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00:00Every serious incident on the road requires forensic examination.
00:08We've got to start asking the question, why is this happening?
00:12Pedestrian's been struck in the cold-off area of this dual carriageway.
00:15The car is filled to stop.
00:17And inside the cordons, dedicated officers take on this challenge.
00:22Clearly, I don't think this came out of the factory sounding like that.
00:26This person's lost their life for whatever reason. We're here trying to establish why.
00:34Only now can I realise that that is actually in the middle of my lane.
00:38Tracking down the evidence.
00:40This is really important. This is key.
00:42To get to the truth.
00:43Once we've got somebody, that's going to put him in the driver's seat.
00:46There's a death on the road.
00:48So we've got to be investigating properly and thoroughly.
00:51This is a proper head scratcher, this is.
00:54All in a day's work for the crash detectives.
01:10Ambulance Service.
01:12Hello, I knocked one bicyclist.
01:16Quick, please.
01:18OK, so I need you to tell me exactly what's happened.
01:21I'm diving.
01:23And, er...
01:24I...
01:25I...
01:26I...
01:27So you've knocked the cyclist off his bike?
01:29Yes, yes.
01:30Can you speak to traffic wheels please and find out whether they've got any cameras on the 840?
01:37Hello, 1926.
01:39There's an ambulance, they're already off at the scene.
01:42And the cyclist is being worked on by paramedics.
01:48That's the driver.
01:49Critical care doctors are now treating a seriously injured woman.
01:55White van, yeah?
01:56After her push bike was struck by a van.
01:59There's a vehicle that's involved in this.
02:01You ready for the index?
02:02It's a box, sort of, with our own wife.
02:04Right.
02:05Earl's speaking to the driver who's got him detained.
02:07Hi.
02:08Hi.
02:09Hi.
02:10Hi.
02:11Hi.
02:12Hi.
02:13Hi.
02:14Hi.
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02:25Hi.
02:26Hi.
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02:33Hi.
02:34Hi.
02:35Hi.
02:36Hi.
02:37Hi, hi.
02:38Hi.
02:39Go ahead and have a look?
02:40Yeah.
02:41Yeah.
02:42This is just so smooth, there's no debris on it to make any scratches.
02:51This collision has happened on a concrete road, so the chances of finding clues on its surface
02:58are limited.
03:00What we'd be looking for would be the sort of,
03:02the scratches in the road surface, the grindings,
03:05rather than, um, you're not gonna get
03:08the sort of big, like, tire marks on this,
03:10because there's just not the bitumen to melt and come up.
03:16The 52-year-old cyclist was out with a group of riders,
03:20taking part in a regular time trial event.
03:27That bike's definitely not involved.
03:28Yeah, OK, so he's just sort of first on the scene?
03:31He's just come across minutes after.
03:33Yeah, OK.
03:35With no evidence found on the road surface so far,
03:39there are signs of disturbance along the verge.
03:44You start to get this sort of stuff,
03:49the fresh grindings on the bits of stone
03:53where they've all been kind of ground into each other.
03:56And I would have, if that had been a vehicle travelling over it,
03:59I would have expected a bit more, but that's, that's fresh.
04:03But there's nothing I could really say was definitely the van.
04:07With the driver in custody,
04:12Focus now turns to his vehicle.
04:15As you can see, this is all bent back here.
04:19There's a huge amount of damage to this wing and to this headlight.
04:24You've got this, this black stripe along here,
04:27which, which looks like, um, tyre rubber potentially.
04:32Um, impact marks here.
04:33You've got these scratches coming back across here as well.
04:37Stripe of yellow paint there,
04:41so it'd be interesting to see if there's anything
04:43with yellow paint on the bicycle.
04:45So this is obviously the part of the vehicle that's hit the,
04:48uh, hit the cyclist.
04:50Um, for a person to cause that much damage to a vehicle,
04:55it's got to have been a fairly heavy impact.
04:58So this is obviously the part of the, uh, the vehicle that's hit the, uh,
05:02hit the cyclist.
05:04Um, for a person to cause that much damage to a vehicle,
05:08it's got to have been a fairly heavy impact.
05:11It's very, very straight, this section of road.
05:24There's no hard shoulder.
05:25We've got this edge of carriageway marking here
05:27and a small section of, of concrete beyond it.
05:32But nowhere to cycle if you're a cyclist other than the carriageway.
05:38So can this help identify a point of impact?
05:41So it's going to be a bit of a close examination
05:44to see if we can find little telltale scratches on the road surface.
05:51That's fresh. That's recent.
