Cyclist suffers serious head injuries after collision with runner racing in London Park

so why would you not wear a helmet and compete in a run where you can trip over and crack your skull on the pavement? Helmets for pedestrians and runners now???

Tragic accident and quite unusual I suppose, and I do hope she makes a full recovery.

It's entirely understandable that the H word would surface, given reports about head injury sustained and reports in comments here about a rider not wearing one..

kevvjj wrote:

so why would you not wear a helmet and compete in a run where you can trip over and crack your skull on the pavement? Helmets for pedestrians and runners now???

But I don't get this point - appreciate people may be anti-helmets regardless, fine - but to post that on this story is counter-intuitive. If anything, this suggests why a cyclist, rather than a runner, might benefit from a helmet?.... 'Cyclist sustains head injury, runner unhurt'

Anyway, nothing is proven or conclusive and people with strong views won't be pursuaded either way, of course..

700c wrote:

Tragic accident and quite unusual I suppose, and I do hope she makes a full recovery.

It's entirely understandable that the H word would surface, given reports about head injury sustained and reports in comments here about a rider not wearing one..

kevvjj wrote:

so why would you not wear a helmet and compete in a run where you can trip over and crack your skull on the pavement? Helmets for pedestrians and runners now???

But I don't get this point - appreciate people may be anti-helmets regardless, fine - but to post that on this story is counter-intuitive. If anything, this suggests why a cyclist, rather than a runner, might benefit from a helmet?.... 'Cyclist sustains head injury, runner unhurt'

Anyway, nothing is proven or conclusive and people with strong views won't be pursuaded either way, of course..

The point being that running fast on pavement can cause you to fall and crack your head on the gutter... Using your (victim blaming) anecdote as an example, all runners should be advised to wear a helmet. There is a point at which we have to accept bad luck happens to people. Your fellow rider was just unlucky... I am not anti-helmet at all I just don't see the point in blaming victims (acting well within the law) when shit happens to them.

simon59 wrote:

Blah blah blah... Also it does mean that if it was the pedestrians fault, not wearing a helmet will almost certainly negate any legal claim.

Why should it? You find your victim as they are!

mattandbenny wrote:

You've got to assume the cyclist was speeding down the slope extremely fast to cause the damage that happened.

We don't know how fast she was going, but any cyclist speeding where there are runners en masse is barking mad, those feckers are like sheep and will flock on whim.

From the pictures it looks like the accident happened on a road in the park ? I cycle through there 4+ times a week and often joggers will just run across the road without looking. For some reason in a park that is 180 acres they like to run in the one road that goes through the park.

neildmoss wrote:

What would the principle of strict liability have to say in such a collision?

If I understand it right (pretty unlikely, to be honest), isn't the cyclist automatically liable, being the bigger, faster party?

I guess so - fair's fair. Isn't 'strict liabity' just a matter of the default assumption, though? It would still be possible to prove it really was the slower party's fault in cases where it truly was, no?

And surely this unfortunate case illustrates how its not such a big issue for cyclists, as they are less likely to seriously injure the slower party and a lot more likely to injure themselves.

Hope the cyclist recovers fully and rapidly.

I guess so - fair's fair. Isn't 'strict liabity' just a matter of the default assumption, though? It would still be possible to prove it really was the slower party's fault in cases where it truly was, no?

And surely this unfortunate case illustrates how its not such a big issue for cyclists, as they are less likely to seriously injure the slower party and a lot more likely to injure themselves.[/quote]
Seriously? How does this one incident lead you to believe they are "less likely" to injure the slower party? I'm not a physicist, so if there is a principle at work here, please enlighten me, but if I'm walking along, and a bicyclist creams me at 15-20 mph, I would think it more likely for me to absorb the damaging energy, no?

shawnriffhard wrote:

Seriously? How does this one incident lead you to believe they are "less likely" to injure the slower party? I'm not a physicist, so if there is a principle at work here, please enlighten me, but if I'm walking along, and a bicyclist creams me at 15-20 mph, I would think it more likely for me to absorb the damaging energy, no?

A car has far greater mass (and generally, greater velocity) than a cyclist and their bike. The 'principle' is just Newtonian physics.

Of course a cyclist-pedestrian collison _can_ injure the latter. Sometimes seriously. It clearly happens.

But if someone proposed an experiment, whereby you pedalled into them at 15mph and they in turn drove into you with a car at 30mph, would you really take them up on it? (even if you got to go first!)

Not only the physics, but the accident statistics seem to bear this out as well.

PS as well as learning a bit of basic physics, you need to look up what the word 'illustrates' means, by the way. It doesn't mean 'leads one to believe'.

Edit - Actually, apologies, you probably just misunderstood my point - 'cos I release I made it in an ambigious way - it would have been clearer had I added 'than a motorist is' to the end of the sentence.