London Bridge Tuesday morning

Does anyone know why it was closed? It looked serious, so I am assuming an accident.

I saw a yellow triumph motorcycle with front-end damage on the north-bound north side of the bridge at about 11am. So yes, probably a Road Traffic Accident.

One of my colleagues saw the accident happen. Apparently the motorbike was speeding southbound from the City. A bus pulled out in front of it, the bike couldn't slow down in time so swerved across the central reservation into the path of the northbound traffic and hit a cyclist.

Story and quite distressing picture, page 4 of the London Paper, tonight.

Poor folk.

What a terrible thing to happen.

I've been cycling up BHS/London Bridge, as it's been so hard to use cycle route 4 along the south bank because there are so many lorries from the building sites, sometimes the whole road is blocked by two parked lorries, and the contra-flow bike lane always has lorries parked doing deliveries.

A lorry suddenly tried to reverse while going up Park Street, which gave me a terrible shock as I was immediatley behind him, so I startd to go up BHS.

However, it's generally chaotic along SBR and BHS, and I'm not suprised accidents happen, as it's all so fast and busy.

Zoe, if you need to cycle from south of the river to the City, you might want to consider using Southwark Bridge instead of London Bridge. It's much less busy. I use it twice a day, going to/coming from work, and it's a rather pleasant ride.

full details http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23733703-details/Three+in+hospital+after+bicycle,+bus+and+motorbike+collision/article.do

I gave first aid to the cyclist John until the ambulance arrived. His girlfriend texted me at lunchtime to say he was given a check over at hospital and besides some scrapes, bruises and stitches he's fine.

My husband and I were cycling not too far behind the accident as it happened. I did not see the exact impact moment; we just looked behind us to change lanes, but we did see the motorbike fly through the air, hit the bus on the south bound side of the bridge and fly back to the north bound side of the bridge.

When I asked the cyclist John how it happened, he said the motorbike and the bus hit each other and the bike hit him on the way back. Guess he must have just nicked him as his bicycle looked ok from what I could make out with everyone standing around.

Two people attended the motorbike driver - he was conscious and they kept him still the whole time. When the ambulance arrived and they took over he started shouting with pain. Poor guy. I hope he's ok.

tonytiger wrote:

One of my colleagues saw the accident happen. Apparently the motorbike was speeding southbound from the City. A bus pulled out in front of it, the bike couldn't slow down in time so swerved across the central reservation into the path of the northbound traffic and hit a cyclist.

Unless your colleague was carrying a speed gun, is it likely that (s)he could tell whether the bike was speeding or not? People's ability to correctly gauge m/c speeds has been objectively tested, and shown to be very poor.

It seems the motorcyclist came off worst... there's a lot of anti-motorcycle stuff on the cycling forums -- the usual "he must have been speeding" stuff.

But to me it looks like the Bus is at quite a severe angle... he must have swung out to get past other traffic and left the motorcyclist no where to go.