The news was hard to take. A Sunday cycle ride overtaken by death. Four people, the youngest just 14, killed by a car on an icy road in North Wales. Crumpled bikes spread across the highway, their riders taken from the scene by ambulance.

Drivers and cyclists often trade insults. Bike riders complain that drivers pay far too little attention to other road users. Motorists claim that cyclists ignore the rules of the road. There’s truth on both side. But today’s tragedy sounds like a terrible, but genuine, accident. The kind the world accepted with a heavy heart before compensation culture set in.

So let’s not rush to blame, and instead think of those whose lives have been blighted for ever by a chance encounter on a Welsh road.