Drivers urged to stop killing cyclists

Nah, only kidding.

Yet again cyclists are found to be at fault for their own demise Clicky

Stealth ride at your peril in Devon!

Link doesn’t work for me….

http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/Cyclists-urged-care-Devon-roads-figures-reveal/story-22972624-detail/story.html

Thank you Samuri. First attempt at clicky and it didn’t work…there’s a surprise!

As for the story, it’s shocking, as usual. We have people in charge of a ton of metal who have a history of putting people in morgues and hospitals and vulnerable people who cause no harm.

Who gets told to sharpen up? Not the people doing the killing, that’s for sure.

Fixed your link.

Contentious story but regardless, “be more visible” isn’t bad advice.

It takes a lot to argue with be more visible. If it’s anything other than bright blue skies I tend to run a rear light or 2 on the road bike now.

Sadly, might is right on the roads. I’m a Hi Viz and lights at all times road rider now. Even sunny days have shaded areas. Give them no excuse at all not to see you and ride defensively.

Be more visible, how did I make myself less visible in the first place

nobody said you were less visible.

If you become more visible you must have been less visible before. Its not like cyclists are out in stealth mode any more than a pedestrian is – have they advised pedestrian to do this to avoid being hit ? Is it just cyclists?
be more visible is akin to asking a woman not to dress like that nor walk in that part of town as a crime reduction strategy.

What we need in this case is to ask drivers to be more attentive as it is akin to saying it is cyclists fault they are not seen and get hit. Its pretty close to victim blaming IMHO. Of course be seen is not “bad” advice” but it is not the cause either. TBH if you cannot see a cyclist and you drive a car hand in your licence.

How do I make myself more visible then?
Its bullshit, every person who has ever pulled out on me simply didnt look.

i spotted a few recently, in the dark without lights…

Whilst I have every sympathy for anyone that gets hit or has an accident and whilst legal responsibility lies with the hitter rather than the hittee I can see where these chaps are coming from.

The clear real life situation is people make mistakes evidence is in the paper every day and in every decision we make we should seek to mitigate risk to ourselves and others.

Reasonable measures may well include wearing your brightest jacket or shorts, not riding down a dual carriageway, switching on your lights etc.

You’re a long time dead. Who is right and who is wrong makes little difference when you are 6 foot under, or indeed when you have driven into a poorly lit rider on a foggy day because they had no lights on etc.

Prof Ian walker is good on this topic. I think it was him that pointed out that if he had been for something like a 50k road ride, been overtaken/interacted with 250 motorists, but only 1 or 2 had nearly hit him…then the reason for the near collision was more likley to reside with the drivers of those 1 or 2 vehicles as 248 had had no problem seeing/avoiding.

By the same logic we’d all be painting our cars yellow with silver stripes, but you never see that advice given out. I agree there’s nothing wrong with advising cyclists to make themselves more visible, but it should be included along with advice to drivers to pay more attention

In the current road environment….”taking the lane” is arguably a more important way of “being seen” – yet road safety organisations of this ilk seldom urge cyclists to ride in the middle of the lane.

It is frustrating to see people riding in the dark without lights but it’s not the whole story, and it’s unlikely to result in harm to anyone else. The police Inspector is quoted

if an accident is caused as a result of not having lights we will look to prosecute

whereas if the accident is caused by careless driving…?

surprisingly sensible set of comments too. obviously this article didn’t catch the eye of the usual bottom feeders!
agree with the points raised here and there – that PC should be ashamed.

THIS and of course we would advise the same to pedestrians .

It is one way – make yourself more visible when the real issue is a SMIDSY and the drivers fault.

It is frustrating to see people riding in the dark without lights but it’s not the whole story, and it’s unlikely to result in harm to anyone else.

so if I kill someone who has no lights on on a country road in the dark, even though its not “my fault” it won’t do me any harm? even if he walks away its almost certainly damaged my car and harmed my insurance premiums – and if I swerve to avoid him at the last minute and hit someone else…

…actually quite likely to harm someone else.

if an accident is caused as a result of not having lights we will look to prosecute

and they’ll have left it too late 🙁 as with careless driving they need to proactively prosecute bad cyclists as a deterrent.

