Coroner wants cyclists to be educated about danger of HGV's

[Linford]

bus drivers get similar training, yet buses pose nowhere near the risk posed by HGVs. So, are cyclists more careless near lorries than buses, or is there another explanation?

Most buses are not articulated

 

[Markymark]

bus drivers get similar training, yet buses pose nowhere near the risk posed by HGVs. So, are cyclists more careless near lorries than buses, or is there another explanation?

I've had far more run-ins with buses than lorries (more than would be expetced by the increased occurance of buses) in London

 

[glenn forger]

the stats show that HGVs are involved in a disproportionate number of cyclist fatalities. unless we accept that cyclists must be more careless near lorries there must be another explanation.

 

[glenn forger]

The appalling driving of the other driver wasn't even dealt with by the legal system

http://lcc.org.uk/articles/annivers...to-improve-driving-standards-and-lorry-safety

What’s perhaps not so well known is that Svitlana might still be alive if the poor-quality of the junction design at Bow hadn’t been combined with what we consider to be careless driving and a lorry that fell short of the highest safety standards.

This is an opinon shared by many, including her family, and a message in her memorial book says:

“Today is one year from the day you were taken from us by careless driver in an old lorry without proper mirrors.”

The lorry driver who ran over Svitlana is called Gurpreet Shergil, and there's widespread disappointment that the authorities decided not to prosecute him.

At the time of crash, Shergil, while driving his 32-tonne tipper truck, had been talking on his hands-free mobile phone for around seven minutes.

According to his own evidence, while on the phone to his father, Shergil did notice in his side mirror someone walking along the pavement from the back of his lorry towards the front.

 

[Boris Bajic]

bus drivers get similar training, yet buses pose nowhere near the risk posed by HGVs. So, are cyclists more careless near lorries than buses, or is there another explanation?

There are many possible explanations

Bus drivers are usually positioned low and ahead of the front wheels. HGV drivers are usually positioned over the front wheels.

Buses usually have clear glass doors to the nearside of the driver, to facilitate passenger entry and exit. HGVs do not.

The bodywork of buses is usually only inches from the road, making it less likely that a cyclist will fall between axles as can happen with HGVs.

There are probably other reasons too, but this is not my specialist subject.

 

[Linford]

There are many possible explanations

Bus drivers are usually positioned low and ahead of the front wheels. HGV drivers are usually positioned over the front wheels.

Buses usually have clear glass doors to the nearside of the driver, to facilitate passenger entry and exit. HGVs do not.

The bodywork of buses is usually only inches from the road, making it less likely that a cyclist will fall between axles as can happen with HGVs.

There are probably other reasons too, but this is not my specialist subject.

Makes a lot of sense

 

[glenn forger]

there was even a trixie mirror at that junction, and the driver had used that route to the Olympic Park many times so would have known about the CSH2. On the phone, not indicating, in a vehicle he hadn't bothered to fit mirrors too, at a junction with a trixie mirror he didn't use.

 

[Boris Bajic]

there was even a trixie mirror at that junction, and the driver had used that route to the Olympic Park many times so would have known about the CSH2. On the phone, not indicating, in a vehicle he hadn't bothered to fit mirrors too, at a junction with a trixie mirror he didn't use.

I'm not clear what you would have had this chap prosecuted for. Any death in traffic is a tragedy, but I'm not sure this driver was breaking the law.

Most of the members of these pages would not dismount and walk along the pavement to get in front of an HGV at a junction. If they did, few would re-mount to the front nearside of that HGV. It may be that that was the safe and sensible thing to do in the circumstances. I was not there and I do not know.

I know that I would not do it and would advise anyone I cared for not to do it. I do not blame the deceased in this accident, but the nearside and immediate front-nearside of a stationary HGV is a deadly place.

I'm all in favour of changes to HGV design to make it less dangerous. In the meantime, I do not think it a bad idea to train cyclists to treat the nearside and the space immediately to the front of an HGV as a deadly place.

 

[glenn forger]

Breaching the Highway code is not a criminal offence: using those breaches would have found that the liability was firmly at the door of the driver, for failing to indicate, whether or not he was on a phone. Otherwise why bother with the Highway Code? The driver was liable, he chose to introduce the danger, was distracted and failed to notice another road user, killing them.

Speaking afterwards to the Evening Standard's Ross Lydall, Ms Tereschenko's mother Mariia Vorobei who had travelled from the Ukraine along her elder daughter Oksana to attend the inquest compared the approach taken to the incident in this country with what would have happened in her native Ukraine:

“My daughter was in love with this country. We respect the conditions of this country.

“But in the Ukraine, a driver would be prosecuted always if there is a victim. This is a criminal case. We are shocked.

“How is it possible that everybody else could see the cyclist but not him? What if it was a little child? He was not concentrating on the road. That is why he didn’t see her.”

We are absolutely shocked that he failed to offer any sort of apology.”

http://road.cc/content/news/57677-b...ath-cyclist-svitlana-tereschenko-says-coroner

 

[Boris Bajic]

It is a tragedy that Ms Tereschenko died as she did. I've now read the coroner's comments in his narrative verdict and the comment of the officer who investigated the incident.

The driver had been arrested and was later released. The narrative verdict of the inquest id quite clear.

A tragedy for the mother to have to come to London and experience all that she did, but I find her wish for Ukranian justice in the UK slightly odd.

Understandable in the circumstances, but slightly odd. There is no justice in Ukraine. In terms of its police, judiciary and legislature it is one of the most corrupt and wicked regimes in the Northern hemisphere.

