Recent HGV/cyclist accidents

out of interest do people who think cycle lanes are dangerous think we should not have a cycle lane at all?

BR warning

They can be dangerous but I would think in general they do more good than harm, some are clearly not very well thought out when they are put in however. As with anything they are not entirely fool-proof and require a degree of judgement by all road users to work safely. For the most part away from junctions less experienced cyclists tend to feel much more confident cycling in them as the lane provides a visual barrier between them and the traffic, that it should be their space on the road. This is clearly preferential to said cyclists riding close in to the curb and feeling scared of vehicles squeezing past them.

[begin rant/]
However I really do not agree with shared cycle / footpaths, I used several country roads with these when commuting to work in the summer and received almost daily abuse for not being on the pavement. However considering that they were really quite narrow and had occasional pedestrians / children on them as well as multiple openings for entrances / exits, I felt both out of place on them and at risk / a risk (if a car pulled out of a concealed entrance over the path it would have been very hard to avoid). To use them it would be better to ride at a more moderate pace but on a 25mile commute I wasnt particularly keen to go unnecessarily slow. As I pointed out to one driver, would you be happy with a moped on the pavement? I think not.
I have similar grievances with the ones you find with the cycle lane marked on the pavement. All well and fine in principle, but it is common for pedestrians to walk in the bike lane part without noticing. Having had a pedestrian step out into the bike lane to pass some people and being unable to avoid them, I am also rather reluctant to use these if avoidable.
[end rant/]

... out of interest do people who think cycle lanes are dangerous think we should not have a cycle lane at all? ...

Yes.

John Franklin has sensible things to say about why.

Fuck me...........bill was right.

This forum has turned into Bike radar

Oh and all that you said is bollocks

it's just my opinion. its that ok by you or do i need permission ?

HGV drivers can't be held responsible for running over "invisible" cyclists. Its not their fault, they just can't see then on the inside and beside HGV drivers have a hard enough time just driving in LOndon.

I'm sorry, but they fucking should be. If a truck is not fitted with enough, properly placed mirrors then I think it is ridiculous to accept that they just can't see. All trucks and buses should be forced to be fitted with all the mirrors available to make sure they can see around them. (or sensors etc)

I just can't see how it is acceptable to allow tons of truck to be driving around partially sighted when, if not avoidable, it can at least be improved. It really pisses me off that as a society we accept 'I just couldn't see' / 'they were in my blind spot' as an excuse - for killing someone FFS.

I know that this can't be changed and that impotence makes me even angrier.

(sorry Dylan - not particularly a rant at you...)

What you forgot is that 2 people have been killed by trucks over the last 2 days and you post bullshit like this

HGV drivers can't be held responsible for running over "invisible" cyclists. Its not their fault, they just can't see then on the inside and beside HGV drivers have a hard enough time just driving in LOndon.

The buck ultimately lies with the cyclist, with more awareness, easily achieved i think through bike shops having a word in the ear of every customer who intends to ride in London of courses, a sober warning to NOT RIDE ON THE INSIDE OF LORRIES, with leaflets and so on.

The whole point is that it IS 100% the truck drivers job to check all mirrors and blind spots.

Posts like yours belong on bike radar

@ Dylan:

You don't need permission to be wrong, but people need to see that you are wrong.

Your view seems to be basically 'might makes right'. That's not a recipe that improves many things.

my two pence are that there is a lot of people that ride being afraid of traffic rather than realize they are part of traffic.
lot of people look for the "half way" Ie "I ride close to the pavement cos I don't feel comfortable riding in the middle of a lane. staying close to the pavement I feel half a way still a pedestrian"
this is a very dangerous attitude that brings people in dangerous positions on the road...

it a hard cold fact, if u ride on the inside of lorries, drivers cant see you, thus you are practically invisible.
theres no point pissing about is there now.

What you forgot is that 2 people have been killed by trucks over the last 2 days and you post bullshit like this

The whole point is that it IS 100% the truck drivers job to check all mirrors and blind spots.

Posts like yours belong on bike radar

bike radar ? saying that is meanigles.

so what your saying is all us cyclist should ride around expecting all cars and ESPECIALLY HGV's to pussy foot around us, watch out for us, and stop and let us get by ? Get real man, its aint never going to happen.

Like i said, the buck stops with us the cyclist, not the lorry drivers.

What you forgot is that 2 people have been killed by trucks over the last 2 days and you post bullshit like this

The whole point is that it IS 100% the truck drivers job to check all mirrors and blind spots.