05:56It's about the width of a bicycle tire.
06:00If this is our point of impact,
06:02then it means that our van drivers crossed this edge of carriageway
06:06marking this rumble strip.
06:11Have you, have you found an impact mark?
06:14Yeah, there's a potential point of impact.
06:16Um, it's that side of the edge of carriageway marking,
06:19so it's, it's off the lane entirely.
06:22It's off the lane?
06:23Yeah.
06:24The wrong side, the left-hand side of the rumble strip?
06:25Yeah.
06:26So, just there, something's been kind of almost rotated.
06:33So all of the carriageway is swept quite regularly
06:38by vehicle tires passing along it.
06:40It's cleaned, essentially.
06:42And this section of the road isn't.
06:44All of the dirt that's collected there has been cleaned off the road.
06:49There are stripes in it, lines that we call, call them striations.
06:52They're indicative of something sort of being scraped across the road surface.
07:06So at the moment, we know potentially where the van's hit the bike.
07:11And then I can attribute things to the cyclist and to the van where I can.
07:21We start to get some of the stones from The Verge have been brought out onto the road.
07:36So this is where we start getting the headlight debris.
07:41Four is quite a recognisable chunk of the mirrored backing of the headlight.
07:47And this is sort of sections of the glass from the front of the headlight
07:53that have been spread across the road.
07:55Adds a bit more weight to that being our point of impact.
07:59Because if he's travelling this way,
08:02all of this debris isn't going to be behind the point of impact.
08:11The helmet looks like it's hit the gravel because it's got lots of little indentations in it.
08:32There's a lot of scuffing on the saddle there.
08:45I think I will have a good look at that when I've taken the photos and come back to it.
08:58I don't want to move it too far from where it is until I've recorded where it is, if you see what I mean.
09:08I'm trying to think about what I've seen with the bike and what damage there is to it,
09:20how that fits in with the van.
09:22The problem with this van is it's just got so many little dinks over its life.
09:42That's fresh.
09:44So they have come down this side of the van.
09:48You've touched that.
09:52That's fresh rubber on there as well.
10:04So does this mean that an obvious section of damage to the bonnet can be dismissed?
10:11There's no evidence of it being sort of fresh.
10:14You can feel the kind of the grit on the surface of it.
10:18I would have expected that that would be cleaned off.
10:20It does look like it's old, doesn't it? Yeah.
10:22Because those dead flies there would have been cleaned away, yeah.
10:26Yeah.
10:28And an inspection of the van's load is starting to cause concern.
10:32Oh, that's very full. That is jammed. It's jam-packed.
10:39Is he moving house?
10:40I don't know what they've said he's doing, but there's a lot of stuff in there.
10:43Suitcases, battery chargers, washing machine, I think it is.
10:49He goes right to the front as well.
10:51When we do the vehicle exam, we get it weighed.
10:56Yeah.
10:56Because it's going to be our three and a half tonner, isn't it?
10:58Yeah.
10:58So we've weighed an issue.
11:00What have you got the keys for?
11:14It's got an ABS warning light on and stuff as well.
11:18ABS and a service light.
11:19So I don't know whether it's breaking is as good as it should be, do you know?
11:26Yeah.
11:31It's passport and wallet.
11:35What country is it?
11:35Romanian.
11:40Yeah, that's him.
11:42I don't think of anything. He's a local man as well.
11:44Mm.
11:46If he's been in and around this area for that long, then you'd expect him to have seen
11:51the time trials plenty of times before, wouldn't you?
11:52Yeah.
12:02Are you responsible for careless driving today?
12:05I don't think I am, no.
12:09Well, I'll take you back a little bit.
12:10Yes.
12:10What can you see on that carriageway when you first come on here?
12:13I see bicyclists on the, on the road.
12:17All the time I keep at, uh, I pass a few of, uh, of them.
12:23Okay, so where, which lane were you in?
12:25First time I've been on the lane, uh, one.
12:28So you're in lane one.
12:29Yes.
12:30What speed are you driving at that point?
12:3360, 65.
12:34Okay.
12:35The van, it was fully loaded.
12:37It's, uh, you couldn't go even if you want, uh...
12:41Okay.
12:45As the driver continues to give his version of events,
12:49the bike's now been recovered from the scene.
12:52This is the rear wheel of the, the bike.
12:59You can see that during the collision, it's, it's sort of come apart.
13:03That's completely split.
13:07And if you look inside, you can see that the spokes are damaged.
13:11They've come away from the rim.
13:12Some of them have come away from the hub in the centre.
13:17That's pretty catastrophic damage to that wheel.
