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Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)Jersey coroner says foot stuck in clipless pedal led to cyclist's death
A coroner’s inquest has said that a British cyclist’s inability to unclip from his pedals led to him being killed after he lost his balance and was hit by a van while on holiday on Jersey in the Channel Islands. The coroner says he will be writing to Shimano, the manufacturers of the pedals, to raise his concerns.
Neil Blood, aged 42 and from Stoke-on-Trent, had not used clipless pedals prior to his holiday in July last year, where he was riding a new bike fitted with them.
Mr Blood was cycling with his cousin, Ruth, in St Helier and after turning to look at her, he hit a lamp post, causing him to lose his balance and fall under a passing van, reports the BBC.
His father, Geoff Blood, told the inquest that shortly before his son departed on his holiday he had urged him not to use clipless pedals, which he believes are dangerous.
“What happens with those cleats is you can’t pull your foot in and out,” he said, quoted in the Stoke Sentinel.
“You have to do a motion and when Neil or anybody is involved in an accident you don’t think logically.
“Your brain becomes a bit scrambled and to get your foot out of cleats you have got to think clearly.”
Mr Blood, a father of three who ran his own engineering business, received medical treatment at the scene but died in hospital shortly afterwards.
According to Home Office pathologist Dr Amanda Jeffrey, he sustained “extremely severe” injuries to his chest after being run over by the van.
The inquest heard that there was nothing the vehicle’s driver could have done to avoid hitting the cyclist.
Deputy Viscount Advocate Mark Harris said that Mr Blood’s death was a “tragic accident,” adding that he intended to write to Shimano to “bring this verdict to their attention.”
We have contacted both Shimano and UK distributor Madison for their reaction and will let you know their response.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- chrisonabike 1 sec ago
They give the figures for numbers of all casualties so should be possible to work this out?...
- Pub bike 6 min 10 sec ago
I reported a car going through a red light not long ago and the Met appear to have acted upon it....
- GMBasix 9 min 4 sec ago
But don't forget to correct for altitude.
- OnYerBike 12 min 18 sec ago
Clearly a tragic incident all round, but it's hard to imagine the family finding much comfort in the inquest's findings when they are so clearly...
- chrisonabike 4 hours 7 min ago
Also don't forget - Sustrans are a charity *....
- chrisonabike 4 hours 18 min ago
Yes ... but (just due to the large numbers of people affected) this likely would only proceed in the UK at a very ... cautious ... pace....
- EK Spinner 4 hours 36 min ago
Arsehole in the van not with standing, how did they manage to get a risk assessment allowing a race (a group not a TT) group to be competing on ...
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I think reviewer completely missed the point here trying to match bike's name with what it can do. Ribble is namin git's bike weirdly, the...
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Bit of googling gone wrong in the article - the JAT is the Junction Assessment Tool, the Joint Approval Team appears to be a coutner terrorism...
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69 comments
Yep I was just going to say the same using this quote as a starter
"The inquest heard that there was nothing the vehicle’s driver could have done to avoid hitting the cyclist."
and I was about to say that the driver could have complied with the Highway code for starters. I don't know how fast he was driving so can't comment on that but he was going so fast that he was unable to stop in time.
Rule 163 of the Highway Code states:
"give motorcyclists, cyclists and horse riders at least as much room as you would when overtaking a car (see Rules 211 to 213 and 214 to 215)."
And if the van driver had complied with the Highway code then he would have avoided the collision.
Another numpty Coroner.
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. The fact he hit a lamppost, and the picture in the article above, would suggest that he riding on the pavement, and swerved/fell into the path of the vehicle. There is nothing a driver can do about such a scenario, Highway Code or not.
As someone said above, sometimes these things just happen, and there isn't a single person who can be blamed. It seems extremely unfair to try and make out that the driver could've avoided this.
Well I didn't really. My target was the Coroner. As far as driving is concerned and I am an Advanced Driver and drove in a professional capacity for over a decade I have to say, "there but for the grace of god - goes many of us" . But to say that there was nothing a driver could do or could have done to prevent a collision is to test the bounds of credulity a bit. I am very sceptical of 100% judgements.