It is not clear from what I have read that the driver was not indicating, but there seems to be strong circumstantial evidence that he was not. Nonetheless, he was not prosecuted and the coroner found that the cyclist could have positioned herself better.

A preventable tragedy.

 

[glenn forger]

Section 3:

Level 3 – This is driving that created a significant risk of danger and is likely to be
characterised by:
• Driving above the speed limit/at a speed that is inappropriate for the prevailing conditions
OR
• Driving when knowingly deprived of adequate sleep or rest or knowing that the vehicle has
a dangerous defect or is poorly maintained or is dangerously loaded OR
• A brief but obvious danger arising from a seriously dangerous manoeuvre OR
• Driving whilst avoidably distracted OR
• Failing to have proper regard to vulnerable road users

http://sentencingcouncil.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/web_causing_death_by_driving_definitive_guideline.pdf

It's not as serious as causing a death whilst racing or being on drugs, but it's there, (sentence range 2-5 years). The driver was avoidably distracted, he put the importance of his chat with his dad over the safety of other road users,.

 

[Boris Bajic]

Quoted from road.cc:


“There is every likelihood he didn’t see her,” PC Thorne told the inquest. “That is the crux of the matter.
“As he turned, she would have been progressively deeper and deeper into his area of restricted vision.”
CCTV footage viewed at the inquest showed Ms Tereschenko positioning her bike in front of the lorry seemingly unaware of the danger of the situation; witnesses to the incident, passengers in a car behind the lorry, also said that they could see the danger that Ms Tereschenko had placed herself in and that it had seemed to them clear that the driver of the tipper lorry intended to turn left.
Accepting the police findings in a narrative verdict Deputy coroner Dr Shirley Radcliffe ruled that Ms Tereschenko's died "as a result of traumatic road death". While acknowledging that if the lorry had been indicating it might have given Ms Tereschenko some warning and the chance to consider her movement and position on the road Dr Radcliffe went on to conclude "that nobody is to blame".
In her verdict Dr Radcliffe also stressed the importance of constantly reminding cyclists of the dangers posed by such lorries and "the positions where they are very vulnerable and which they should avoid at all costs."

 

[glenn forger]

At Bow roundabout Transport for London ignored their own consultant's report (Jacob's) which said the site was so dangerous that traffic signals and separated lanes for cyclists should be installed. The London Cycling Campaign were so worried about the design proposals for Bow that they wrote in the strongest possible terms; "the apparent deficiencies in CS2 are so significant that it may be better to re-consider this route". Their concerns were also ignored.

This comes after previous revelations that Transport for London told consultants to "ignore cyclists" at a dangerous junction in Kings Cross where a report stated vulnerable road user deaths were "inevitable". Student Min Joo Lee would later be killed at this spot whilst cycling to college, in a collision with a construction lorry.
This week's inquest exposed that Transport for London also ignored warnings from the Met Police that CS2's design could potentially put cyclists in danger. PC Simon Wickenden from the Traffic Management unit said "The advantage is that it [blue paint] highlights the potential presence of cyclists to drivers... The disadvantage is quite clear. One; it places cyclists in a position on the roundabout where they may come in to conflict with traffic. Two; it may give cyclists a false sense of security." Revealing that a list of 21 concerns about cyclist's safety at Aldgate gyratory issued by the Met in 2008 had also been brushed aside by TfL, he said "In my view it would be safer not to have these markings at all on the roundabout."

http://ibikelondon.blogspot.co.uk/

This is what it looks like at Aldgate:

tfl ignored 21 warnings from the police. The implications are pretty big, this could effect future csh plans:

When quizzed on the Coroner's findings, Boris Johnson stated he believed that his blue cycle superhighways were "the right solution for London" and that he was determined to press on with the installation of another 12 over the next 2 years.
However, with the Metropolitan Police making their concerns about superhighway designs so public, and with the findings of the Coroner so damning, there is now massive pressure on Transport for London to re-asses their plans.

 

[Boris Bajic]

The above pictures look like an excellent reason for cyclists to be very aware of HGVs.

Training can only help to lessen the likelihood of unplanned contact between rider and vehicle.

Pointing at HGVs and TfL and shouting 'foul!' will only take the story forward so far.

If big, scary lorries are widely perceived as mobile mincers, then there is a case for cyclists (all of us) to take steps to ensure that we all know what happens when mincer meets flesh and how to avoid such contact. There is (clearly) a serious job for drivers, vehicle manufacturers, road planners and haulage firms too...

But we are not they. We are cyclists. Anyone who cycles in London regularly sees riders who do not know enough or are not aware enough to save their own necks if things get tight by the kerb. I do not blame those riders for their bizarre approach to road safety. But I do think they need to learn pretty quickly what they ought and ought not to do.

Utterly plank-stupid and unaware riders might go for decades without as much as a scrape and a fully trained, fully aware expert might get hit and hurt after two days... but the probability is otherwise. All the pictures in the world of HGVs encroaching and of poorly planned cycle routes do not tell me there is no need to train cyclists. Quite the reverse.

 

[glenn forger]

Training can only help to lessen the likelihood of unplanned contact between rider and vehicle.

.

Can you find an example where cycle training has reduced road deaths, anywhere in the world, ever? You're posting the same victim-blaming rubbish you posted on the Dr Helen Measures thread where you made up lies about a dead young woman cyclist. You're doing the same on this thread, not one single post of mine was addressed to you but you keep spamming with the same, repetitive, predictable and boring victim-blaming. Write to Svitlana's parents with your hilarious "Utterly plank-stupid and unaware riders" remark if you like, just stop spamming yet another thread about yet another dead young woman with your unpleasant sneering and contempt for a life lost.