I think you’ll find that the PM used to cycle to work.

Yessss…. with a car full of armed secret service following him of course. Not exactly a true taste of the challenges faced by normal cyclists I suspect.

Leading the way in edgy cycling chic there Dave. 😆

Is he wearing a skirt in the top picture?

signed

Yep – he’s wearing his wife’s old skirt in the top one, and her old helmet in the bottom one.

Psst

Interesting story in Evening Standard about Police Stopping and Inspecting HGVs to protect cyclists

According to one guy in the comments:

Inspector Aspinall told the meeting about a day of City of London spot checks on HGVs, carried out on 30 September 2008 as part of the Europe-wide Operation Mermaid, which is intended to step up levels of enforcement of road safety laws in relation to lorries.

On this one day, 12 lorries were stopped randomly by City Police. Five of those lorries were involved in the construction work for the 2012 Olympics. All of the twelve lorries were breaking the law in at least one way.

Repeat: a 100 per cent criminality rate among small random sample of HGVs on the streets of central London.

The offences range included overweight loads (2 cases), mechanical breaches (5 cases), driver hours breaches (5 cases), mobile phone use while driving (2 cases), driving without insurance (2 cases) and no operator license (1 case).

😯

That’s me done. If you haven’t I hope you have some well formed arguments why not.

Can this not be a sticky? I’m a little disappointed its not on the news page really. Many mountain bikers cycle to the trails

+1 every other website with anything to do with cycling is promoting this with articles and links.

Y U No Help Cyclists Singletrack?

Signed 🙂

There’s more hits on the forum than the webpage I imagine.

Can I sign it despite no longer being resident in the UK?

I’ll forward it to my mum (she now rides M&S since I bought her a bike 16 months back). She’ll sign it and get her sisters to do the same…

Another cheeky bump

bump

This looks interesting: Office for Active Travel

Weekend Bump

That stuff about OAT is a good spot too – interesting

Sign it?

What?

People will still park on the cycle lanes, cycle lanes will be put in squashed/shared spaces. Etc. Its money for contractors.

How do you stop women who overtake you by sharing the same lane and stressed out males who think your an easy target?

More painted cycling lanes and an overpayed for TV/print campaign to follow. Even in France you get a dicks attitude to cycling (Paris etc).

On a country road yesterday I was overtaken at 70+ within a metre of my right arm. ****-gesture, he makes to stop but decides safer for him not to.

Would this latest iniative have put him in jail for life if he had hit me?

Doubt it.

Thats the iniatitive that you need. The thing that will get people cycling. Massive punishments. The fear of new draconian punishments. Then you could have a cycle lane on a motorway and people would fearfully carefully drive round you.

Not the current range of actual punishments handed out.

@hora, all true, I couldn’t agree more HOWEVER it is a step in the right direction.

Hopefully it will gather momentum and become something unstoppable which WILL change the current motorists-rule climate.

Have you actually read the recommendations hora?
(See the infographic 2 pages back for a good summary)

They go beyond just “money for contractors”.

20 zones, less HGVs, updated traffic regs, proper national cycling targets.. All good.

They also mention stricter enforcement and greater punishment for drivers endangering cyclists – which seems to be exactly what you are asking for.

But yeah – probably best not to sign it eh?

You wouldn’t want political types thinking any of this was a good idea or had our support.

signed

Hora just pull your finger out and sign it, have a moan if you want but what have you got to lose? its hardly a great effort it probably took you longer to complain. No one says its the solution or there will be an overnight change but its a step in the right direction.

Very close to 40000 now.

Have you signed it yet? http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/49196

40k now

road.cc is covering the OAT stuff now too.
http://road.cc/content/news/82003-government-reportedly-set-create-new-office-active-travel-budget-%C2%A31-billion

Potentially a good thing, especially with Boardman involved. I’m always impressed by how much sense that man talks.

If you haven’t already then SIGN:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/49196

@hora, all true, I couldn’t agree more HOWEVER it is a step in the right direction.

Absolutely. It’s not just about the immediate effects. Slowly it will help increase awareness and adjust attitudes. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and all that. We’re building a society for our kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews…

Get it signed.

We’re building a society for our kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews…

SIGN THE ‘FESSION

41,337 – still a LONG way to go.

A sign of things to come perhaps? Dutch roundabouts on trial.

signed it early on, but I believe a bump wouldn’t hurt.

I believe a bump wouldn’t hurt.

I agree.

Signed!

this needs some more impetus injecting – sign and share it

the signing rate has dropped and I cant see it reaching the 100,000 target at this rate

the signing rate has dropped and I cant see it reaching the 100,000 target at this rate

Yep, down to just 65 signatures in the last hour. That’s pretty poor.

I suspect many more people would support it, but either haven’t heard about it or are disillusioned about the effectiveness of e-petitions in general. 🙁

Apathy is the enemy of democracy.

it just needs Chris Boardman (or similar) to talk to the press again. Wiggo maybe?

I suspect many existing cyclists have already adapted to the quirks of riding in the UK (crap infrastructure, drivers getting a slap on the wrists for killing entire Sunday club runs, etc) and think “why bother”.

Meanwhile for many ordinary people cycling isn’t even on their radar as a practical means of transport, and their bikes are destined to be carried to Centre Parcs on the roof of a car once a year.

I can’t help but feel like the original focus of the Times campaign (which was all about “cyclists”, those freakish lycra-clad annoyances) continues to haunt this.

Still. I’ll be pimping it as much as possible. It’s all you can do, innit…

I suspect many existing cyclists have already adapted to the quirks of riding in the UK

Yep – a topic that comes up repeatedly in cycle campaigning is existing cyclists saying they don’t need lanes, facilities, segregated paths, etc etc

They miss the point. They are not the target audience. They have already adapted, and cycle in the UK despite the crap facilities and hostile attitudes.

The target audience is the people that don’t cycle, but might like to if the conditions were better and they perceived them as safer.

Good tactic for Facebook users: post a link to the petition then explicitly name any facebook friends who cycle in the comments.

Their names should auto-complete and go blue, like this:

or like this on mobile:

That way they get a notification that they have been mentioned in a comment and come check it out.

(bit cheap but hey, it gets more signatures!)

You’d think/hope everyone on this forum would sign it.

44K seems a bit low considering all the cyclists in the UK.

46,256 now.

Front page story on road.cc again today.

Still no official coverage on Singletrack.

yes the rate of signing has picked up a bit again now 🙂

Good to see BC and the Times getting behind it…

Times article with BC video.