crazy-legs – Member

That’s getting perilously close to the “earning respect” bollocks that gets trotted out regularly.

Yup. Nobody should be talking about “earning” the minimum legal, safe standard of driving from other road users. We’re not asking for anything special or demanding.

I overtook a bus once, just before he pulled out from a stop, he then close passes me and forces me into the kerb deliberately.
After some choice words I went to the back of his bus and hit the stop engine button.
I also made a complaint to the bus company, but the response was a fairly basic, “we’ll look into it…”.

bigyinn – Member
It makes me laugh when motorists rant about cyclists breaking the rules. So who is likely to come off worse in the event of an accident? The cyclist EVERY SINGLE TIME, regardless of whose fault it was.
So why the vitriol?
Usually they like to counter that particular point by parping on about insurance and damage to their car caused by the cyclist and who will pay to put it right?
I can’t say I’ve had much damage caused to my cars by bikes over the years though, other motorists though? Oh yes!

it’s the cyclist nearly caused an accident thing….I’ve told a few people to listen the traffic news and tell me how many of those “accidents” were caused by cyclists nearly causing them

kcr

…..Have you ever looked at the facts about road incidents? I looked up the Scottish figures on incidents caused by ignoring traffic lights a few years ago. 95% of incidents are caused by motorists (see the Transport Scotland website for the data).
The CTC published analysis on incidents involving pedestrians. 98% of all pedestrian death and injury in the UK is caused by motorists.
Motorists are responsible for about 4 or 5 road deaths every day in the UK. Cycling accounts for one or two deaths per annum.

When I look at those figures, I don’t feel any obligation to collectively apologise for the behaviour of “cyclists”.

exactly – been living in Aus’ last few years and have the luxury of pointing at this bit of research:
http://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/217306/muarc322.pdf

Regular commuter cyclists in Canberra where fitted with video cameras and their daily interactions evaluated by the researchers over quite some time…from the executive summary (italics added)

“No collision events were recorded. A total of 91 potentially unsafe cyclist-interactions were identified. In the majority of events (93.4%), the behaviour of the driver led to the event. The most common event type was left turn (37.3%) which involved a driver turning left across the path of the
cyclist, drivers turning across cyclists’ path from the adjacent direction (32.9%). Unexpectedly opened vehicle doors accounted for 17.6% of cyclist-driver interactions. In the majority of all events, a crash was avoided due to the evasive actions taken by cyclists.”

2tyred – report to police and contact bus company, asking them to review footage from bus onboard camera

The next lay by we come to the old feller pulls in,still cycling to allow me past. A quick toot on the Horn from me,a wave from him,everyone’s happy.

The problem is though, he will have to merge back into the road at some point, which is more dangerous for him than just staying there in the first place. This is often the reason people don’t use cycle lanes, because they will eventually leave you in a more dangerous place than you would have been if it wasn’t there.

Never seen an accident at a red light.

I’ve had one. Lass that had recently passed her test drove into the back of me because I stopped at red and she wasn’t going to.

Luckily it was the Explosif, so I just yanked the stays back straight again and rebuilt the wheel.

Earning respect is bullshit.

https://beyondthekerb.org.uk/2013/10/11/the-most-basic-respect/

I’ve had one. Lass that had recently passed her test drove into the back of me because I stopped at red and she wasn’t going to.

😆 so the only example we have of an accident at a red light was caused by the cyclist not jumping the light?

Lol @ aracer!

Bez – just read that. Excellent article. Spot on.

The problem with the respect thing is, road safety has nothing to do with respect. It is just about safe driving/ riding/ walking. We should all practice it.

Once you think of safety in terms of rights rather than duties, you open the debate up to arguments about people losing their rights, not being entitled to them and so on.

so the only example we have of an accident at a red light was caused by the cyclist not jumping the light?

I’ve had the same. Stopped at a just-changed-to-red light and the Audi behind missed me by millimetres as he swerved round me to jump the lights.

The problem with the respect thing is, road safety has nothing to do with respect. It is just about safe driving/ riding/ walking. We should all practice it.

Yep, people saying cyclists need to earn their respect are more of a problem than any cyclist I’ve seen on the roads.

To my mind its a tribal “them and us” situation in the UK. Cyclists are seen as a group apart and are given a hard time by road users, this then leads theminto a situation whereby they feel ” why bother with the highway code” as obeying the highway code does not get car drivers to do the same and the situation escalates over years until both groups hate, blame and behave badly to the other

The parallel is with travelling people. 100 years ago valued members of the rural economy welcomed onto farms for the temporary skills they bring. As they got a worse and worse press and attitudes towards them hardened they became detached from society and (some) of them began to behave in ways outside of society’s norms thus increasing the antagonism towards them and thus reinforcing the antisocial behaviour

The other aspect is simple jealousy. Cars are sold on the basis of this wonderful dream of the open road and stress free travel. the reality is somewhat different and this is frustrating. the car driver then sees the cyclist enjoying stress free travel and they don’t even pay for it and that causes them to hate the cyclists

Round 2 today. Though there seem to be more cyclists than drivers today, and the level of bile is fairly low so far:

#OpClosePass ALREADY CHANGING BEHAVIOURNearly 70 people in Edinburgh have received the chat on the mat as part of…

Posted by Edinburgh Police Division on Friday, April 28, 2017

I was musing on this thread and the half baked comments from readers in the local paper in response to police using go pro footage to prosecute drivers and a couple of things occurred to me.

1 – out of all the people I’ve travelled in cars with for business and leisure over the last few years if i had to pick a top ten people I feel safe with as a passenger: eight ride bikes or have ridden bikes regularly, of the other two my wife is an infrequent family cyclist and the tenth is simply a good driver. I’d struggle to find many more non cyclists if that list went to 20.

2 – why are drivers so fearful of go pro footage etc? The police cannot prosecute if there is no crime. So if I go out all camera kitted and you don’t drive like a tool and illegally you have the sum total of NOTHING to worry about. If you’re worried your driving is not up to scratch and you aren’t as careful as the law requires then improve it, don’t moan about getting caught for being a tit!

It’s a combination of the “persecution of drivers” narrative they’ve all been told and the sense of entitlement many drivers get – which extends to them being allowed to break the law if they want to. I think many drivers know subconsciously at least that they regularly break the law, but they think they should have a sporting chance of getting away with it.

@aracer

I’m sure you’re right. I think the only thing I’d disagree with is “sporting chance” what many want is a cast iron, platinum plated guarantee that they’ll get away with it (especially if it’s just some scummy cyclist).

I drive 20,000 miles a year. Persecuted is not a word I would choose to associate with trying to maintain a sense of order on the roads. I fear I am in the minority!

I’ll save the word persecuted for those who are acting legally and getting routinely bad treatment as a consequence of their beliefs, life choices etc.

Getting nicked for not being able to wait 20 minutes to read your e-mails is not persecution it’s their own fault!