I'd say the driver was too close.

[Wowbagger]

http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/11309938.Car_hits_teenage_cyclist/?ref=mr

[tonycollinet]

I'd agree

As are 80+% of the drivers who pass me. If I fall off at the wrong moment, I'm going under the wheels. Doesn't make it right, but does mean the case will be susceptible to the "There but for the grace...." defence.

[Woofage]

The car behind was unable to avoid the teen as she fell in its path.

No, the driver was unable to avoid the teen. If he or she was paying attention then he or she would have seen that the cyclist was in difficulty and should have acted accordingly.

[Kim]

The car behind was unable to avoid the teen as she fell in its path.

No, the driver was unable to avoid the teen. If he or she was paying attention then he or she would have seen that the cyclist was in difficulty and should have acted accordingly.

Unless they were too close, in which case it's about physics, not attention.

[ian]

As part of my commute is down a narrow A road, I've been observing a lot of passing behaviour from cars.

(1) There are a substantial number of drivers who will, when there's nothing coming the other way, pull right out and make a huge, gracious overtake. Pretty much all professional lorry drivers will do this.

(2) There's a number of drivers who even faced with an empty oncoming lane will not give an inch when passing. I'm no gutter monkey. Even if I'm in primary, I think they'd arrange to pass with a centimetre-thin gap. After six months, I can safely say that every Audi driver falls into this category.

(3) There's the ones who will always squeeze by regardless of space or oncoming traffic.

(4) There's a teeny, tiny minority who if there's no space behind will wait until there is. Professional lorry drivers mostly, the 4x4 drivers who realise they just won't, and the few remaining drivers who have remembered courtesy.

Overall, I'd say that overtaking is consistently piss-poor. There's rarely enough space and zero tolerance if I do fall off or weave. The close pass is probably the most off-putting thing about cycling on British roads. I'm genuinely thinking of putting a big sign on the back of my bike (one that's about two metres wide) asking drivers to give me space (I may be making a mistake to think that Audi drivers can read). The annoying thing is that a nice, wide pass would rarely precipitate a delay of more than a few seconds to their undoubtedly very important days.

[Diver300]

I would agree with Ian.

What I have found makes things worse is a white line, and doubly so for a double white line.

I don't think that I have ever had a driver stay behind because of the double white line, so all it does is encourage close overtakes.

Several times I've been overtaken over double white lines when driving, sometimes at or near the speed limit, sometimes following a cyclist while waiting for somewhere legal and safe to overtake. Far too often, there are perfectly safe places to overtake cyclists, made illegal by double white lines.

[perpetual dan]

Without wanting to be highway code pedant, there are situations where overtaking is allowed on a double white line:

129
Double white lines where the line nearest you is solid. This means you MUST NOT cross or straddle it unless it is safe and you need to enter adjoining premises or a side road. You may cross the line if necessary, provided the road is clear, to pass a stationary vehicle, or overtake a pedal cycle, horse or road maintenance vehicle, if they are travelling at 10 mph (16 km/h) or less.

Obviously there are also those that think the idea is that they can overtake provided they don't cross the white line, who are in another category entirely.

ETA: Not a comment on the OP at all, and GWS to that cyclist. I do hope no one was badly inconvenienced by the resulting queue (which seemed to be the main concern in the story).

[Gattopardo]

The car behind was unable to avoid the teen as she fell in its path.

No, the driver was unable to avoid the teen. If he or she was paying attention then he or she would have seen that the cyclist was in difficulty and should have acted accordingly.

Cars path?

[ian]

The other observation that I neglected to mention – some drivers will still try to push by even when there's a clear line of stationary traffic in view. Even if they get by, I'm going to pass them again a few seconds later. Yet they still try.

[sojournermike]

It strikes me as at least conceivable that the driver's choice of road positioning may have forced the poor girl to take the line she did, and so precipitated the final outcome.

[Regulator]

Or the driver may not be at fault at all.

Sometimes accidents do happen and drivers won't be able to avoid a developing incident.

[delthebike]

A bit of back story, http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/11315718.Pothole_ignored___so_teenager_fights_for_life/?ref=var_0.

