Bristol cyclist critical after crash with car

The BBC news is reporting that "a cyclist is in a critical condition in hospital after being hit by a car in Bristol."

Interesting they chose the phrase "hit by a car"; in London they tend to describe the bicycle as hitting the car, before going on to discuss whether they had a helmet on.

The location was describe as the junction of St Michael's Hill and Horfield Road. We've noted how this isn't that much fun in a car. This collision happened at 22:22 on a Friday, so congestion would be minimal -and there is more chance of cars driving around fast.

Judging by the signs, the collision wasn't with Park Row, it was further up the hill. There's no further details yet on what happened.

Some possibilities:

• Car and bicycle heading down the St Michaels Hill, collision.
• Car and bicycle heading down Horfield Road, collision.
• Bicycle heading up St Michaels Hill, collides with car also going up St Michaels Hill

Those are the normal two vehicles in the same-direction incidents. This junction adds some more, all of which tend to lead to side-on collisions:

• Bicycle heading down St Michaels Hill, collides with car going down Horfield Road, or up St Michaels Hil.
• Bicycle heading down Horfield Road collides with car pulling out St Michaels Hill and heading downhill
• Bicycle heading up St Michaels Hill towards Horfield Road, gets hit by a car going straight up St Michaels Hill

Nobody rational turns from St Michaels Hill into Horfield Road; its too tight. There are other options further up the hill.

The highest risk actions on a bicycle are probably

1. Heading down from St Michaels Hill, where you are exposed to vehicles heading in either direction. Gravity works in the bicycle's favour here, it pulls the bicycle forward and minimises the time side-on to traffic.
2. Heading up towards Horfield Road, where the bicycle rider is curving right and pushing slowly up something steep -any vehicle heading up St Michaels Hill in a hurry may turn over them. It's like a left hook only without the car making the left turn, it just goes straight on (hence faster), even though the road lanes turn rightwards.

On a bicycle, before the building works started, heading up through the BRI car park (the former Terrell Street) was apparently a lower hassle option. Follow the signs to A&E from Park Row, then head out to Horfield Road, or turn right to Marlborough Hill and a final bit of climbing.

 
We have no more details than the BBC article -and wish the cyclist a speedy and full recovery.

More about → Bristol cyclist critical after crash with car

Absolute Vehicle Care Ltd, selling Alloy wheels to outsiders who inconvenience us

Dear info@absolutevehiclecare.com.

Thank you for posting your comment on our alloy wheels are for outsiders posting.

We are aware that we are the highest ranked site when you search blogspot for alloy wheels, and therefore that a comment with some banal chat and back links to your own site would help your page rank. However, as well as using nofollow links to remove them from google's PageRank scores, we have a policy that says if you spam us with attempted to links, we only make fun of you. Therefore, please accept this posting as a gift, but note that the nofollow tag above renders your link worthless and all that you will get is more spam to your email address. Sorry.

There is no point trying to push alloy wheel services to our readers, despite our broad readership in Bristol, because (a) you have a Southampton postcode and are therefore unimportant, and (b) we don't think alloy wheels have a place in the city.

Every driver who has alloy wheels values their wheels. Not only does this prevent them doing operations in the city, it holds up other traffic. Takes this video of the bottom of St Michael's Hill from last month.



The car in front of us is waiting to turn slide into the left turn lane -which has a green light onto Park Row. But it cannot do that as the car in front of it values their wheels too much to scrape against the kerb or to commit more aggressively and get both wheels entirely on the pavement, and they still have a driver-side wingmirror to lose. The selfish decision of the first car to have alloy wheels not only slows them down, it slows down the rest of the city's traffic. And this is on a Sunday! Imagine how much congestion one selfish alloy-wheel owning outsider would cause on a busy weekday morning!

Drivers who value their vehicle's bodywork and paintwork are as much an inconvenience to us locals as pedestrians on zebra crossings and cyclists pootling along. You may not realise this as you live in the provinces and dream of day trips to Portsmouth where you can see three cars in a row, but we city folk know the harsh truth: from a game-theory perspective, alloy wheels place you at a disadvantage. They are easily damaged and, as they are a visible status symbol, everyone else sees that you value your car, therefore are more likely to give way on high conflict roads, such as here, the Horfield Road/St Michael's Hill junction.

Please do not bother posting any more spam advertisement comments, as we will only continue to criticise you for your naive lack of understanding of modern driving techniques and issues, as well as your complete ignorance of game theory and its application in city driving.

Thank you,

The Bristol Traffic Team.

More about → Absolute Vehicle Care Ltd, selling Alloy wheels to outsiders who inconvenience us