to operate a potentially lethal machine) hits child considered by law to be too young to be responsible enough to operate potentially lethal machine.
The same system of law then throws all of that out of the window and concludes it was the childs fault.
Speeding motorist kills distracted cyclist, police's main concern is that cyclist wasn't wearing a helmet. In other words, business as usual, nothing to see here.
Did the car driver have the radio blasting? Was the driver disracted?
If Joshua had been crossing the road on foot would PC Wyatt's main concern still have been over a lack of helmet?
On this basis the Police should have no issue with prosecuting drivers that are wearing headphones to make phone calls / listen to music / listen to the audio of the video they are (illegal) watching on their phones whilst driving.
Don't hold your breath.
Has forensic collision investigater Richard Wyatt done this course?
https://profdev.college.police.uk/professional-profile/forensic-collisio...
Which includes this gem:
"Advise how to interpret and assign conclusions to forensic findings, distinguishing between factual and expert reporting."
It's not clear whether he distinguished for the court that his statement about lack of helmet was neither factual nor expert, and similarly with his dismissal of speed as a factor.
No wonder so many cyclist collisions and deaths don't get properly investigated if this is the skill level of of so called "experts" investigating them.
I haven't posted often, despite being a regular visitor to the site. This story is so sad, thinking of the family and their loss. The inquest can't bring their son back, but way the collision investigator has victim blamed can only have worsened their situation. That a trained professional can draw such staggeringly poor conclusions beggars belief.
"trained professional" I have considerable doubt that he has been trained, or if he has received training, that he passed the course. If he has been trained, and is qualified, there is something fundamentally wrong with the training.
If the family want to contest this inquest result, I'd contribute to a crowdfund. If the verdict is changed they might be able to pursue a private case against the driver and get proper financial support. PC Wyatt and the coronor need to be taken to task over the bullshit they spewed. Even a motorcycle helmet would be unlikely to have prevented the death, but the driver adhering to the speed limit might have.
It is extremely unlikely that a motorcycle helmet would have saved him: they're only rated to protect up to 16mph, only 4mph faster than bicycle helmets.
Like you, I'd cough up a few quid to crowdfund a challenge.
It's a bit of a double standard to complain about people making statements without supporting evidence whilst making statements without supporting evidence.
You have no idea whether a motorcycle helmet would have saved his life. Or a cycle helmet.
On a lighter note I hope today brings good news for you.
Poor do for Joshua and his family. It's worth bearing in mind that an increase in speed from 40 to 48 mph equates to a 20% increase in momentum and a 44% increase in kinetic energy. Enough to make the difference between life and death.
> According to an investigation carried out using reconstructions and dashcam footage, Mr Davies would have first seen Joshua emerge from the filter lane 4.2m (13.7ft) away from the point of impact.
A reminder that people may step out of a line of stopped traffic at any time. Best to ease off the speed in these higher risk situations.
I'm struggling with the lack of focus on the excess speed.
Speed limits are set, as I understand it, taking into account things like road lay-out, how busy a road is, potential hazards, vulnerable road users.
The idea being to set a speed limit that will mitigate against the recognised hazards / limitations of a given piece of road.
In this instance, you'd argue that the speed limit of 40mph will have, at least partially, have been set on the basis that pedestrians and other vulnerable road users will be in close proximity to, or even on, the carriageway. To that end, that speed limit will have been set on the understanding that motorists and pedestrians make mistakes.
Therefore, in my mind, as soon as someone fails to adhere to the speed limit, all of the above considerations / mitigations go out the window.
Yep, the lad made an error of judgement, potentially due to distraction. However the implications of that error of judgement were, in my eyes at least, significantly increased due to the speeding of the motorist. I'd argue the difference of driving to the speed limit - in regards to the lads injuries - would be far greater than the differences from wearing a helmet.
This is the second time recently that motorists speeding has been dismissed as irrelevant when relating to impacts with cyclists. Why is this?
Me too. The driver's speed seems to have been dismissed out of hand. Don't understand it at all.
I wouldn't say dismissed out of hand: “Joshua’s death was caused by a combination of factors: Joshua failing to cross the road safely, him not heeding oncoming traffic or the traffic lights, and the excess speed at which the car was being driven.”
But no mention of the driver being prosecuted for speeding and his involvement in the death of the lad. For his speed to be 48mph, it is likely that his speedo was showing somewhere around 55mph, way over the limit. The only way he could have reacted so fast is if his foot was already on the brake pedal, the implication being that he was going much faster before the incident and was already slowing down.
