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This forum is by it's nature full of confident and experienced riders - not everyone is like that.
Exactly.
Personally, I think they that people who feel unsafe on sections of road and who aren't bothering anyone else should be afforded some discretion (obviously not a total waiver - if they feel unsafe riding on a road at all, then they should question using a bike).
I disagree. My mother only learned to cycle at the age of 40. As she doesn't cycle frequently, and doesn't get a lot of practice she is still very nervous about cycling amongst traffic, but is slowly building confidence. Should she stop cycling completely because she is inexperienced and feels uncomfortable in heavy traffic?
As an example of how uncomfortable she finds it: She will put the bike in the back of the car and drive to the canal (paying to go over a toll bridge which is free to cyclists) in order to go for a ride along the towpath, rather than cycle the 5 minutes (if that) to get to where she leaves the car. -
Astonishing. The point of this story is not cycling on pavements but skewed and tendencious journalism, if this disgrace of a BBC report deserves to be called that. That this whole thread has been about cycling on the pavement and not the way that a committee's discussions have been misrepresented is saddening.
The BBC chose to go with the headline "Target pavement cyclists, say MPs". Target is the key word; it implies 'crackdown' and all that bullshit, it implies that there is a major problem. Later the report happens to mention "During the committee's hearings two MPs raised concerns about "anti-social behaviour" of some cyclists". Two MPs. Just two. And what they have to say is purely anecdotal or spiteful. So the concerns of just two MPs, one of whom has well known previous for his prejudice, are taken as the lead to the story.
"The committee urges the government to "devise education, training and publicity measures to target such anti-social behaviour, particularly when it breaks traffic laws". This is half way in to the report: education, training and publicity, *not *fines, prison, the birch. The headline could have been MPs say improve training for cyclists. Not such an emotive statement though. Why did the BBC choose to slant it's report in this way? Why did it not take this "The committee's report was a response to a wide ranging NAO report on road safety published in May which suggested Britain was still behind other countries in tackling road safety for child pedestrians. It said pedestrians and cyclists were particularly vulnerable - largely because they had little physical protection from crashes." as the focus of it's report? Headline: Britain does less to protect child pedestrians than other countries. You would think from the headline that the committee was only discussing cycling; they were not, they were discussing road safety in general.
Why was the headline not derived from this:
Richard Devereux, the top civil servant at the Department for Transport, pointed out that, according to the Highway Code, it was illegal to cycle on pavements. But he said it was wrong to assume that all cyclists were dangerous.
"There are, without doubt, some elements of the cycling community who are in that position and there are equally, I imagine, rather more people who are far more dangerous drivers as well," he said.
Headline: Top civil servant says car drivers are more dangerous than cyclists. Not exactly what he said but no more risible than the angle the BBC went for.
Brilliant thread this; a shameful piece of reporting leads us not to questioning the BBC or complaining about it's reporting but to calling each other cunts or being defensive about our own behaviour. -
Good call Wiganwall - people by nature are bigots - although we have largely managed to educate ourselves out of some of our more obvious bigotry - most of us still like to indulge in a little mild bigotry - afterall a little self righteous indignation feeds our egos and makes us feel better about ourselves - any number of perceived outrages committed by non conformest cyclists make us an easy target - and MP and Journos alike feed off this for their own self promotion and to sell newspapers - one of the reasons I like France so much is because thos Fucking French CUNTS don't have this bad attitude towards cyclists and they rarely wet their pantyhose because someone is riding at two miles an hour on the footpath
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afterall a little self righteous indignation feeds our egos and makes us feel better about ourselves
Exactly we all do it, in someway or another.
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Good call Wiganwall - people by nature are bigots - although we have largely managed to educate ourselves out of some of our more obvious bigotry - most of us still like to indulge in a little mild bigotry - afterall a little self righteous indignation feeds our egos and makes us feel better about ourselves - any number of perceived outrages committed by non conformest cyclists make us an easy target - and MP and Journos alike feed off this for their own self promotion and to sell newspapers - one of the reasons I like France so much is because thos Fucking French CUNTS don't have this bad attitude towards cyclists and they rarely wet their pantyhose because someone is riding at two miles an hour on the footpath
totally agree. It's just a bit worrying when the mild bigotry is being openly displayed in an MP who's on a select committee with (theoretical) power to act on it. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind.
most of us still like to indulge in a little mild bigotry
And he IS a conservative. With shit glasses.
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This article depressed me a bit.
Choice quotes from MPs:
Committee member and Tory MP David Curry said some were "irresponsible and arrogant road users" and said many people believed they took no notice of red lights and believed traffic cones were "not for them".
"The only time I have been knocked down in my life was by a cyclist going like a bat out of hell outside the House of Commons," he said.
"We seem to regard cyclists as living in some sort of superior moral category when they actually do not have any."WAC
No, you're a cnut. I agree with him. Get off the pavement...
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...oh....
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Exactly.
I disagree. My mother only learned to cycle at the age of 40. As she doesn't cycle frequently, and doesn't get a lot of practice she is still very nervous about cycling amongst traffic, but is slowly building confidence. Should she stop cycling completely because she is inexperienced and feels uncomfortable in heavy traffic?
As an example of how uncomfortable she finds it: She will put the bike in the back of the car and drive to the canal (paying to go over a toll bridge which is free to cyclists) in order to go for a ride along the towpath, rather than cycle the 5 minutes (if that) to get to where she leaves the car.No - sorry, obviously I was unclear. That's exactly my point - your mum will build confidence to the point when she'll be fine on the roads. In the meantime I don't think that she should be forced onto them if she doesn't feel safe, and I suspect she's not causing any problem. Even if there's the odd junction or stretch of road where she doesn't feel safe I personally have no problem with her considerately using the pavement.
I don't think that all cyclists should be told it's ok to always ride on the pavement though - but I certainly don't think that all cyclists on a pavement are cunts, or even that they're doing something wrong.
In the past week there have been threads here about taxis running wheels over, bus drivers cutting people up, taxi drivers coming at you with wheel jacks - I managed to end up on the floor in the middle of the road a couple of days ago (partly my fault :) ). Yet here we are saying that people who don't feel safe jousting with horrible traffic are idiots... seems the wrong way round to me.
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Looks like David Curry MP has even less morals than those mythical Darth Vader cyclists which haunt his imagination.
Tory David Curry stood down as head of standards and privileges committee pending inquiry into second home claims
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/nov/20/david-curry-expenses-commons-committee
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Target pavement cyclists, say MPs
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@mongrel
Similar story with my 6 year old (except he is occasionally allowed on the road)