13:24It's obviously a very high-end time trial type pedal cycle.
13:28If you look at the shape of the, shape of the forks,
13:33they're this sort of blade shape.
13:35And the same with everything back here.
13:37That seat post is, is very sort of aerodynamic.
13:43Instead of your standard drop bars on a road bike,
13:46we've got this set up.
13:48Um, this is where the cyclists would be sort of leaning forward on those,
13:54holding onto this part, get tucked right forward into that aerodynamic position.
13:59So this, the, the, the end of the bars here, you can see both of them,
14:02they, they would be attached to the end of there.
14:06They should form a straight line.
14:07So at some point those bars have dug into the ground and that end has, has snapped off.
14:18These yellow bits here, these are the brake pads.
14:21It's got these sort of deep rim carbon wheels,
14:24which means you need to have a particular compound on these brake pads.
14:30It's not the sort of thing your average cyclist or your average commuter would be riding.
14:35It's been specifically set up to be exactly right for her to be able to, to ride this bike.
14:41This is a woman who's serious about her cycling.
14:50But there's also some less obvious damage.
14:54We can see that we've got this mark on the tyre, this white coloured scuff.
14:59This is, this is what the rest of the rim looks like, this lovely smooth edge here.
15:11And we suddenly get to this section, in line with this mark.
15:15And we've got this, this angular edge.
15:18It's chipped away.
15:21This damage still needs to be linked to evidence found at the scene.
15:25So Kath's going to reconstruct the moment of impact between the van and the bike.
15:31Thankfully they had all her specifications was built.
15:34Yeah.
15:35Back to what she would have had.
15:37So this is exactly her size and measurements.
15:40Her size, measurements, because they built the previous bike.
15:45On the night of the crash, damage caused during the collision was captured on camera.
15:51When I looked at the van, I could see that there was a, there was a mark on the front bumper.
15:56Since then, some repairs have been carried out to the van.
16:01But combined with evidence gathered at the scene, there's still enough here to work with.
16:07I don't have most of that mark, but this bit here is the very top section of that mark.
16:14So we can use that. We can see from the scene photos taken at the time, that's sort of straight up and down there.
16:20And this is going to tell us exactly where the vehicles were.
16:31And what they were doing in relation to each other at the time of the collision.
16:36That is where that mark would have been.
16:38OK.
16:43So that's going to be the point of impact there.
16:50I see it, I give a space, I take myself around like that to pass her, and I hear a knock.
17:05If she was falling into his path, that would be a diagonal line across the bumper.
17:11So, she was upright, travelling, approximately in line with the van at the time of the collision.
17:20Yeah?
17:21You see that, can't you?
17:24Sometimes when you do that type of movement, the parcel is moving and you can hear a knocking.
17:36I know you say a knock, is it a high pitch or a dull third door?
17:40Just a knock, like that, exactly like that.
17:44OK.
17:44I stopped the van, yeah.
17:55It's better to show you.
17:57Yeah, you can.
17:57When I'm coming from the van, I'm looking from that side, and I don't see nothing in my back.
18:07And I go around, and when I see that headlights broken, I'm looking,
18:17now I have a straight vision, and I see that bicycle.
18:23So, just where was his van at the moment he collided with a cyclist?
18:33If it was where these scratches were found, it didn't make sense.
18:39That mark was outside of the lane, which would seem to me to be a strange place for an experienced
18:47cyclist to be in that circumstance.
18:49So, Kath now wants to know how the bike moved during the collision.
18:57The van driving through that back wheel, essentially,
19:00would have caused the back wheel to come off entirely at that point.
19:03We've got this scalloped yellow mark here on the bumper.
19:12And there was another mark at this point at the scene.
19:23So, we would have had the brake calipers and brake pads that would all have been exposed after this point.
19:30So, that is the back of the bike being lifted up into the air.
19:39And then the whole thing would have had to have been off the floor to get to about that point.
19:44Then we had that mark on the road, the only mark we identified on the road at the scene.
19:56After it's been lifted up, the van would have passed by this point, and the bike has come back down onto the road.
20:04We saw the damage to the front wheel that that caused, before tumbling to where it ended up.
20:17We saw the crash.
20:35With a clear idea of how the bike was struck, focus now turns to the lead up to the crash.
20:41And Kath suspects those final moments could have been captured by the cyclist herself.
20:51I could see that there was a mount which appeared to be for a cycle computer.
20:57And that told me that there might be an extra piece of data here.
21:05If one had been attached to the bike, it could have been recording the ride.
21:11But in the darkness, it couldn't be found.
