A motorist who veered off the road and mounted the pavement, slamming into a row of parked bikes, was “spoken to” but not arrested by police following the shocking incident, which left a female cyclist requiring hospital treatment for “non-life threatening injuries”.
The bizarre crash, footage of which has been posted on social media, took place on Sunday morning on Upper Clapton Road in Hackney, east London, at around 10.40am.
In the CCTV footage, the driver of a silver BMW can be seen travelling in the left-hand lane, before suddenly veering off the road and onto the footpath, colliding with a set of cycle racks containing two Lime hire bikes.
The motorist mows through the ‘cycle park’ before hitting a woman, who was seemingly locking her own bike to one of the stands, throwing her into the air and across the pavement, while breaking her bike in two in the process.
The driver then comes to a stop a few yards away on the footpath, as passers-by rush to help the stricken cyclist. London Ambulance Service confirmed that a woman was treated by an ambulance crew at the scene and taken to a London trauma centre as a priority, where her injuries were later revealed to have been non-life threatening.
While the clip of the incident has sparked speculation on social media surrounding the circumstances that led to the crash, one resident, who lives on the road, told road.cc that locals believe that the motorist may have “passed out” at the wheel, before suddenly waking up after they had ploughed through the bike stands and striking the cyclist.
According to the resident, who witnessed the scene of the collision a few hours after it took place, also said that the Lime Bikes stationed at the ‘cycle park’ were flattened and that the cyclist’s bike was “snapped in half”.
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As of Thursday morning, the cyclist’s lock and helmet remained at the scene, along with the destroyed bike stands, though the bikes have since been removed.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police told road.cc that the BMW driver was not arrested in the wake of the collision, but merely “spoken to”.
“Police were called at around 10.40hrs on Sunday, 22 September to reports of a road traffic collision,” the Met spokesperson said. “A car collided with a female pedestrian. She was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
“The driver of the car was spoken to by police. They were not arrested.”
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While locals have attributed the crash to the driver allegedly passing out at the wheel, the lack of police action – and the incident itself – is strikingly similar to a shocking collision which took place earlier this year in Norwich, when the driver of a Ferrari lost control of his sports car on a city centre road with a 20mph limit, before mounting the kerb and smashing into a bike rack.
CCTV footage of the crash showed the moment Ross Mendham, a former Dragon’s Den contestant and son of former Norwich City footballer Peter Mendham, left the road on Norwich’s Rose Lane, hitting and destroying the roadside bike racks which prevented him ploughing across a protected cycleway and onto the pavement.
However, despite narrowly missing two pedestrians and a runner in the shocking high-speed crash, Norfolk Police later confirmed that nobody had been injured or arrested for their role in it.
Mendham did, however, appear in court two days later, not in relation to a driving offence, but for having breached his bail conditions after being accused of knocking his pregnant girlfriend unconscious with a punch to the face, the trial for which is set to take place in 2026.
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24 comments
Seems to me the police need to be arrested for incompetence and they could know the drivers and got backhanded cash! Disgusting, did they arrest the injured for being in the way of the cars?
I look forward to the House of Lords debate on the problem of cars mounting pavements.
Can you get away with this in industry - serious injury caused but no investigation and an acceptance that it's just one of those things so jog on? The police should be prosecuted.
I saw somebody drive fully on the pavement just now to avoid a closed road. I'm sure he wasn't passed out.
I've seen motorists veer towards the kerb whilst phone-distracted. And phone-distraction is endemic - just walk any urban pavement during heavy traffic, look at the motorists, 10% of them are on their phones. It's blatant, because there is zero prospect of being caught. It would appear that you can even smash through street furniture and plough into a pedestrian, still the police are not interested.
10% of them are on their phones. It's blatant, because there is zero prospect of being caught
On the contrary, I catch them fairly frequently (admittedly, that's still a very low probability of being caught) but the attitude of Lancashire Constabulary is that it's not a real offence and they refuse to respond or take action unless the offender is somebody they don't like. Bent coppers are the problem.
Regardless of the Met police's frankly useless response, I'd love to know what this does to the driver's insurance renewal.
If the driver had a medical issue then the police should have the power to revoke their licence untill it is confirmed they are safe to drive.
Maybe a change in the law is required to give the police this power.
