Horror of bike deaths
 | | Floral tributes to Roy Tillson |
THREE people lost their lives in a week of horror on the roads.
Two young women cyclists died after each was in collision with a lorry - and a 45-year-old scooter rider was killed in a four-vehicle pile-up.
Islington Cyclists' Action Group is now calling for safer roads in the wake of the three early-morning smashes.
Campaigner John Ackers, 52, said: "It's awful. The roads definitely need to be made safer for cyclists. We need to be taking some radical options - safer junctions, lower speeds, less traffic and some segregation.
"Cyclists go along the main roads because they don't consider the back routes good enough. But it's not too dangerous to cycle around Islington. There are enormous health and climate change benefits.
"Most cyclists involved in accidents have been caught in a situation that, perhaps with more training, they could have avoided."
The first accident claimed the life of 24-year-old Amelia Zollner of Stock Orchard Crescent, Holloway.
She had pulled up alongside a lorry stopped at traffic lights in Russell Square near the junction with Woburn Place, Bloomsbury.
As the lorry pulled away, she ended up going under its wheels.
She was taken to the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, with severe head and chest injuries after the crash around 9.10am last Thursday but could not be saved.
A post mortem gave the cause of death as a head injury. The 49-year-old lorry driver not injured.
The second crash happened less than 24 hours later, when a 26-year-old cyclist was in collision with a lorry in Pentonville Road, Islington, at the junction with Penton Rise.
The Islington woman, who has not yet been named, was airlifted to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel with leg injuries but was pronounced dead shortly before 11.30am. The 37-year-old lorry driver was not injured.
Less than 48 hours later, scooter rider Roy Tillson was killed in a hit-and-run smash.
The 45-year-old of Finsbury Park had been travelling on a blue-and-silver Sym Jet when he was involved in a head-on collision with a green Rover 414.
The accident in Seven Sisters Road near the Finsbury Park railway bridge happened around 7am on Sunday and also involved a Vauxhall Vectra and a parked Tube replacement coach.
Mr Tillson suffered massive wounds including a broken skull and was pronounced dead at the scene. Nobody else was injured.
A post mortem gave the cause of death as multiple injuries.
Flowers have been left tied to railings. One says: "Roy, gone but never forgotten. We salute you." Another reads: "To Roy, we will always remember the laughs and the big hugs. We never got to celebrate you know what! One day! We'll have a good drink together. You will be missed."
But Seven Sisters Road shopkeepers, who arrived that day to find a section of the road closed off, said it was an accident blackspot.
Eyup Gunay, of Harput Kebab, said: "There were two cars stuck head-to-head and there was a broken-up motorbike on the ground. Every year there are one or two deaths here. There are a lot of accidents."
Gue Mok, of Fonthill House clothes shop, said: "Every two months there is an accident."
Khuram Shazad of Sunrise Express, added: "It is so dangerous here. There have been two or three accidents in the past two or three months."
Police are still trying to track down the Rover driver, who fled the scene on foot.
He has been described as Asian, 5ft10in, tall, of stocky build and with shoulder-length black hair.
Anyone with information should call Euston Traffic Garage on 020 7321 9941 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
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