[Closed] The mother of close calls

Bloody cyclists!

Didn't even ring his bell....

WTF were they doing not having the road cordoned off?

Surely that is appallingly, like appallingly bad on the part of the tree surgeons, isn't it?

Wouldn't have happened if they'd been wearing HiViz....

I thought first one, what tree falling, second one, that wasn't that close - oh, there's a third F&&*(ing HELL.

Change of shorts needed there

Cyclist should have rung his bell...

(joke)

like how the cyclist ducks 🙂

Shitsticks!

There was one on that TV programme "Most Ridiculous": a lorry load of poles pushes a lamp post over right onto a cyclist, he bails and manages to avoid getting hit. Quite amazing.

WTF were they doing not having the road cordoned off?

don't think they were planning for it to fall that way. They have ropes tied to the very top, and I'm assuming people pulling on the other end of those ropes to pull it the opposite way it actually fell. I'm guessing someone let go of the rope by accident

Trunk road?

don’t think they were planning for it to fall that way.

Well, no, but if was bloody obvious it was going to as that was the way it was leaning.

I’m guessing someone let go of the rope by accident

And holding the rope would have helped?

WTAF... HSE copy of clip time!

It happened a year or two ago in brockely South London and was all over the news. Fairly sure the culprits were id'd in a couple of weeks and given the huge HUGE HUGE h&s beaches I suspect someone has done time for it.

Thank God he was wearing a helmet. Might have been killed otherwise.

Should have just put a bloody sling around it and hooked it up to a Hi-ab crane arm to steady it during cut then lower it.

They look amateurs pissing about with ropes.

IANATS and my only experience of tree surgery is watching someone cut down a tree opposite my old flat, but it was on a similar sized road and they brought it down in 6-8 foot chunks while also closing the road while they where cutting. It did take ages but was very safe

Yeah the proper way to do this is to bring the tree down in sections starting from the top.

This looks like a bunch of rogue traders trying to do the job quickly and cheaply. Incredible that nobody was killed!

don’t think they were planning for it to fall that way. They have ropes tied to the very top, and I’m assuming people pulling on the other end of those ropes to pull it the opposite way it actually fell. I’m guessing someone let go of the rope by accident

Some detail,

The tree has been climbed and the top removed, the climber should have blocked it down, felling onto a footpath or carriageway is asking for damage.

when directional felling the tree wan'ts to fall a certain direction dictated by where the weight of the tree is, a felling cut can be used to control the direction. once the hinge has been formed the tree should fall in the direction intended. if they are heavily weighted to a certain side as it falls tehy can be pulled in that direction slightly (pretty hard to describe)

If the hinge would is comprimised (decay, big lump of railing etc) or the cutter cuts through the hinge, gravity can and does take over and the tree goes wherever it wants (one of these options happened here).

Once a tree has had its canopy removed, the bole that's left can be quite stable, without the mass up top they require a pull or a wedge, or both. the rope the guy was holding was purely to start the bole falling, not to control it's sideways movement. as soon as the tree falls the rope goes slack.

the company should have had some sort of traffic management, chunked the stem down, NOT felled it up the side of an open road.....I suspect they have been lazy and couldnt be bothered climbing it after lunch and decided to wing it.

CyClist shOUldnT of been on teH road!!111 😡😡

(Clip over 18 months old and didn't go viral? Needs moar keywordz)

Howabout ‘CYCLIST NEAR-MISS OAP TREE, OAP FIGHTS BACK!’

(Seriously would be interesting to discover whether the correct heads rolled re the incident)

I suspect someone has done time for it.

Hopefully Special Branch are on the case.

They didn’t even shout timber.

They didn’t even shout timber.

I think he was a bit busy shouting F*** H. It's on the pavement as well, so the actual works were on a public highway, even if it had been on private land it should have been a road closure, the fact is was on the highway is unforgivable. I'm assuming the council was also involved, either giving permission for or organising the felling, they should have been on the hook for poor oversight as well.

It's a good one that. I quite like a good near miss video on YouTube.

That second video is sick. The sky scraper one was too much. My wife just asked me why I went white.

Basically what Jamiemcf said, I suspect he may have been a poster on Arbtalk in the dim distant past. Planes can take some pulling over if you are felling the stick rather than chunking it down, the tree in the clip looks to have a fair bit of side lean with a bit to the back, I think you can see the bar get pinched just before it goes sideways off the stump, reckon he over-thinned the hinge and the remaining fibres tore as it started to move. At least they didn't have to worry about stopping the traffic with that lump in the road.
If they had adhered to their method statement it would have probably specified a lane closure with lights and a sectional fell, road closure for this kind of work is unusual. Without seeing the tree with its crown on I would guess that they had been expected to have done that in half a day, not to excuse the corner cutting.

It’s the cyclist ducking under the tree as it falls that gets me, along with turning and looking back to confirm that what just happened is really what just happened!
My next move, under such circumstances, would be to go buy a lottery ticket.

I hunted down and posted that old clip on the Sycamore thread, it's now the 2nd time it's been posted in a new topic in as many days.

Am I responsible for generating a little flurry of hits resulting it going viral?! Kicking myself now as I gave in and posted a clip from The Suns Youtube account rather than the original Twitter one! Hate to think The Sun are earning a few quid on my part!

I thought it did go viral, it was on the TV news enough.

Shocking, no excuse. Even if the road wasnt closed you would have a couple of banksmen to stop the traffic either way whilst it was felled....

Watches video, loses pint of sweat through palms of hands

Tree lopping - how the Hannahs do it. Drone footage by Trace Hannah.

I watched it again frame by frame, and took screen shots of three frames right on the incident.
The cyclist is fractionally in front of the tree by the time it’s at shoulder level, he missed being hit by a fraction of a second!
Lucky barely begins to describe it.