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Driver mounts pavement and ploughs through cycle rack on Upper Clapton Road, London (999 London)Driver “spoken to” but not arrested by police after mounting pavement and ploughing through cycle rack, injuring cyclist and snapping bike in two in shocking crash
A motorist who veered off the road and mounted the pavement, slamming into a row of parked bikes, was “spoken to” but not arrested by police following the shocking incident, which left a female cyclist requiring hospital treatment for “non-life threatening injuries”.
The bizarre crash, footage of which has been posted on social media, took place on Sunday morning on Upper Clapton Road in Hackney, east London, at around 10.40am.
In the CCTV footage, the driver of a silver BMW can be seen travelling in the left-hand lane, before suddenly veering off the road and onto the footpath, colliding with a set of cycle racks containing two Lime hire bikes.
Happened on Upper Clapton E5 yesterday.
🎥 Video Credits: @999London pic.twitter.com/emYSd5E3ns— In Stamford Hill (@instamfordhill) September 23, 2024
The motorist mows through the ‘cycle park’ before hitting a woman, who was seemingly locking her own bike to one of the stands, throwing her into the air and across the pavement, while breaking her bike in two in the process.
The driver then comes to a stop a few yards away on the footpath, as passers-by rush to help the stricken cyclist. London Ambulance Service confirmed that a woman was treated by an ambulance crew at the scene and taken to a London trauma centre as a priority, where her injuries were later revealed to have been non-life threatening.
While the clip of the incident has sparked speculation on social media surrounding the circumstances that led to the crash, one resident, who lives on the road, told road.cc that locals believe that the motorist may have “passed out” at the wheel, before suddenly waking up after they had ploughed through the bike stands and striking the cyclist.
According to the resident, who witnessed the scene of the collision a few hours after it took place, also said that the Lime Bikes stationed at the ‘cycle park’ were flattened and that the cyclist’s bike was “snapped in half”.
As of Thursday morning, the cyclist’s lock and helmet remained at the scene, along with the destroyed bike stands, though the bikes have since been removed.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police told road.cc that the BMW driver was not arrested in the wake of the collision, but merely “spoken to”.
“Police were called at around 10.40hrs on Sunday, 22 September to reports of a road traffic collision,” the Met spokesperson said. “A car collided with a female pedestrian. She was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
“The driver of the car was spoken to by police. They were not arrested.”
While locals have attributed the crash to the driver allegedly passing out at the wheel, the lack of police action – and the incident itself – is strikingly similar to a shocking collision which took place earlier this year in Norwich, when the driver of a Ferrari lost control of his sports car on a city centre road with a 20mph limit, before mounting the kerb and smashing into a bike rack.
CCTV footage of the crash showed the moment Ross Mendham, a former Dragon’s Den contestant and son of former Norwich City footballer Peter Mendham, left the road on Norwich’s Rose Lane, hitting and destroying the roadside bike racks which prevented him ploughing across a protected cycleway and onto the pavement.
However, despite narrowly missing two pedestrians and a runner in the shocking high-speed crash, Norfolk Police later confirmed that nobody had been injured or arrested for their role in it.
Mendham did, however, appear in court two days later, not in relation to a driving offence, but for having breached his bail conditions after being accused of knocking his pregnant girlfriend unconscious with a punch to the face, the trial for which is set to take place in 2026.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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41 comments
We always talk about the aggressive, impatient and lazy drivers, but probably overlook the downright incompetent drivers; cycling or driving, you see them all the time, sometimes clutching the steering wheel with a terrified look on their face. This looks like the motornormativity in action; car veers off road and ploughs into a bike rack and pedestrian (they weren't on their bike) for no specific reason (didn't seem to be speeding). We don't know the contents of the discussion but it feels like a 'just one of those things that happens when you're driving; nothing to see here; you were just trying to get from A to B; poor you'. Not acceptable; should be a careless driving charge.
I hope the driver will replace the lady's bike and pay for all the other damage caused.
Naive, I know.
