http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero

It’s got to start somewhere…

Wasn’t there a transgender lady on here at one point? I thought she was asking about feminine clothing attire. Could’ve been another cycling forum tho’.

IMO I’m male, although I’ve been called other genders in the past due to my MTBing/cycling manner. I think they were supposed to be derogatory, but thinking about it being compared to the fairer sex and our trans and homosexual* kin is probably a compliment from my POV.

*Yeah I know this isn’t a gender, but people who use those kind of insults aren’t smart enough to recognise that anyway.

What needs to disappear is commuting. Far easier to get rid of a lot of commuting, leaving the roads clear for traffic that we actually need – goods, tradespeople, services etc.

I’ve often thought it’d be a good idea to get rid of true “personal” motorized transport, those with a need to shift heavy stuff, plumbers retailers etc… could register business vehicles, but all of us normal folk who don’t need a business vehicle should try and make do without.

Not gonna happen though, to most people freedom = car ownership/use, shame that mobility is such a limitation for so many.

Both guilty of something, quite what not so sure.

That would be for the courts to decide. The same courts who I suspect are heavily biased against the cyclist for “riding on a road that was obviously dangerous”*

*Now trade marked by the Petrol Lobby.

Don’t think anyone has ever been raped due to a momentary lapse of concentration

I think the comparison only stands up within the limitations expressed in those posts that mention it. Obviously (I hope!) the ‘intent’ between rape/RTI is very different.

On the whole though “out groups” within a given population tend to be those that suffer more than those with the most power, be it choice of transport, gender, race or any other way of distinguishing segments of society. Unfortunately those same “out groups” are the ones that tend to be blamed for their suffering…

young women goes out on a friday night, dressed up, short skirt etc.

She gets raped.

Yep, very emotive, but not without a grain of truth, after all how many people would say “Come on, she put herself at risk by being dressed like that in that environment”. Word for word you could use that to defend the KSIs of cyclists who are on dual carriageways without hi-viz.

It’s a ridiculous state of affairs to absolve and excuse bad driving because it’s considered normal, in exactly the same way as it’s ridiculous to blame the rape victim for being raped. The overwhelming message sent out should be: “Men, stop raping women”* and “Drivers, stop killing and injuring other road users”*, neither of these should be something that any civilised society should be accepting because it’s normal.

*By the way, there is no implicit assumption that all men rape and all drivers kill/injure before that’s jumped upon.

56 mile round trip Monday and Tuesday, today a whole 9 mile round trip, tomorrow will be about 20, Friday I may catch the train if I don’t feel like another 56 miler!

No car, expensive train so the options are pretty limited. It’s much, much harder if there’s a more convenient and comfortable option!

Like helmets, its all down to personal choice.
Can’t see that there’s really a debate/argument.

There wouldn’t be if we all thought like you Dez, trouble is there seems to be a significant number of people who don’t want it to be personal choice!

We should indeed be teachign people to look properly, but I think that, given this IS a matter of life and death, that belt and braces is appropriate.

Plus, I can easily go out and buy some bright clothing, however I can’t re-educate the motoring population on my own.

My worry is that as the belt and braces are used more and more frequently, in more and more situations that aren’t necessarily appropriate the buckles become loose, the buttonholes widen and eventually the trousers fall down (if you’ll excuse me taking your turn-of-phrase to ridiculous lengths!). Basically, the more people who wear these clothes, the more lights we use the less effective they’ll all be, it’s an arms race and there has to be a point where someone says “stop, this is silly”. It’s all a sticking plaster approach without tackling the cause…

‘it’s actually impossible to see a dark object (even a large one) under the shade of a tree canopy’

If any potential road user had stopped at that junction for more than a second the bike would’ve been more easily visible.

Shouldn’t we be teaching people to look properly rather than making Hi Viz stuff less visible due to overuse? Personally I’d rather flouro stuff was kept for use in dangerous locations, working on highways, railways in industrial locations that kind of thing. There’s a reason why this type of clothing is becoming known as “urban camoflage”.

Blame and safety recommendations are something for the courts to apportion and make.

and if the courts cannot be trusted to be impartial in their judgements? What other recourse is there?

We’ve all heard about the driver killing a cyclist then getting away with it because the jury thought “that could’ve been me”, not to mention the judegs themselves with blatant bias. The whole of society needs to change it’s attitude, the judiciary should be the force to make it happen, at the moment it’s being at best complacent and at worst encouraging this carelessness resulting in death, suffering and pain…

You could try agreeing vehemently with everything she says? Just to add a bit of interest like, especially if she’s trying to pick faults with you and start arguments that way. Agreeing with folk often takes the wind out of their sails.

Bl**dy immigrants, coming over here stealing our egg laying locations, infecting our hosts, don’t know why they can’t just go home….

but yeah, £600 is a bit steep, for now Avid will have to do.

and tourers, audaxers, commuters and anyone else who likes their rims to last!

it’s about education, not medication.

