Ouch - Collision with a Pedestrian

[PrettyboyTim]

Today a woman listening to her ipod walked in front of me from behind a van and I was unable to avoid her. Cue collision, me going over the handlebars and me and her ending up in a heap with the bike falling on top of us.

She was fine in the end - although a bit shaken. I have a few grazes and me left knee is pretty painful, as is my left wrist. My bike has a badly buckled front wheel and the right side Ergo bar end on my handlebars has snapped in two.

It was a bit odd lying there in the road - about five people all rushed up and started asking me if I was okay but the thing is at that point you really don't know if you are or not! I managed to make it to the pavement where I sat down until my knees had recovered a bit.

Anyway, some kind soul called 999 and a bicycle paramedic turned up and cheked me out - I seem to be basically okay although she recommended a tetanus shot and some ibuprofen. I walked my battered bicyle the rest of the way to work which luckily wasn't far, although the woman's boss turned up and did offer to hire a cab for me to get there, which was nice.

Anyway, I guess I'm going to be off the bike until next week...

 

[spindrift]

Blimey, she must have been a , ahem, sturdily built lass.

 

[Tynan]

bummer, how near were you to the parked car?

some peds are doomed to die, I think they assume the two feet between the traffic and the parked cars is a safe zone

had a fairly narrow miss myself yesterday, Camden, where else, land of the lemming

anything you walk away from and all that

 

[PrettyboyTim]

She wasn't that big actually - but then I'm fairly slim myself so the combined weight of me and the bike was probably only 3-4 stone more than she weighed.

The van was actually on the right - it was a fairly narrow road and it had just gone from cars being parked on the left to the van parked on the right, and just after the van there were cars on the left again. I was probably 4 feet to the left of the van. I guess I was going 15-16 mph at the time.

I was actually pretty surprised she wasn't hurt - I had expected her to be!

 

[TheDoctor]

Ouch! Sounds nasty.
And the size of the moving target doesn't seem to matter much. My most spectacular off was hitting a very small kid near a local infant school. I also went over the bars, and shattered my collarbone. The bike was totalled, the kid had a bruise.
Grrr.

 

[Keith Oates]

You're right about the size thing, on the way to work one day in Vietnam a man on a small motorbike hit a small dog that ran out of the bushes in front of him. The motor cyclists went over the handle bars and the motorbike carried on part way across a rice field. The dog yelped a bit but then ran somewhere, home I guess, but the rider had some deep cuts and bruises!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hope your troubles will soon be mended, PBT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[magnatom]

Ouch!! Nasty one Tim! Just be thankful you didn't faceplant or you wouldn't be such a pretty boy!!

Seriously though, take it easy for a while.

You've probably seen my video of a wee girl walking out on me. Close but she managed to stop walking in time. Yours would certainly made for some interesting footage had the camera still been working...

 

[magnatom]

Meant to say, pedestrians should be banned from wearing IPODS!!




(FAO Sun reporters: Notice the wink wink at the bottom suggesting that the initial comment was made in jest....)

 

[Maz]

Did you shout to warn her or was there no time to even do that?
Granted, she was i-podded up, but would there still have been a collision in this case?
btw...if your wrist pain doesn't go away, go to A+E...i went as a precautionary measure cos mine didnt feel right after my bike-off and turns out i'd fractured my radius.

 

[fossyant]

More importantly have you got her address for the damage bill !!

Oh....glad you are sort of OK....

 

[domtyler]

Did you get a quick grope in while you were both on the floor?

 

[PrettyboyTim]

The only shout I managed was "shoot!" - she had just enough time to turn her head with a shocked look before I hit her. If I'd had time to shout a proper warning I wouldn't have hit her.

Fossyant - she gave me her business card - I've just had a look at it and as t turns out she works in insurance ;-)

If the damage the bike is bad, I'll probably chase her up about it but if it's just a case of getting the wheel trued, I don't think I'll bother.

 

[beanzontoast]

Hope you aren't too badly shaken up.

I haven't bought my helmet cam yet, but I wished I had this morning when a guy carrying a can of beer wandered out into the road ahead of me in town and started directing traffic - at 7.30am!

 

[Cab]

That could have been worse! Glad you're okay.

 

[biking_fox]

Ouch, gklad to hear it's not too bad.

Impressed that you managed to buckle a wheel on a person without seriously damaging them ... maybe you need stronger wheels.