A more sobering post than my last one and with substantially fewer miles covered.
My commute to the office every day is just under 11 miles in, then, because I take a more circuitous route home, around 13 miles back again. Normally these miles pass by pretty uneventfully, an occasional van driver being awkward or a chatty moment with a cheerful cyclist being the only real happenings.
Today was not one of those days.
My route takes me past Bermondsey tube station every morning and this morning the first hint that something was wrong was while coming up to the lights when I saw there were a lot of people out of their cars talking. A polite van driver stood in the road by his van then asked me to slow down.
I filtered slowly to the front of the stationary traffic, unusual on this part of the route, as I neared the front I could see a gaggle of people around someone prone on the floor, a number of bikes scattered across the road and finally, a large, spreading pool of dark red blood.
I did not see the accident, so I can’t comment on what happened at the crucial moment. I did see around 20-30 cyclists who had stopped their journeys to help, to comfort the man, to call the emergency services and even to stop traffic.
I didn’t stay. There were a lot of people already with the injured man, including someone who looked competent with a large first aid kit. I came to the conclusion that I could not add anything of value to the situation, not being a medic or practiced first aider, all I would have been was an additional voyeur on a moment that didn’t need another one.
As I moved away I caught the eye of another cyclist who looked ashen and said, “I don’t think I can cycle any more”. I didn’t know how to respond really, beyond agreeing that this had made me more aware of the danger of our choice of transport. However, I don’t think this will stop me cycling or even change how I cycle particularly. The chances of a crash or injury are no greater after having seen the accident than they were before. I have always been acutely aware of the vulnerability of cyclists on the road, this just underlined that point.
I had maybe a couple of miles left of my journey after I passed the crash. They were quiet, uneventful and perfectly normal. I saw the paramedic motorcycle go by a few seconds after I moved away from the accident, followed closely by a paramedic car, the sirens sounded a little more urgent than usual.