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news
Cardiff bus on Westgate Street (via GoogleStreetView).PNGConcussed cyclist staggers head-first into Cardiff bus after crashing in the rain (+ link to video)
A CCTV camera captured the moment a concussed cyclist who had just crashed in the rain staggered head-first into a moving bus in Cardiff.
Just Eat delivery rider Joseph Nicholson, aged 24, says he has no recollection of the incident, which happened on the Welsh capital’s Westgate Street close to the Principality Stadium.
He said he initially thought he had injured his thumb but was unaware of his head injury, and turned his bike upside down to reseat the chain but could not remember what happened next.
It was only when he saw the CCTV footage that he learnt he had staggered into the road and into the path of a bus.
"I still don't think I've processed how lucky I am, looking at [the video] there are so many variables,” he told Wales Online, which has a video of the incident.
"It caught me on my neck – that could've been head on, face on, whatever.
"I was heading to St David's to pick up an order and the bike gave way on the metal ground cover – it was raining – so it just slipped.
"I fell, and I hit my head without realising. I got back up and all I can remember is complaining that I'd hurt my thumb.
"I just didn't realise I'd hit my head."
Mr Nicholson, who lives in Newport, spent several hours in hospital and said that immediately before stumbling into the road he experienced a sensation similar to when "you get up too quickly off the sofa.
"That's the last memory I have until after being hit by the bus. I've been knocked out on my feet, my body's taken over and I've stumbled into the road and been hit by the bus.
"I’d like to thank the bus driver, I have little to no memory of the time before being in the ambulance but I recall him consoling me and being very kind.
"And of course all of the public service staff at the scene and at the hospital. I was seen to immediately and treated very well at the hospital and am incredibly grateful."
He added that his close escape had made him rethink riding without a helmet.
"I've gotten away with one, it could've been fatal,” he explained. "I would say to riders 'wear a helmet'."
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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28 comments
Obviously you can't prove that a helmet would have prevented concussion, but it seems likely that it would have at least reduced it. I've written off a helmet, and I remember clearly how hard that impact was. I can't say for sure that I would have been killed/concussed/bleeding without it but I feel confident in saying that it would have hurt a lot. As it was, I felt no pain at all (apart from in my wallet to replace the helmet).
The arguments against helmets (and more specifically, their compulsion, or expectation of wearing them) is not that they don't help when you headbutt tarmac: I'm pretty confident that they do.
The issue is that compulsion or expectation of wearing them deters people from cycling at all, which has a far greater negative effect on both health and safety. Countries with high cycling rates (e.g. the Netherlands) generally have some of the lowest rates of helmet wearing, and the lowest rate of cycling KSIs. But that doesn't mean that those people in those countries who do fall off and smash their heads on the road wouldn't be better off wearing helmets. They probably would. But then again, so would pedestrians who trip and fall.
In this particular case, a helmet might well have made a big difference. In the overall picture of cycle safety, helmet use is a distraction from the real issues.
BTB - I didn’t see anyone claiming it was better to crash. I did suggest it was disingenuous to point out the delivery rider would have been better not to have crashed in the rain on slippy street furniture, and I implied that a strategy of never ever crashing was probably unrealistic.
Carrying on my fallacy bingo, we had the introduction of the pro-peloton strawman, which in itself was a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Maybe ‘eople like you’ is ad hom? Then we had a move of the goalposts once it was clear the guy had a baseball cap.
Regarding the speed, my understanding is as below. Test standard is 11.7 mph to flat. Perhaps someone with more time than me to grind their axe on this particular anvil could calculate, frame by frame, the normal velocity of Deliveroo man’s head as it strikes whatever sort of anvil, with appropriate error bars. Then compare that to the distribution of g experienced at different velocities.
”When tested in accordance with 5.3 and 5.4 the peak acceleration shall not, for each impact, exceed
250 g for the velocity of 5,42 +0,1, m/s on the flat anvil, and 4,57 +0,1 m/s on the kerbstone anvil.”
BTB.He wasn't wearing a helmet so i can't understand your usual anti helmet stance in this case.
I mistook his cap for a helmet, seems my greatest risk is my failing eyesight
So did I. It was only on the last lines of the report I realised he hadn't. I then went to cook some popcorn and waited.
Plenty of debatable logic here. Some of it upthread, the rest is from applying arguments commonly heard to this example.
”No use wearing a helmet as they are only designed to protect at <12mph...”
Man falls off at <12 mph without lid, gets concussion.
“It was his own fault, with my Tom Pidcock riding skills I’d never ever cock up a bend in dodgy weather”
”He should have gone into a foetal position to protect his head, so his own fault again for not having ninja skills”
”The only reason hat wearers bash their heads is because the helmet makes the head bigger. Without it my head is so small that it never hits the ground. Must be his own fault for having a big head.”
More importantly, it does show it is important to take a concussion seriously - don’t “put me back on my bike”.
