2010-06-15 - Rider Down, Waterloo Bridge

Female rider down - southbound carriage of Waterloo bridge 18:00 - being cared for by four other cyclists - bleeding and in shock - but alive - ambulance in attendance

I went past this at around 6.20, no ambulance, but the other cyclists were still there. Hope the girl was ok, heal up fast lady.

It looked like it happened right at the point where the road finally opens back into 3 lanes. The southbound lane that's been rigged up is very narrow, at some points just inches wider than a bus. There was a long tailback of traffic on the bridge, and despite the obvious fact that a cyclist had just been hurt 50 or so riders squeezed up the inside of a line of 4 slow-moving buses, stopping squashed up against the metal barriers, right in the blindspots/crush zones. Atleast two stumbled off their pedals doing this, or knocked their bars into the side of the bus and nearly went down. FFS when will people have sense.

I posted ambulance in attendance because I saw one make its way into the traffic queue and then coming towards her from the other end of the bridge and (apparently mistakenly) assumed it was for her.....like konjin I could see that it had happened at the end of the roadworks

:s I didn't mean that there wasn't an ambulance called, just that it must have left by 6:20, which is usually good news, means that the injured person is stable and getting medical attention etc. I guess the witnesses were still there to make police statements.

Cool.....let's just hope she's not too badly hurt.....just seen the thread list of riders down on Waterloo Bridge in the last few months.....not good at all

Waterloo Bridge and Tower Bridge appear to be a pretty common heading in this part of the forum, 7 accidents on these two bridges over the first three pages. That's a pretty scary trend emerging...

All of the road bridges across the Thames are problematic for cyclists - if you think about the catchment area above and below each bridge that filters onto them they create an 'hour glass effect' with the bridge being the pinch point. There's a lot of traffic and a lot of cyclists who have to get across the river. It's the one place we could really do with Dutch-style separated cycling infrastructure (with properly designed filters, not like what they have at Waterloo at the moment) to help to bring the cyclists injury levels down. Short of either building more bridges, taking space away from peds or taking space away from cars I'm not sure how you'd go about doing this though :o( A tough one. Hope the aforementioned cyclist is OK and heals up well.

Best thing to do on waterloo bridge is stay in the middle of the lane so no-one can get past and just pedal like crazy to not piss the cars off.

I send all my best heal-up-vibes to the rider.