Presumably anyone driving along an unlit country road is doing so at a speed which allows them to stop within the distance their headlights are illuminating. Anyone (or a sheep/deer/fallen tree)) not wearing High viz or lights will still be illuminated by the car headlights…so it’s not a factor.

Here’s a hypothesis – Normalisation of High viz and lights just means drivers tend to travel faster than they should and makes for a more dangerous environment for everybody.

Conversly unlit steel bollards randomly distributed evry 24hrs along country lanes would make things safer

Risk compensation see…..

last year D&C police re-instated ‘dedicated traffic officers’, though some of those are apparently made up of armed response too. this was after cutting the traffic unit to zero in 2011. curiously deaths on the roads soared, while the numbers of tickets issued fell by half. it was denied that there was any link between these events…
of course we should take steps to make ourselves visible, but people shouldn’t drive like **** either. 🙄

The driver is always at fault. But we seem to expect a level of absolute perfection from drivers that we don’t expect from themselves.

Any road user can be momentarily distracted, sneeze, be dazzled by sun or take a second to adjust to shade.

Making yourself more visible doesn’t absolve the driver of blame. It just increases your odds of not becoming the next tragic thread on here. On that basis, I’m happy to be more visible rather than a sanctimonious resident of the morgue.

Drivers should be held accountable to higher standards as they are the ones who have decided to bring a source of danger into an otherwise low risk environment.

sneezes…yep – unlucky…but sun and shade…..that’s just not driving to road conditions. High viz won’t help you againts a driver who’s driving into the sun at a speed where he can’t see anything at all, but is just guessing there’s nothing there.

Good infrastructure design will help to make human mistakes less likley to turn into tragedies though(see holland)

Sanctimonious..perhaps…but there has been a massive failure of logic around road safety for years in this country.

Police attitudes to road violence in particular seem to be around 20 years behind their attitude to domestic violence

On the advice of the police oficer who must be so proud they got their name in the paper, if you hit a cyclist in the dark, just throw the cyclists lights away, and youll get off free and the injured cyclist will be prosecuted for the colision.

Could be worse, BBC Radio Devon’s take on that stat was “SHOULD WE BAN CYCLISTS FROM ALL ROADS?!” 🙄

Ninja roadies in dark lanes or riding at dusk with no lights is going to increase the risk of getting hurt. Its very simple. There is no excusing bad driving but cyclists have to take responsibility for their own actions as well.

Also, articles like this are two a penny, written by sheep, quoting morons. Morons are to be found on every road and in every council chamber. Taking umbrage and demanding that drivers “should” see riders and “should” only drive as far as their headlights project (live in a hole by any chance?!!) is not going to change behaviour of every driver is it!?

Often these articles are written about ‘people on bikes’ rather than cycle enthusiasts – chavs on their phone, popping wheelies on their stolen bikes’ in the dark with no lights. The ones who moan on here should not be the target of these articles because surely they have the common sense to dress to be seen on the roads they choose to share with idiots in metal cages.

Taking umbrage and demanding that drivers “should” see riders and “should” only drive as far as their headlights project (live in a hole by any chance?!!) is not going to change behaviour of every driver is it!?

Neiher is asking all cyclists to be seen going to work yet you support them saying that- do you live in a hole? 🙄
It is still victim blaming – saying the reason we get hit is because we did something that meant we were not seen rather to , correctly, point out that they failed to see something on the road.

We need to educate both groups whilst being clear who is to blame and who has to look for things on the road.

FFS you even have to explain this on a cycle forum so there is no chance we can get this through to car users and certainly not with media, councillor and police quotes like that – see radio devons reaction for example 😯

Demonise us for car drivers hitting us- dont improve standards of driving just ban us from the roads

It is still victim blaming

It is and it isn’t. For every “cyclist” with a degree of road sense there’s a kid in a black hoodie on a black trial bike hurtling diagonally across an unlit road at night. The only reason they’re not under somone’s wheels is sheer blind luck. “Be more visible” really isn’t bad advice in this situation.

We need to be careful not to conflate “victim blaming” with the suggestion that avoiding unnecessary risk is a bad thing. We’ve discussed this before in the context of some halfwit policeman talking about girls dressing provocatively.