The registration number doesn't look decipherable on this video but the police will have it and the driver's details so she has a nailed-on case for claiming from their insurance, and hopefully the council will also take action for the cost of replacing the bike racks and so on, so although it's small consolation when we can all see that the driver's licence should have gone straight in the shredder at least his insurance premiums will go through the roof.
Out of interest, in the event of a genuine medical episode (that had no warning signs and had never occured before), would the driver (and hence their insurance) be liable for damages? My understanding is that civil liability requires some kind of negligence to make out the tort. The vast majority of RTCs involve some degree of negligence (the Highway Code is pretty comprehensive - there are very few situations in which a collision would occur if every road user had been obeying it to the letter) but possibly not in the case of a medical episode (again, assuming the driver had absolutely no prior warning)?
I'd like to think that driving while being medically unfit to drive would still count as negligent, even though the driver didn't know about it. Similarly, if a car didn't have working brakes, then the driver should still be held responsible for the subsequent crash even if they hadn't bothered to check their brakes first.
IANAL, but the road traffic rules don't usually specify intention (e.g. crashing into the side of a building is very rarely intentional).
That is true but almost always someone who crashes into the side of a building will be in some way negligent through their driving behaviour. If it could be demonstrated that there was something outside their control that could not possibly have been anticipated that caused them to crash then they may escape liability, e.g., if someone had scattered caltrops across a bend (no I don't know why, make up your own scenario!) and the driver took the bend at a reasonable and lawful speed but blew out all their tyres which caused them to crash into the building, they would not be liable.
Wouldn't their insurance company still pick up the bill for the damage though?
I don't think they would if it could be shown that the driver was in no way liable for the incident, I think the building owners would have to claim off their own insurance.
Yes, there is a defence called automatism that can exonerate the damage/injury-causing party if it can be shown that the medical event occurred instantaneously and there was no way in which the driver could have foreseen it happening, i.e. there is no prodrome, the period of time between symptoms first manifesting themselves and blacking out. This is pretty difficult to prove as it's generally accepted that almost all blackout events have some warning, even if it's only a few seconds, in which period the driver had an opportunity to take remedial action. It's very rare for a condition to appear completely out of the blue and instantaneously cause a loss of consciousness and it would be down to the defendant to produce medical reports showing that they had a condition that made this possible. Interesting summary of the law here, if you're interested.
You really believe that the driver of an old BMW was actually insured? I doubt he even had insurance and mot. Certainly he has never passed a driving test.
Whilst my faith in the Met is far from absolute I'm reasonably sure they would have checked the driver had a licence and insurance.
You would hope that they at least did an ANPR check on the vehicle.
Not so common sense would expect at least some sort of investigation.
"spoken to" :-
I may have a befuddled mind but "spoken to" seems wholly inadequate for something as potentially serious as this.
More pedantry, I'm afraid, but you don't need ANPR when the number plate is there in front of you, stationary among all the wreckage.
Many years ago, I was stopped by the police and they checked my registration by radio calling back to HQ - it took about ten minutes - his colleague was checking my tyres and tax disk etc. They'd stopped me for faulty tail light, got a 'producer' for that.
Compare that with 'spoken to' and it does make you realise how far our standards have dropped.
I don't know how they do it now but it could actually be quicker for them to use their mobile communication device to simply take a picture of the number plate and let the technology do the work.
Seems to me the police need to be arrested for incompetence and they could know the drivers and got backhanded cash! Disgusting, did they arrest the injured for being in the way of the cars?
I look forward to the House of Lords debate on the problem of cars mounting pavements.
Can you get away with this in industry - serious injury caused but no investigation and an acceptance that it's just one of those things so jog on? The police should be prosecuted.
I saw somebody drive fully on the pavement just now to avoid a closed road. I'm sure he wasn't passed out.
I've seen motorists veer towards the kerb whilst phone-distracted. And phone-distraction is endemic - just walk any urban pavement during heavy traffic, look at the motorists, 10% of them are on their phones. It's blatant, because there is zero prospect of being caught. It would appear that you can even smash through street furniture and plough into a pedestrian, still the police are not interested.
