I was teaching my son and daughter about this topic a couple of weeks ago - she's doing cycling proficiency stuff at school and they live just next to a builders merchants. The people who work there were really kind in letting us sit each of the kids in the cab of the lorry, while the other pretended to cycle up alongside. Hopefully they now understand the blindspots.
I tried to explain the turning circles of LWB vehicles but I'm not sure they fully understood, but I did get them to accept the simple rule that if you never get ahead of the rear axle, you can't get run over/closed off by a lorry.
For this lady to have been run over the way she was, she had to have been ahead of the rear axle. And whilst she was in the position, she fell, for reasons unknown. Which reminds me again of my children and a crash one of them had a few weeks ago. Heading through a gap between bollards, they were paying so much attention to missing the one on the right, they clipped their left hand on the other bollard and fell over. I did exactly that as a kid - but only once, it hurt like a fuck, skinned my knuckles and I never did it again. But what if you've never done that? Now, this is pure speculation but, how does "an experienced cyclist" just fall over? Well if you're ahead of the rear axle, so the lorry suddenly start to close the gap on you, I would (and I expect we all would) be paying attention to the side of the lorry closing in fast. If that meant you then clipped you left hand on the railings there at Elephant roundabout, it's not unreasonable to see the cyclist's front wheel suddenly flipping left, which pitches them off the bike to the right and unfortunately straight under the lorry's wheels they were trying to avoid.
Given that there were questions earlier in the thread in the nature of "how could she just 'fall off'", I just wanted to point out one possibility, which I've seen before. It's unfortunate, but any "coming together" between a ped or a cyclist and an HGV is likely to have a seriously bad outcome.
I was teaching my son and daughter about this topic a couple of weeks ago - she's doing cycling proficiency stuff at school and they live just next to a builders merchants. The people who work there were really kind in letting us sit each of the kids in the cab of the lorry, while the other pretended to cycle up alongside. Hopefully they now understand the blindspots.
I tried to explain the turning circles of LWB vehicles but I'm not sure they fully understood, but I did get them to accept the simple rule that if you never get ahead of the rear axle, you can't get run over/closed off by a lorry.
For this lady to have been run over the way she was, she had to have been ahead of the rear axle. And whilst she was in the position, she fell, for reasons unknown. Which reminds me again of my children and a crash one of them had a few weeks ago. Heading through a gap between bollards, they were paying so much attention to missing the one on the right, they clipped their left hand on the other bollard and fell over. I did exactly that as a kid - but only once, it hurt like a fuck, skinned my knuckles and I never did it again. But what if you've never done that? Now, this is pure speculation but, how does "an experienced cyclist" just fall over? Well if you're ahead of the rear axle, so the lorry suddenly start to close the gap on you, I would (and I expect we all would) be paying attention to the side of the lorry closing in fast. If that meant you then clipped you left hand on the railings there at Elephant roundabout, it's not unreasonable to see the cyclist's front wheel suddenly flipping left, which pitches them off the bike to the right and unfortunately straight under the lorry's wheels they were trying to avoid.
Given that there were questions earlier in the thread in the nature of "how could she just 'fall off'", I just wanted to point out one possibility, which I've seen before. It's unfortunate, but any "coming together" between a ped or a cyclist and an HGV is likely to have a seriously bad outcome.