A CYCLIST died after crashing into the back of a parked BMW during rush hour traffic.

It happened on Carmel Road South in Darlington at around 8am this morning (Friday, May 31) and the cyclist - believed to be in his late forties or early fifties - was airlifted to the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough where he was confirmed dead.

The road was closed for around two hours and the police helicopter that took the cyclist to hospital had to land on the nearby Blackwell Grange golf course.

Officers have not yet named the cyclist but believe he is local to the Darlington area.

Residents living close to the scene of the accident described their shock at what happened.

One neighbour, who asked not to be named, said she was alerted to the incident by a car alarm.

She said: “We heard a car alarm but we didn’t know what had happened.

“We looked out of the window just to find out where the alarm was coming from, we couldn’t see much but our were neighbours standing outside, and that was it.

“We didn’t realise how serious it was at first because the police rightly kept people well away.

“It was a shock when we heard he had died, it’s very sad.”

Her husband added that although the speed that cars travel down the road did not seem to be a factor in this incident, he described the route as “a rather naughty road” which has now seen three separate accidents on it in the last month.

He said: “The problem with this road is that there are lots of articulated lorries and cars that shoot down here.

“A lot of speeding goes on, not that this has anything to do with what happened today as far as you can see, but it is a busy road.

“It is a rather naughty road yet nothing is done about it.”

At the end of April a trainee lorry driver jack- knived his vehicle on the 30mph road and brought down a telegraph pole after skidding on a patch of diesel near the Elm Ridge Methodist Church.

And a car parked on the same bend as where this morning’s incident happened was hit by another car around two-weeks-ago.