MotoGP ace Nicky Hayden dies five days after cycling crash

Both incidents are truly awful. Condolences to families and friends.

I tend to try to work out what has happened in these incidents to see if there's anything I can personally learn from them that would help me avoid a similar fate - not to apportion blame. (Maybe it's just my way of dealing with the increased fear reports or cyclist deaths might provoke?) From looking at the photos from the local press (linked in article) of the incident that Hayden was involved, my guess is that:

- He left the end of a road that had a stop sign (and may or may not have stopped - unconfirmed reports suggest not - but we still have no indication of what level of caution he emerged with if he did not stop) and the junction visibility appears to be poor due to high hedges.

- The motor vehicle was probably travelling at a fairly considerable speed. I would guess this as it appears Hayden's bike landed some distance down the road, in a ditch, and the location of the main impact damage being on the windscreen rather than the front of the car, where there is smaller impact damage around the nearside headlight. This would suggest the bicycle being swept out from under the rider before they fell down significantly. Of course we know nothing about the speed limit or the visibility of the junction, signage etc from the direction the car approached, though that only really affects culpability I suppose.

- If he had been wearing ear-phones (shouldn't be used to judge culpability in my view) and if the vehicle was approaching at excessive speed, it perhaps could have made a difference to whether he heard it approaching and could perhaps have made a small difference to judging its speed.

So what I'd take from this for my own cycling, based purely upon these guesses, is that I need to remember to look out for blind junctions and take particular care at them, and try to remember to assume there may be an idiot driving too fast on the other road. Sometimes you just can't see everything coming, hearing vehicles approaching may sometimes help, and I still won't ride with ear-phones.

Whether or not Hayden stopped at the stop sign, I really wish some countries would stop using stop signs as traffic calming measures. If they are only used where junctions have dangerously poor visibility (as they are in the UK, mostly) I think people tend to be much more careful to observe them. It's a bit like crying wolf. I'm not sure what it's like in Italy, never having driven or ridden there. If riding in a new place. I know in the USA they are widely used for traffic calming, and I note this is where Hayden came from, and I wonder whether it may have shaped his perception of their purpose.

Ride in peace #69 

RIP to both Hayden AND Julianna Viellehner.

Road.cc editors - doesn't a female triathlete losing both her legs and subsequently dying deserve her own story rather than mashing it in with someone else because they happened to be  treated in same hospital and died the same day? 

you still have to stop at a stop sign if that's what happened. doesn't make it any less tragic - but i see most ppl blasting through stops and lights without even looking all day long every day (and some that get hit) they just expect the car will always stop even when it has priority. wtf.

fck, that's sad.  Walk away from 150mph crashes on the track and not from anything on the road.  Don't care about fault, it's a life lost.

If you look at the car the damage is all on the passenger side window. Most likely car didn't even see him, ploughed into him and ultimately has killed him. Please rephrase title to say car driver was involved with the death of Nicky Hayden. Rarely is the cyclist at fault