Can we ban cyclists from rye lane?

[Earl Aelfheah]

The reason people get defensive talking about cycling indiscretions however, is because of the quite disproportionate amount of ire directed towards this most benign form of transport

[Earl Aelfheah]

civilservant Wrote:

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> rahrahrah Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > Oh come on. I see cars jump red lights to, but

> to

> > suggest it's because of cyclists is really

> jumping

> > the shark.

>

> perhaps so (but I think you mean 'jumping to

> conclusions' - shark-jumping is something else

> entirely) but the basic problem is the mindset

> that, when in a car, behaves like a selfish arse,

> and when on a bike, continues to do so.

> special pleading, e.g. for cold wet cyclists, just

> doesn't cut it.

>

> of course there are pedestrian arses too e.g.

> wandering along with earphones in, getting in the

> way of well-behaved cars and bikes.

> but that, Best Beloved, is another thread.

Yeah I may have misused the idiom, what I meant by it was that the whole 'bloody bikes' manifesto really has run out of ideas when it resorts to blaming car-light hopping to cyclists.

[Loz]

It's not benign at all. Cycling kills over a hundred people a year, mostly the cycle riders themselves.

[DuncanW]

No - over a hundred people are killed on bicycles a year, but it's not the cycling that does for most of them, it's more commonly the motor-vehicle that ploughs into them doing the damage.

[Loz]

DuncanW Wrote:

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> No - over a hundred people are killed on bicycles a year, but it's not the cycling that does for

> most of them, it's more commonly the motor-vehicle that ploughs into them doing the damage.

Irrelevant argument. The number of deaths while cycling by definition makes cycling dangerous. Your argument would also mean dancing blindfolded in the middle of the M25 during peak hour is a perfectly safe thing to do.

[Blah Blah]

But as a percentage of people who cycle it is a very low percentage.

[Earl Aelfheah]

It is relatively benign when compared to motor vehicles.

[Earl Aelfheah]

.. To argue otherwise is ridiculous

[DuncanW]

Four times as many pedestrians are killed (than cyclists) in road traffic accidents, so does that make walking a dangerous activity?

About one or two people are killed each year by bicycles.

Surely there's a huge difference between being killed by and being killed whilst?

[edcam]

Blah Blah Wrote:

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> What I'm trying to

> point out is that if it's the middle of the night,

> cold and pouring with rain, a cyclist may feel

> it's ok to keep going if there is no traffic

> about.

They may feel that but that feeling wouldn't be a justification.

[Earl Aelfheah]

Cycling isn't benign you're right... its net effect is actively positive, in terms of health benefits, reductions in pollution and congestion. Sure people can get hurt whilst cycling, but that is true of any and every activity. It's just crazy, actually pathological how people focus their disgust on this most innocuous of activities.

[Loz]

DuncanW Wrote:

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> Four times as many pedestrians are killed (than

> cyclists) in road traffic accidents, so does that

> make walking a dangerous activity?

It makes walking in the vicinity of traffic dangerous, yes, of course. Who on earth would think otherwise? That's why we have loads and loads of safety education for people doing things like crossing the road, etc. It's why we teach pedestrians to take personal responsibility for their safety in this situations. If a pedestrian does something dumb/illegal and gets hit by a car or can or bike, we don't try to automatically shift blame to the other party (unlike, ahem, cyclists).

> Surely there's a huge difference between being killed by and being killed whilst?

I refer you back to the dancing on the M25 example.

[miga]

I'd like to see some figures on how many cyclists actually ride on the pavement or run red lights. Often, discussions on cycling infrastructure etc. get sidetracked by people generalising based on the behaviour of a handful.

I cycle ~20 miles a day, and in that distance, sometimes with a lot of road congestion, I see all manner of rules broken, incl. by cyclists. But, in my experience, most cyclists are courteous and law abiding.

On the other hand, being alert saves me from being squashed, cut off, running into dozy pedestrians crossing a red light (which I know is legal), coming a cropper on poorly thought through bike infrastructure etc. daily.

This, of course, is anecdotal, just as the exaggerated experience of the red light running bike lunatic is. It's funny how alive that stereotype is for a lot of people though, even with the thousands of quite normal, quite law abiding commuters in hi viz forming the vast majority of London's cyclists.