In my opinion the main person at fault was unfortunately the cyclist. He took a vehicle on the road that he wasn't quite in control of. I would also put a bit of blame on the bike hire company. I believe it was hired. That let a novice out on the road with clipless pedals without checking they were expreienced in using them. That doesn't excuse him though. But that doesn't mean to say that if a cyclist is at prime fault everyone else gets a free pass on any of the blame.
I work with a the Police quite a lot and several of my mates are still Road Traffic Officers in Surrey. The times we have heard "There was nothing I could do" after a collision would boggle your mind.
People walking out, cyclists falling off, stuff falling off other vehicles, drivers pulling out in front of you. These all happen. They happen hundreds even thousands of times everyday across the country. The difference between many good drivers and the others is that good drivers don't hit everything that lands in or comes in to their path.
This is not voodoo. It's not luck. Most supposedly "unavoidable collisions" are actually avoidable.
I have to somewhat agree with the above. Whilst it's clear that the cyclist made a hideous inexperienced error, I dont think it's as simple as there was nothing the driver could have done because the cyclist started on the pavement.
If I'm driving I always slow down or give room to "vulnerable" people on the pavement. If there's room I drive further out away from pavement, if there's no room then I slow down. I always do this if I see a kid on a bike on the pavement, as there's a slim chance* they might fall off or slip in the road.
Slow down? But they're on the pavement you say?
It is clearly not acceptable to closely pass a cyclist at speed if they are on the road for obvious reasons. Why is then acceptable to hammer past closely if they are on a narrow shared-path? Just because they are raised above the road surface, why does that mean it's suddenly okay to pass closely and quickly with no-room-for-error?
*In fact it's not even a "slim chance". A large proportion of cyclists killed are KIDS that badly transitioned from the pavement to the road.
F*cking hell, are you being deliberately stupid or does it come naturally? I'm suprised you manage to do anything with that much anger! At no point does the article state that the van was travelling in the same direction, in fact it states that the van driver could do nothing to avoid the cyclist.
It's a sad story but Shimano aren't to blame - a guy using their product for the first time (with little or no practice of what it's like to be clipped in), gets distracted, loses his balance and falls off his bike infront of a van which can't then avoid him. Accidents happen and unfortunately this one proved costly where the same sequence at other times wouldn't have done. RIP.
Which I'm inclined to agree with - but see my post above re direction..
Noted, but riding on the pavement with a van passing on the road is different to the van passing the bike on the road. You don't expect people walking or riding on the pavement to move into the road without warning and therefore don't adjust your speed/road positioning as you would were it a bike in the road. My point was purely that it was absolutely not the van driver's fault and suggesting that he ran over the cyclist because he was too close/driving too fast was a ridiculous statement to make.
This reply sickens me almost as much as this horrible accident, so I'm going to play devils advocate here.
1. If a driver is looking somewhere else (perhaps looking at their child in the back seat of their car) and they hit a cyclist, who's fault is it ?.... but a cyclist who takes their eyes off the road, hits a lamppost and falls over, they are then struck by a van and its still the van drivers fault... really ? glad you pointed that out.
2. The article has no mention of what happened after the lamppost was struck, I doubt the poor bugger went straight down, what happened if he swerved off line by say 1.5 metres and then fell right, given the height of a typical person that would add another 1.5 metre to the distance making him 3m from the side of the road, also if that happened just as the van was about to pass there is no way it could of been avoided.
End Of.
Whilst I might apologise for your illness, I make zero apology for my reply. Maybe in a tiny, *tiny* percentage of KSI collisions there was genuinely nothing the driver could have done - such as a cyclist veering head-on into the path of a vehicle with no warning. But what many people on here have shown is just how pervasive the 'there but for the grace of god go I' attitude is in the UK. No wonder so many juries acquit drivers who could have and should have taken a lot more care.
As the operator of the heavier vehicle you have an obligation to defer to other more vulnerable road users, to allow for their errors. That seems anathema to 99% of UK drivers.
That's what is sickening, because it kills people every day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvLaTupw-hk
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