A man in his 80s died at the A38 junction with New Road on Tuesday. Police want dashcam footage. No cyclist died in the district in the five years to 2025.

A cyclist has died after a collision with a lorry on the A38 in Bromsgrove. West Mercia Police say the man was in his 80s. It happened at the junction with New Road on Tuesday afternoon.

The force published its witness appeal at 09:23 on Wednesday 23 September. In its own words:

“The collision, involving an HGV and a cyclist, happened at the A38 junction with New Road around 3.40pm. Despite the best efforts by emergency services, the cyclist, a man in his 80s, was sadly pronounced dead at the scene.”

The same statement says: “A 35-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of causing death by careless driving and has since been released under investigation and is helping officers with enquiries.”

Nobody has been charged. An arrest on suspicion is not a charge and not a finding of fault. The force has not named anyone involved, and neither will we. It has not said which vehicle the arrested woman was in, and we are not going to guess.

What the force is asking for

The appeal names four groups of people. Officers want to hear from:

  • anyone who witnessed the collision
  • anyone who saw the HGV or the cyclist in the area shortly beforehand
  • anyone who was driving in the area at the time
  • anyone with relevant dashcam footage

The force asks that it all goes to sciusouth@westmercia.police.uk, quoting 00279_i of 22 September. That is a serious collision investigation unit address, not the general 101 line.

If your dashcam records on a loop, copy Tuesday afternoon’s clip off the card now. Most consumer units overwrite within a few days, and the Bromsgrove A38 crash happened in the middle of the school run and the start of the evening peak.

Where it happened

The junction is the A38 Bromsgrove Eastern Bypass where it crosses New Road, the B4184, at Aston Fields. It sits between the Oakalls roundabout to the north and the Stoke Road junctions to the south, about a kilometre from Bromsgrove railway station. It is controlled by traffic signals.

It is also a building site. The junction is Scheme D of the A38 Bromsgrove Route Enhancement Programme, one of six junction schemes in the £49.7 million phase 3 works. The county council’s own upcoming works table lists the next stage there as “amending temporary layout for next phase of works and surfacing of widened areas of carriageway”, under weeknight closures from 2 to 7 November. In other words, the junction is running on a temporary arrangement now.

West Mercia Police have said nothing about the layout of the junction, and the investigation is open. What follows is simply the published design.

The council’s own drawing for Scheme D shows the finished junction will have:

  • an additional southbound traffic lane on the A38
  • the northbound A38 realigned to take the change
  • an extra ahead lane from the New Road west approach, with the A38 east exit widened
  • a new staggered pedestrian crossing on New Road near Fordhouse Road and Bant Mill Road
  • an upgraded signalised toucan crossing, the type cyclists ride across
  • wider crossings, on-crossing detection at the signals, and separate signal phases for New Road east and west

The programme as a whole is funded with £43.2 million from the Department for Transport, £1.3 million from the former local enterprise partnership and £5.2 million from developer contributions. £34.7 million of it had been spent by the end of July 2026. The council says some phase 3 activities will run into spring 2027.

What the collision record shows

Road deaths do not appear in the police.uk crime figures, so the usual local crime data says nothing here. The Department for Transport’s STATS19 collision records do. Bromsgrove News filtered the department’s last-five-years files to this district’s own code, E07000234.

Between 2021 and 2025 the district recorded 758 collisions in which somebody was injured, producing 1,012 casualties. Fifteen of those collisions killed someone.

Sixty-nine of the casualties were cyclists. None of them died. Eighteen were seriously injured and 51 slightly injured.

Cyclist casualties in the Bromsgrove district by year and severity, 2021 to 2025 Stacked bar chart of pedal cyclist casualties in the Bromsgrove district. 2021: 15 in total, 3 serious and 12 slight. 2022: 20 in total, 1 serious and 19 slight. 2023: 12 in total, 5 serious and 7 slight. 2024: 12 in total, 4 serious and 8 slight. 2025: 10 in total, 5 serious and 5 slight. None of the 69 casualties across the five years was fatal. 69 cyclists were hurt on this district's roads in five years. None was killed. Pedal cyclist casualties in the Bromsgrove district, by year and severity, 2021 to 2025. 20 15 10 5 0 1520121210 20212022202320242025 Seriously injured (18 in five years) Slightly injured (51) Killed: none Source: DfT STATS19 road casualty statistics, collisions and casualties last five years, filtered by Bromsgrove News to local authority district E07000234. Graphic by Bromsgrove News.

A lorry is rarely part of it. Of the 67 collisions that injured a cyclist here, one involved a goods vehicle over 3.5 tonnes. That was on the A456 in May 2024, and the cyclist, aged 79, was seriously injured rather than killed.

The A38 itself is another matter. The district’s stretch of it recorded 81 injury collisions and 103 casualties across the five years, three of them fatal. Of the district’s 15 fatal collisions in that period:

  • five were on unclassified roads
  • three were on the A38
  • three were on the A435
  • one each was on the A456 and the A491
  • one was on the M5 and one on the M42

So the A38 and the A435 are jointly the district’s worst A roads for deaths over the period, and only the unclassified lanes beat them.

Six injury collisions near this junction since 2021

Narrowing the same file to a 250 metre circle around the A38 and New Road signals returns six injury collisions between 2021 and 2025. Three of them were within about 20 metres of the junction itself:

  • June 2021, someone seriously injured, a car and a van
  • August 2023, two people slightly injured, a car and a goods vehicle over 7.5 tonnes
  • January 2025, a pedestrian seriously injured by a car

A little further out, a collision on New Road in July 2023 slightly injured a cyclist.

Three caveats matter. STATS19 counts only collisions reported to the police in which somebody was injured, so damage-only crashes are absent. The most recent year is revised later, so the 2025 figures can still move. And the published file stops at 2025, so Tuesday’s collision is not in any of the numbers above.

The road is open again

The county council’s live emergency road closure list, checked on Wednesday 23 September, carries no A38 entry. The only Bromsgrove closure on it is the side road off The Strand, shut since January because of a collapsing building. Our Bromsgrove roadworks and travel page is updated through the week and covers the BREP night closures as they are ordered.

What it means for you

  • If you drove the A38 near New Road at about 3.40pm on Tuesday 22 September, the force wants to hear from you even if you think you saw nothing. Email sciusouth@westmercia.police.uk quoting 00279_i of 22 September.
  • Save your dashcam footage from Tuesday afternoon today. Once a loop overwrites it, it is gone.
  • Nobody has been charged, and the arrested woman has been released under investigation. Please do not name or speculate about anyone involved. We will report any charging decision from the force’s own statement, and nothing else.
  • If you cycle through this junction, the temporary layout stays in place at least until the November works, and the toucan crossing in the published design has not been built yet.
  • The next scheduled work at the junction is 2 to 7 November, on weeknights. Full closure details go on our roadworks page when the order is made.

Sources