Saw this advertised last night. On next Wednesday but not having seen something never stopped a STW “discussion”!

The title seems to suggest it’s gonna be some shonky, stir it up, journalism so you lot should love it?

Oh I was wondering what happened to that, I thought it was on last night. I bet it will turn in to a cyclist-bashing exercise though but I will watch with interest.

Should be interesting, if only for the reaction. Might make some drivers think twice if the perception trickles through that cyclists have video cameras.

Sounds like they’re setting out to hammer home the message that it’s a war out there, with sides to take and casualties to expect. Exactly how we don’t need to be thinking of the roads.

War on Britain’s London’s Roads

… would seem like a better title, judging from the footage. I hope the programme consists of more than shouty cabbies, and suicidal courier-wanabee fixie-riding idiots, but by the looks of it, I doubt it.

It looks like a televised version of a Jeremy Vine Radio 2 ‘debate’. ie: Lets get two people with really extreme, opposite views, then let them have a pop at each other. We’ll get a guy in from Critical Mass, then, like, a really right wing Clarkson-a-like cabbie. Yeah… that’ll be, like, really edgy, n shit, yeah? 🙄

Typical bone idle, lowest common denominator ‘journalism’, that looks like the very reason the BBC is constantly being accused of dumbing down.

“Car crash” telly, without irony.

Typical bone idle, lowest common denominator ‘journalism’, that looks like the very reason the BBC is constantly being accused of dumbing down.

But it’s world class British dumbing down, not just any old tat!

Meanwhile, in an adrenaline-filled one-off film for BBC One, viewers will be parachuted into the middle of a war that is raging between two-wheeled road users and their four-wheeled counterparts in The War On Britain’s Roads. As more and more people take up cycling as a way of beating the traffic or just keeping fit on their commute, the potential for conflict between cyclists and drivers has increased massively.

Now cameras installed on bikes and in vehicles will use heart-stopping footage of interactions between road users to reveal a shocking picture of life on Britain’s roads. The film will follow current cases as they go through the courts and revisit the tragic stories of some of those who have lost their lives on Britain’s roads.

Todd Austin, Chief Creative Officer, Leopard Films, says: “This timely documentary highlights a growing issue on Britain’s roads, from the viewpoint of both the motorist and the cyclist. BBC One is the perfect home for this insightful and at times shocking film.”

Sounds like well balanced cutting edge journalism to me

As someone mentioned elsewhere; what’s the betting it starts with footage from an alleycat race somewhere?

A mother who lost her cyclist daughter in a fatal collision with a cement mixer tells us the extraordinary story of what she did to change cycle safety on our roads

Sounds familiar. I think this has been on before.

[edit] maybe not

It would be interesting to see if there is an increase in hospital admissions of cyclists, secondary to RTA’s from aggressive driving, next Thursday.
*or hospital admissions of drivers, secondary to aggressive cyclists! 😉 *

Mmmm these shows are not helpful. Even if they are “pro-cycling” they promote the idea that cycling on the roads is incredibly dangerous.

In reality, sitting at home idly watching telly is FAR more harmful to health.

“All activities carry a risk. For some reason there seems to be strong focus on the risk of injury associated with cycling. Clearly, when deaths do takes place that’s tragic, and we need to do all we can to avoid them. But I think there is a perception that cycling is much more dangerous than it really is.

This focus on the dangers of cycling is something to do with the visibility of them, and the attention it’s given. What we don’t notice is that if you were to spend an hour a day riding a bike rather than being sedentary and driving a car there’s a cost to that sedentary time. It’s silent, it doesn’t get noticed. What we’re talking about here is shifting the balance from that invisible danger of sitting still towards the positive health benefits of cycling.”

— Dr Harry Rutter, lead author of the report and an adviser at the National Obesity Observatory, as quoted in yesterday’s Grauniad: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/bike-blog/2012/nov/28/deadly-cycling-sitting-watching-tv

They are based in Farringdon i believe, only about a mile from the people who came up with this http://road.cc/content/news/70235-dont-be-stupid-****-says-new-safety-campaign.

i’ll wait until it airs before complaining it was a London-centric, shit stirring mess of a program with no real insight into the problems behind the difficulties people face in using the roads no matter what the form of transport.

Oh dear….

Austin [Labour MP who co-chairs the All Party Cycling Group] said he was particularly concerned by the footage of couriers weaving at high speed through traffic and pedestrians. It was shot in 2006 by a US film maker, Lucas Brunelle, who sells DVDs of his footage, something not mentioned in the programme. Austin said: “I cycle in London every week, and have been for years. I’ve seen lots of car drivers driving badly, lots of cyclists doing things they shouldn’t, and everyone should obey the rules of the road. But I’ve not seen cycling like that. The idea that they present that as normal cycling is mad, irresponsible and dangerous.”

Charlie Lloyd from the London Cycling Campaign said he was also worried by this sequence: “The programme’s integrity is destroyed by the use of six-year-old commercial video footage of professional cyclists doing reckless stunts, endangering themselves and everyone else. Showing this as real behaviour is as false as presenting a James Bond car chase as how average people drive to work. The programme makers chose to fan the flames of aggression on the roads, that can only increase the risk for all of us.”

— http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/nov/30/cycling-documentary-bbc1-road

So +1 on the inflammatory lowest-common-denominator tabloid journalism then.

Carlton Reid has seen it and posted a summary
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/i-m-a-human-like-anyone-else/014027

Thanks BBC! idiots.

The BBC seem to be following ITVs style of journalism that is used in their “tonight” program.

Disappointing. IF they are going to show an allycat race as examples of cycling they should show an illegal street race as an example of driving.