exdulwicher

They've been updated a few times, I'd have to look to see the latest incarnation. It's not that "lights are a legal requirement but no-one cares". I think even the dumbest chav knows that they *should* have lights. Whether they care or not is another matter and (in true stereotypical fashion), if said chav is using said bike to go out and mug someone for their phone, the lights aren't really the issue! It's that lights are a legal requirement (and frankly ANY light so long as it's white at the front, red at the rear would be a win) but that the actual legalities of lights in terms of what British Standard they're supposed to meet, quoted lumens or wattage or whatever is a complete minefield. Personally, I don't know or care if my lights fulfil some British Standard from 20 years ago, I always have them on even in daylight.

Amber pedal reflectors. A wildly outdated piece of legislation that fails to recognise that many pedals (especially the clipless ones but also most modern MTB pedals) simply don't have them and won't accept them (there's nowhere to mount them). Arguably they're worse than useless anyway because reflective ankle bands or shoe detailing is just as effective. I assume you mean sunset and sunrise...? The problem is that the lighting regulations have not kept up with lighting tech, there's a variety of British Standard regulations that lights are supposed to adhere to which are so out of date that pretty much nothing actually falls within it and the police neither know nor care about the details. There have been police operations over the years (often around this time of year when the clocks go back) where the police have handed out cheap light sets to cyclists without lights along with an instruction to get some better ones ASAP.

Presumably at the same point the person doesn't feel any sympathy for a female victim of assault cos well, that skirt she was wearing, she doesn't deserve any sympathy. Same with that kid who got mugged cos well what was he doing walking through there at that time of night, doesn't deserve any sympathy. You left a window open, of course you got burgled, you don't deserve any sympathy. Maybe everyone in Gaza being shelled to bits could just have upped and left, they probably don't deserve any sympathy either. It's a horrible phrase and frankly anyone using it - whether it's for a cyclist being knocked off or the more extreme examples I've cited above - really needs a long hard look in the mirror because victim blaming doesn't solve anything, in fact it often marginalises or makes excuses for criminal behaviour.

The existing guidance is advisory. It suggests that cyclists and pedestrians might like to consider wearing brighter clothes / reflective gear etc. Doesn't say you have to. Lights is a separate matter because they're a legal requirement but helmets, hi-vis etc is all guidance. The problem is that as soon as anyone isn't wearing it, it gets used as a weapon against them. Witness the number of times on this very forum that the first question asked when a cyclist injury is reported, someone going "were they wearing a helmet?!" in an almost accusatory tone. And the common tone of these sort of threads of "I saw a cyclist wearing all black..." Generally get on with life in a considerably more sensible and less victim-blaming manner. Things are also a lot clearer legally, most countries have Presumed Liability which usually means that the bigger more powerful vehicle is to blame unless proven otherwise. And contrary to popular belief, this does not result in pedestrians leaping under the wheels of a cyclist or cyclists hurling themselves in front of trucks in order to claim compensation. To be fair, this time of year is crap all round. Most drivers haven't regularly driven in the dark since about February / March (and haven't bothered to check minor things like their own lights, screenwash levels etc), it's a manic time in the shops (Halloween / Bonfire Night / Black Friday) so there's loads more people out and about (very few of them paying any attention to anything), the weather is rubbish, there are slippery leaves everywhere...

So... you saw them then? In spite of them having no lights (and presumably being dressed in all black / coming out of nowhere / insert any other standard anti-cyclist trope here). I've long thought that the best way of being visible as a cyclist is to wear all black, have no lights and to ride on the pavement (or jump red lights). Not only does literally *everyone* see you, they pop onto the local forum to complain about you! On the other hand if you dress in all yellow and get T-boned, the driver will still manage to say "sorry mate, I didn't see you". 😉

The northern end (Townley up to Goose Green) is actually not too badly served, average distance of about 180m between crossing points (they're closer further north, a bit further apart at the southern end up to Townley). After that though, there's no provision at all until you get to The Plough which is over 500m away. It's more residential at that end so more people coming out of a house and needing to cross to the adjacent bus stop for example. There's a day care centre, a church, then up towards The Plough is Sainsburys and various other busy shops. There's always people running out from behind parked cars and pulled-in buses along that stretch. And from the Library, there's nothing else until you get to Overhill Road, another 500+ metres of wide road, mostly residential so people wanting / needing to cross at regular intervals. Same again from there to the South Circ junction, that's 300+ metres of no provision. I'd argue that from Goose Green to Townley, it's not too bad but from there on heading south, it's a disaster and needs at least another 4 crossings.

From the first line in that article you linked to: A record-high of nearly 10 million fines were issued to London drivers last year in what experts claim to be a “money-making exercise”. What experts? Who are they? There's no indication there as to who these "experts" actually are, who they work for... Surely that fails the very first part of your transparency test? In other threads, you're arguing that much more should be done to fine cyclists for these same offences, but when it comes to drivers, you're outraged at this apparent cash cow. Tad hypocritical don't you think? 42,000 fines in 23/24, 48,000 fines in 24/25 - as you care so much about safety on the roads, surely you should be outraged that there's that number of people breaking the rules? Or more to the point, that number of people being caught, it'll be a tiny fraction of those that commit the same offences and aren't caught. It's not a pile-on, don't be so melodramatic. The thing is, there's actually some useful, constructive and positive debate to be had here but you insist on turning everything into a conspiracy. It's like trying to "debate" with a Flat Earther. Every time you debunk their nonsense, they go further down the line of "you're must be in on it, you're a paid NASA shill, you're ideologically obsessed with the globe model..." Same here, you've accused several people (including me I believe) of being paid council shills, we're ideologically obsessed with cycling, we're anti-car... And yet you never see that same aspect (from the other side of the coin) in yourself. Although actually on a revived thread a little while ago I did find this (see below) and I thought: Rockets and I agree on something! I was going to add that you must prefer it because it's right on the lovely Dulwich Square and then thought that your blood pressure might not take such accusations! 😉

