Video: Cardiff cyclist hit by car as he rides through red light

I couldn’t see from the video what the cyclist did prior to the collision. All we have is the following driver’s remark that “The cyclist pulled straight out without looking…” It isn’t even clear what direction he was going to take – straight ahead doesn’t exist but that looked to be where he was headed.

Without asking the cyclist, we can only speculate about why that happened, but presumably he wasn’t expecting a car to be crossing that junction where it did, and either didn’t clock the red light or thought he had time.

A couple of points occur to me. One is that British light-controlled junctions have the peculiarity of having a repeater light on the far side of the junction. This is so the leading vehicle, who may be too close to the light to see it properly, knows when the lights change. But it means the repeaters can be easily mistaken for the main light. I once saw a French car turn left (or right) at a crossroads and come to a halt because it was presented with a red light. The driver wasn’t to know that it only applied to the other arm of the crossing. He eventually went through the red, looking very concerned, after everyone honked and waved at him to do so for a while.

The junction in the video appears to have a sort of small triangle. I wonder if the cyclist mistook the light for a repeater and ignored it.

Secondly, the triangle may have confused the cyclist. If he didn’t realise it was a triangle and misread the road, he may not have been expecting cars to be where they were. I recently had a near miss on a busy junction myself. I was crossing a busy and slightly complicated junction as a pedestrian, using a puffin crossing. I crossed the first half of the road (two lanes I think) and reached a pedestrian refuge island, where you had to press the button again for the lights. I looked carefully – there was nothing coming down the road, and nothing on a side road close to the junction so I was about to step out without bothering with the lights, when something made me turn, and cars were bearing down on me at high speed from behind! It gave me quite a scare, as I was one step away from being hit hard. I had simply become confused about which side of the road was which and which direction traffic was travelling on each arm of this junction. Breaking the crossing down into small parts removed one of the clues I needed to build an accurate mental map of the junction, and there were no ‘look left’ signs to correct my faulty map. I wonder if something similar happened to this cyclist. Perhaps he thought he was already on the main road, not realising it was just one side of the triangle, and thus expected the other traffic – on a side road in his head – to give way to him. Or he may have thought he was already on the junction.

Another similarity between my incident and this one is the speed the traffic was moving at. Given a green light, drivers seem to think they can stop paying attention to their surroundings and have the right to drive at top speed. The driver in the video didn’t appear to be aware that he was being approached by a cyclist who wasn’t looking; the driver in my case didn’t pay any attention to a pedestrian carefully looking the wrong way on the road and about to move off. This is why things often get safer when you take lights away – it makes drivers responsible for their actions and aware of their surroundings, while lights take away that responsibility.

I got quite spectularly taken out by a car about a year ago in Beckenham, South East London.  I got a squad car and transit full of (very friendly) coppers within minutes but the requested ambulance never showed in the 90 minutes I waited before the squad car took me to A&E and the van took my bike home.

The PCs said they were becoming heartily sick of the doing the ambulance services job, and that they'd lost a motorcyclist who'd been in an RTA the day before because the ambulance took an hour to show.  No surprise that the London Ambulance Service has now been put in to special measures.

Shockingly poor response from the ambulance *ahem* service. 200m from the nearest station to attend to the unconscious (self inflicted) victim of a RTI. Scandalous. It's not the first time I can recall very poor service from them either. Never showed up for ages to one I remember we called in a while back or even Dani King's punctured lung more recently which they took ages over. How many people die as a result of their poor service? You'd get to hospital quicker in a taxi. 

Oh, and for a Cardiff grad your memory is failing you Simon, it's Colum Road not Colum Place (that's a side road off Colum Rd )

"The collision took place just a hundred yards or so from Blackweir Ambulance Station, and the vehicle eventually arrived 35 minutes after the crash had happened.

According to a spokeswoman for the Welsh Ambulance Service, it is piloting a new clinical response model in response to the McClelland review of ambulance services in the country."

So I guess this new clinical response model is much better than the old one, is it?

And that is why traffic lights were invented!

What an utterly stupid risk to take.

Hopefully for him, that's the one close call he needs to wake him up.

What a complete and utter idiot. There must be some simple explanation. Drugs, drink, headphones, texting, perhaps an habitual rljer it won't happen to me. Well it did. What a numptee. He's going to hurt a whole lot more when he gets the bill for repairs to the car he hit and damaged.

Why check road.cc when this was posted on a trinity mirror rags' site?

Fear not, media Wales are as click bait anti everything as the heil...

I bet the Daily Mail has a journo whose job is to check RoadCC every day and recycle stories like this that put cyclists in is  bad light as possible.

Thanks chaps.

Love the potato quality dash camera.

At least when cyclecammers shoot video they do it in HD!

This cyclist is giving us all a bad name!!!

Ok that's out of the way and I claim my £5.

What a lucky, lucky, lucky boy.

I bet he'll get a slap from his mum when he gets home...

Woo hoo, Cardiff is on road.cc again.

Lets all have a disco, let's all have a disco

What a plum

I live about 150m from this location and cycle through that junction everyday on the way to work or club runs. The insanity of jumping that specific light which controls the junction onto one of the busiest thoroughfares in Cardiff absolutely baffles me - it's a three lane road that is often/always busy.

Hope (s)he's ok.

B'jesus, just shows the forces involved when a body impacts a vehicle!   Very lucky indeed to be alive.  I think he will be a little more careful in future, life shocks like this do that!

Quote:

I've got nothing.  Glad he is ok but what a plum.  Lucky to be alive.

Total agrement.

Run a red light, and your own risk  it be.

the Daily Hail will no doubt be pushing this video hard as soon as they need a distraction from the current gung-ho reporting of the 'war' campaign... and the vilification of Labour...

There are cyclist and then there are idiots on bicycles.

Darwinism. 

I've got nothing.  Glad he is ok but what a plum.  Lucky to be alive.