London Cycling Deaths: Five Die In Nine Days

There have been fresh calls to make London's roads safer for cyclists after two fatal accidents in 24 hours.

The latest death involved a man who was hit by a double-decker bus at around 11.30pm on Wednesday.

It happened at the junction of Whitechapel Road and Commercial Road in Aldgate, east London.

The man was treated at the roadside by paramedics but died a few hours later in hospital.

No one has been arrested and efforts are being made to trace the cyclist's next of kin.

The accident came hours after a young woman was killed in the morning rush-hour.

She has been named as 24-year-old Venera Minakhmetova, a Russian national living in Bethnal Green, east London.

Police were called to the Bow roundabout in east London shortly before 9am following reports a lorry had collided with a cyclist.

Ms Minakhmetova, who had been travelling west along the A11, was apparently hit when she tried to turn south towards the Blackwall Tunnel.

Police said the male driver of the lorry stopped at the scene and there were no arrests.

The two deaths brought the number of cycling fatalities in the capital to five in the last nine days and 13 in all this year.

A male cyclist who was badly hurt in a collision with a lorry on Millbank in central London on Wednesday morning remains in a critical condition, Scotland Yard said.

Cycling campaigners are urging London Mayor Boris Johnson to look at the design of roads to ensure they meet cyclists' needs.

Martin Key, campaigns manager for British Cycling, said: "While cyclist deaths are rare, it is clearer than ever that national government and councils must take urgent action on designing roads that address cyclists' needs."

RAC technical director David Bizley said: "This tragic series of deaths is yet another terrible demonstration of the well-known dangers that occur when heavy goods vehicles and cyclists share road space.

"While some routes, such as the London cycling superhighway are now being designed to segregate cyclists from traffic, elements of these designs need to be closely re-examined as they clearly are not working as well as they were intended."

Mr Johnson told Sky News millions of pounds were being spent on improving the capital's roads and that he was trialling an exclusion zone in central London "for lorries that don't have the proper safety equipment".

"If they don't have the skirting on the sides to stop cyclists being dragged under or the sensors to detect the presence of cyclists both in front and behind, we're consulting on a system ... that would restrict them coming into the city."

But he said irrespective of how much was done to help cyclists, they and other road users were ultimately responsible for their own safety.

"What I must stress to people is that there is no amount of traffic engineering you can do to budget for irrational decisions (or) risky behaviour by pedestrians and by cyclists as well.

"Please, please, please think about other road users, and think about yourselves and your journeys."

Chris Boardman, a 1992 Olympic cycling gold medallist, said: "The problem is the perception. The perception is that cycling is a dangerous thing to do and that’s important because if it looks dangerous – and cycling say in London doesn’t look attractive – then less people are going to want to do it."