unklehomered – Member

While you have a point sbob, merely surrendering the road everytime doesn’t alert the driver to the fact he might nearly have killed someone, and reinforces the notion they have somekind of supremacy over cyclists. If I did something which a cyclist found threatening, inimidating or dangerous, I would want to know about it.

Which is why I boarded the bus (with bike) further down the road to remonstrate with the driver, once it was safe to do so. 😆

While this doesn’t directly relate to the cyclists in Cambridge, I wonder if these panel meetings have anything to do with it:

http://www.cambs.police.uk/myneighbourhood/priorities.asp?teamcode=222

as I understand it, there is a meeting with local Police, council & members of the public where people can air their views…..
I think then that the local policing teams have to commit a certain amount of time to tackling these crimes, as they have been bought up as concerns by members of the public…

I am pretty sure that complaints about cyclists would be fairly high up the agenda in cambridge (rightly or wrongly when looking at all the other motoring stuff mentioned above).

Anyway – back to the F1 Quali…..

Dales_rider – Member

It is when you are not overtaking anything

No it isn’t. 😀

You really didn’t need to justify using your car to get to work, you know.
It’s ok, it’s your choice. 🙂

stumpy01 – Member

Anyway – back to the F1 Quali…..

Fell asleep before he even finished the sentence. 😉

speeding is an incredibly minor cause of accidents

As statements pulled out of thin air go, that’s up there with the best of them.

Mr Agreeable – Member

As statements pulled out of thin air go, that’s up there with the best of them.

4% of accidents have speed in excess of limit as primary cause.
You can bump that up to about 14% if you’re only looking at fatals.

Government stats, look them up whilst you are looking up sources for your claims, as I’m sure you didn’t pull them out of thin air.

How many involve speeding vehicles? It may not be the primary cause, but it is always going to increase the risk of injury.

You can bump that up to about 14% if you’re only looking at fatals.

So with a quick bit of Googling you’ve found a stat which says that 1 in 8 fatal accidents are caused by speeding. *slow clap*

I’ve linked to my sources, not my fault you can’t be arsed to read them.

If you’ve got time to slap a car, you’ve got time to brake out of danger.

Stop being a prick

Thanks. I think the prick was the guy who undertook me in slow moving traffic, pulled alongside, then proceeded to move sideways into the space I was occupying.

Mr Agreeable – Member

So with a quick bit of Googling you’ve found a stat which says that 1 in 8 fatal accidents are caused by speeding. *slow clap*

No, after looking at government statistics, I have seen that speed in excess of the limit is the primary cause of less than 4% of accidents.

Here’s a link for you.

Like I said, a minor cause of accidents.
I trust you will now retract your statement which is shown to be in error, assuming it was made in error and you’re not a weasly maggot of a cowardly liar, which I’m sure you’re not. *coffee bean shake*

Would you say it has (relatively) recently got worse?

I’m not sure if its a case of it getting worse, seems to me there’s just more cyclists than there has been previously and if X% of people ride recklessly then your likely to see more incidents as more people ride.
I drive as well and there are some awful drivers around town, I suppose that’s true of anywhere though, we do seem to have a higher amount of reckless cyclists than most places, most of which are primarily a danger to themselves!

simons_nicolai-uk – Member

Thanks. I think the prick was the guy who undertook me in slow moving traffic, pulled alongside, then proceeded to move sideways into the space I was occupying.

Absolutely, but no need to stoop to his level. In this case the moral high ground is also the physically safest. 🙂

sbob – Member

Here’s a link for you.

So the best you can do is an anti-speed camera story from the Daily Mail. From 2007. Which still admits that 14% (nearly 1 in 8 ) fatal accidents were caused by breaking the posted speed limit (And another 16% were caused by people driving too fast for road conditions)

Bored now, why don’t you retire back under your bridge?

Of course, speed in excess of the limit does not necessarily include driving too fast for the conditions. Statistics are very adaptable dependent on one’s point of view and really prove very little.