[fields5069]

Oi, I used to drive an Audi and was consistently quite nice to cyclists! Even when an "older" road bike rider was cycling up a hill on a twisty lane with barely enough space for 2 cars. Probably as slow or fast as I would go on that lane myself, but then I'm not sure I would choose it to cycle along.

On my Severn Bridge <-> Almondsbury route, there are a mixture of vehicles and behaviours. Even when the vehicle passes with lots of room, it's sometimes just before a blind bend and I wonder what makes people so stressed that they need to arrive 5 seconds earlier than they would if they stayed behind me for 50 yards. Some people are lovely, especially coming home along Tockington Lane with its narrow bit before the M4 bridge. They stay behind as my novice legs struggle up an incline, luckily they should know that soon afterwards they have a nice straight bit under the M4 bridge and can overtake at their leisure.

But yes, it's still surprising the number of drivers, few that they are, that choose to stay this side of the white lines on an open stretch of road!

[Jaded]

Stop in the distance you can see to be clear.

Having said that, I doubt most drivers have any concept of the fact that a cyclist stops being vertical and becomes horizontal in some spread out way if they fall off, and any concept of how quickly some thing slows down if it is no longer on wheels.

[numbnuts]

.....but she wouldn't have come off if the road was OK

[Pickled Onion]

As part of my commute is down a narrow A road, I've been observing a lot of passing behaviour from cars.
(snip)

I call it the 95% rule - if there's nothing coming the other way 95% of drivers will overtake properly, 5% won't; if there's no room to overtake, 95% will still do it, 5% will wait.

The other observation that I neglected to mention – some drivers will still try to push by even when there's a clear line of stationary traffic in view.

Ditto if you're going the same speed as the vehicle in front and there's less than a car's length of space between.

[fossala]

Ditto if you're going the same speed as the vehicle in front and there's less than a car's length of space between.

This annoys me, I'll be going down a main road at 30mph (speed limit). Cars will overtake me then cut in front of me, I pull back. Rinse and repeat.

[Mr Larrington]

Without wanting to be highway code pedant, there are situations where overtaking is allowed on a double white line:

129
Double white lines where the line nearest you is solid. This means you MUST NOT cross or straddle it unless it is safe and you need to enter adjoining premises or a side road. You may cross the line if necessary, provided the road is clear, to pass a stationary vehicle, or overtake a pedal cycle, horse or road maintenance vehicle, if they are travelling at 10 mph (16 km/h) or less.

On my former commute there was a Nice Hill.  Well, nice on the way home, anyway.  Double white lines all the way.  On one occasion I was overtaken by some tragic waste of blood in a Rover 75, in spite of the facts that:

• I was doing 75 km/h, and thus
• I was making a good fist of catching the car in front

Natch the Rover driver, after passing rather closer than was comfortable, pulled in and hit his brakes, for fear of disappearing up the tailpipe of the innocent in front.

IIRC I swore a little.

[Domestique]

http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/11309938.Car_hits_teenage_cyclist/?ref=mr

That whole area is a nightmare for riding a bike.
The airport gets ever busier as well which is adding to the problem.

[RW]

I was bollocked the other day in work for not overtaking a bike doing 30 mph (on a 40 mph road about 200 yds from the start of the 30 mph sign.  I was route learning with a mentor and the bus was full of passengers, one of whom thanked me "for showing consideration to the cyclist".

[Wowbagger]

I cycled along this stretch of road yesterday as part of the London-Southend BHF charity ride. I had noticed that The Council had been out and patched the pothole where this unfortunate young woman was injured, but since the road has been properly resurfaced for a a few hundred yards either side. I wonder whether that work was part of the original schedule?

After that stretch of road, our route joined the dreaded Sutton Road for a little over 2 miles. It was a delight as there were enough cyclists heading in each direction to force the cars to obey the "No Overtaking" signs. I have to confess that I acted illegally in that I overtook a couple of cyclists within the prohibited zone. I didn't need to cross the white line though.

[greenmeansgo]

I was bollocked the other day in work for not overtaking a bike doing 30 mph (on a 40 mph road about 200 yds from the start of the 30 mph sign.  I was route learning with a mentor and the bus was full of passengers, one of whom thanked me "for showing consideration to the cyclist".

So bus companies actually teach their drivers to drive like w*ankers then? I thought it was just a natural tendency of most bus drivers.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Timetables.

[RW]

Quite