Say I leave my phone on the table in a pub when I go to the toilet, and I come back to find it’s gone. It’s not my fault it got stolen, I don’t deserve to have it stolen, and I have every right to be able to leave my belongings somewhere for two minutes without them getting filched. However, we don’t live in a perfect world and there were steps I could sensibly have taken to make myself less likely to be the victim of a crime. Ie, the blame lies wholly with the thief, but that doesn’t absolve me of a responsibility to try not to be a victim in the first place.

I like that cougar 🙂

By all means don’t take any steps to make yourself visible, but please apply the same logic and leave your bike unlocked lent against a lampost in the street outside your house at night

I dont disagree with what you wrote but i still think the “advice” is poor and one sided
Is it not more like me running[ on foot] into you in the street.as pedestrians say, and then complaining you had not made yourself more visible, arguing you wear something reflective, and suggesting it was your fault rather than accept I was not looking?
Its not helpful though i could say it

At a recent meeting of the Partnership’s Exmouth Local Action Group, members agreed with Exmouth town councillor Steve Gazzard that cyclists need to wear reflective clothing and helmets at all times and in addition need bright lights on their bikes during the hours of darkness.

Drivers need to look more that is the solution. Reflective clothing in daylight is not that effective [ probably claim we dazzled them ].

They need to be saying to car drivers look out for cyclist you keep hitting them you inattentive bastards.
They can couple that with advice about what drivers can do to see us and what we can do to be seen ;they cannot blame us for them not seeing us in broad daylight.

I very nearly became a statistic yesterday.
BIg 3 lane roundabout , I am in lane 1 , not too heavy traffic an its sat afternoon. I am in a Bright red Altura top, Disco effect Cateye triple LED on the rear.
Driver in a Tigra is joining from my left. I am sprinting in the middle of the lane trying to clear the roundabout as quickly as possible. Tigra driver is attempting to barrel straight out of his road and acroos to inside of the roundabout.
I guess he was looking 10 -20m behind me for oncoming cars. He wasnt stopping and I was on a collision course.
I screamed ‘No’ as loud as I could and started to swerve to the center lane , not knowing if there was a car there or not. Out the saddle on the drops at 20+ does not make for the highest manoeverability
The driver braked and swerved as he had an empty lane to his left.
We both stopped . I was livid , but too shocked to be agressive toward him . I walked up and pointed at my bright red top and said ” What, am I not visable enough , Why did you not see me?”
He was very apologetic and couldnt explain why he didnt see me till I yelled. I asked how close he was to hitting me, Millimeters was his reply.

I just said be on the look out for cyclists , and went on my way ( shaking alot )

Going to get a small torch with a strobe on my lid to point in the direction of drivers as a bar light would have ben pointing away in this situation.

i still think the “advice” is poor and one sided

It’s one-sided sure, biased even, and I don’t like the loaded threat at the end one jot. Many drivers absolutely need to improve their observational skills, but that doesn’t mean that giving them more to see is a bad idea.

It’s always bikers that have to be more visible. I wonder how visible you’d have to be to a BMW driving twonk on their phone, before they actually noticed you? I’ll tell you, you’d have to be visible as something that was going to hurt them/their car before they really noticed.
It’s not vests we need, it’s guns. Or at least, something to get across the point that killing people through negligence will be a bad thing.

that doesn’t mean that giving them more to see is a bad idea.

Camouflaging your phone when you leave it on the table is not a bad idea but it wont help much either as it is not treating the cause

I suspect riding naked wont be enough to get you spotted by some drivers

that doesn’t mean that giving them more to see is a bad idea.

Maybe not. But that is not the primary action Safety Partnerships and Police Inspectors should be advising in order to make the roads safer.

Going to get a small torch with a strobe on my lid to point in the direction of drivers as a bar light would have ben pointing away in this situation.

So, you’re going to make yourself more visible…. Still doesn’t make them see you when they are simply not looking.

In forty years of cycling the only times I’ve been hit by a car have been deliberate, making myself more visible would just be make me a clearer target.

Until all all cars are hi viz yellow, orange or pink and the occupants wearing helmets they get what they deserve when crushed by a truck driven by a Latvian half wit who’s knocking one out to the laptop on his dashboard.

I wonder how many commenting about this have ever driven or ridden the roads in South Devon?