EDIT: ooh, 43 seconds too slow. The irony… 😉

In this case the moral high ground is also the physically safest.

I’m not trying to claim it’s big, clever or in any way sensible. In fact I always feel annoyed with myself after a confrontation but I do think that sometimes it’s useful to remind people that, however much they may feel insulated within their private space inside their little metal box, actually the outside world is still able to interact with them (and make better progress through the city). Acting like a prick in a car is not without consequences.

unklehomered – Member

How many involve speeding vehicles? It may not be the primary cause, but it is always going to increase the risk of injury.

That is correct, however it is my belief that by plastering over the cut we mask the severity of the causal problems which will continue to grow until we run out of plasters!
We need to think about the long term solution to safe road use, which I believe is better training, for all road users.
Unfortunately nobody wants to do that. Everyone wants to blame everyone else for problems on the road and not take responsibility for themselves.
Look at the anti-driver sentiments on this forum. They are exactly the same as the anti-cyclist opinions expressed on motoring forums.
It’s all driven by the same thing; selfishness.
Selfish car drivers don’t like bikes because they slow them down.
Selfish bike riders don’t like cars because they slow them down.

I blame the false sense of entitlement that the Labour government introduced. 8)

We need to shift people’s attitudes back to when we took responsibility for ourselves and start being a little more neighbourly.

speed in excess of the limit is the primary cause of less than 4% of accidents

This I love. Now I’m reading this as someone who is trying to argue that speeding should not be prosecuted/made a priority because it’s not a ‘significant’ cause of accidents. Maybe I’ve not picked up the whole thread but that’s how it looks.

Going back to the title – “The law is the law….” I’m not going to match every comment to every previous comment that people have made but I really hope it’s not the same people arguing that “speeding is fine” that were arguing that “cyclists should obey the rules” or we really are on Daily Mail Island

Even when 99% of people on here agree, there is a greater than 50% chance that there will be disagreement.

The law is indeed the law but we all make judgements to break the law to varying degrees. Whether this is a good thing or not will depend on whether you benefit or whether you are disadvantaged.

Mr Agreeable – Member

So the best you can do blah blah blah

I stated that speeding is a minor cause of accidents, which it is.
I’ve given you a source.
I don’t see what your problem is?
Unless you want to argue about whether less than 4% equates itself to being incredibly minor?
I don’t see how as

it’s a tiny proportion – about 6%

according to yourself.
I also fail to see how my national newspaper source is any less valid than your anti-driver blog.

Second arch on the left, there’s a good chap.

simons_nicolai-uk – Member

This I love. Now I’m reading this as someone who is trying to argue that speeding should not be prosecuted/made a priority because it’s not a ‘significant’ cause of accidents. Maybe I’ve not picked up the whole thread but that’s how it looks.

Well, yes.
We should make the more common causes of accidents a priority to address.

That’s some pretty simple logic I’m following right there, how about you?

Are are you just going to jump in with Mr Agreeable (a misnomer if ever I saw one) on the grounds that I pointed out your road use was shit?
Do you drive like that when in a car?
Someone does something wrong, so give ’em a nudge!

Attitude.
That’s the key.

Mr Agreeable – Member

Second arch on the left, there’s a good chap.

Lose the argument, play the troll card.
What next, “I know you are but what am I?”. 😆
🙄

So what is the main cause of accidents? Not mocking, some of you seem to have gone through statistics, I’m interested.

Inattention.

Someone does something wrong, so give ’em a nudge!

Strangely, that seem to the be attitude of a lot of car drivers towards cyclists – drive at them and they’ll get out of the way.

I’ll admit to having a secret fantasy about having a really battered old Landy so that when some idiot roars up the outside or inside to jump a queue of traffic and then forces their way in you could just absent mindedly drive into them.

Also, lights which are triggered by the presence of a car.

You can generally get those fixed by reporting them to the council – I’ve reported several round here and they’ve mysteriously started detecting my bicycle shortly after. I understand it’s also not actually illegal to go through a red light when the lights are faulty.

