An 18-year-old from Mullion who died after his motorbike went under a tractor was unable to react quickly enough when he rounded a corner, an inquest has heard.

Joshua Harry Key, who lived at Mullion Golf Club with his mother Jane, was travelling from Porthleven to Helston along the B3304 on May 2 last year when he rounded a bend to see stopped traffic on his side of the road and a tractor pulling out into the opposite lane.

Crash investigation evidence showed that although he braked hard, his bike struck the back of a stationary Vauxhall Corsa and he lost control, crossing the centre line and landing under the tractor, followed by |his vehicle.

Lisa Snell, who was in the Corsa along with her son Michael, told the inquest at City Hall in Truro that she had rounded a corner to find a tractor pulling out onto the other side of the road, with another tractor and car stopped in the road in front of her, and as she stopped she saw a motorbike coming around the corner behind her.

She said: “The next moment I felt a big bump in the back of me, the car went forward a little bit.”

Looking out of the driver’s window she saw the rider “trying to keep himself straight.

“Then he fell off and he went under the tractor, and the bike followed.”

Josef Wardega, speaking through a translator, said he was driving the tractor out onto the road at Penventon Farm |when he saw Mr Key’s motorbike rounding the bend.

He said: “[I could see] the biker tried to brake from the movement of his body.

“It only took a few seconds. I’m not quite sure if he fell off or not or what went under the tractor first.

“After he hit the car he lost control of the bike and went under my vehicle.

“I did brake when I saw him hitting the car. I think I was already stationary.”

Police collision investigator Stuart Parratt said due to the nature of the bend, which has hedges at the side, Mr Keys would have had limited visibility of around 46 metres, and there was evidence that when he applied the brake he was travelling at least 31mph.

He said that Mr Keys “should have had time to react” and stop at any speed up to 37mph, and that suggested he was “travelling too fast for the distance he could see to be clear.”

PC Parratt said while the stopped traffic was “not something you would expect to be around the corner” it’s a country road and “you have to expect the unexpected.”

Following a pathologist’s report, assistant coroner Barrie van den Berg gave the |cause of death as severe head and spinal injury, recording a verdict of death by road traffic collision.

He added: “It’s always a tragedy when someone so young dies do suddenly.”