Women's Safety in Traffic

I also am a fan of cycle training and am even thinking of having a session myself - despite having cycled in traffic for 33 years (yikes) and getting 98% in my cycle proficiency in 1978.

I grew up in london and can safely say i've been riding confidently here for well over 25 years (not giving away too many clues about my age). I also run the BUG at the university where I work, so felt that I should go on a cycle training course in order that I practise what I preach... it was incredibly worthwhile and I cannot recommend it highly enough, even for other cyclists like myself who consider themselves competent and confident.

... But confidence and competence are not the same thing and the most reckless cycling I see tends to be by young men who are too sure of themselves. Perhaps the key word there is 'young'.

No. I had some bloke undertaking me on CS7. when I tried suggestion alternatives we got into an argument as he sped off RLJing. The p****

What you talkin bout Willis?

How's this for stereotyped gender-based speculation with no evidential basis:

Women are at more risk in traffic than men, because to drivers of motor vehicles men represent more of a threat (on some primeval level), so are less likely to be forgotten about.

Where did you get this from?

those cheap Christmas crackers on Deptford high Street.

What you talkin bout Willis?

He was a lot older than me.

Interesting pattern. I ride Hackney-South Ken every day, so my seven year old has (hopefully) a idea that cycling in traffic is safe if you do it properly.
However, I still don't let him cycle on the road (Hackney driving is pretty special) and we have a well-practised drill for stopping and waiting until I yell the all clear before he cycles across a road.
And we are also VERY polite to pedestrians, of course, and say "tahnk you" if they have to step aside. (I stick to the road even if he is on the pavement.)

I also am a fan of cycle training and am even thinking of having a session myself - despite having cycled in traffic for 33 years (yikes) and getting 98% in my cycle proficiency in 1978.

BUT at what point will I feel confident that my child is ready for the roads (or the roads are ready for him)?

Any hints from other parents out there (and I am not trying to turn this into mumsnet, which brings me out in a rash).

There are national guide lines for children riding on the road unaccompanied (11, I think) but ultimately you as parent know YOUR child's maturity and risk assessment better than anyone. Maybe it's worth getting the little one to ride alongside you on the quieter roads getting him/her used to the new view of the road, constantly reiterating rules/ideas- for starters.

+1 roads come in all shapes and sizes, I would establish a few quite roads he can cycle on safely and work from there
until you, and he, feel confident to do some TT'ing around Elephant and Castle, Aldwich, HP corner etc.. in midst traffic together.

I don't want to get into a debate about this but I just wanted to state that in 2008 there were 10 men killed while cycling in London and only 3 women. In 2007, 10 men, 4 women. So far this year it's 5 men and 3 women.

2009 there were more women. I'm not denying this. I just want people to understand that it wasn't a typical year, as the media seems to have painted it.

i would have thought all those figures back up the claim that proportionally more women are killed cycling than men.

I should start by saying I ahve no facts here at ll and this is just gues work but...

I'd bet that proportionally more women die per mile of cyclcing than men even if more men are dying there are definitely more male miles being ridden hence my point.

Also not in mood for debate, just a musing I posted on a seperate thread.

this.
even the 10 men/4 women year. i seriously doubt women riders make up 4 in every 14 miles ridden, or minutes ridden.

Really? I would have thought that it's a particularly ineffective way of getting a message across, and has the potential to get people's backs up.

how? why would anyone be annoyed at you for saying 'excuse me, but my wife was one of many people who have been killed doing exactly what you just did' ?

What I've seen more often from female riders is a sort of zoning-out, leading to a failure to predict something awful about to happen. Laura Ashley-type dresses and/or hi-viz seem to be the most strongly predictive of this.

I wish to emphasise that I'm talking very, very broad brush here - we all know many absolutely focussed female riders and plenty of distracted male ones (not least me, which is why I'm a pretty risk-averse rider these days).

w/o making a guess at gender patterns, there are a lot of cyclists in general who seem to think, if i just stick to the left of the traffic at all times and stop at lights, nothing can harm me, no need to pay any attention. i can ignore traffic, pedestrians, never signal or look around me, stick to the left and i'll be fine.

On the other hand, lots of car/van/truck/bus drivers are shit, so the riders who think they are safe if they keep 6 inches from the kerb are making a false assumption, while the idiot cyclists do at least seem to be taking some notice of the traffic some of the time.

+1

Am I missing something on this thread (and I've read it all)

Cycling dangerously, not looking around, being in a world of your own etc etc has got anything to do with your sex does it - both men and women do this. Likewise, trying to give safer cycling tips are quite often met with a less than favourable response by both sexes.

And as for more women being killed by lorries and trucks turning left, where is the evidence that this has anything to do with the fact they have a womb? It's just a sad, unfortunate coincidence, surely?

I think the point I'm laboring to make is that what exactly makes cycling in traffic more risky to women, than men?

^ You might be better off asking in this thread http://www.lfgss.com/thread31997.html where all the mums and dads gather

Help ? I'm at work and the thread link is blocked, can someone tell me the actuall thread name, I can try and view it from search......

Ta

It's in the Private section of the forum, "Dads/mums on the forum"

And as for more women being killed by lorries and trucks turning left, where is the evidence that this has anything to do with the fact they have a womb? It's just a sad, unfortunate coincidence, surely?

As it has been mentioned in the topic, it's may be due to the women being more cautious than the male counterpart, they follow the cycle lane, especially in the ASL boxes which tell them to undertake vehicles in order to get to the front, and you HAVE to get to the front.

Not many of them realise that this manoeuvre is actually a very risky one, and frankly, TfL is responsible for the death of cyclists getting killed by HGV due to the implication that such manoeuvre is safe.

where is the evidence that this has anything to do with the fact they have a womb?

Entirely independent of the points raised in this thread, which I'm not sure how far I go along with one way or another, there's a whole lot more that goes into someone 'being' a 'man' or a 'woman' than whether they have a womb/any damn physical attributes/chromosomes or anything like that, indeed some people (myself included) would say that any 'physical' basis of gender is very much secondary to the social construct, i.e. physical characteristics are used, modified and simulated to portray/maintain certain social signifiers which form the actual basis of gender. Essentially, the main thing that makes someone a woman is understanding that they're a woman (maybe the only thing), and it's not especially controversial to suggest that an identifiable group of people who have been exposed to significantly different influences regarding their behaviour compared to another group, may act differently in certain circumstances whn compared to that other group. But there's a lot of theorising that goes on on top of that, which I'm generally never too sure about.
For example men are far, far more likely to be convicted of a violent crime. Where is the evidence that this has anything to do with the fact they have testes? Well, obv it's the kind of thing people love to cook up and theorise about, but the alternative sociological idea provides a model for it without the need for any vaguery or non-scientific hand-wavey theorising.

Nicely put....and way better than I ever could. You've captured what I was trying to express/thinking.

I grew up in london and can safely say i've been riding confidently here for well over 25 years (not giving away too many clues about my age). I also run the BUG at the university where I work, so felt that I should go on a cycle training course in order that I practise what I preach... it was incredibly worthwhile and I cannot recommend it highly enough, even for other cyclists like myself who consider themselves competent and confident.

You only look around 25.