I can confirm that being hit by a car at 30mph hurts!

[DCLane]

Ouch! Get well soon.

 

[growingvegetables]

Aye, get well soon. Nasty one.

 

[HLaB]

Ouch GWS. I've been lucky in my incidents like that I've been more central giving me or the SMIDSY room to react. I thought my last SMIDSY was going to be bad I was on this roundabout passing about 5 to 6 cars in the right approach of the arm on my length (I hope that makes sense) which correctly gave way to me. However SMIDSY in the left lane undertook them all and came straight out towards me. Luckilly with the geometry of the rbt I was in a slightly elevated position and I could see them accelerating out (not stopping) and rather than opting for a head over bonnet managed to put the bike into a spin so if there was to be any contact, it had been my rear wheel. SMIDSY did come back to apologize and said it was 100% his fault, I just thought, 'Aye right I'm just the one who's 100% hurt'.

 

[downfader]

Yesterday I got taken out on my commute to work in Bournemouth. I had just entered a rb to continue straight on when a car entered from by left without seeing me until I was on her bonnet!
That was not a nice feeling! I was looking at the car & knew they hadn't seen me because they accellerated to (I assume) beat the car that was about 10m behind me! ( I had 2 fronts & 2 back lights Bright orange top & ankle reflectors) Hit my head twice on the road & kerb (yes I was wearing a helmet!) and have suffered lots of grazes,cuts,bumps & lumps and my Secteur is 'Donald Ducked' I also had the opportunity to have a ride in an ambulance to the local A&E where xrays showed nothing broken just a 'ruptured calf' wrenched shoulder & a sore back!
Ironically I feel very lucky, it could have been a lot worse, but now I've got to sort out all the legal stuff.....and I'm missing my bike already, its the one I did LeJoG on & you do get attached to themTony

Sorry to read this and hope you heal up soon!!!!

 

[dellzeqq]

oooch!

And, yes, given what happened I'd be thanking the Big Guy and promising to be kind to grannies and squirrels from now on.

 

[stowie]

Sadly not true if the vehicles are moving as they were in my incident and possibly in the OP's.

A key rule of seamanship is that you can tell whether a boat you can see will pass your bows or stern by checking how it moves relative to a static part of your own boat. If two vehicles are on a collision course at relatively constant speed, the relative positions will not change and the cyclist will stay in the blind spot until the impact, when they suddenly appear in the windscreen.

Conversely, a stationary car will not have as much of an issue because the cyclist will pass through the blind spot.

As for your "surely", yes, that's true, but when was the last time that you saw another motorist move their head to look around the A pillar's blind spot?

Certainly if two vehicles are on a constant trajectory with each other then one will remain in a constant place on the screen related to another. So a cyclist might remain in the blind spot - but with a roundabout, I would have thought a constant trajectory would be unlikely. The cyclist would be moving in an arc whilst the driver presumably is moving in a straight line, both at different speeds.

Looking around the A pillar is the best solution, but simply looking for longer than a split second before making a decision must surely cut down the likelihood not seeing a cyclist obscured by a blind spot.

 

[Gez73]

I nearly got blind-spotted a while ago by someone pulling out on my right from a side road. Oddly enough I did think at the time that they hadn't spent long enough looking and had simply glanced and was ready to set off. I looked behind me and pulled out enough to give us some space and time to play with just as they pulled out themselves and realised I was right in front of them. They slammed on and I hope learned a lesson. They stalled the Landrover twice before they got ahead of me going in the same direction. Unfamiliar with the vehicle I imagine. Always worth trying to gauge the level of attention they might have paid. Some don't spend enough time looking and others look but don't consider cyclists worthy of being given the right of way the situation demands. Too much to lose by assuming the right of way. Gez

 

[GrasB]

Certainly if two vehicles are on a constant trajectory with each other then one will remain in a constant place on the screen related to another. So a cyclist might remain in the blind spot - but with a roundabout, I would have thought a constant trajectory would be unlikely. The cyclist would be moving in an arc whilst the driver presumably is moving in a straight line, both at different speeds.

Actually the cyclist doing an arc is one of the situations where you can easily hide a bike in a blind spot as a car approches. The cyclists movement relative to the cars blind spot is quick at first then slowly reduces as they continue through the arc. On larger roundabouts I find that entering wide & carrying on a straight line towards the giveway line actually gives the least chance of being in the A pillar blind spot.

