Friday, September 13, 2013

A Tale of Two Collisions

An interesting juxtaposition of stories in the Standard today.

First one: Nicole Kidman beeing "KO'd by a pavement cyclist" in New York. By which they mean knocked down - Kidman is not reported as sustaining any injury. She is reported as being "shaken up" by the experience. A 19-year-old cyclist had been issued with "three summonses for riding a bike on the sidewalk, riding a bike with no helmet and reckless endangerment".

Second one: Cyclist Chrishan Mathias, 28, was hit by a minicab. He "was pulled under the vehicle and had one of its wheels run over his head when it shot across a junction and veered into his path as he cycled home from work." He suffered suffered a dislocated ankle, broken sternum and ribs, bruised lung and lacerated liver, spent 5 weeks off work and is still undergoing physiotherapy. But for his helmet, which was broken in two in the collision, he might well have died. The report says (now get this), "police are due to decide in the New Year whether the minicab driver should be charged with a driving offence." The incident does not seem to have been reported at the time it happened in March, and it appears that it has been picked up by the Standard after being revealed by the London air ambulance team, who attended the stricken rider.

You might want to sign this.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this, it has been reported that the 'cyclist' in the Kidman story was actually a paparazzo photographer. Which makes the predictable anti-cyclist rants in the Standard troll-comments section seem a bit lame.

3 comments:

  1. To be fair, there were quiet a few comments on the ES article pointing out that the cyclist was in fact a paparazzo who has "form" for using a bicycle as a means for creating a scene he can photograph. On the other hand, others apparently couldn't even tell that the incidents didn't actually happen in London.

    No such allowances to the ES though - their sister paper the Independent managed to get the story straight, so how come they couldn't?

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  2. Oh, and I forgot - the other story was first featured on the London Air Ambulance website. Alongside this story were four other cases, of which two involved pedestrians run over by cars. One was quite explicit that the victim, a 5 year old child, was run over by a speeding motorist. The other, about an Australian lady called Kim Bowler, was rather coy about the circumstances, but Ms Bowler herself relates her story on the Huffington Post website. My links to the story here http://countercyclic.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/a-helicopter-saved-my-life.html

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