Bounced a pedestrian down New Cross Road. Filtering towards Greenwich, lights go green, traffic is moving and about 20 yards before the lights this person of a darker complexsion wearing a hoodie just ran between moving cars into my path. I had .002 seconds to nail both brakes and lose 10mph. Hit him and stopped in 1m. I was probably doing 5mhp when I made contact with the alien. He flopped onto the road like a rag doll, but got up, shook out his limbs, said he was okay and scarpered. I’ve now got a cracked fairing and bend fairing frame. Pissed off at my lack of reaction time and at the fact that I cannot afford to fix the bike.
Just a rant. Any point in reporting this to the police? No details exchanged, traffic carried on around us and ignored the whole scenario. Bikers rode on past etc… Life goes on I guess. Chalk this one up to experience and visit www.plastex-uk.com for the kit to do some basic repairs…
In Brixton you get points for NOT hitting them.
In Brixton they cycle against the traffic to show you just how hard they are.
In fact, one of these idiots actually hit me as he was going past the wrong way.
Actually reached out and slapped me.
Yesterday, one of them kicked broken glass into the road in front of my bike as I was cycling past. Saw me coming, looked down, toed the glass into postion and kicked it out in front of me…
I stopped and he just stood there bold as brass.
Why? What was he getting from that. I’m 33 and a fat ugly bar steward, he was 15. One slap and his teeth would have been all over the bus shelter…what do they get from doing that sort of stupid sh!t?
I’ll say it again, where’s the pistol-whippin’ end of a .45 when you need one? And people laughed at the problem of where to keep it whilst on a bike (I reckon an ankle holster would fit in my Sidi’s)! Guarantee he wouldn’t do that again. Never mind remedial classes, whale humping music or social security jaunts to the gallapagos.
No racism intended at all, and that said honestly. He could have been green for all I care. Night time, dark clothes, dark skin, mist, very hard to see. He ran in from of me and I could not miss him, even though I tried, to the point of nearly ramming a car. I can replace the bike, but not a life. For me, the main point is that we both “walked” away from the accident. Nothing matters more than that.
To cover yourself mate you should report it to the Police.
Pop into your local nick, explain what happened and get it done. They may do it there and then or they might give you a self reporting form. If they give you a self reporting form get the name of the Person behind the desk and note down the time / date that you went into the nick - should be within 24 hours of the accident to cover you legally.
Legally any accident (especially one where someones been hit causing injury (we don’t know that for certain but I bet he hurt himself) must be reported to Police within 24 hours.
the kids on the isle of dogs have developed a new game - push each other infront of moving traffic. i’m all for darwin-esque attempts at self-cleansing the genepool but leave me the feck out of it
Can I also point out there was no racism intended in what I said, I just happen to live near and drive through Brixton regualrly where most of the trouble occurs. The white kids, the chinese kids, the black kids…round here they’re ALL idiots.
Makman, I sympathise. Same thing happened to me a few weeks back, more or less, as Westie said. I’ve looked into avenues of compensation, but there just aren’t any. The guy I hit scarpered as well, so no way to claim off him. The governmental compensation scheme only applies to accidents involving two or more vehicles drivers, one of which doesn’t have insurance (i.e. not to situations where we’re talking about a vehicle driver and a pedestrian, who isn’t required to have insurance in the first place), so no hope there.
Note that after reporting this to the police, you’ll most likely be expected to turn up with your licence and insurance documents for inspection. A few days later you’ll get a lovely letter from them saying something along the lines of “having investigated the incident, we have decided not to take any further action against you.” I can tell you that had me in a flap, being that I wasn’t the one that jumped out in front of my own bike, and I was the one left with a very hefty repair bill (including a new helmet and bike trousers).
Life’s harsh sometimes I hope you get ya bike up and back to normal as soon as poss!
Ps: And I’ve got a new satnav which I’ve already managed to drop. Excellent
You were lucky Jackie and I stuck around after you had gone so the Police knew there were witnesses saying you had been proceeding slowly and taking care when when he ran out in front of you without looking. Otherwise they would probably have searched the CCTV footage to find evidence you hadn’t been to blame.
They did the same to me with the little note saying they weren’t going to charge me with anything when all I did was hit debris left by workmen at the side of the road travelling at 15 mph. To be honest, they must check every incident to see if charges are warranted, and the letter just confirms they are not pursuing any charges against you, so you should be pleased the bureaucracy is working right! They could have found the perp - who could have said you were riding at 40mph and things could have got a lot more complicated!
I know your perp wasn’t playing chicken, but he knowingly took a risk (deliberately running out between two buses without looking)which resulted in a violent act (you being injured in the collision). The problem is your injuries would get you peanuts from the criminal injuries compensation scheme. However, it will be interesting to see where this goes.
Remember Jackie and I saw the perp and you before you collided so you have a very good case that he didn’t make any attempt to look round the bus to see what was coming before running out. He also said to me afterwards that he “looked through the bus” and didn’t see anything so stepped out which shows he knew he should have looked but didn’t bother doing it properly!
I hope you get ya bike up and back to normal as soon as poss!