Grandmother hit by cyclist in Nedlands dies

[gdl_gdl]

Sad to read of this incident / accident which happened this morning.

Nedlands

Cheers,

Gary

[Kalgrm]

That really is awful. The article speculates whether or not the cyclist was on a bike path, but a quick look at Google's street view reveals no bike paths in the area. The cyclist was probably on the road and had the people step out in front of him/her. (More speculation on my part, I know, but at least I've looked for evidence of a bike path ...)

My thoughts are with the family of the grandmother.

Graeme

[nickobec]

From the TV news it happened at a roundabout at the bottom of a hill.

I had a similar experience with a teenage girl stepping out in front of me at a roundabout, fortunately her friend grabbed her and pulled her back.

Her response "it is only bike"

I was thinking it is only a bike and rider weighing 90kg+ travelling at 30kph+ and it would of hurt.

People tend to under estimated the danger posed by bikes travelling at speed on the road. Another vehicle say a motorcycle travelling at the same speed would be given far more respect.

I am not saying that was what happened in this case.

[rolandp]

Princess Rd is part of Perth Bicycle Network and is route NW21 which goes all the way down to the river and past UWA. There are no shared paths or cycle ways in the area where the accident happened.

This is very sad, for all parties.

[CycleSnail]

A BTA member who did not want to be named sent these observations

if you are not familiar with the intersection it is a roundabout - the western approach from Princess Road is both downhill and very steep - the view to the right along Broadway at the roundabout is quite obscured. Judging from the reports in various media the cyclist was riding on the road, coming down Princess Road to the roundabout. This means he would have had both hands on his brakes and been watching right in preparation to entering the roundabout (give way to the right). The couple pushing a pram stepped off the kerb directly into his path.
At this point the matter is all conjecture
1: Did they see the cyclist?
2: If they did, did they misjudge his speed of approach?
3: Did they freeze on the spot when the cyclist called out?
4: The grandparents were tourists, so did they 'expect' the traffic to be travelling on the right hand side of the road, or
5: Did they assume that Australian traffic rules were the same as their home country?

In any event, a tragedy for all involved.

[sogood]

This seemed to be the location. Visibility seemed to be quite adequate for any pedestrian at the roundabout, unless they weren't being attentive or was taking too much time to cross one lane of road.

[wombatK]

Pretty hard to determine what has gone wrong here, but roundabouts are notorious for being pedestrian-unfriendly places. They are good at calming traffic speed, but not at establishing an expectation that a motorist or cyclist has to stop and give way. While the police investigation will scrutinize the pedestrian and cyclists contribution to the accident, we really need someone to question the intersection design.

What scares me particularly about this is that a motorist or cyclist coming down the hill on Princess Rd has very limited view of traffic approaching from an acute angle on the right. They could easily become pre-occupied in dealing with that risk and miss a threat to a pedestrian approaching from the left. Not saying that is what happened here, nor that it is not negligent to fail to deal with the risk safely. But IMHO Roundabouts and give-ways aren't suitable in places like this.

Cheers

[rhancock]

I've just done an intersection design subject at uni, and we had this very debate. Essentially, roundabouts are very effective at managing traffic flow, but very poor for cyclists and pedestrians. Unfortunately, we don't yet have transportation engineers, just traffic engineers, whose job is to ensure the traffic keeps moving, and make allowance for peds and bikes "where possible".

In my utopian world, engineers and town planners work out the best way to configure routes for cars, bikes, pedestrians, buses, wheelchairs, scooters, old people electric things, and not necessarily in that order.

One day, when I'm in charge, maybe...

[casual_cyclist]

I have found that when exiting a roundabout, especially at speed, I tend to be a bit off balance. What I mean by that is that I don't have the option of moving to any part of the road I need to (personal experience of NOT missing a large pothole I was trying to avoid).

I am not sure what has gone wrong in this case but the results are tragic for all parties involved. My thoughts go out to both the family of the grandmother and the cyclist involved.