Looking around the A pillar is the best solution, but simply looking for longer than a split second before making a decision must surely cut down the likelihood not seeing a cyclist obscured by a blind spot.

There are cars which have A pillars so large that you can lose another car in them at near point blank distance (Vauxhall Zafiras for instance has an A pillar blind spot which is big enough to lose another Zafira in until you're about 5-7 meters away!)

 

[fenlandpsychocyclist]

(Vauxhall Zafiras for instance has an A pillar blind spot which is big enough to lose another Zafira in until you're about 5-7 meters away!)

They need seriously thick pillars due to having so much glass in place of good old metal.
When i'm driving my zaffy its as though i have a flea infested ar5e how often i have to move around to "see" past the A pillar.

 

[Norm]

Certainly if two vehicles are on a constant trajectory with each other then one will remain in a constant place on the screen related to another. So a cyclist might remain in the blind spot - but with a roundabout, I would have thought a constant trajectory would be unlikely. The cyclist would be moving in an arc whilst the driver presumably is moving in a straight line, both at different speeds.

Over an extended period, that would be the case, but most drivers on most roundabouts seem to have a second or two to make that go / no go decision and, in that space of time, the relative positions are remarkably static.

I know this may seem weird but, after the incident I described earlier, this is now one of my safety checks when I see a car approaching a roundabout that I'm on. It is quite amazing how often the curve of the roundabout and the relative slowing and accelerating of the cars puts me in a fairly static spot in the driver's vision for the second or two that they have to make the decision.

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

Damn, it hurts just reading that.

I very nearly had a similar one a few years ago, fortunately, the berk who tried to take me out had a passenger whose warning screams I could hear from my position 10m 5m 1m 30cm 5cm in front of the car. When he stopped, with his bumper against me foot, I got off, leaving the bike where it was resting against his car, walked round to the driver's window and said, in a most polite shout, "If you can't see a fat **** in a bright yellow coat right in front of you, then maybe you should think about quitting driving"

In defence of these motons, the issue is sometimes** one of car design where the manufacturers make the A-pillars so wide (in the name of occupant safety) that they can completely obscure a cyclist / motorbike. The angle from the driver's head through the A-pillar is, unfortunately, often exactly where a cyclist would be on a roundabout. Whilst there is a limit to the field of vision which the A-pillar should obscure, manufacturers use a get-out which relates to the days when cars had quarter-lights on their windows, so any pillar which is in the glass area of the door doesn't count as a part of the A-pillar.

Unfortunately, any voice raised against the design of modern cars is lost in the wilderness, drowned out by a chorus of "I'm all right, Jack, pull up the ladder" voices who don't give a stuff about anything as long as their car has a 5 star Euro-NCAP rating.

**It is also that sometimes they just don't see us, I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has had a driver who stared straight at me through his side window as he pulled out on a mini roundabout.

My car is like that Pug 407(Not my choice I inherited it), it's really scary going aroundcorners, my head is going back and for like Goose in Top Gun, trying to see the bit of road covered by the A pillar as is dis/ap/re apears !

 

[Norm]

I didn't realise that the 407 was that bad - it's usually the MPV's (Scenic, Zafira, 3007 etc) which are the worst culprits although some of their hatchback brethren (Astra, Altea etc) are as bad.

This PDF is quite an enlightening read.

 

[marshmella]

Get well soon wintonbina sounds nasty. I was only inches away from being taken out myself yesterday by a car from the right at a crossroads.It was -7 at 6.30 am and the barsteward of a driver hadn't bothered to de-ice his passenger side windows.

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

I didn't realise that the 407 was that bad - it's usually the MPV's (Scenic, Zafira, 3007 etc) which are the worst culprits although some of their hatchback brethren (Astra, Altea etc) are as bad.

This PDF is quite an enlightening read.

Astra!!!!!!!!

In the late 80's through the 90's I had a number of Astra GTEs , the forward vision on those wasn't tooooo bad, but the rear and 3/4s!

Kamm tail, rear wing and a C panel the size of Rutland, you could lose a whole HGV in the C panel! Joining a Mway was the worst, you could NOT rely on pulling into a gap behind you, you would toodle along at 50 ish looking for a gap ahead and then aim for it, luckily power over weight used to cure this problem amazing what you can do with 115, 130, 190 BHP!

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

I didn't realise that the 407 was that bad .

The problem with the Pug is not just the thickness and the supporting buttress of the "vent" panel but the rake of the A pillar