(apologies for the sensible interlude – as you were with the arguing)

non necassary, I did not know that, I just thought they didn’t detect bikes. Thank you muchly.

I would check that badly calibrated counts as malfunctioning before running any reds…

Inattention.

Inattention is certainly a big cause of road accidents, without a doubt. But wouldn’t a reduction in speed somewhat compensate for that? Most accidents and close calls I see on the road are a combination of inattention and being in a massive rush. In other words not taking the time to correctly evaluate the situation.

Speed is not the cause, but at a lesser speed situations unfold slower giving an inattentive mind more time to evaluate. Not only that, I find there is a correlation between the speed you drive and the speed your brain ticks over at. So even when you’re not moving, your general driving speeds have an influence on your decision making, or perhaps more to the point the speed you make them at.

I have no sources for this whatsoever so may be talking crap.

One thing that I can be absolutely positive about is that if traffic didn’t move, there would be no accidents.

There’s certainly a lot of poor cycling in Cambridge. Cyclists without lights are commonplace (there’s a police campaign every Winter which seems quite sensible) while there’s a definite element who see Hills Road/St Andrew’s Street as their own personal time trial course.

But, if you really wanted to fix the problem of lunatic cyclists you would do something about the roads – which is what the City Council are doing. The Hill’s Road/Lensfield Road junction is getting a redesign; most of the roads in the North are going to 20mph speed limits; and slowly, some quite decent cycle path provision is being built.

So it feels as though the City Council are actually doing something about the problem, but our police commissioner seems to be just posturing.

Meanwhile, his draft plan only mentions bikes once in relation to bike theft. What gives?

Last year I happened to be cycling round San Francisco. At a 4-way stop I unthinkingly cycled through behind the bike in front of me without giving way to a car trying to make a left turn. “We respect you, so you should respect us” he yelled angrily from his SUV. And I think that he had a good point. Cycling in the Bay Area is a very different experience to cycling here, for that reason.

EDIT: and why can’t we make a left-turn on a red light if it’s safe to do so? It’s allowed in the US and the sky doesn’t fall in.

the thing that really baffles me is that more people don’t get killed on the roads, regularly..

I was talking to a guy at work about this today (I work in a bike shop in Central London)

thankfully, my commute is only 3 miles each way to work

despite this short commute from NW to WC2 London, I see every single day, absolutely shocking instances of stupid action from other cyclists, pedestrians (stepping off pavement into road whilst talking on mobile phone, browsing internet on smart phone, etc.) and motorists (this includes drivers in private motor vehicles, as well as bus drivers, taxi drivers and utility drivers i.e. refuse collection) and motorists using smart phones for navigation or answering phone calls or texts?

I always stop at red traffic lights; I like maintaining the quality of my track stands and also the aerobic buzz of sprinting to the next lights and then stopping at the next light, then to track stand and sprint again. I am rarely going faster than 25-30mph on my sprint between these lights as its a short distance.

Every day? I see stupid cyclists jumping red lights, constantly. I see stupid cyclists riding the wrong way up one-way streets into oncoming motor vehicle and cyclist traffic. I see stupid cyclists riding on the pavement coming into conflict with pedestrians (I was run over last year by a cyclist on a pavement). I see stupid cyclists riding at night on the road, in black clothing, with no lights.

I also see many stupid motorists jumping lights, sitting in the ASL box, ignoring other road users “right of way” and ignoring the traffic signs specifically ‘give way’ or ‘stop’ at junctions, often when combined with “segregated” cycle lanes

how more people don’t get killed every day in London, is truly a mystery? Can anyone offer an answer to this question…

@esher shore: amazingly in London, everyone is kind of conditioned to a) be a moron and b) look out for morons and the whole organised chaos actually works in harmony.

“We respect you, so you should respect us” he yelled angrily from his SUV

That isn’t what I heard yelled from SUVs round Leeds… SF sounds nice, and also a little bit make believe.