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A rider can get killed at any junction. All it takes is a moment of bad driving. This junction is of the same type as countless others and a very old and unupdated design without any particular merit--too many, too narrow approach lanes on all arms, low-quality pedestrian crossings, pedestrian deflection features, etc. Advanced Stop Boxes are not a particularly significant 'safety' feature, so I wouldn't attribute any significance to their presence.
I don't know the method of control there, but looking at StreetView it doesn't look to me as if there's any split-phase arrangement on the eastbound approach of the A214 Crown Lane, which is where stevo_com suggests it must have happened. At any rate, split-phase arrangements are generally not a 'safety' feature but usually adopted because modelling shows higher vehicle throughput than without it, e.g. at junctions where there are a lot of turning manoeuvres and without separate phases drivers would block the centre of the junction while waiting to turn (or, as for the approach of the A215 Beulah Hill, probably for left-turners).
The vast majority of crashes occur at junctions, i.e. where people are going in different directions respective to each other. In London, some reports have put the share of junction crashes at 85%, although for most places it's around 75%. Even junctions with a generally good crash record can see fatal collisions, and some of the fatalities you'll find in 'Rider Down' have occurred at very innocuous-looking junctions.
It's all rather academic, as the fact is that a fatal crash has occurred here, and while I share your distress that it should have happened, it's very important to emphasise that while this design here can function perfectly 'safely' much of the time, some of the time it simply won't, and that's entirely down to what people do.
Everything had been cleared up by this morning and all was back to normal, which is grim when you consider someone lost their life there....
Yes, very much so. It's this whole 'getting back to business as usual' thing. In London, you constantly pass places where someone was killed, whether you know it or not, with very few visible roadside memorials in the case of road traffic collisions.
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Oliver Schick
I cycle from Thornton Heath, so I come from the south along Beulah Hill (the A215) and go north straight across down to West Norwood. That means I don’t turn at the junction so I can imagine that’s more dangerous but as I said it’s pretty well marked out and has filter lights for turning left and cycle safe boxes on all four sides.
Everything had been cleared up by this morning and all was back to normal, which is grim when you consider someone lost their life there....