This is a branch of medecine that is so often under exploited. Not surprisingly considering the lack of profits GSK and Pfizer can (or can’t rather) make out of it.

Behaviour change and education are the two major stumbling blocks to our maintaining our current lifestyles.

My mashed little pinkie hurts as I type this

If your fingernail has gone black, you may have a pressurised pool of blood behind it. A top tip I learnt after squishing my finger in a door and making the nail go black was to heat up a straightened paper clip in a flame (gas hob is perfect) until it goes red hot, then push it v.v. gently through the nail. The hot metal melts a small hole through the nail and the blood underneath quenches it before you burn the nail bed. Then when the paper clip comes out the pressure is released and the (majority of) the pain goes. I found out it quite scary when I did it, but the relief was immense!

I think he interpreted the stance taken by you and some other posters that blur the lines between the age of concent, and then the creation of other hypothetical scenarios involving people just under and over the age of concent as an attempt to mitigate / justify this mans actions. thats how it reads to me also.

Seems to me that the debate is pretty limited if you can make such intepretations without realising the difference between mitigation/justification and understanding/explaining.

We’d be in trouble if all attempts at unravelling crime followed similar lines of “logic”…

Apparently sex between a 14-15yr old girl and a 30yr old man is understandable.

That’s a bit of a silly thing to write, and implies that you don’t really understand what a lot of posters are trying to explain.

The point is, this kind of scenario older (immature) bloke, adolescent girl happens so regularly that we should make an effort to understand it and be aware of all the dangers associated with it*. As Mrs Toast points out there is nothing unusual here except that it’s a married teacher/pupil situation which puts a much darker spin on it.

*Interestingly the dangers associated with this kind of relationship aren’t that different to any relationship. The potential for abuse is always there no matter the ages of the players, a vulnerable adult can be at more danger from a potential abuser than a mature adolescent. Something that is often unfortunately overlooked in adult/adult relationship dynamics…

I would if it was with somebody who is supposed to be responsible for their care.

Well, yeah. Sorry I thought that was self-evident from the general consensus on this thread. For what it’s worth, and for the record. I am in complete agreement.

Slightly creepy though that male posters are somehow reducing what he did to ‘her’ being abit more than a schoolchild who was groomed by an adult to part-guilty-party.

Not at all, we don’t know what part each played in the relationship. You’re assuming something that may not be the case.

Ok at what age would you class someone a Paedo?

It’s not about age though is it? In this case I wouldn’t call him a peado.

Sorry- I went to school, there were the odd girls and boys who were mature for their age (15/16yr olds) but that was mature in our eyes at that age. Don’t mistake maturity with intelligence. A child isn’t worldly, wise and mature.

You can’t generalise, well, you can but you’ll be wrong to! A child or rather a young person, can be far wiser than someone older than them. Intelligence and wisdom are to separate qualities and one would be mistaken for confusing them.

In some countries? Sorry are we now selectively selecting the laws and customs from other countries/cultures and apply to our own laws as we sit fit?

We? You can, I’m not! I’m simply pointing out that the age based laws don’t account for individual cases and people. If these two had been in a school 1 few hundred miles south (say in Spain) things would be different I’d imagine. Food for thought, not “selectively selecting laws as we see fit”.

14yr olds can be sex mad. Why not let them be sexmad with someone of a similar age to them.

I’m not stopping them! I’m also not going to jump up and down if there’s a significant age difference though.

The emotional language “impressionable, immature, 14 year old kid” doesn’t help. We don’t know for sure she was any of these. In many countries she’d be considered an adult.

Personally I see it wrong on the level of student:teacher relationship well over stepping the bounds. I’d be concerned about a 30 year old and 14 year old, but not enough to brand the bloke a “peado”. These kind of relationships can work (as above in this thread) if both are willing to take it slowly, not do anything silly (as what happened here) and generally keep with the bounds of social acceptability I don’t really see a problem.

If a student and teacher develop mutual feelings then I think removing that part of the relationship would be the best course of action. Why he didn’t quit his job when he knew things were likely to progress I don’t know. At least then they could’ve had a fair chance. Doubt that’ll happen now.

Bloodshot – Translucent red ones, I think Queen size
Bluemoon – Same as Bloodshots, but blue.

Isn’t Sheffield Steel these days a bit too high quality for simple stuff like standard cutlery? I thought they focussed more on high grade alloys for surgical or similar high tech purposes.

Could be wrong though. I often am.

Give it a few more years and electric/hybrid cars will make the “can’t hear cars” argument null anyway.

Probably better to continue doing all your life-saver looks and being visually aware of everything anyway. Relying on, or using sound to augment your primary sense could lead to you missing out on something…

You get used to it pretty quickly.

I’m right handed, I picked up a cheap set of Deore hydros on Ebay. It wasn’t ’til they arrived that I realised they were the wrong way round (international shipping so I should’ve twigged really!). Anyway, put them on thinking I’d swap the hoses when I got round to it, three years later I still haven’t got round to it!

