Blood on the streets

Pfft. Those Fair Wiggo Cyclists.

Yeah, but it's cold and I can't remember who Bradley Wiggins is any more.

Probably mainly this.

(There still wasn't any room on the bike racks outside my office though)

"The survey polled 1,070 adults living in London between 19 and 25 November, of which about a quarter identified themselves as cyclists"

So an effective sample size of 250, from which to project the results on all the London Cyclists. And worth pointing out that, of those who had responded saying they cycled more than once a week, the actual figure falls to 13%

I would assume that at least some of that number will start 'bike-commuting' again after a week of dealing with the tube etc.

(response copied from FB)

edit: // and remove things like unreasonable time targets that supersede safety.

I believe this, along with time targets that are reasonable, and 'pay per job' contracts that the construction lorries seem to be working to, would make the streets safer for everyone. You cannot remove the 'hurry' from daily life, but making a driver's 'performance' pay-related turns the job into a race against time, which is, after all, a race. Public streets are not the place to have races, especially not with an HGV at your disposal.

car nearly kills me , passenger is wearing headphones and carrying a pizza on his lap . driver is in cloud cuckoo land , where doth boris stand on car drivers enjoying pizza and having fedora hats on the rear shelf ? blantant attempt on my life

None, cars is king.

The last couple of pages of debate remind me of the US gun debate.

Guns don't kill people - people kill people. But if you don't have a gun, people might kill you, because you can't kill them first. So you should have a gun and be ready to kill with it, so that nobody kills you.

And, like in the gun debate, the argument about human nature goes nowhere. People are flawed, some in a well-intentioned way, the others because they are cunts. You can't legislate away human frailty.

You can, on the other hand, legislate away guns.

So, yeah. Riding in primary may keep people from passing you, and riding in primary can be stressful if you have a bastard behind you.

But the question of whether or not you have to ride in primary is a basically a question of how you adapt to a road environment that is dangerous, and different people have different views and they're not necessarily cunts for saying that you should do one thing or another thing, they just have a different perspective.

The danger bit we could solve by legislating away the HGVs/imposing strict liability/segregating the road/changing the culture/etc/delete or add as appropriate. Which I thought this thread was mainly talking about. Maybe we should go back to that discussion? It was more interesting.

Major urban hubs, cities, should have higher standards of vehicles. Less polluting vehicles, safer vehicles just like a lower speed limit.

HGV should be fitted with a complete safety system, cameras, sensors, less opening to the underbelly. Drivers should be required to pass a higher standard of exams for driving in the city, specific training on how to share the space with cyclists for example.

On the other hand police need to be properly trained on spotting bad cycling and bad driving in relation to cyclists. Rather than have all the popo in London camping on junctions for a month eating doughnuts, why not have a dedicated team who are police officers as much as they are cycling coaches. Officers who know what they are talking about. They need to be able to hand out mandatory training weekends for both riders and drivers.

Public streets are not the place to have races.

Alleycat thread>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Discussed at the highest level by experts:

Jason McCartney, a Tory MP, asked if there was "a war ongoing" between cars and bikes. Then his party colleague, Martin Vickers, asked – and he was being entirely serious – if the panel felt cyclists should "contribute" financially to the upkeep of roads.

Labour's Jim Dobbin launched into a series of fuzzy anecdotes about miscreant cyclists and scratched car paintwork before asking – again in seriousness – if a solution for our current cycle safety woes could be to force all cyclists to be registered, tested, and to put their bikes through a sort of MoT test.

Jack Semple, policy head of the Road Haulage Association, was left utterly unchallenged when he repeatedly singled out cyclist behaviour as the reason for them being killed by lorries.