21:16Officers returned, and they did a proper search in daylight.
21:21And they found a cycle computer.
21:31She can't tell us what happened.
21:33But this might be able to give us those answers that she's not here to give us.
21:41The readings are a clear reflection of how this ride ended in tragedy.
21:46You can see, at this point, we've got the distance doesn't increase anymore.
21:55The altitude stays the same.
21:58The orange line, the speed here, drops to zero.
22:02So this is the point at which the collision occurred.
22:05The cyclist had been riding in the time trial event for just nine minutes.
22:15You can see here, she's got up to a maximum speed of just over 13 meters per second,
22:22which is going to be about 30 miles an hour, which is impressive for a cyclist.
22:29So she would have been near maximum effort for those nine minutes.
22:34She was very fit, very fast. She was a very able cyclist.
22:43What drew your attention to the cyclist?
23:00We know that she was using an incredibly bright flashing rear light.
23:04It was set to an irregular flashing mode.
23:17Which would make it more visible than a regular flashing mode and more visible, again,
23:24than just a static rear light.
23:27But a detail in the data is also adding to how visible the cyclist would have been.
23:34The yellow line we've got is altitude.
23:38You can see that it's climbing, so she's clearly, she's cycling uphill.
23:41It's by no means as dramatic as the graph makes it look, but she is cycling uphill.
23:47And we can see that the very last bit of cycling, she is just accelerating very slightly.
23:54Because we know that she's going uphill, because we know that she's accelerating,
24:02she must have been pedalling.
24:08Pedalling, so biological motion, draws attention.
24:13And it's one of the things that would have made it easier for any driver following her
24:19to be able to see that she was there.
24:24So just what could he see as he sat at the wheel of his van?
24:33This is a Vauxhall Movano, which is the same as the van driver would have been driving along this
24:38section of road. It's quite high up. You've got a much better vantage point than you would have
24:43in any of the cars that are going past us at the moment.
24:45So you've come to the first people who are cycling. What have you done there?
24:51I'm looking in the mirror, I put a signal, I'm going, overtaking it.
24:59So we've got a cyclist in lane one, so I come right over into lane two to go past.
25:08There's absolutely no reason for me to be in that lane with him.
25:11So you say overtaking him was you going up the lane one and the lane two, yeah?
25:17Yes. Probably not the whole vehicle in the lane two, but I've been to the half in the lane one,
25:25half in the lane one.
25:27OK. But as she retraces the driver's journey, she knows that at the time of the crash,
25:35his van was not in a roadworthy condition. It was also half a ton overweight.
25:43And from this position in the cab, she's made a key observation.
25:49We've got a huge, huge view. Hundreds of metres ahead of us available.
25:53Is it a straight road?
25:57Or is it a straight road? No, no, it's a straight road.
25:59Straight road, is it? Straight road, yeah, yeah.
26:01So your visibility, um... 100%.
26:05In fact, the driver could have seen at least 500 metres of road ahead.
26:14This section is asphalt and we can see up ahead, the road changes to become concrete, much lighter coloured.
26:22We know that the cyclist was wearing dark blue clothing and it would have provided really good contrast
26:27with that light coloured road surface.
26:31At 60 miles per hour, the cyclist could have been within his field of view for 18 and a half seconds.
26:38We're now half a mile from the point of the impact, that very last closing up to the point of the collision.
26:50It's very possible that by this point, the driver would have had the cyclist directly in front of him.
26:56From the time you saw the bike, or the female, or the flashing light, is there some sort of time distance you can give us?
27:08How long did you have that? Seconds.
27:10Seconds? Seconds.
27:12OK.
27:17How much space did you give yourself from the front of your van to the back of the bike to start doing a manoeuvre?
27:23Uh, around two metres, something like that, like, here to the wall.
27:32Here to the wall?
27:33Yes, yeah, yeah.
27:34So from where you're sitting to the wall?
27:35Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
27:36He had 18 seconds, at least, in which to see her.
27:46She was doing everything that she could to be safe, to be visible.
27:52Can you give us any reason why you saw the cyclist, but collided with the cyclist?
27:59Don't know. Don't know why. I don't know what happened. I really don't know why.
28:07I ask myself, I will ask probably the whole life, what's happened?
28:14The driver denied causing death by dangerous driving.
28:20But he was found guilty and sent to prison for four years.
28:27He believed that he'd given her enough room.
28:29That is an absolutely catastrophic misjudgment, and an innocent cyclist has paid for that misjudgment with her life.
28:42I don't know why.
28:54I'm sorry.
28:55I'm sorry.
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