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Mr Devereux: I guess it is always possible to have ever more compulsory laws about ever more things, and I guess bells on bicycles are in the category that we should be delivering them with bells.
Q56 Mr Curry: Whistles will do.
Mr Devereux: Or whistles. As I understand it, and correct me if I am wrong, we are now expecting new bicycles to be delivered with bells on them.
Q57 Mr Curry: Welded to them?

Priceless.

Q19 Mr Curry: ** If a cyclist or any driver of a car drove his car like cyclists ride their bikes, there would be nobody left on the roads of Britain at all. **

Wanker.

Q22 Mr Curry: The point I am making is that they do not have a bell, they do not have a horn and they do not have a speedometer. Do you not think that cyclists should be equipped with that basic equipment, even if it does provide a bit of drag or add to the weight?

Who doesn't? I do. My computer tells me the speed, it's not a legal requirement.

**Q26 Mr Curry: What is your view of these flat bikes, bikes which are parallel to the ground where the cyclist lies back on them with his feet above his head? Do you think they are safe, according to some Health & Safety Executive rule, in that they are likely to go sliding under a lorry or under a dog's nose?

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmpubacc/uc665-i/uc66501.htm
**

About time too, getting fed up of teenager/yobs speeding up and down pavement on their sit-up-and-beg full suspension mountain bike.

Excellent point.
All those broken legs arms fingers, concussions, bruises, damaged property and all are ok though..

Little old ladies are 2 points but children are 10 as they move faster and are more difficult to hit.

That's right, because I said that riding into little old ladies on my bike is way cool, didn't I?

Once again, cyclists on pavements are annoying. MP David Curry is a slack-jawed, goggle-eyed mouth-breathing shitclown who takes the bad behaviour of the worst cyclists and applies it to all of us.

And we all dress like Darth Vader.

...you're saying that nothing is being done to reduce the amount of uninsured cars on the road?

Seriously?

Had I said "But nothing is being done about uninsured cars" then you'd be right.

I said that there is a disproportionate amount of squawking about a relatively trivial problem.

Yes, have a crackdown, bring it on, maybe it will discourage twats riding bikes on pavements.

I don't want to be glib, and I concede pavement cyclists are flipping annoying and admit I have shoulder-charged them more than once, but it's strange that pavement cycling gets so much gum-flapping when the total number of cycle commuters, including those who don't cycle on pavements (1.1m) is massively outnumbered by the total number of uninsured cars on the roads (1.7m).

Brilliant. Gee, I wonder if it would be useful to know how many more cyclists there are on the road since 2004?

In London, cycling's up 83%. Casualties have halved in the same period. The truism is, the more cyclists there are, the safer the roads become. It's called "The Virtuous Cycle".

"Awesome logic. that'll show em."

When cyclists are accused of having no morals and being worse than terrorists, logic has long departed.

Quite right Dammit, pavement cycling is often carried out by yoofs on stupid BMX bikexs with pegs and their arse hanging out of their trousers.

Which makes it all the more galling than I find myself lumped in with those bumclowns. I don't cycle on pavements.

Statistically, you are more likely to be killed by a police car on the pavement than a cyclist.

Not London, sorry, but an encouraging precedent:

http://road.cc/content/news/10352-court-ignores-cops-smidsy-defence-knocking-cyclist-her-bike

It beggars belief that "I didn't see you!" is offered, and often accepted, as an excuse.

15.10.09

A specialist police unit dealing with HGV accidents is to be disbanded.

Transport for London has withdrawn the £1 million-a-year funding that pays for the Met's Commercial Vehicle Education Unit, which helps prevent cyclists being crushed by lorries.

Mayor Boris Johnson, who is chairman of TfL, was told shutting down the unit was "misguided".

The CVEU will close in March.

Jenny Jones, a Green party London Assembly member, said:* "The Mayor is risking Londoners' lives in order to save a small amount of money."*

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23756785-tfl-shuts-down-specialist-police-lorry-safety-unit.do

Loving the tags for this thread!

Inflating claims is wrong, it would be dishonest, for instance, to claim the collision has given you PTSD, you don't enjoy sex any more and have no sense of taste in films.

Settle for £50k

I would suggest that HGV drivers in illegal vehicles who have no insurance couldn't give a flying fuck about educational dvds.

Turning to the issues of lorries, Inspector Aspinall told the meeting
about a day of City of London spot checks on HGVs, carried out on 30
September 2008 as part of the Europe-wide Operation Mermaid, which is
intended to step up levels of enforcement of road safety laws in
relation to lorries.

On this one day, 12 lorries were stopped randomly by City Police.
Five of those lorries were involved in the construction work for the
2012 Olympics. All of the twelve lorries were breaking the law in at
least one way.

Repeat: a 100 per cent criminality rate among small random sample of
HGVs on the streets of central London. The offences range included
overweight loads (2 cases), mechanical breaches (5 cases), driver
hours breaches (5 cases), mobile phone use while driving (2 cases),
driving without insurance (2 cases) and no operator license (1 case).
In some cases the drivers were given a warning and in other cases
there was a more formal police follow up.

No information was given on
convictions following this operation.

Inspector Aspinall said that the London construction vehicle market
(skips, cement mixers, construction materials haulage) was very tight
and competitive. Shady operators with dubious standards and legality
exerted a downward pressure on market prices and that was forcing even
the more responsible companies to cut corners in order to win tenders

.** Some companies were even factoring into their costs the
inevitability of a certain number of fines for breaches of the law. **

I found this revelation shocking.

http://thebikeshow.net/city-of-london-police-road-safety-forum/#more-342

Boris is such a twat it's untrue. The worst vehicles on the roads are being given carte blanche to drive illegally, in unsafe vehicles.

