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  • 3,000 road deaths caused by motorists every year

    Caused? Only in the sense that collisions with motor vehicles wouldn't happen if motor vehicles didn't exist. It's disingenuous to say that all deaths of non-motorised road users in collision with motor vehicles are caused by motorists, when there is often contributory negligence by the so-called victim.

    I think it probably is fair to say that the vast majority of collisions wouldn't happen at all if everybody paid proper attention, but as a vulnerable road user you can do a lot both to make sure people pay you attention and to make it hard for the buggers to kill you even when they seem to be trying. I rode half a million miles in a decade as a London motorcycle courier with only the one aforementioned collision with a really determinedly suicidal pedestrian, by assuming that everybody was out to get me, and making it as hard as possible for them to succeed. Now that I'm in a van, I seem to be making the most use of the same skill set in assuming that all pedestrians and quite a few cyclists are determined to end it all under my wheels, and putting my efforts into preventing them from so doing. When I'm walking or cycling, I don't assume that any other motorists are making anything like the same effort to preserve me, a conclusion easily drawn by observing how careless they are about something as big, red and liable to break their car as my daily driver.

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