It could be an amalgamation of multiple films/TV. The merry-go-round destruction thing could be the Magic Roundabout? Zeebad tries to destroy it in the film…

Not sure about the cat/dog love thing or the robot cat though.

not the same now to many paedos and freaks around to let kids do the same.

Wow, really??! [/quote]

I read it as being tongue in cheek. Although there are a lot of people who believe this rubbish that the media spout…

edited to add – Why can’t I quote two posts? It comes out okay on the preview post, but not in the live forum? Very odd.

but there are a lot of old men with blurred, faded tattoos

I’ve seen quite a few inked folk with the telltale white-emulsion of sunblock covering their art recently. I think the blurring and fading comes from over exposure to UV from sunlight. If the inks are better and people are using sunblock more then the blurring and fading should be significantly less…

…can’t do that much about the stretching though. Unless botox, collagen injections and eating a proper diet are on your agenda!

Air rifle, stock pot/roasting dish. Yum.

Or you could do it per hour travelled: It’s stats innit?

They’re great, I love the one about cycling being much more dangerous than walking per mile travelled. Yet it being broadly the same when comparing time spent travelling!

Interesting, and certainly rings a bell with me. Never had the guts to speak about feelings, admit personal weaknesses etc. Always find it embarassing and shameful, completely irrationally I might add!

I do worry that this kind of article although probably worthwhile and to a greater extent true is often used as a way of denigrating feminism and the (still) vast inequalities in our society. Despite all that has been achieved by Germaine Greer et al there still a long way to go, and anything like this is often picked up as a tool to either beat feminists with, or conversely by the more RadFems as proof that the Patriarchy is still all-powerful and that while the Guardian and media are worrying about the emasculation of men, the abuse of women conitnues unabated (the usual elephant in the room).

Anyway, I suppose anything that spurs the debate and generates knowledge and education should be encouraged.

The strange attitude I see locally is helmeted children with bare-headed parents on the ride to school.

I concur, don’t understand these double standards.

Surely the nature of accidents is the fact that they’re utterly random and unpredictable. They’re as likely to get you 100 yards from your house as anywhere else, surely?

I believe it’s worse than that, most RTIs happen within half a mile of your origin or destination. So not utterly random.

Anyway,it’s all about a risk assessment that everyone automatically does in their head before setting off. In my case I’ll wear my helmet if it’s a relatively long jouney and I’m on a full size bike. I don’t wear one when using my folder because I don’t deem it practical to carry around (or I’m just lazy, the choice is entirely perception!).

Sorry, forgot to add. Kids are very young, one has a helmet but can’t ride a bike yet. Will have to see what happens when he can!

Who me? Nope, I was just asking a question. I didn’t speak to a friend at the HSE, I don’t have any friends at the HSE.

Anyway, you’re in a better position to answer that than me. Does he/she? Do you by proxy allow her/him to do more “dangerous” stuff than otherwise? Would your sample of one, represent the entire population? Lots of questions… 🙂

I was having an interesting chat with him about the effect of replacing old hard surfaces in playgrounds with that soft rubber stuff you now get.

Although this bit could suggest that there has been a significant reduction in the number of tyres going to land fill and being flytipped? Not sure the HSE look into that side of things though…

Care to guess what the outcome is?

Is it a “risk compensation” thing, i.e. no difference? A bit like using antiskid surfaces so people can drive/ride around corners faster?

I’ve got one pretty much identical to that! Great bike, very happy with it.

However, it is my third Edinburgh Bike Co-op Revolution Country Explorer, I had two of the previous models (Al, rather than steel) and both ended up cracking at the seat-tube/bottom bracket junction, bizarrely when they both came up to the 8000 mile odometer reading. Anyways, the steel one is going strong at 4000+ miles and I keep checking it for cracks without any signs so fingers crossed.

Just got to put a Brooks saddle on it with a Carradice cotton duck saddle bag and it’ll be good to go!

Sounds like a case of “communication skills” lacking than anything else. As has been said by the Professional Medics, this kind of thing seems to be standard MO these days.

I took my son in to A&E last year, couple of weeks before his 2nd birthday after he ran into a see-saw at the local park and ricocheted onto the back of his head. He was in lots of pain and couldn’t walk so we went quite quickly (to A&E) to get his legs and head checked out. Turned out he had broken his leg, nothing wrong with his head though! Anyway, I fully expected to be grilled/visited by SS in hospital. However nothing of the sort happened, I was asked what happened by the Triage Nurse, the Pead. Nurse and the Pead. themself without ever once feeling interogated. In retrospect it was certainly a way for them to assess whether my son was a suspected child abuse victim, but I only realised that much later. It was the way the questions were asked and the manner in which the information was gathered that was the key.

<snip> Maybe a precondition for posting on this thread should be a brief summary of what the poster has done to make the world a better place for no personal gain.

Some would argue that true altruism doesn’t exist and therefore this thread is now dead!