There is only one police unit in London qualified to carry out HGV checks.

Boris plans to scrap it.

*Questions going to the Mayor tomorrow include:

• 
  *Will the cuts to the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Unit make London's
  roads less safe for cyclists? *
  
  
  
  
  

HGVs in London have a dreadful safety record. Because the HSE refuse
to get involved in road deaths as opposed to deaths onsite, cyclists
deaths are ignored on London's roads and penalties to killer drivers
are laughable.

The most dangerous vehilces, the ones that pose the greatest danger
and the ones that are involved in a disproportionate number of deaths,
are given even greater leeway to lumber around a medievel road layout
unimpeded.

City of London [Police] spot checks on HGVs [were] carried out on 30
September 2008 as part of the Europe-wide Operation Mermaid2, which is
intended to step up levels of enforcement of road safety laws in
relation to lorries.
On this one day, 12 lorries were stopped randomly by City Police. Five
of those lorries were involved in the construction work for the 2012
Olympics. All of the twelve lorries were breaking the law in at least
one way

Repeat:

a 100 per cent criminality rate among small random sample of
HGVs on the streets of central London. The offences range included
overweight loads (2 cases), mechanical breaches (5 cases), driver
hours breaches (5 cases), mobile phone use while driving (2 cases),
driving without insurance (2 cases) and no operator license (1 case).

Dawaat restaurant, at 60-62, offered me and three mates 40% off our meal, including drinks! Smashing food too. But yes, those twats who look like Amy Winehouse's boyfriend are ruining the area with their twatty hats and stupid trousers, they've spread out from Shoreditch, the twats.

just to add the that, the lorry that hit me had no operator license and 3 tacho offences.

still hasn't gone to court a year later. the defence keep stalling....

It's time to acknowledge how completely nuts it is to have huge machinery lumbering round narrow streets and posing a disproportionate danger to vulnerable road users.

It is time to point out that the beeb article, complete with the drawings of the "kill a cyclist and get away with it if you say they were in these shaded areas", is misdirection.

People ought to be allowed to make mistakes and not die or be crippled, that's what the aim should be- a town where the most dangerous vehicles are perpetually aware of their lethal potentiality and the drivers behave accordingly.

One of the deaths was a hit-and-run incident involving an experienced, safe cyclist.

"In 2007, an internal report for Transport for London concluded women
cyclists are far more likely to be killed by lorries because, unlike
men, they tend to obey red lights and wait at junctions in the
driver's blind spot."

This is not true, it's a misreporting. Hypothesis printed as fact.
It's bollocks, the report did not say that at all.

The bit about women being reluctant to use ASLs because they feel
exposed to public gaze sounds like a load of made-up twaddle as well.

I think the sample is too small to derive any worthwhile conclusions.

I also think talk about "blind spots" is a distraction. Why are HGVs being driven through a medieval street layout with huge areas the driver can't see around the vehicle?

Mirrors cost about £40. That's the blind spot eliminated. But then if you admit filling in your paperwork whilst cornering in a lorry and fail to notice a cyclist you kill, you only get a £400 fine and keep your licence:

http://www.movingtargetzine.com/article/more-on-emma-foa

From experience, I'd say skip lorry firms insist on evidence of sociopathy from their drivers.

Especially Ideal Scaffolding of Woolwich, who chuck fags and gum at cyclists (me) on Hackney Road.

They were random stops:

City of London [Police] spot checks on HGVs [were] carried out on 30
September 2008 as part of the Europe-wide Operation Mermaid2, which is
intended to step up levels of enforcement of road safety laws in
relation to lorries.
On this one day, 12 lorries were stopped randomly by City Police. Five
of those lorries were involved in the construction work for the 2012
Olympics. All of the twelve lorries were breaking the law in at least
one way

Repeat: a 100 per cent criminality rate among small random sample of
HGVs on the streets of central London. The offences range included
overweight loads (2 cases), mechanical breaches (5 cases), driver
hours breaches (5 cases), mobile phone use while driving (2 cases),
driving without insurance (2 cases) and no operator license (1 case).

3 women have been killed by collisions with lorries so far this year.
I doubt that being able to turn left on red would have enabled any of
the 3 to avoid the collisions that killed them.

Meryem Ozekman, killed at Elephant and Castle last week, was nowhere
near a traffic light when she was run over. Rebecca Goosen, killed on
Old Street, was almost certainly going straight on over the junction
with Aldersgate Street, as her office was on Cowcross Street, so she
is likely to have followed Clerkenwell Road at least to the St John
Street junction.1 And Eilidh, killed at Notting Hill Gate, is known to
have followed NHG all the way down to Shepherd’s Bush, and, in any
case, is reported to have been on the right hand side of the lorry
that killed her.

http://www.movingtargetzine.com/article/boris-left-at-the-lights

"They are simply trying to find a theory to explain an observed pattern."

Their theory doesn't fit with what we know about HGVs involved in fatal RTAs with cyclists. Plus, there's the danger that a lorry driver is sometimes the only living witness. "The cyclist undertook" is offered as an excuse. Case closed. There was a roadside check of lorries in London fairly recently. Every single one of the lorries stopped were on the roads illegally, or were illegally faulty, the tacho was fiddled or the driver was uninsured or on a mobile.