Posts like yours belong on bike radar

I disagree - one of the big problems with the cycling community is that we dont take enough responsibility for our actions - there have been many great campaigns aimed at HGV drivers to make them more aware, but where the fuck has there been a decent campaign to make cyclists aware - i know they exist, but on a level which is off the radar of the average cyclist.

Dylan does have a point, because too many deaths are the cyclists fault, all the more tragically because the majority of the time the cyclist has no idea that the situation they are putting themsleves in is lethal. All of us every day see other cyclists putting themselves in crazy positions seemingly unaware of the dangers. As i have said before, and others have said too, learning to ride a motorcycle taught me more about road awarensss and the perils of HGV's busses etc than anything else because you are taught how they use the road space, and how to avoid getting into situations you dont want to be in.

We need to change this because there should never be an excuse for the HGV driver, never be a need for a cyclist to take a risk tht they are not even aware they are taking, and never be a need for anyone to find themselve in that position. You are right that a Driver needs to check their mirrors 100%, but you forget that even when they do this it is still the case that a moving cyclist is all but invisible to a moving HGV, no matter how carefull they are, and the majority of HGV drivers (i know a fair few as i used to work in Logistics) dread driving in central London because of this.

Rather than just pointing fingers at others we need to improve the road awareness of cyclists and make sure that the powers that be are doing everything to safeguard us aswell.

And thank god there are discussions like this on here because as has been said many times before they have raised the awareness of how HGV's effect us, and i for one have become a better rider as a result.

My views have nothing to do with the recent deaths and do not relate to these incidents, but surely the point of this thread is to discuss the issue here, and not in the threads relating to specific cases where it would be inappropriate

Well said VInylV, thats pretty much it in a nutshell, for me at least.

Anyone who rides a bike who thinks that HGV's should make room for them needs their head seen to. Thing is you can't argue with a HGV cos your always going to lose. Every time.
I was once run over by a lorry, so i know 1st hand how it can be, and i've learnt, through the shear terror of it, to respect them in every way, give them loads of space, always. Otherwise your just dicing with death, literally.
You should never assume anything with Lorries, or cars for that matter.

what im saying is that if people knew the dangers before riding on the road, many accidents and unfortunate deaths would have been avoided. People, as VinylV said already, are putting themselves at risk without knowing it. That's the crux of the matter.

The whole point is that it IS 100% the truck drivers job to check all mirrors and blind spots.

All well and good in theory but I regularly drive round the E&C roundabout and you need eyes everywhere, in part for the shear volume of traffic using the roundabout but also to account for a lot of poor lane discipline by other road users. To expect truck drivers to keep a 100% lookout on all 4 corners of their vehicles whilst negotiating complex junctions like this is impossible.

All well and good in theory but I regularly drive round the E&C roundabout and you need eyes everywhere, in part for the shear volume of traffic using the roundabout but also to account for a lot of poor lane discipline by other road users. To expect truck drivers to keep a 100% lookout on all 4 corners of their vehicles whilst negotiating complex junctions like this is impossible.

drive or ride?? many drivers sail round in their boxes cushioned in metal security, i lived in e&c for a year so know the place well.

we're back to the dual responsibility thing, 'accidents' are caused and generally its 50/50 both parties. so, we have a duty as riders to ride well, and fast, and with top notch awareness.

most, probably all, adults would benefit from training/reading Franklin which seems something to aspire to achieving.

way that law is letting drivers get away with fines/bans for a life is the major problem in all this--massively needs changing.

@ Dylan:

Yes. On an individual level, understanding the dangers of trucks and keeping clear of them will make you personally safer.

The problem is that spreading that message can have other effects as well. It can perpetuate a culture that blames victims, reducing the care people take of each other, so making the roads more dangerous. I'm not saying this is inevitable, but i do think care needs to be taken to avoid it. I think the LCC's 'Two Sides' leaflet is a good example of such a careful approach. Fuzzier 'people' issues matter as much as the hard mechanics of this problem as all these vehicles are controlled by people.

While we should not let pursuit of cycling utopia hold us back from achievable improvements, we should be careful that they really are improvements.

Suggestion

We get off the forum and onto the streets by running a campaign to educate our fellow cyclists , its called peer education.

It might involve designing a good clear leaflet and other media, e g cakes based on the message " don't go up the inside " or some thing similar. But it must be simple

We , and any one else from LCC, CTC , etc who wants to join in, spend 1/2 an hour one morning at one of the junctions in London ( eg Dalston Lane and the Balls Pond Road ) and use the leaflet and cakes to get the message a cross .

Oh and build in some before and after data collection in to see if it made any difference to the knowledge of the risks .

@ Dylan:

Yes. On an individual level, understanding the dangers of trucks and keeping clear of them will make you personally safer.

The problem is that spreading that message can have other effects as well. It can perpetuate a culture that blames victims, reducing the care people take of each other, so making the roads more dangerous. I'm not saying this is inevitable, but i do think care needs to be taken to avoid it. I think the LCC's 'Two Sides' leaflet is a good example of such a careful approach. Fuzzier 'people' issues matter as much as the hard mechanics of this problem as all these vehicles are controlled by people.

While we should not let pursuit of cycling utopia hold us back from achievable improvements, we should be careful that they really are improvements.

that's being politically correct, something i know little about, but i get what your saying.

@ Dylan:

You don't need permission to be wrong, but people need to see that you are wrong.

Your view seems to be basically 'might makes right'. That's not a recipe that improves many things.

Might makes right is kind of a motto the entire world lives by.

You don't see Mongolia squaring up to America do you.

Lorries kill you. Bicycles don't kill lorries. Who should really try and be more careful? Lorries or cyclists? I'm not talking about the theoretical, or the 'I wish the world was like this' answer, I'm talking about the answer that keeps you alive.

oh my god.

you called?

Well said Vinyl!

The responsibility is with the Cyclist, the numbers will explode and i'll put money on deaths rising.
The only way we will force the issue is by pulling together and taking 1 action. 1 clear message with one achievable goal. but it's not all about the big bang
At least once a week i pull up a cyclist trying to pass on the left, some take it on board, some laugh at me, if it sticks with 1 in every 20 i tell that could be one less rider down.

Masses of effort went into getting the ghost bikes out but to no big fan fare. If one driver or one cyclist changed their approach to that day on seeing it... they didn't jump a light, they checked their mirrors for a second time, they left enough space.. then that could have been one life saved.

I have the details of a person who went under the wheels of a lorry turning left and survived. She survived by inches and i mean inches. but she went through the entire experience. she has agreed to talk in detail about the ordeal and include photos were we can.
I feel that would have a massive impact, we can detach ourselves from death as we didn't really know them and never really know what happened. now what if that weren't the case. what if we knew every detail of being dragged under a rolling truck.....

as i mentioned

Suggestion

We get off the forum and onto the streets by running a campaign to educate our fellow cyclists , its called peer education.

It might involve designing a good clear leaflet and other media, e g cakes based on the message " don't go up the inside " or some thing similar. But it must be simple

We , and any one else from LCC, CTC , etc who wants to join in, spend 1/2 an hour one morning at one of the junctions in London ( eg Dalston Lane and the Balls Pond Road ) and use the leaflet and cakes to get the message a cross .

Oh and build in some before and after data collection in to see if it made any difference to the knowledge of the risks .

less talk, more action.

as far as I can see what needs to be done is:

1. educate cyclists - road skills (yes, it's tactical)
   
2. educate other road users - speed, sharing the road,
   
3. lobby government - strict liability, road planning, vehicle design
   
   

what did I miss?

How about a short, hard-hitting viral video clip (e.g. on YouTube) for educating cyclists about lane positioning, especially w.r.t. lorries?

less talk, more action.

as far as I can see what needs to be done is:

1. educate cyclists - road skills (yes, it's tactical)
   
2. educate other road users - speed, sharing the road,
   
3. lobby government - strict liability, road planning, vehicle design
   
   

what did I miss?

Number 2 will have little effect i think (u cant make drivers drive better than they already are IMO)

number 3 is the long term goal 20,30 years down the line. should still be done though.

For now, i think Number 1 is where its should be at. It has an immediate effect.

condenses into 3 words. don't undertake lorries

simple.

what I meant by less talk was that we can spend hours and braincells discussing the merits of 1 vs 2 vs 3 but IMO they are not mutually exclusive - so what we should be doing is working out what we want to to in these three areas.

Having said that, the best way for things like this to gain momentum is that people who feel passionately about a certain thing will always achieve more. So maybe 3 working groups for three complementary areas (yes, I know Oliver, but let's keep it simple)?

I like the youtube vid idea.

Fred.. Dylan i see a beautiful partnership between two driven individuals coming on here.
You are both articulate and passionate let's revive the awareness campaign thread as that was full of good ideas/designs and viral ads etc.
This kicks off on every death, lets not waste time coming up with new ideas when we have so many that were not acted on.

Oliver and Charlie are aware of the current campaigns we can add weight to through our numbers

Lets organise a Forum Jumble/whip round to raise money for leaflets/stickers etc

Peter your leaflet drop at several junctions is a great idea. I'd help there. which ones?