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news
Metropolitan Police visit scene of HGV and cyclist near miss caught on film
Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service have today visited the location near Blackfriars Bridge where a near miss involving a lorry and a cyclist was filmed last week.
Cyclist 4 Chords No Net who filmed the incident, which happened where Cycle Superhighway 3 crosses the Victoria Embankment between Temple and Blackfriars Bridge, said that there are two major problems at the location.
One is that hoardings associated with works on the Thames Tideway ‘Super Sewer’ project mean that motorists travelling westbound cannot see cyclists waiting to cross the road, and likewise the riders’ view of oncoming traffic is blocked.
Secondly, the phasing of the traffic signals is such that the lights for cyclists turn from red to amber at the same time as the lights for motorists turn red.
Fortunately, the lorry driver was able to brake in sufficient time to avoid hitting the cyclists crossing the road.
In a tweet this morning, the Met’s Cycle Safety Team said: “Many of you may have seen the footage of the near miss between the HGV and Cyclist on Victoria Embankment at Blackfriars.
“We have visited the location this morning and all relevant stakeholders have been contacted to find a solution.”
They added: “There is a fault in the light phasing which is being addressed.”
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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24 comments
The hoardings are now fixed with much improved sight lines.
I think the west bound set of lights down further are also set to go red early enough that amber gambling should be eliminated.
Look like there are three issues here
1) Motorist not slowing down to stop when the lights turn amber
2) Cyclists setting off when the lights are Red+Amber
3) The light sequence has no all red duration to allow a margin of error for the above rule breakers.
If everyone obeyed the official rules in issues 1&2 then issue 3 probably would not be a problem. The lack of an all red period is probably down to someone creating a sequence based on what people should be doing rather than what people actually do.
So in my opinion the light sequence is not wrong, however because there are people not obeying the rules of the road (maybe due to lack of enforcement) there is a need for the infrastructure to build in a margin of error.
Almost, but you omit the visibility problem caused by the hording. So (1) needs the addendum '...even though in this case he can't actually see the cross-traffic'.
Which surely makes it worse than the usual motorist treatment of amber lights? In fact, I don't see why it doesn't qualify as careless driving, what with being worse than the common and apparently accepted level of risky behaviour.
(Am annoyed that STATO has made me have to flip back-and-forth on the lorry driver's degree of cupability! Hopefully nobody will turn up to say that in fact there is no amber phase after all)
I'm perplexed as to why people are still arguing about the lorry driver... he's clearly tried to barrel through a light that was turning red.
The light phasing gap that is apparently missing here is to allow for drivers who try to do exactly this and reduces the chance of them crashing into someone else, or indeed killing a number of vulnerable road users.
Can't have been easy to stop that huge truck in time, well done driver.
Since a green light gives a road user permission to go 'if the way is clear' then whoever approved the hoardings has created a hazard, and as they should be a suitably experienced professional, then they should be held responsible for any incident here.
Presumably the hoardings are there to secure a construction site, they do not need to be a solid wall, open metal fencing would allow drivers and riders to see each other, seems quite simple to me
Since a green light gives a road user permission to go 'if the way is clear' then whoever approved the hoardings has created a hazard, and as they should be a suitably experienced professional, then they should be held responsible for any incident here.
Presumably the hoardings are there to secure a construction site, they do not need to be a solid wall, open metal fencing would allow drivers and riders to see each other, seems quite simple to me
Yes, there is/was a problem with the light phasing. But that still doesn't get round the fact that the Highway Code (and common sense ) says. "Green light - you may go if the way is clear" It looks to me like the first cyclist using the crossing did not make much of an effort to see if the way was clear.
It's worth noting that Cemex is one of (the few) construction companies that does give its truck drivers compulsory cycle training. This came about following a cycling fatality involving one of the firm's trucks (there's plenty on that online if you want to research it).
I crossed the road at this spot while the hoarding was there and can confirm that it is/was a real danger spot. Whoever put the hoarding there simply didn't think about pedestrian/cyclist safety.
The truck driver was not at fault in this instance.
