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Cyclist fatalities in London - what's going on?
- Thread starter Bry Nylon
- Start date
£1.99
Well-known member
- Mar 3, 2008
- 1,233
Sadly a hit and run here in Sussex today.
http://www.sussex.police.uk/whats-h...dge?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
http://www.sussex.police.uk/whats-h...dge?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
"However, Castle defended this position, saying: "It is good safety advice; look at the lady who had that VW pulled off her in Spitalfields, she said she would be dead if it weren't for her wearing a crash helmet."
Read more at http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest/541270/police-road-safety-checks-not-just-targetting-cyclists.html#ROl9JROkw4l0bGSi.99"
Surely not having a car drive over someone in the first place is likely to make more of a difference...
m20gull
Well-known member
"Following the death of a cyclist in Camberwell today following collision with a lorry, many, including London Green Party leader, Jenny Jones, are calling for city centre lorry bans during rush hour."
That would be the death just after midday. How long is rush hour now?
That would be the death just after midday. How long is rush hour now?
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You seem to prejudging who was at fault! The incident yesterday was when a lorry was turning left from the lights. Significantly, the Police did not arrest the driver which is the normal thing to do when an incident is under investigation. Doesn't that suggest to most people that maybe this cyclist was the author of his own misfortune! Again, admittedly speculating, but if there was any doubt that the lorry driver wasn't signalling or that he pulled up alongside the cyclist and then turned left then he would have been arrested. There is the possibility that the cyclist has just cycled up the inside of lorry at the lights and ignored the fact he was indicating left. Inquest will establish the fault but you seem to quick to blame motorists. Having worked in the city, I have witnessed many occasions when cyclist fail to observe even the basic highway code!
Can we get over this stupid blame issue...?
Sure, there are some reckless cyclists on the roads, a minority I'm sure, but they are only ever going to be responsible for damaging themselves. A driver bears greater responsibility.
The reality is 95% of drivers fail to follow the Highway Code, especially ignoring stopping distances etc.
Please remember when you're casually daydreaming when commuting, possibly getting distracted, you are responsible for controlling a multi ton hard metal machine with similar kinetic energy and lethality than caused by a firearm.
And, do you really want to be responsible for a fellow road user's family to be fatherless this, and all future, Christmases just because you wanted to beat the lights and shave 10 seconds off your journey?
Please, just be careful out there. Getting to work doesn't need to be a matter of life and death. It's your responsibility to share the road peaceably.
Thanks for your attention.
Pogue Mahone
Well-known member
- Apr 30, 2011
- 10,951
That's it in a nutshell, really.
This constant need to vilify all cyclists because of the misdemeanors of some leads to attitudes that are downright dangerous.
Too many drivers have a 'Got to get ahead, must overtake, must not be behind' attitude, and are willing to take chances with the safety of other human beings in a way that they wouldn't in any other area of their life.
We have one of the highest fatality rates per miles cycled in all of Europe. Let's make more of an effort to look out for each other.
I haven't attributed blame at all, but I defy you to end up under a car without it driving over you (whoever was at fault). All I said is that it is better for vehicles not to drive over people than it is for people to have to wear protective items 'just in case'. I assume you don't wear a bullet-proof vest all day every day 'just in case' someone shoots you, and I'd suggest the more important thing is to prevent the shooting in the first place. I also assume you don't apply the 'well, she was probably asking for it' argument is rape cases.
All I want to do is keep people safe on their way to and from work, or to meet friends. There are things that could be done immediately to help this, and there are things that will take time and money to improve life for people. What there doesn't seem to be is any political desire to create a City that is safer for people.
queens park pete
Prog off!
Kudos to the guy in the black van who passed me very close on Southover just now!
After I yelled at him to look out (no abuse, honest) he swung round the mini roundabout, and came back towards me. I expected a loud of verbals, but he apologised if he had come closer than he realised.
A lesson learnt by me as well as him I hope. No one is going out to kill anyone, apart from that abomination on Top Gear, who should be prosecuted for hate crime!
After I yelled at him to look out (no abuse, honest) he swung round the mini roundabout, and came back towards me. I expected a loud of verbals, but he apologised if he had come closer than he realised.
A lesson learnt by me as well as him I hope. No one is going out to kill anyone, apart from that abomination on Top Gear, who should be prosecuted for hate crime!
Let's Stop Scoring Points Over Dead Cyclists
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/matt-glass/london-cyclist-deaths_b_4298701.html
If you need a barometer of just how much a bunch of utter *******s humankind can be, look no further than a story about a cyclist dying on the roads of London.
Tragically, you won't need to look far - six in the last fortnight should give you plenty of ammunition - and it seems everybody has a little bit of hatred reserved for the people who leave home in the morning and end up lying in a morgue rather than sitting at a desk.
Even Boris Johnson threw his barely-used bike helmet in the ring this week, stating that there could be "no question of blame or finger pointing," before finger pointing and laying the blame squarely at the feet of the cyclists who ended up beneath the wheels of heavy goods vehicles and buses on the capital's roads.
The internet swiftly - and predictably - erupted in outrage that humans could be so rude as to meet their maker instead of turning up to work in the morning.
Over on the Daily Mail, the nattily named 'bornfreetaxedtodeath' posed the reasonable question: "How many car drivers have been killed by trying to avoid these lycra two aside idiots & come face to death with a lorry?", before heading over to another forum to complain that the erratic nature of whales could be putting the lives of harpooners in danger.
'Rickz_88' literally misunderstood what the word literally means by suggesting that all cyclists "literally have a death wish", while 'Louisa-Jane' decided that the only reasonable solution is that "cyclists should be banned from the centre of London. They'll never be safe on those roads. If they ARE going to insist on riding their bikes then they should have to pay road tax." More on that later.
'Kay' rounded up the empathy of the nation nicely by pointing out that the dead cyclist "wasnt the only 'victim' here what about the driver? Very biased story, you don't have to read between the lines to notice the glaring ommisions in this one." (sic)
The Guardian's readers enjoyed a rant as well; 'Trilla' argued that "cyclists should not be on the road", before presumably complaining about them being on the pavement as well, and 'