http://www.stop-smidsy.org.uk/

Stop ‘Sorry Mate, I Didn’t See You’

Because sometimes sorry just isn’t enough.

Bad driving intimidates and harms innocent people. Cyclists and pedestrians are particularly endangered by negligent or aggressive driving because we’re not encased in a few tonnes of metal every time we set out on the roads.

Stop SMIDSY will address how the police, prosecutors, the courts, and the law itself could all do a better job at encouraging people to use the roads in safer and more considerate ways. When we lobby these institutions on your behalf, we need evidence of how they need to improve. That’s where you come in.
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Most of us have experienced bad driving. By creating a place to collect and share these stories, we will build the political will to change how society deals with bad driving.
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You can also learn more about the law about bad driving and download some practical tips for dealing with it.

Its certainly a start!

Will you ever stop the "looked but didn't see" type collisions?

its happened to me before, pulled onto a roundabout and passenger shouted at me. I'd been looking at what was coming but completely failed to see a car. I was pretty shocked.

Frankly I think thats a terrible name for the campaign which I assume is against bad driving ? If people genuinely make a mistake what can you do.

Will you ever stop the "looked but didn't see" type collisions?

Not completely, but you can certainly cut it down massively. I've done exactly the same a couple of times, and I think I know why – its usually been early in the morning or late at night when the roads are quiet and I've not been *expecting* to see anybody, therefore I haven't – I've ssen what my brain expects – an empty road. Its only when I either look a second time or my passenger shouts that my brain has woken up.

The solution? Train yourself to *always* expect there to be something there. It's not the perfect answer (humans are too fallible) but it does improve matters.

I disagree SK. A lot of near misses and accidents is not just d.t. "an accident and not seeing you" IME of years of cummuting. I do think education is the key about driving carefully – i.e. don't always have to overtake us, we go at different speeds don't you know, also some riders are not confident or competant and some drivers "hate" cyclists but should ride themselves are see what we have to put up with.

This does not, however, excuse those cyclists who ride like a TW£T? 🙂

also a robot on Robot wars

SMIDSY

[/geek mode]

Oh yeh I remember that – BFTP (blast from teh past 😉 )

people who think it's a bad name need to get knocked off more often, it's invariably the first thing out of the drivers mouth. There's even an insurance company for motorcyclists called 'sorry mate'

Frankly I think thats a terrible name for the campaign which I assume is against bad driving ?

it's not really a campaign against bad driving, it's more focussed on riders' safety.

it's come over from motorcycles, with their documented history of accidents. by and large, a proportion of their accidents are caused by the rider going *far* too fast. this gives them a bad name.

in truth many more accidents are the result of motorists simply never seeing the rider they then hit. it leads to the cliche response, and hence the name of the campaign.

many motorists have never ridden a motorbike, or ridden a cycle in traffic, so don;t see the other side of the situation. they don't look in the right places, at the right times, they don't correctly asses the speeds of smaller vehicles, or simply assume the no car could be there so don't look at all.

in this sense the SMIDSY thing is about quite specific education for drivers, rather than a broader approach to road safety/ad driving, but can have a massive effect on those sorts of cliche accidents.

we can make a difference too, by (wait for it) not riding like arses. no red light jumping or pavement hopping hopping to start with. good lights and hi vis when the light is not good, not just when it's dark. riding well out from the kerb where it's not safe to be overtaken, tucking a little out of the way where it's safe. *paying attention* when there are cars waiting at junctions – it doesn't matter whose fault it is once you're under the car, you're still under it and might have been able to stop the accident, even if the other guy caused it.

making the roads safer has got to be a good thing – don't let the cars scare you off! *do* try everything to keep safe.

Agree Sockpuppet 🙂 More eloquent than I could be bothered to put 🙂

The signs this lot put up are dangerous in themselves. A year or so back, all along a busy local road there were multiple copies of a big yellow sign with a m/cycle and SMIDSY written on it. In tiny writing was a web address.

They looked like important official road signs – so everyone was driving down the road, slowing, peering at multiple examples of a sign that meant absolutly nothing to most of us, but which looked important so you did not like to ignore it. So you concentrated and peered harder to try and decipher its meaning, the word, to try to read the tiny web site.

Well, that solved the problem of not concentrating on traffic on the road didn't it!

Much more useful are the '12 accidents in 1 year here' signs, as they are fast to read and easy to comprehend. I cant help but wonder how many accididents the mindless design of the SMIDSY signs has actually caused.