The injured man had to wait for almost an hour for an ambulance

Michael Cowley from Frampton Cotterell in South Gloucestershire suffered severe head injuries when he fell off his bike near Iron Acton on 25 April.

The 41-year-old haemophiliac went into a coma and never recovered.

Avon Ambulance Service is investigating why Mr Cowley was left lying in the road for 53 minutes before any medical help arrived.

'Delayed response'

Trust Chief Executive Kevin Hogarty said early findings indicated that the service had experienced an exceptional increase in demand at the time of the emergency call from the cyclists at 0005 BST.

"The calls were coming into our Dispatch Centre at a rate of one emergency call every two minutes on average," he said. "This high level of demand severely stretched the Trust's operational resources.

"Regrettably our response to the cyclists in Iron Acton was delayed as a result of this.

"On behalf of Avon Ambulance Service NHS Trust I would like to offer my sincere condolences to this patient's family and apologise for the delay experienced by the patients and other cyclists involved in the incident."