You may remember some of my tweets from the end of last year from an accident on my way home from work.
I was cycling past Peckham Rye Park along the London Cycle Route 22 as I was usually doing, a motorist decided to come out of a side road even so he didn’t have priority and had plenty of time to stop rather than me ending up going over his bonnet. Luckily the people in the car behind me stopped and helped, including calling the police and ambulance, unlike the driver of the car that I had the collision with who drove off instead. He did come back to see if I was ok, but needed convincing from the paramedics to stay to talk to the police, who hadn’t quite yet arrived.
I was taken to hospital as a precaution after giving the police a statement while lying on the bed with my head strapped in position. The police took my bicycle to the police station for safe keeping until I was able to pick it up. It turned out that I only had a few bruises, grazes and some shock, so was discharged and took the bus home.
A day later I picked up my bike from Peckham Police station. At this point I found that the front wheel was a little buckled. Thankfully due having a hub brake rather than a rim brake I was still able to ride the bike safely to work and back home. It took 3 weeks to get a replacement front wheel for just short of £100. The train travel also cost an extra £100 that I wouldn’t have have spent otherwise. It was quite nice as the Oyster Pay As You Go had come in just after the accident and turned out to be a bit cheaper than a travelcard based on my specific travel pattern.
After a couple of months I was sent a witness form to fill in, which I filled in and sent off:
Yesterday I got a letter from the Metropolitan Police stating that the court proceedings with incident were completed last week. The result was the driver being convicted of driving without due care and attention with a £100 fine pus 7 penalty points.
It’s good to see that the driver has been given some punishment for not being careful enough with his driving, rather than it being ignored by the police as I’ve heard has happen on many occasions in the past.