Precicely, and DC’s encourage some people to wrongly become complaceant and not look for slow moving objects.

Saying certain roads aren’t dangerous sounds like the NRA saying guns don’t kill people, people kill people, whilst both are strictly true, I’d not stand in front of a gun whether the person behind it was an idiot or not!

but it is not just DCs, it is all roads! Drivers get complacent on roads they know.

A custodial sentence for killing on the roads as default might help. We’re not in general talking DBDD here, as that does normally get custodial, but plenty of cases of DBCD which don’t. I find it hard to believe the the current widespread leniency doesn’t encourage people to be less bothered about their driving standards. You are right that a crack down on more minor offences would help – that is after all part of the “could have been me” attitude, as general driving standards are appalling poor, and most people are just lucky that they haven’t killed somebody.

there is an alternative route, really near buy as well… thats the sad thing 🙁

I just opened this thread as I saw it on the news last night and was shocked and felt awful for the victims and families.

Then I read the comments on the dangerous road and whilst I can’t comment on that, Ive just returned from driving down the A24 between Leatherhead and Dorking, (where there are wide cycle paths on each side) and saw a road biker in all the gear, head down on the main dual carriage way. He was totally oblivious to a lorry approaching him at 50mph, who was being overtaken at about 60mph by a van. The lorry was forced to break hard to get down to the 15-20mph the cyclist was doing and await the van to overtake him.

Now, you can say its legal, but its also bloody stupid and puts drivers backs up who may be less generous to other cyclists in future.

If that’s the section I think it is the the lanes were badly cracked and potholed last time I rode it, which was admittedly a couple of years ago. It was ok if you were bimbling/on a mountain bike but at 20 odd mph on a racing bike it’d be a nightmare.

Which brings us back again to the provision of facilites for cyclists, insofar as they’re generally inadequate and often downright dangerous.

I bloody hate cycle paths like that. There’s this assumption that cyclists HAVE to use them but cycle paths are almost always designed for speeds of about 10mph and in most cases (when doing 20+mph) it’s actually safer and more convenient (for the cyclist) to use the road. Blame piss-poor provision for vulnerable road users, bad road design and the “motorist comes first” attitude of town planners for that lot.

We had a really bad road rage incident a few weeks ago when a white van cut us up and the passenger got out and was screaming abuse cos we weren’t using the shared use foot/cycle path (which was covered in leaves and debris and schoolkids walking home). That wasn’t on an A-road, that was just a residential street. It would have been far better for all if the council simply hadn’t bothered with that dreadful piece of “cycle provision” (unless it was intended for the kids riding to school?). If it wasn’t there, we wouldn’t have had the road rage and the council would have saved themselves a few tens of thousands of pounds.

You can argue common sense too, personally I’d never even consider riding on such a fast road but what’s to say these two poor guys knew an alternative route? Bottom line is that they had every right in the world to be there and everyone has the responsibility to drive/ride according to conditions.

I assume that, in your scenario, lorry 1 doesn’t have a brake pedal?

Now imagine you’re driving a tractor instead of pedalling a bike. Do you think that affects lorry drivers 1’s decision making process?

I expect he probably does when he’s devoting his full attention to his driving.

Whilst this is a terrible tragedy, I do question some people’s sanity in this. Even worse, I saw what was evidently a group of LEJOG’ers today riding up the A34. In the short space of time I saw them, there were a number of traffic incidents caused by huge speed differences, and scarily some near misses for them.

Considering what happened, how anyone in their right mind thought it would be a good idea to ride up there is beyond me. Even with a misjudge of understanding the road,I would be off on the first opportunity and seeking an alternative route, for my own safety.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Why put yourself in harms way for it? I saw them unloading in the big Tesco car park first thing, whilst I went in to get some food & fuel, then saw them up near the A303 junction. It would have taken all of one or two HGV’s coming past me at 60mph to realise this is a really bad idea.

This should be a non issue, we should all be able to use the roads together, in a utopian world maybe that would be the case, but in reality we don’t. We share rubbish roads with big, fast, metal boxes that can kill us.

I passed these guys about 20 mins prior to the accident one was wearing high viz I think – I was lucky to be on my way to a course (an lgv course) at the time. Turns out it was a good day to have off as the rest of my crew had to recover the bodies of the poor guys

Oh come on. Cycling on a dual carriageway with no hard shoulder is just a recipe for disaster. I drive a boring Volvo. I drive it as safely as I can. Sometimes I change the radio station which requires that I take my eyes off the road for a moment. That’s not bad driving, that’s normal.

And the slip roads coming onto the DC are a death match for anyone on a bike.

As always, thoughts with the families.

just to be really emotive

young women goes out on a friday night, dressed up, short skirt etc.

She gets raped.

I get the feeling that many on here think it would be her fault.

She gets raped.

Yep, very emotive, but not without a grain of truth, after all how many people would say “Come on, she put herself at risk by being dressed like that in that environment”. Word for word you could use that to defend the KSIs of cyclists who are on dual carriageways without hi-viz.

It’s a ridiculous state of affairs to absolve and excuse bad driving because it’s considered normal, in exactly the same way as it’s ridiculous to blame the rape victim for being raped. The overwhelming message sent out should be: “Men, stop raping women”* and “Drivers, stop killing and injuring other road users”*, neither of these should be something that any civilised society should be accepting because it’s normal.

*By the way, there is no implicit assumption that all men rape and all drivers kill/injure before that’s jumped upon.

Don’t think anyone has ever been raped due to a momentary lapse of concentration*

* not saying that was the cause of the accident in this case, as the full facts of the matter remain unknown to me at least

why are most humans considered ‘able’ to drive, when patently many are not, its this divine right that seems to be considered sacrosanct, the right to charge about in tons of metal, with very little or no responsibility, and when it goes wrong, often there is very little sanction. The right to drive should be a privilege,and treated as such– but as we live in societies bound up with said mode of transport , its treated as an inalienable given.

Two guys lose their lives on a UK highway, in broad daylight and we are discussing if it was a “good idea” if they were there as less dangerous routes were available.

If we as cyclists start that argument what are the non cyclists going to turn it into. Its his fault there was a safer route, its his fault for taking to the roads in a vulnerable vehicle.

And as for the rape scenario!

Come on guys this should be about us as cyclists raising the issue of shit roads and shit driving standards, but in another thread. Hopefully one day having had enough to do something about it, ride on Parliament, ride on some of the most dangerous roads as a group. I don’t have the answers and I may be wrong.

Lets try and pay respect to the two gentlemen who have sadly been taken from their loved ones while enjoying a hobby that many of us love.

People have been riding LEJOG for years and years…surely all the motorists on that road know that there will be cyclists there and so drive extra carefully.

im sure you would all have different opinions if you were driving the lorry

Completely tragic event but I don’t see how anything other than total segregation would eliminate all risk of this happening again.

If I’m assessing the risk of using a bike on a road I tend to consider if I’d be happy driving a car at 20mph on it – If I thought driving a car at that speed would increase the risk of an accident I would choose a safer route to cycle on. I suppose when planning such a long journey that it would be very difficult to plan for every potentially dangerous stretch of road.

Thoughts with the families of the victims, very sad indeed.