Wet Roads Can Kill - Denwick Crash

I find cycling on wet roads, particularly at this time of year, an extremely dangerous business. Only this last weekend some folks from my club, The Tyneside Vagabonds, I believe had a narrow escape when a 4x4 skidded in their direction and this kind of thing worries me. It's not just the very real risk of skidding off oneself which is bad enough, it's the lunatics in vehicles who have no idea whatsoever how slippery the roads are and who just speed round corners in total uncaring ignorance, inevitably they somethimes skid and inevitably they sometimes skid into other road users.

Lorena and I were out for our walk today on our usual route. The route brings us out at a small junction in Denwick where we wait to cross the road. The lane we emerge from happens to meet the main road on a bend. Right on the bend is a telegraph pole which we always stand next to waiting to cross the road.

Today when we arrived at the bend there was a police car, an ambulance and a blue van which had gone off the road and smashed into a stome wall and the telegraph pole EXACTLY where we normally stand waiting to cross. The driver had clearly been going too fast and had skidded off the road into the wall/pole, there were no other vehicles involved.

The fact of the matter is that if we had left the house about 20 mintes earlier we would have been waiting to cross the road exactly where he went off the road which would probably have killed both of us or at the very least seriously injured us both. As it was we were fortunate but it does serve as a reminder of the extreme dangers of skidding vehicles, most drivers are unaware of just how feeble their grip ona wet road is, until it's too late.

Here are some shots of the accident I snapped with my mobile telephone: