• Here's a true story that happened to me that seems to cover many of the points raised.
    I was riding through london on my brakeless fixed wheel and feeling good so I decided to jump the next red light. It was sunny, visibility was good, roads were dry.
    Unfortunately what I hadn't noticed was a man on a horse. I skidded to try and stop, even grazed the rim, but to no avail. I hit the horse, at speed, from behind and ended up with my head inside the horse's rectum.
    Maybe a helmet would have prevented this, we will never know.
    Obviously my first thought was "Thank God I'm still alive". My second thought was "I am suffocating and am going to die with my head up a horse's backside". People were not going to say "Well, it's how he would have wanted to go. At least he died doing something he loved".
    Then I felt tugging on my feet. I later learned that a crowd had gathered and by chance the famous wrestler Kendo Nagasaki was amongst them and thanks to his enormous strength he was able to pull me from the horse's innards.
    I've never been so glad to breathe the clean clean air of London. And when a nearby window cleaner threw his bucket of water over me to wash off some of the horse-bottom debris it was even better.
    Anway, to cut a long story longer, the case turned in to a legal minefield. The horse's owner wanted to claim for damages to his nag's behind (getting ahead of myself here but, although my head is only normal size, I caused quite an amount of irreversible stretching and the horse will have to wear an equine nappy for the rest of it's life) but it turned out that, although I had jumped a red light on a brakeless death machine, not only was the horse rider drunk and using an I-pod but the horse was high on reefer and had only just been released from HMP Black Beauty having done a 12 stretch for dealing. So questions of liability became complicated.
    I am sad to say that the LCC were of no use whatsoever. Three times I phoned them and told the whole story and each time the person on the other end of the line just started giggling and, on one occasion, Iam sure he put me on speakerphone and I heard other so called cycling-advocates laughing in the background.
    As of now the case is still unsettled and I have to endure being called a variety of hurtful nicknames by my colleagues.
    Anway thanks for listening and I hope you have all learned a valuable lesson from my experience.

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