[edcam]

miga Wrote:

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> I'd like to see some figures on how many cyclists

> actually ride on the pavement or run red lights.

> Often, discussions on cycling infrastructure etc.

> get sidetracked by people generalising based on

> the behaviour of a handful.

>

> I cycle ~20 miles a day, and in that distance,

> sometimes with a lot of road congestion, I see all

> manner of rules broken, incl. by cyclists. But, in

> my experience, most cyclists are courteous and law

> abiding.

>

> On the other hand, being alert saves me from being

> squashed, cut off, running into dozy pedestrians

> crossing a red light (which I know is legal),

> coming a cropper on poorly thought through bike

> infrastructure etc. daily.

>

> This, of course, is anecdotal, just as the

> exaggerated experience of the red light running

> bike lunatic is. It's funny how alive that

> stereotype is for a lot of people though, even

> with the thousands of quite normal, quite law

> abiding commuters in hi viz forming the vast

> majority of London's cyclists.

Of course it's impossible to give statistics on how many cyclists jump red lights but in my experience it's a significant minority. I cross Farringdon Road every day and one week recently, I decided to mentally log how often it happened. Crossing the road Mon-Fri morning and evening, in one week I counted 23 cyclists and 6 motorists jumping the lights.

[DuncanW]

Yeah, but do you know what - I wouldn't dance, walk or cycle on the M25 because it would be both illegal and highly dangerous.

But I would do all of those activities, some better than others, in the appropriate settings without considering them inherently dangerous.

Also I don't really recognise your characterisation that pedestrian fatalities involving motor-vehicles are resultant of doing something 'dumb/illegal'

[Loz]

DuncanW Wrote:

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> Also I don' really recognise your characterisation that pedestrian fatalities involving

> motor-vehicles are resultant of doing something 'dumb/illegal'

Of course you don't - you are one of 'those' sorts of cyclists to whom all motor vehicles are inherently evil and at-fault for everything. Some are motorists fault, some are pedestrians' fault, but you couldn't possibly widen your horizons to that sort of thinking, could you?

[civilservant]

Loz, your M25 analogy is hilarious, but it is true that cyclist deaths (and the rather larger number of pedestrian deaths) are mostly caused by 4-wheel traffic

so I've got another question - every day I watch from the bus while (some) cyclists take the most absurd risks in traffic.

This being traffic, the risks will be shared to some extent by everyone around them, in the same way that a car with bad brakes is a threat to everyone else on the road.

as exdulwicher points out, some of this is about bad cycling infrastructure. But quite a lot of it is not.

so why do they do it? is it just for the sake of shaving a few minutes off their journey? or is something else going on?

[DuncanW]

"you are one of 'those' sorts of cyclists to whom all motor vehicles are inherently evil and at-fault for everything."

Not sure how you'd think you know me well enough to conclude that.

[miga]

civilservant - every day I watch drivers of blue cars/white vans/red buses take risks and break rules. Is it just because I have a weird hangup about a particular mode of transport that I'm focusing on this/that/other group, or is it the unfortunate statistical reality that out of many, many people, some will do things I find unpleasant? Nah... It's got to be the blue cars!

Or was the answer you were looking for to confirm your prejudice something along the lines of: "Nah mate, it's the cyclists, they're risk taking psychos and that's why they flout the rules. I'd make 'em pay road tax, me!".

[civilservant]

now, now, miga, what was all that about?

everyone takes risks and many people break rules - that IS a pretty obvious fact, isn't it? well done for pointing that out. but i'd have thought that it's also pretty obvious that risks can be disproportionately weighted against some groups e.g. cyclists and pedestrians.

but let's leave pedestrians out of this cyclist-focused thread...

so wouldn't you agree that a rule-breaking blue car driver doesn't run quite the same personal danger of being squashed as a rule-breaking cyclist? hence my question - it's simply not logical to put oneself in a situation when the risk is so great and the reward so small.

so - why does that make you feel so personally slighted? and what's all that stuff about road tax? how and why does that follow?

[Loz]

DuncanW Wrote:

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> "you are one of 'those' sorts of cyclists to whom all motor vehicles are inherently evil and

> at-fault for everything."

>

> Not sure how you'd think you know me well enough to conclude that.