If they don't have a medical issue then the police should deal with this as careless/dangerous driving.
Either way, the police's lack of action could lead to repercussions should the driver be involved in a future incident leading to serious injury/death which could have been prevented had the police DONE SOMETHING USEFULL.
Maybe a change in the law is required to give the police this power
No, it's a major change in the police that's required. They're much worse than 'useless'
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police told road.cc that the BMW driver was not arrested in the wake of the collision, but merely “spoken to”.
Were they a cyclist? If so, Ian DS will be foaming at the mouth, but if not, well, it's just one of those things.
The police should have the power to suspend someone's driving license in these kinds of cases. If it's a genuine medical condition, then that needs to be fully investigated before the driver should be allowed back on the road and if it's not, then charges should be brought against the driver for causing injury and destroying property.
Yes, this should be an automatic suspension of thier license until medically cleared to drive again.
In 1979 I was told by the DVLA to see a silly eye chap in Bath, he said that both my eyes could not see the red dot between 12 & 3, how long did have that problem, might have been since the Menningitues or all your life, so I asked why can't I carry on driving, he said on approaching a roundabout you can't see the vehicles on the right, my answer was my head can turn like yours and I expect other drivers to slow down on approaching these junctions as I do. 7 years later I got my license back, and never did stop driving cars just trucks and coaches. never had an accident either! I have now 80.
Your mistake was not going to see someone in Barnard Castle.
(sarcasm)
I presume the police actually did some kind of investigation, e.g. got a hospital report on the driver, checked their phone records to see if they were using their phone, breathalysed them, etc, rather than just accepting their excuses.
(/sarcasm)
I only say this because I've been a victim of a SMIDSY where the police were extremely quick to tell me that negligence wasn't involved, and to dismiss witness reports of a phone-distracted driver, and overlook the fact that I was lit up like a christmas tree and wearing high vis. It is remarkable how quickly the police can come to the conclusion that there was nothing untoward with an incident, without any kind of investigation.
Edit: just to be clear on how quick this was - I was still lying on my back in the road, waiting for an ambulance to arrive and check me over, when they told me that it wasn't negligence. Literally within three minutes of arriving on the scene. The only check they had done was to breathalyse the driver, whcih i understand is a mandatory thing when a driver crashes into a pedestrian or cyclist.
This is probably the same reason that the official DfT car/bike KSI report has a section at the back basically telling you to ignore the "combined" stats because of the massive bias in the attending police officer's initial assessment. It's probably also why DfT stats (which are currently based on "the attending officer's confidence") show that 29% of car crashes can be attributed to speeding, yet a 2018 study by numerous forces that used actual accident investigation data found it was more like 53%.
Will someone tell Si Richardson of GCN that the cycling casualty statistics for GB are only useful when you have run out of toilet rolls! A year ago Si gleefully announced how much safer our roads are, according to the statistics😡
If it wasn't negligence then what was it?
"just one of those things". The driver "just didn't see you". Which apparently isn't negligent....
Eight minutes for a drug wipe. Though a positive can come through quicker if very +ve.
If it was a genuine medical emergency for the driver I think I can understand them not being arrested but there has to be some form of action to stop them driving at least in the short term!
There does seem to be a spate of people with no medical history of "passing out" but then do so while committing some crime while driving. Then miraculously the condition goes away and their fitness to be licensed to drive is never questioned.
It's the excuse you use as an alternative to 'the sun was in my eyes'
Wimbledon school crash? Spontaneous onset one-off epilepsy event, bookended by total amnesia.
That's true - if it weren't for the incompetence paradox. Commonly accepted in courts this means you can use your incompetence as a driver as a defense or mitigation - without that actually being an aggravating factor. Or the need for you to return to face another careless / inconsiderate driving charge.
OTOH they could just use the "Scottish defense" (apparently also used for a long time elsewhere in the UK; in other contexts the "Murdoch response") whereby you say you have no memory of / don't recall the incident in question. Why give more detail that someone could pick you up on? Let others worry about what actually happened and why.
It seems the jury very often put the best possible interpretation on this. Or at least are not impressed by the prosecution apparently harrassing another normal driver like themselves, who was making a vital trip from A to B with no intention of doing harm to anyone. Works astonishingly well...