I'm not convinced there's a light timing issue here, just crap driving. You can see the eastbound lights go red and the traffic stop at 0:08 in the video. 3 vehicles go through westbound after the eastbound traffic stops (2 white vans and a car) - probably 'normal' amber gambling. Then a full six seconds after the eastbound traffic stopped, Mr Cemex Lorry attempts to barrel through.
Either 1) there is a huge error in the traffic lights wiring where the eastbound and westbound traffic lane lights are massively out of sync (in which case why has there not been carnage previously at what is clearly an extremely busy crossing?), or 2) the lorry driver was deliberately running a red as he couldn't see anyone waiting, or 3) the driver was 'distracted'. I know what I believe is likely, and it's not option 1)...
Sun would have been behind the lorry as well
The video shows the lights the cemex lorry stopped at change 6 seconds after the previous set (and ones in opposite direction) and they go green to red with no amber phase, so the lorry was driving at a green and then suddenly it was red and a cyclist was pulling out. He braked at the point it changed, he reacted as quickly we would expect of a driver, but the setup of his lights and the lack of gap to the cyclist lights changing is a serious issue.
If there's genuinely no amber phase (are you saying you have seen that for yourself and it's definitely the case?), then that entirely changes my view about the culpability of the lorry driver. And conversely lowers further my view of whoever designed that crossing and signed off on the hordings.
Too many people safe in offices in this country don't seem to fully think through the concquences of their decisions. And there don't seem to be the systems in place to train them and give them a reason to do so.
(Could call it "the Grenfell problem" - though, come to think of it, ironically, Grenfell-type cladding could make even those decion-makers offices unsafe)
Sorry i was wrong, misread the info and the first part of the video with the bus blocking the light made me think that there was no amber. However as has been pointed out there is no ALL RED so unless you do an emergency stop as soon as you see the amber (which is what it would be going at the speed limit) then cyclists would be pulling out immediately.
I don't follow you.
The section at the end of the video shows there is no "all red" phase, i.e. there is no moment when both the carriageway and crossing lights are both showing red. However, the carriageway goes from amber to red as it should - you can see this most clearly at 1:52 into the video.
What is clearly wrong with the timing is that it makes no allowance for the fact that in reality, drivers do amber gamble and run red lights regularly. Equally, people using the crossing are likely to start to cross before it turns green. On top of that, there is obviously the visibility issue.
Assuming that what is shown at the end of the video was the same timing the lorry driver had, the driver did not stop for the amber. The assumption is that the cyclists (on both sides) appear to have gone on amber/red. Assuming the cyclists did this, then the driver actually went through on red, by a second or so.
If the cyclists waited for the green, then the driver was very clearly going through on red.
I hate the word 'stakeholders' seems to imply anonnimity for people responsible.
Shit happens, when it does - point it out. I highly doubt it was deliberately done to endanger people or even to micro-optimise the through-put - humans likely involved.
I agree it's unlikely that such an appallingly bad situation was put in place deliberately.
It's far more likely that it's just a result of people not giving a shit, and that proper systems are not in place to make them do things properly in the first place.
As namby pamby as it sounds, the last bit is actually the worst in my view. Making sure that bad people cannot under any circumstances do bad things is incredibly difficult. In contrast, putting systems in place to stop stupid/careless/indifferent/average human beings doing something dangerous is relatively easy.
Because in my view this was obviously dangerous. As best you can see from the video, those hoardings go right up to the road. And it's equally obvious that human beings, especially in London, will run red lights and will start to go the moment the lights change.
...but which hadn't been addressed before now, and wasn't going to be addressed, until this video appeared, went viral, and made us look silly.
The Met’s Cycle Safety Team has nothing to do with the light phasing, which is being addressed after being found to the at fault - doesn't sound unreasonable to action things only once you know about them unless we happen to know that it was already reported.
The Met surely aren't to blame for that. But someone's in charge of this hording/light combo and whoever that is should have thought things through a bit more to start with, not waited for someone to point out to them that they'd created a hazard.
Sorry, yes, that was more like what I'd actually meant to say (wrist slapped).
There's a fault in the hoarding design and layout too. It wouldn't be legal for motor vehicles so why should it be for cyclists and pedestrians?
There was a comment on the met police tweet saying that the hoarding had been taken down that evening.
My word, an actual, dare I say timely, response to a road safety issue for cyclists?
How singular.