Statement on the fatality at Stratford High Street/Carpenters Road on Monday 13th January

View from the central island of a two-stage pedestrian crossing with guardrail, looking towards a Holiday Inn Express on the pavement where people are talking, their bicycles standing nearby. In the foreground is a yellow sign from the Metropolitan Police reading "FATAL COLLISION. DAY: MONDAY, DATE: 13th JANUARY, TIME: 13.45-14.15hrs. Telephone 07884743474."

We’re here tonight to mark the sad events of last Monday. Details are still scarce to us, and no doubt will become clearer in the coming weeks and months as the Police and coroner make their inquiries.

So here are the facts: On Monday, 13 January, at around 2pm, a man in his 20s was cycling here, at the junction of Carpenters Road and High Street, when he was involved in a crash with a lorry. Despite the efforts of bystanders, and the attendance of the Metropolitan Police, London Ambulance Service, and London’s Air Ambulance, this gentleman was pronounced dead at the scene. Our deepest condolences go to his friends and family. Our thoughts are also with all those who witnessed, were involved in, and responded to, a very traumatic incident.

Right now, we have no further details about the person who died, nor the circumstances of the crash.

Fatal crashes involving lorries and people cycling are a distressingly regular occurrence. The last one in London that we know about was only 10 weeks earlier, on 2nd November last year, when a 27-year-old man was hit and killed in Putney while he was on his way to meet his friends for lunch.

Last week’s crash took place just a few feet away from here, at a junction that was, between 2019 and 2023, Newham’s fourth most dangerous for cycling. Despite being a known danger spot, Carpenters Road junction has been left largely untouched and unprotected for over a decade—just like its neighbours at Cooks Road and Warton Road. It should not take someone, or someones, losing their life for the responsible authorities to take action to remove danger from our streets—at a location that the thousands of us who navigate Stratford on a daily basis know all too well. Even one death is one too many.

Today we are here to acknowledge yet another violent and premature end to a person’s life on London’s roads—and to pay our respects to the unknown rider whose life ended here. And it is easy to forget when policymakers, journalists, and indeed campaigners like us, so readily reduce traffic fatalities to statistics, but let us remember: Every single death or serious injury in traffic is someone’s personal tragedy.

No matter who the young gentleman who died here was, no matter what he was doing, no matter where he was going: no-one deserves a sudden and violent death while simply going about their lives.

We’ll now observe a minute’s silence to reflect, and to pay our respects to the person who was killed.

May he rest in peace.

A traffic light/street lamp post with four tea lights arranged around the base, and five bunches of flowers attached to it at various heights. In the distance, another one of the "FATAL COLLISION" signs appealing for information is visible.