Poor road surface may have played part in Bexhill cyclist’s death

Having recently fractured a vertebra having hit a pothole because I moved from the centre line, coming up to a blind bend at the bottom of a descent, to avoid an oncoming car, it strikes me that the real danger in potholes is where they are located. The result of hitting a pothole at speed can be far more disastrous, and could have been much worse in my case. That should be built into the thinking on road quality. 

road surfaces are fricking terrible all over the UK, my crash a couple weeks back was down to do the council not looking after the road markings, luckily i was only going around 10mph, so walked it off with a concussion and a lot of blood being spilt, councils need to bother looking after the roads, as every commute is like a CX race, and it's fricking dangerous having to hop and swerve over/around pot holes and cracks.

I rode with Konrad over many years and he was an experienced rider who did not take risks. He was a decent rider and I had no qualms riding at close quarters in a bunch with him. He was strong, a good climber and he knew his way around a bike.

I ride this section of road regularly, it is the descent of a legendary local climb called Battery Hill. It is around 14% in places. It's part of a popular coastal route from Hastings through to Rye and into Kent. Konrad was very familiar with this road, he was local and rode it regularly.

At the top, the road suffers from tree drop erosion (water dripping from the overhanging trees which erodes the road surface) and the surface is broken in a number of places. It is hard to find a line where you do not end up having to lift your weight over poor surface at high speed.

Further down, where Konrad came off, the surface is better but there are potholes. The road is now in the worst condition I have seen it. Speeds of over 40mph are easily attained and it's actually quite an open corner, certainly not technical, through which you can take a nice line from outside for good sight lines, to the apex and out again. But you have to look ahead for the potholes to avoid adjusting your line mid-corner. There is plenty of width at this point, as you can probably see from the photo. It's a lot steeper than it looks in the photo above. Once through the corner the road is straight and freewheeling gives you 45mph+.

One has to draw the conclusion that Konrad made a mistake of some sort, but I don't think we will ever know what that was. It's a quiet road for traffic and certainly bad luck to collect with a car coming up. I rode out the day after he came down, to pay my respects and I tried to work out what could have happened. But I have no idea.

He was a very fine fellow, a classy club rider and sadly missed.

Ride safe.

Sad event but the conclusions already drawn seem reasonable. Everyone will screw up at some point, sometimes there's no luck to go with it. 

But they moved to the offside of the lane they were travelling in, this would have been the best position to get around the bend safely so any uneven road surface on the inside which is what was described should/would have had no effect if you were in that position in any case.

IMHO it's clear that 31mph (which isn't mentioned at what point that lower speed was so could have being at the top of the hill) is excessive for the conditions/layout and the primary cause, you would not be able to stop in time if there was something hidden around the bend, a queue of stationary vehicles, a wheelchair user or an inform/elderly person halfway across the road, a fallen tree, animal, roadworks, big pothole etc.

I think trying to point the finger at the uneven surface on the inside line is a bit of a stretch tbh because it's very obvious that he was going too fast for the conditions/road layout and his ability. 

Travelling at excessive speed into a blind bend is what was the primary cause of the rider going on to the wrong side of the road and causing the incident.

You wouldn't want to be approaching that bend on the inside part of the lane in any case as it's even harder to get around it and you would see even less around the bend from that position than being right of centre of the lane.

I'm also puzzled by the statement by the friend, he says the uneven surface is at the "outside edge", surely that should be the inside/nearside edge given they moved to the right of centre of the lane?

Unfortunately there are too many people on bikes who ride beyond their and their machines limitations and fail to understand hazards/conditions until it's too late, this is apparent at all levels including the pros who make similar mistakes. 

Sadly for this guy it cost him his life.