The moment you can prove to me that he'd have got concussion if not wearing a helmet is the moment you can call my logic debatable...
We see clearly that he got concussion whilst not wearing a helmet, so that is proven.
If I assume you put the logical operator ‘not’ in the wrong place, then you are challenging me to prove he would have avoided concussion if wearing a helmet. I can’t prove that, and made I no such claim. I did claim that some argue a helmet is useless because it is designed for impacts at < 12 mph.
Are they designed for impacts at <12mph? I think it is reasonable to suppose this is true.
Do some people argue that this makes helmets useless? Again, it is true that people argue this.
Do they reduce risk of concussion in such circumstances? Given that they are designed and tested this way, and manufacturers have made claims that they do reduce concussion risk under their test conditions, I think my logic is appropriate.
And as per this video, man falls off WITH lid and gets a serious concussion, the helmet failed to stop his brain from being sloshed about in his skull such that he suffered a clearly debilitating concussion, he was like Anthony Joshua after being battered by Ruiz at the weekend, he had no lue whatsoever as to what was going on.
Now tell me again how this helmet prevented a concussion from a low speed fall?
Hat wearers have an increased chance of bashing their heads due to helmets (not will only), this is patently obvious to all but the simple minded/those that don't understand putting a helmet on increases your head size. Hat wearers increase the chances of being involved in an incident, this is again easily shown, just look at the incident rate in the pro ranks post helmet rules, the risk taking in the last near 15 years has gone up to a ridiculous level and thus the number of crashes massively exceed what they were before the helmet rules.
But eople like you are simply blind to the facts.
He wasn't wearing a helmet - just a cap.
Oh, the irony.
From someone who has just got the main fact wrong.
*facepalm*
I've seen this happen just in front of me when driving. This guy somehow went over the bars and then when into what I can only describe as a slapstick silent comedy routine of trying to remount whilst dazed and falling again and so on. Luckily the cars stopped and a ped chaperoned him to the pavement to gather himself.
Shame the one on the mobile phone who even watches him stumble into the road and almost go under the wheel has such an important call to make he just continues on it.
There was no car vs bike vs ped agenda to it. The ped was literally next to him on the pavement. He was simply first to help.
I wasn't making it into an agenda, just pointing out that whilst someone was in obvious distress and almost became a horrible statistic, the person in that video just didn't seem to care and it was a shame it wasn't your one.
"I've gotten away with one, it could've been fatal,” he explained. "I would say to riders 'wear a helmet'."
Or better still, don't ride over metal drains when it's raining.
Full plate armour is the only thing that makes sense.
You've only got one body (though with bilateralism, you do have two of some things), so why just protect the head? Also, which organ is it that's telling you to protect your head?
This line of logic makes total sense, said no one ever.
Well, that's just a self-referential paradox.
Mind you, I was always puzzled as to why Blackthorn "cider" needed to add sweeteners to it.
I did wonder what the message would be from the NeverHelmets (
) as it was pretty much the only thing covered in the safety ratings (ie low speed fall to the floor). Looking at the video it was either a very small metal covering or he was mistaken and it was painted road markings he skidded on.
I thought that, but there is a metal covering there - here's another cyclist negotiating it: https://goo.gl/maps/jjj8AzJ7nLzuQMMb7
I recently took a tumble on a bend in the wet - it is on my normal every day route to work (except for when I decide to go a different way
). I'm still not sure if it was the metal manhole cover that took me out or the paint that the council has added accross the whole junction (to make the tarmac look like block paving) - combined with my own poor judgement of course. I've seen at least one other person take a tumble there. Ofcourse it could be a combination of paint and the manhole cover.
double post, but while I'm here... looks like it is quite a large double manhole cover
https://goo.gl/maps/XNQTLoM4zEnzsndMA
Yep, saw the other link. Not as obvious as some others on the same stretch, awfully placed and I suspect the council thought unicycles would park there if they didn't paint across it. However avoidable if noticed in time.
With all the yellow paint on it and surrounding it, it is pretty well hidden. The council could probably have left the double yellow lines off it - if they terminated them and restarted them properly - as you say, theres a chance that someone would have parked the unicycle there (or a motorcycle perpendicular to the kerb).
They are frequently placed on junctions because inspection chambers/manholes are required where there is a change in direction. Apparently it is possible to get composite manhole covers that are a lot less slippery when wet - I don't think they even cost more than ductile covers. Perhaps their use should be mandated for all new/replacement covers.
Just for the sake of clarity, are you claiming that it is better to crash with a helmet than not to crash?
The speed of his head hitting the floor was almost certainly more than 10mph, so higher than the speed helmets are rated for, which used to be 12mph but the standards were revised down some time ago.
Another Burt 'fact'.
EN1078 is the EU standard so would be applicable in this case.
Test velocity is quoted at 5.42 m/s or 12.124 mph.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EN_1078