This thread contains lots of good advice, most of which wouldn't have done the bloke in the video much good in those actual circumstances.
As i see it there are two failures; the driver totally fails in his responsibility to look for the cyclist, and the cyclist is a little slow to notice the car. Some level of human error is inevitable so 'spot the car earlier' advice is useless.
The cyclist should have entered the roundabout slower? Given the angle of the roundabout, the clearness of the route he wanted, and the fact that he wasn't aware of the car at that point i think that's a harsh criticism. To make the case you practically end up arguing for slowing down for every (apparently) empty side-street you pass. Also, i've read advice to accelerate through roundabouts to better match the speeds of other vehicles. Maybe the cyclist is going quickly to avoid conflict with the other car coming up to the roundabout on the right hand road?
Should he have established eye contact? When? I think the cyclist first notices the driver at about the moment he's cycling onto the roundabout. An immediate dramatic swerve left might just have saved him, but at that point there's still a chance the car will give way. You'd be arguing for making a potentially dangerous evasive manoeuvre in response to a mere possibility - even if the costs and benefits add up in this case, are you really expecting him to consider all the ways it could play out and reach an optimum decision in that instant?
Eye contact takes time, there is a lot of glare coming off the car window, the driver has his sun-visor down (helping him see, but making it harder to see him), and because of the crap angle of the junction the window post isn't helping. A moment later the cyclist starts braking hard, not because of failure to achieve eye contact but from the much quicker-to-see observation that the car is moving into conflict with him. Eye contact is irrelevant to this particular incident.
So we end up arguing for continually allowing for hypothetical threats. Great if you can do it, but how many of us would have thought ahead far enough to deduce that any hypothetical cars that might come along that road would have the sun in their eyes and their windscreen pillar concealing us?
This thread contains lots of good advice, most of which wouldn't have done the bloke in the video much good in those actual circumstances.
As i see it there are two failures; the driver totally fails in his responsibility to look for the cyclist, and the cyclist is a little slow to notice the car. Some level of human error is inevitable so 'spot the car earlier' advice is useless.
The cyclist should have entered the roundabout slower? Given the angle of the roundabout, the clearness of the route he wanted, and the fact that he wasn't aware of the car at that point i think that's a harsh criticism. To make the case you practically end up arguing for slowing down for every (apparently) empty side-street you pass. Also, i've read advice to accelerate through roundabouts to better match the speeds of other vehicles. Maybe the cyclist is going quickly to avoid conflict with the other car coming up to the roundabout on the right hand road?
Should he have established eye contact? When? I think the cyclist first notices the driver at about the moment he's cycling onto the roundabout. An immediate dramatic swerve left might just have saved him, but at that point there's still a chance the car will give way. You'd be arguing for making a potentially dangerous evasive manoeuvre in response to a mere possibility - even if the costs and benefits add up in this case, are you really expecting him to consider all the ways it could play out and reach an optimum decision in that instant?
Eye contact takes time, there is a lot of glare coming off the car window, the driver has his sun-visor down (helping him see, but making it harder to see him), and because of the crap angle of the junction the window post isn't helping. A moment later the cyclist starts braking hard, not because of failure to achieve eye contact but from the much quicker-to-see observation that the car is moving into conflict with him. Eye contact is irrelevant to this particular incident.
So we end up arguing for continually allowing for hypothetical threats. Great if you can do it, but how many of us would have thought ahead far enough to deduce that any hypothetical cars that might come along that road would have the sun in their eyes and their windscreen pillar concealing us?
60% car driver's fault, 30% highway engineer's fault, 10% accident, imho.