Karen Lumley, reminisced fondly about her cycle proficiency test at school and wondered if there was anything similar these days.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2013/dec/03/transport-committee-cycling

.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2013/dec/03/london-cycling-provisions-laughable-bike-blog

One of Johnson's plans is for a pair of segregated cycle routes crossing London, north to south and east to west. Such routes could also be counterproductive, Gehl argued: "It's again something that's good for the freaks who like to go at high speed. It's not good in a city to do 40kmph on a bicycle. We should do 20kmph. The best way to get the 40kmph to slow down is to put a lot of grandmothers and children in the bicycle lanes. It slows down the whole thing and it gets more civilised."

^ i wonder why that doesn't seem to apply to vehicles?

Excuse the cynicism in me, but with all this shit I can't see things getting better for us any time soon. Recent deaths and campaigning has put the focus on cyclists recently - and yet all it appears to have done is bring daft nonsense anti-cycling bullshit further into the mainstream.

This was in the metro today:

Which is sure to be followed up by a ton of responses in tomorrows metro slagging the author off saying it's all cyclists faults for running red lights, not wearing hivis etc.

Then on 'progressive' 'liberal' site Reddit, this was the most popular response in the London subreddit to a photo of the die-in:

And then when I hear people I know who don't even drive slagging off cyclists saying they bring it upon themselves, right in front of me knowing I'm a cyclist, I can't help thinking the only thing that's going to make me safer on the roads isn't activism, isn't trying to change minds, but to carry a fucking gun and just look out for myself.

Why on earth would anyone need to be wearing a helmet and hi-vis to lie down on the road? Did it not occur to the commenter that perhaps people may have taken them off when they got off their bikes?

Not just to the commenter, but the one hundred and sixty-eight people who read that comment and decided they liked it so much it was worthy of being 'upvoted'

http://jakesbikes.co.uk/content/graph.php#.Up3aLWR5zcI

http://www.treehugger.com/bikes/short-film-amsterdam-will-blow-your-mind-video.html

That report on the commons committee is so depressing. We pay these people to be morons it seems.

what's also frighting is Haulage representatives failing to acknowledge responsibility. Comment like Boris Bumbaclot gives them free reign to disavow any necessity to do anything different than they are already, which means they can avoid any extra costs of improved training and sensors on the lorries themselves.

Quite happily imagine there is an element of conspiracy here, the politicians being hand in glove with the haulage companies and no desire to upset the current status quo.

i don't believe any conspiracy is even necessary - they're that disinterested.

Private motoring receives huge subsidies, motorists aren't cash cows, they're freeloaders.

The report by transport academics at the Dresden Technical University in Germany calculated that even with drivers' insurance contributions discounted these factors amounted to an annual total of €373bn (£303bn) across the 27 EU member states, or around 3% of the bloc's entire yearly GDP. This breaks down as €750 per man, woman and child.

The report recommends that such so-called externalities be factored into the cost of driving, noting that even the €373bn tally does not include costs from congestion or ill health caused by lack of exercise.

The idea that drivers are "the cash cows of our society" is wrong, the authors write:

• "On the contrary, it must be stated that car traffic in the EU is highly subsidised by other people and other regions and will be by future generations: residents along an arterial road, taxpayers, elderly people who do not own cars, neighbouring countries, and children, grandchildren and all future generations subsidise today's traffic."*
  

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/controversial-plans-to-create-uks-first-toll-road-for-a-decade-to-be-dropped-8980427.html

ABOUT 3 HOURS AGO
Evidence over cycle safety 'bypassed in favour of opinions'
In front of them sat experts from campaigning bodies, transport research and the police - all ready to get into a proper discussion - and yet the MPs demonstrated that they didn't even know the most basic of facts.

Evidence and statistics were bypassed in favour of opinions and anecdotes on sideline topics.

Such a clear demonstration of lack of research and understanding at this level of seniority would, in any other business, be classed as negligent.

– CHRIS BOARDMAN, FORMER OLYMPIC CYCLING CHAMPION

http://www.itv.com/news/london/story/2013-12-03/mps-investigating-cycling-safety-dont-know-the-most-basic-facts/

It was a pathetic performance, like listening to a bunch of pig-ignorant, prejudiced saloon-bar bores.