10% of them are on their phones. It's blatant, because there is zero prospect of being caught
On the contrary, I catch them fairly frequently (admittedly, that's still a very low probability of being caught) but the attitude of Lancashire Constabulary is that it's not a real offence and they refuse to respond or take action unless the offender is somebody they don't like. Bent coppers are the problem.
Are you seriously suggesting that drivers can get away with 99.9% of their bad behaviour? Thats ridiculous. Everyone knows that because drivers have licence plates and take a test that even the smallest infraction is almost always caught and punished. Which is why cyclists need identification in a similar fashion. Its just completely unfair that when I speed in my car just once I will get a ticket. I check my socials while I am pootling along and bam, police surround me and theres 6 points on my licence.
I wonder how often people sue the police for basically ignoring peoples illegal behaviour and those people then go on to do something really serious. This could so easily have resulted in someones death and the outcome seems to be, as is always the case with car related "accidents" that "no one was actually killed so it can't have been that bad can it".
Regardless of the Met police's frankly useless response, I'd love to know what this does to the driver's insurance renewal.
If the driver had a medical issue then the police should have the power to revoke their licence untill it is confirmed they are safe to drive.
Maybe a change in the law is required to give the police this power.
If they don't have a medical issue then the police should deal with this as careless/dangerous driving.
Either way, the police's lack of action could lead to repercussions should the driver be involved in a future incident leading to serious injury/death which could have been prevented had the police DONE SOMETHING USEFULL.
Maybe a change in the law is required to give the police this power
No, it's a major change in the police that's required. They're much worse than 'useless'
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police told road.cc that the BMW driver was not arrested in the wake of the collision, but merely “spoken to”.
Were they a cyclist? If so, Ian DS will be foaming at the mouth, but if not, well, it's just one of those things.
The police should have the power to suspend someone's driving license in these kinds of cases. If it's a genuine medical condition, then that needs to be fully investigated before the driver should be allowed back on the road and if it's not, then charges should be brought against the driver for causing injury and destroying property.
Yes, this should be an automatic suspension of thier license until medically cleared to drive again.
In 1979 I was told by the DVLA to see a silly eye chap in Bath, he said that both my eyes could not see the red dot between 12 & 3, how long did have that problem, might have been since the Menningitues or all your life, so I asked why can't I carry on driving, he said on approaching a roundabout you can't see the vehicles on the right, my answer was my head can turn like yours and I expect other drivers to slow down on approaching these junctions as I do. 7 years later I got my license back, and never did stop driving cars just trucks and coaches. never had an accident either! I have now 80.
Your mistake was not going to see someone in Barnard Castle.
(sarcasm)
I presume the police actually did some kind of investigation, e.g. got a hospital report on the driver, checked their phone records to see if they were using their phone, breathalysed them, etc, rather than just accepting their excuses.
(/sarcasm)
I only say this because I've been a victim of a SMIDSY where the police were extremely quick to tell me that negligence wasn't involved, and to dismiss witness reports of a phone-distracted driver, and overlook the fact that I was lit up like a christmas tree and wearing high vis. It is remarkable how quickly the police can come to the conclusion that there was nothing untoward with an incident, without any kind of investigation.
Edit: just to be clear on how quick this was - I was still lying on my back in the road, waiting for an ambulance to arrive and check me over, when they told me that it wasn't negligence. Literally within three minutes of arriving on the scene. The only check they had done was to breathalyse the driver, whcih i understand is a mandatory thing when a driver crashes into a pedestrian or cyclist.
This is probably the same reason that the official DfT car/bike KSI report has a section at the back basically telling you to ignore the "combined" stats because of the massive bias in the attending police officer's initial assessment. It's probably also why DfT stats (which are currently based on "the attending officer's confidence") show that 29% of car crashes can be attributed to speeding, yet a 2018 study by numerous forces that used actual accident investigation data found it was more like 53%.
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