Usually it's the other way round

[bellinghman]

Cyclists often rightly complain that other road users don't always see them. This is a problem - a number of collisions occur when vehicles pull out or cut across in front of them.

But this case is different: Cyclist doesn't see stationary van.

nil nisi bonum and all that, but <cynical>I can only think that, the van being stopped at a pedestrian crossing, the cyclist was too intent on running the red light and knocking over a pedestrian or two ...</cynical>

Comments

[damerell.livejournal.com]

If you're unlucky enough a straight fall from bike height will kill you, so it is certainly not a given that he was travelling particularly quickly; and conversely it's very hard to get enough energy in to make killing a human _likely_ - consider that cars, with their much greater mass, flip from "death unlikely" to "death likely" between 20 and 30mph.

And indeed that a pedestrian existed (of course many pedestrian phases operate without human intervention) and was on the path that a narrow vehicle would have taken over the junction - well, not a safe assumption at all.

[mkillingworth.livejournal.com]

flip from "death unlikely" to "death likely" between 20 and 30mph.

At the risk of sounding a bit pedantic, that's actually between 30 and 40mph. I used to be a firefighter/paramedic, so that's one of the things that I do know a bit about. I have also actually witnessed a couple of people being struck by cars. It's an amazing sight.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Thank you. That's a convenient correction, because it supports the idea that getting enough kinetic energy into a bike to make it likely to kill someone is extremely unlikely.