Less Lucky

Last night’s drive home was – to be blunt – a fucking nightmare.

From the look of it, someone had fallen under a bus on Mile End Road, which meant that everything going out of London in that direction was moving half a car-length at a time. It took me 90 minutes to get from my office to the A11/A12 roundabout. After that, it took me about 90 minutes to get home.

I don’t know the fate of the person – assuming that was what’d happened – as neither the local radio traffic news nor the BBC have seen fit to say anything about it. What I do know is that a section of the road, on both carriageways, was blocked by emergency services, so I assume it was at least serious, if not fatal.

But it would be nice if traffic reports would be a bit more honest/useful. If I’d heard “Avoid that road like the plague” I would’ve done, and would’ve cut north instead. As it was, the only reports were that “The A11 is slow-moving, because of an accident”. While I guess that was technically true – we were still moving, after all – it would’ve been far more useful to say “It’s blocked, diversions in place, but you’d be far better off avoiding it completely”

Super-Lucky

On the way home last night, I witnessed what was so nearly a fatal accident – and only wasn’t fatal because of the 50/50 chance of which way the man fell.

On the roundabout for A12/North Circular, a cement mixer came round too close to the kerb, and hit a cyclist. For once (so far as I could tell) the cyclist had been doing the right thing, hadn’t jumped a red light or anything (somewhat miraculous in itself) and the driver of the cement mixer had just come too close to the kerb.

I don’t know how, but the pushbike went under the wheels, and the rider came off onto the pavement. If he’d gone the other way, it would’ve been strawberry-jam time. As it was, the guy then stood up and was fine. The driver of the cement mixer was pretty shocked about the entire thing (with good reason) but it was all just so incredibly lucky that it wasn’t far, far worse.

A couple of other closer witnesses had already stopped to sort things out, so I buggered off past – I wouldn’t have been able to give any more information, or provide any assistance, so I’d have just been in the way.

All the same, it does make you think about the tiny things that lead to a difference between dead and alive…