Got off the bus this evening and was fiddling with my MP3 player as I walked up Oliver St. Looked up and saw a cyclist coming down Cavill St across the intersection, an intersection I had ridden across many times. The odd thing about this scene was that a 4WD was coming the opposite way and turning right across the cyclist's path. I looked on wondering how the cyclist would get around the car and it didn't even register that they were about to collide until I heard the screech of tires and a bang. A loud bang, as loud as you'd expect car on car, not something you'd expect of a bike.
Being right next to a bus stop there were a bunch of pedestrians around and we all rushed out to see if cyclist guy was ok. I instinctively reached for my mobile and dialled 000, spoke to an operator for about 20 seconds before I realised everyone else had done the same, so I hung up. This was a stupid thing to do since the 000 operators then had to trace my call and rang me back about 5 minutes later to see if I was ok. In the meantime we'd established that cyclist guy was breathing and decided to leave him alone as he had landed in a semi-recovery position and had no visible injuries apart from a graze on his chin. He wasn't really conscious, kind of mumbling and stirring a little but a doctor also happened to be passing by so that kind of reassured everyone.
An ambulance turned up a few minutes later, followed by another. The first set of paramedics immediately went to treat the cyclist but the second set did a very practical thing - they told us all to get off the road as we were all standing in the middle of a busy-ish intersection. We waited for the police to show up and left our details as witnesses, and I wrongly figured a vehicle and two guys that I thought were the ones who had hit the cyclist (they had stopped to see if cyclist guy was ok then driven off which looked suspicious to me). It turned out the responsible driver had been standing amongst us the whole time.
Its a sickening thing to see a cyclist get run over, and doubly so when I realised he wasn't wearing a helmet. And that he was riding the same path I use several times a week. I'm never cycling without a helmet again.
