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Broken bike (CC licensed image by garryknight, www.flickr.com)Updated: 16-year-old girl killed in Cambridge named as Beth McDermott
Cambridgeshire police have named the young cyclist killed in a collision with two cars on Wednesday night as Elizabeth Helen Byrne-McDermott.
Cambridge News reports that her college principal, Christine Sherwin, described her as “a very creative young person with brilliant ideas”.
Beth McDermott was attended by ambulance crews and taken to Addenbrooke’s hospital after the crash between Milton Road and Birch Close, Cambridge just before 7pm.
She died of her injuries during the night.
Ms Sherwin said that Beth's classmates and college staff were struggling to come to terms with what had happened.
She said: “She was a very creative young person with brilliant ideas and was able to demonstrate an independent approach to her studies very early on in the courses.
“She was committed to her studies and always willing to put in the extra effort to achieve her very best.
“She was a popular student who got on really well with everyone in lessons.
“Staff and students at the college were very upset and are still coming to terms with this devastating news and our sympathies go out to her parents and all those who knew her.”
Witnesses reported a bobble hat circled with chalk in the middle of the road outside the Milton Arms pub. On the adjacent grass verge was bike with a front wicker basket, bent back on itself.
The cars involved are reported to be a yellow Peugeot 307 and a grey Audi A3 TDI. Nobody from the cars was injured. The Peugeot had a smashed windscreen.
Police have asked that anyone who saw the crash should call 101.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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47 comments
Oh jeez, so sad especially at this time of year.
Bobble hats are no helmet!
Yeah it is sad. But where does it say she died of head injuries that would have been prevented by a cycle helmet. At more than a 15mph impact they are no more use than a bobble hat. There is almost no difference between the KSI rates for cyclists and pedestrians and that's because if you get whacked hard by a car the fact that you are wearing some laminated polystyrene on your head is neither here nor there. You are usually going to dies of what most blunt trauma RTC victims die of and that is massive internal injuries to major organs only one which is the brain.
Cycle helmets protect your head from minor contusions from falls at lower speeds. Introduce any significant mass even into that equation such as a motor vehicle and the energy transferred is way beyond a cycle helmet.
Wear one if you like I do for MTB and when I have to for certain events. I won't do you any harm nor will a St Christopher medal. But please don't go thinking it's a life saver that means you won't die if you get hit hard by a car. Neither the helmet and the St Christopher has any real magic powers. That's just voodoo physics.
Oh, get over yourself. She's barely cold and you're picking a fight about helmets
This, a million times over.
Here Here!
I understand the point you are making. I acknowledged it. But let me ask you what the point was in the report of mentioning the "bobble hat"? I'm interested to learn what you thought was going on there?
The way I see it, for your reference, is that mention of the bobble hat was to make sure the victim was painted as someone who was a bit reckless.
A bit like when victims of other sorts of crimes have the length of their skirt mentioned as if that was relevant to someone else's actions and they were sort of "asking for it."
and the inclusion of that sort of comment is specifically designed to undermine the victim. ie "short skirt" or "no helmet" I mean.. well, what did she expect?
Well that's your opinion. I took it as underlining the poignancy of the situation, that a young girl lost her life.
My sympathies are for her family.
Would a plastic hat have stopped her from being hit? Lets deal with the real issue and stop blaming the victims!
We need to make the roads safer for all, we need to adopt a Sustainable Safety approach.
You are damned right about victim blaming. "witnesses report a bobble hat lying in the road "
is code for
"... just so you know readers, it was her own fault because she wasn't wearing a helmet."
What's worse is that posters here also read that and understood and instead of asking whether it was relevant or had any bearing on the injuries sustained immediately commented that a bobble hat was no substitute for a helmet.
Agreed that this may seem an unseemly spat about helmets so quickly after this tragedy, but allowing victim blaming to go unanswered in the hope that there will be some point at which it will be appropriate to counter it, is naive. This is how the myths and assumptions are propagated.
I saw that comment about the bobble hat for what it was. A not so cryptic reference to the fact that the girls was somehow an irresponsible negligent cyclist.
yes, i'm sure you've previously noticed road.cc's staunchly pro-helmet stance on numerous occasions.
If you look, you'll see that oozaveered's post is a response to Guyz2100's comment that "a bobble hat is no helmet".
I assume that road.cc doesn't have its own Cambridge correspondent. The Cambridge News, however does, and I assume that is where road.cc's report comes from, as that is precisely what the Cambridge News has to say on the subject.
The Cambridge News has a well-established reputation for rabid anti-cycling sentiment, so yes, I think their mention of the bobble hat was specifically aimed at drawing a link between the poor girl's fate and her lack of helmet.
So, if you are going to rail against anyone, rail against the Cambridge News.
Paranoia?
It doesn't "seem". It is an unseemly and tasteless spat about helmets and there is nothing after the "but" that in anyway justifies it.
RIP, Elizabeth.
Tragic indeed. My heart goes out to her family and friends. Extremely sad news.
Agree, very sad.
Tragic, how sad
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