Well, you are right, sort of - I can only judge you on the silly things you've written. You might actually be sensible and reasonable in real life - someone who doesn't blame motor vehicles for each and every accident.

But I doubt it.

[Earl Aelfheah]

I am a car owner. I am not 'anti car'. But anyone with any sense can see that the potential harm represented by a motor vehicles overshadows that posed by a small, light, relatively slow, self propelled bicycle... and by a significant order of magnitude. The fact is that the amount of 'concern' expressed about the 'carnage' bikes cause, is ridiculously disproportionate. The number of threads talking about the 'dangers of bikes' is getting silly.

[miga]

civilservant Wrote:

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> now, now, miga, what was all that about?

It's obvious isn't it? I played your game of "anecdote to behavioural diagnosis" for laffs.

>

> everyone takes risks and many people break rules -

> that IS a pretty obvious fact, isn't it? well

> done for pointing that out. but i'd have thought

> that it's also pretty obvious that risks can be

> disproportionately weighted against some groups

> e.g. cyclists and pedestrians.

Ah, so it's the cyclists themselves you're actually concerned about. That's good of you. Slightly confused way to go about showing your concern by focusing on some careless ones and comparing them to cars with bad brakes, though, because that sounds like you're extrapolating to negative conclusions based on the behaviour of some.

Which is what this thread has been largely about - starting off by calling for removal of infrastructure for cyclists based on the alleged behaviour of one person then running through the usual litany of "psycho cyclist" behaviour. I completed the cyclist thread equivalent of Godwin's Law (for laffs) - "but they don't pay road tax".

> so wouldn't you agree that a rule-breaking blue

> car driver doesn't run quite the same personal

> danger of being squashed as a rule-breaking

> cyclist? hence my question - it's simply not

> logical to put oneself in a situation when the

> risk is so great and the reward so small.

That's not a question, that's a statement. In your previous post, your question was obviously rhetorical. If you have an actual question, I'd be HTH.

[Earl Aelfheah]

Whilst sitting alone in my Volvo XC90 in traffic, the engine rumbling, I noticed a person on a small push bike cycling past the line of cars. It annoyed me. I don?t know why (I didn?t think deeply about it), but I felt a small jolt of annoyance. It felt wrong, like they were skipping the line and no doubt feeling smug about it. The git! Later on, there were two of them and I had to slow down to pass. Get out of the fecking way! Honestly why are they even on the road? I?m really starting to hate them. The next day, I saw one of them move slowly forward at the lights - they looked, saw nothing was coming and then crossed on a red! The sh*t! That is so dangerous? not actually dangerous, but illegal and definitely, potentially dangerous? had there been someone coming. I started making a mental note every time I saw a cyclist do something inconsiderate. Each time I saw them breaking the rules, I felt reassured in my original view, that an adult travelling around on a bike is frankly weird and definitely dangerous. I probably did also encounter some bad behaviour by other drivers and occasionally pedestrians, but it didn?t stick out as much as I wasn?t specifically looking for it. There have always been bad drivers on the road after all, it?s just something you have to get used to. Just people being people. I?m a driver and I?m very careful, so the behaviour of that guy in the van doesn?t tell you anything about driving generally, it?s just some guy being a dick. Anyway, I?ve notice more and more of this recently, how cyclists seem to ignore all the rules. I searched Google until I found some stats that suggest the number of people hurt by bikes could be higher than people think. Again, it all confirms my initial impressions. I suspect that we?d all be better off if they were banned! I saw this really funny rant on Facebook, where this guy was saying how they should all be run off the road- LOL. There are loads of threads about it on the local forum too (which again, just proves what a problem they are). If they all got in car, we?d all be much better off.

[TheArtfulDogger]

It's at times like this when I consider road safety for all users that I ask myself

" what would Tuffty do? "

Ultimately everyone needs to follow the law and rules, otherwise there will be chaos on the roads and pavements for everyone, jumping a red light (regardless of form of transport or reason) is illegal , as is driving or cycling on the pavement.

The rules are there to protect everyone and whilst human error is one factor in accidents, where the rules have been flouted (by anyone) then that can also be a major contributing factor to the cause of an accident.

Everyone needs to take responsibility for their own safety as well as the safety of others around them to help cut down on the number of accidents / problems.