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MotoGP ace Nicky Hayden dies five days after cycling crash

2006 world champ suffered fatal injuries following collision involving Peugeot car near Rimini last Wednesday

Former MotoGP world champion Nicky Hayden has died in hospital today from multiple injuries sustained when he was involved in a collision with a car while cycling near Rimini, Italy last week. Julia Viellehner, a German triathlete being treated in the same hospital in Cesena after a collision involving a  lorry last week near Forli has also lost her fight for life today.

Hayden,  aged 36 and from Kentucky, had been in a coma after sustaining brain, chest and other injuries in the crash in Misano last Wednesday, which involved a 30-year-old woman driving a Peugeot car.

Pictures on the website of the regional newspaper il Resto del Carlino show how the impact of the collision shattered the car’s windscreen, with others revealing how the frame of Hayden’s Specialized S-Works Venge was destroyed.

The newspaper says that magistrates investigating the incident have examined CCTV footage from a neighbouring property that suggests that Hayden may have ignored a stop sign as he entered the junction.

They are also examining an iPod and earbuds that Hayden had with him to try and determine whether he had been listening to music at the time of the fatal collision, as has been reported by some outlets.

Investigators will also seek to determine whether the motorist was respecting the speed limit in force at the location in question.

Viellehner, aged 31 and from Bavaria, had switched from athletics to duathlon then triathlon, enjoying some success both at national and international level. 

Last Monday, while riding on a road near the Passo delle Forche, her bike was hooked by the rear wheel of a lorry and she was dragged along the road.

Her condition worsened in hospital, and doctors amputated both her legs in an attempt to save her life, but she too died today, reports the Gazzetta di Parma.

Hayden, who overhauled Valentino Rossi in the final race of the season to become MotoGP world champion in 2006, had most recently been competing in the Superbike World Championship with the Red Bull Honda World Superbike Team.

A keen cyclist, Hayden once took part in Critical Mass while staying in London, using a loan bike from the hotel he was staying in - much to the surprise of some of the other participants in the ride, one of whom shared the story on a thread of the Facebook page of the Stop Killing Cyclists campaign group.

His death comes a month to the day after Astana rider Michele Scarponi was killed in a collision involving a flatbed van while training near his home in the Marche region, around 100 kilometres further south along the Adriatic Coast from the scene in Emilia-Romagna of the crash that has now claimed Hayden’s life.

Scarponi had been due to lead Astana in the Giro d’Italia, and race organisers have paid tribute to the rider by naming the climb of the Mortirolo in tomorrow’s Stage 16 after him.

> Giro d’Italia honours Michele Scarponi by naming Mortirolo climb after him

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.

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9 comments

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DaveE128 | 7 years ago
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Both incidents are truly awful.  2 Condolences to families and friends.

I tend to try to work out what has happened in these incidents to see if there's anything I can personally learn from them that would help me avoid a similar fate - not to apportion blame. (Maybe it's just my way of dealing with the increased fear reports or cyclist deaths might provoke?) From looking at the photos from the local press (linked in article) of the incident that Hayden was involved, my guess is that:

- He left the end of a road that had a stop sign (and may or may not have stopped - unconfirmed reports suggest not - but we still have no indication of what level of caution he emerged with if he did not stop) and the junction visibility appears to be poor due to high hedges.

- The motor vehicle was probably travelling at a fairly considerable speed. I would guess this as it appears Hayden's bike landed some distance down the road, in a ditch, and the location of the main impact damage being on the windscreen rather than the front of the car, where there is smaller impact damage around the nearside headlight. This would suggest the bicycle being swept out from under the rider before they fell down significantly. Of course we know nothing about the speed limit or the visibility of the junction, signage etc from the direction the car approached, though that only really affects culpability I suppose.

- If he had been wearing ear-phones (shouldn't be used to judge culpability in my view) and if the vehicle was approaching at excessive speed, it perhaps could have made a difference to whether he heard it approaching and could perhaps have made a small difference to judging its speed.

So what I'd take from this for my own cycling, based purely upon these guesses, is that I need to remember to look out for blind junctions and take particular care at them, and try to remember to assume there may be an idiot driving too fast on the other road. Sometimes you just can't see everything coming, hearing vehicles approaching may sometimes help, and I still won't ride with ear-phones.

Whether or not Hayden stopped at the stop sign, I really wish some countries would stop using stop signs as traffic calming measures. If they are only used where junctions have dangerously poor visibility (as they are in the UK, mostly) I think people tend to be much more careful to observe them. It's a bit like crying wolf.  2 I'm not sure what it's like in Italy, never having driven or ridden there. If riding in a new place. I know in the USA they are widely used for traffic calming, and I note this is where Hayden came from, and I wonder whether it may have shaped his perception of their purpose.

 

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PaulBox | 7 years ago
1 like

Ride in peace #69 

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CygnusX1 | 7 years ago
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RIP to both Hayden AND Julianna Viellehner.

Road.cc editors - doesn't a female triathlete losing both her legs and subsequently dying deserve her own story rather than mashing it in with someone else because they happened to be  treated in same hospital and died the same day? 

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muffies | 7 years ago
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you still have to stop at a stop sign if that's what happened. doesn't make it any less tragic - but i see most ppl blasting through stops and lights without even looking all day long every day (and some that get hit) they just expect the car will always stop even when it has priority. wtf.

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brooksby replied to muffies | 7 years ago
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muffies wrote:

you still have to stop at a stop sign if that's what happened. doesn't make it any less tragic - but i see most ppl blasting through stops and lights without even looking all day long every day (and some that get hit) they just expect the car will always stop even when it has priority. wtf.

Its clearly confirmation bias, but I just don't see cyclists running red lights all that much.

I do see motorists doing it, though: as a cyclist and as a pedestrian I've had quite a few near misses in crossings.

Anyhoo: this case is awful, and I agree with Dinosaur: what possible difference would it have made, if he'd been wearing headphones? If he did jump a stop line at a junction then he would have looked: most people don't actually want to die, and look around themselves more if they can't hear.

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me | 7 years ago
5 likes

fck, that's sad.  Walk away from 150mph crashes on the track and not from anything on the road.  Don't care about fault, it's a life lost.

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CXR94Di2 | 7 years ago
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If you look at the car the damage is all on the passenger side window. Most likely car didn't even see him, ploughed into him and ultimately has killed him. Please rephrase title to say car driver was involved with the death of Nicky Hayden. Rarely is the cyclist at fault

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CXR94Di2 replied to CXR94Di2 | 7 years ago
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..

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bobbinogs replied to CXR94Di2 | 7 years ago
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CXR94Di2 wrote:

If you look at the car the damage is all on the passenger side window. Most likely car didn't even see him, ploughed into him and ultimately has killed him. Please rephrase title to say car driver was involved with the death of Nicky Hayden. Rarely is the cyclist at fault

...except when possibly running a stop light? I think we need to keep an open mind and mourn the loss of a life without prejuding the possible causes based on the scant evidence provided in reports.

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