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I'm aware which case the report refers to.
Have to disagree about the guards and fingers. Going up the inside of a signalling/turning vehicle per the coroner's case is using the machine with the guards removed.
In that coroner's case, the cyclist made the wrong choice and paid a terrible price. Like misjudging how to pack your parachute. There will always be an element of personal responsibility.
[quote=MoreCashThanDash ]Have to disagree about the guards and fingers. Going up the inside of a signalling/turning vehicle per the coroner's case is using the machine with the guards removed.
In that coroner's case, the cyclist made the wrong choice and paid a terrible price. Like misjudging how to pack your parachute. There will always be an element of personal responsibility.
There were never any guards on the machine. The parachute analogy is a poor one, as in that case there are no outside factors involved (well it's poor for all sorts of other reasons, but that's the main one). HSE doesn't in general accept "personal responsibility" as an excuse for not having systems in place to prevent deaths from minor mistakes in the workplace - I've certainly seen reports where somebody has been seriously injured due to their own fault where the employer has been prosecuted for not having sufficient safeguards in place.
Problem is that using the roads always has to be using the machine without the guards. It can't really be any other way. Make a mistake in the wrong place and it can be fatal. Sitting in your car waiting to turn right, get it wrong and you are T-boned by the bloke coming the other way at 60. You don't deserve to die because of a mistake, but sadly you do.
"I think the opinion of a coroner, who is a cyclist, and who has seen CCTV footage"
I used to think that if someone was a cyclist they were almost certainly fundamentally OK. Having seen the willingness to excuse drivers and apportion blame to cyclists when unaware of any of the fact by people on here I realise it no longer counts for much.
Just because the coroner has ridden a bike doesn't make her immune from the motor centric attitude that is the norm, and which treats death on the roads as acceptable collateral damage.