Maybe look in the mirror Rockets. It's always you that starts these threads - a link to a headline, a tenuous link to Dulwich / Southwark and a "conclusion" that happens to match your exact opinions on the subject. I'm willing to bet that if we did a posts by author count on the Transport board, your name would account for at least 1/3rd of the input. THAT is relentless... This ^^ - Earl comes along and fact-checks you, you double down on it and drag out complexities and exhausting details - in this case stuff about exactly where your car wheel can cross a bus lane, but you've done it before with the exact positioning of a traffic counter on a road or the timing of roadworks for example. Southwark's Conspiracy Department must really have their hands full dealing with all this! No wonder they need all the money from poor hard-working drivers, it's to pay the wages of the "where shall we put a traffic counter today?" team and the "where should we paint a bus lane to cause maximum distress to Rockets?" crew and the "no, wait a week until we start those roadworks to inconvenience as many people as possible" department... 😉

The problem this year is that 5th November falls on a Wednesday. So some places will be bringing their "bonfire night" forward to Saturday 1st and some will be knocking it back to Saturday 8th and there'll probably be a few that just go with Wednesday 5th anyway. If you're doing a public display, having it on a weekend gets more crowds. Which basically means a solid week of fireworks.

Individual crashes - unlikely. Not a lot can stop someone who's determined to drive at 50mph while drunk at 3am. Collectively (when driving in normal traffic conditions) - yes. All it needs is one car doing 20mph and everyone else behind is forced to drive at 20. Medical episodes - statistically, medical issues are a factor in about 7% of crashes so it's pretty rare (certainly rare enough to usually not immediately leap to that as a "well the driver could have had a medical episode!" excuse that gets trotted out here as soon as a car ends up in a wall) but if the speed limit is 20, assuming the driver is doing 20-ish at the time they have this incredible coincidence heart attack, the out of control car is going to do less damage than one doing 30mph.

It's right there Rockets, you've said that slowing traffic has an economic impact. I'm assuming something something people sitting in their car for longer instead of being at their desk Doing Important Work...? The flipside is that there's an economic impact to collisions as well. A vehicle / pedestrian crash at 30mph is about 8x more severe (8x higher likelihood of death) than a crash at 20mph. https://www.brake.org.uk/get-involved/take-action/mybrake/knowledge-centre/speed/speed-and-injury At 20mph you're less likely to crash, if you do crash the consequences are much less severe. You've seen the pics on here of cars on their roofs, cars in central reservations (usually playing them down with the inevitable "we don't know what happened!!") - what about the economic impact of clearing up all that, the delays, the impact on the NHS, the cost to insurance (and ultimately the customer)? There's an economic impact to congestion as well. At 20mph, traffic flows more smoothly (it's right there in the CIHT report I linked to), journey times are more reliable. There's another (very in depth) report here about driving styles, pollution, journey times and so on also looking at the type of vehicle. https://futuretransport.info/urban-traffic-research/ Towards the bottom of that page, there is a link to a computer simulation model looking at vehicle sizes, normal stop/go urban traffic and speed limits and the conclusion was that if everyone drove golf cart vehicles at 15mph, everyone would get to the destination faster based on a combination of smaller vehicles being more space-efficient (you can fit more of them through a set of green lights) with lower speed limits reducing congestion and smoothing traffic flow. These kind of threads are always entertaining. 20mph in a car is far too slow, inefficient, "economic impact", it's too difficult to drive at 20mph, it's not appropriate on this road blah blah. 20mph on a bike is reckless and foolhardy and hooligan and lycra lout and "what if they hit someone?!" Standard motorcentric attitude...

Page 3, a post you made on Oct 23rd:

That ^^ from the previous page asking about links to studies on 20mph and effect on journey times... https://www.ciht.org.uk/news/20mph-speed-limits-mean-more-reliable-journeys/ CIHT is Chartered Institute of HIghways and Transportation. Click on the link above and read the report then there are other links taking you to who they are, what they do etc. Your critical point of failure in this argument is assuming that a 30mph limit means people drive at a steady and consistent 30. No-one, in the entire history of the universe, has ever driven along the South Circular at a consistent 30mph. You might get up to 30 (or even 40, although naturally no-one on here has ever exceeded the speed limit at all) but then you'll get to lights, traffic, junctions, a herd of irresponsible cyclists who think they own the road, a badly parked lorry, the front of a school at 3pm.. It is impossible to do a steady 30, you just arrive at the next pinch point or congestion fractionally sooner. As the report shows, if you smooth the flow out by doing lower speeds, more cars can fit onto the same amount of road, there's less gas / brake / gas / brake that causes so much variance in speed and less wear and tear on your car and the road. And less vibration going through the road means fewer burst water mains too. Your journey time *might* be fractionally slower at 20mph (although this is highly dependent on how far you're going and on what roads at what time of day) but the variance in journey time (the difference between the slowest journey and the fastest) is less so it's more consistent. And consistency / reliability of journey time is a bigger factor for most people than actual time taken.

It's usually a combination of "nearly Halloween", "nearly Bonfire Night", "weekend" and "dickheads". You can adjust the sliding scale on each of those factors most nights for the next 3-4 weeks.

And you then quote an extensive section of the report outlining 20mph zones and why it's a bit more difficult to analyse them but it's all still valid data... ??? And it's still got nothing to do with cyclists (or drivers) jumping red lights. Edit: I've also explained on another thread about the issues of "free-flow" and why it's really quite a nebulous concept in urban environments.