I'll take issue. Speedos are supposed to be within 10%, so maximum should be 53, but in reality at around 50 they will over-read between 1-3mph. Mine over-reads by 2mph, Mrs S by 1mph.
Don't over-egg a valid point, if he'd checked his speedo it would have been pointing to around 50mph, not 40, so easily seen even on a modern analogue speedo that often goes up to around 160mph.
Much as in the sad case recently when a cyclist pulled into a road causing a motorcyclist to crash and sadly die of his injuries, there were calls for the cyclist to receive a much stiffer penalty, but little acknowledgement that had the motorcyclist not been speeding, (by a similar amount to this case) there would almost certainly been no crash. All of us who drive have exceeded the maximum speed limit at some time, but that should not be allowed to exclude it as the defining cause of so many road fatalities.
The reality is that in this case it would have made no difference. He'd have been hit at 40mph too with enough kinetic energy to kill the kid.
(And no the difference in speeds between 40 and 47 doesnt mean the car would have missed - you can find my fag packet maths on twitter).
Doesnt stop the whole inquest being a tortured mess of WRONG mind you....
Their paths would never have intersected at a lower speed regardless of the 0.065 of a second difference you calculated.
I think this line of reasoning is unhelpful - you end up in chaos theory and the butterfly effect, that any number of things could have been slightly different and this particular incident wouldn't have happened. Maybe there was another driver a few seconds earlier who was also speeding, and if that driver had been following the speed limit, they would have hit the kid instead. Of if Davies had been going even faster, their paths wouldn't have intersected either - that doesn't mean speeding everywhere is a good idea!
The point is you need to focus on what you can control to reduce risk. A driver can't control the probability of something happening just in front of them; they can control their speed to reduce the risk if something does happen.
The insane removal of the pedestrian right of way light on the opposite side of the road on many crossings has resulted on many or most pedestrians relying on the road traffic signals to indicate when it is safe to cross.
It's a bit of a struggle to find good info (lots of poorly referenced grey literature etc.) but a few studies/reports I've found suggest that there is a non-trivial difference in probability of survival between ~40mph and ~48mph. These all focus on pedestrians, but in this case I imagine the outcome would have been similar.
"The average risk of death for a pedestrian reaches [...], 50% at 42 mph, 75% at 50 mph, and 90% at 58 mph." https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-severe-injury-de... and full report https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2011PedestrianRiskVsSpeed.pdf (see Figure 1).
Figure 3.1 suggests probability of death is ~60% at 40mph and >80% at ~48mph https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_fatal_injury...
One study reports little difference. Figure 1.1 suggests that probability of death is ~100% at speeds above 60 km/h (37mph): https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/documents/health-topics/ro...
Exactly, and not only is it 8mph above the speed limit, but that limit is the absolute maximum given optimum conditions.
Did the judge consider what the appropriate speed might have been for approaching a pedestrian/cyclist crossing, with your view obscured by a line of stationary traffic waiting in the right filter lane?
The Streetview from 2017 gives a bit of an idea of the visibility when the right turn filter lane is backed up:
If the motorist had adheared to the speed limit from the sign stating 40, there would not have been a loss of life ... no matter what the young lad did, heavy objects traveling at speed kill people when the two interact.
When did helmets have safety certificate's for getting hit at 40 mph? They are only just good enough if you fall off doing zero mph, due to gravity and the speed you pick up before you hit the road.
There is something fishy about the figures in this article / quoted by the PC. Fag packet maths but if the car stopped in just over a quarter of a second from 48mph then the driver must have lobbed out a very big anchor on a very short chain. It simply isn't possible. 48mph = 21 metres per second. So this car went from 48 to zero in less than 6m or 20 feet?
I think this must be an issue with the reporting. Presumably it's 0.26s reaction time.
Road.cc has this differently (wrongly!) to the Beeb - 0.26s is quoted as the initial reaction time of the driver not the stopping time. Which makes far more sense as stopping from 47mph to zero in 0.26 defys the laws of physics - certainly for cars with non-magic brakes.
I think it must be either poorly reported or the PC expressed it badly, it's (0.26s) described immediately afterwards as a "reaction time", i.e. the time between the motorist identifying the hazard and beginning to instigate a stop, and it's a pretty good one given that official stopping distance figures are based on a reaction time of 0.67s.
None of which takes away from what would surely appear to any reasonable person (so excepting hateful people like Nigel) to be the crux of the matter, which is that if the motorist had been adhering to the speed limit they would have been nowhere near the poor lad as he pulled out and reaction time wouldn't be an issue.
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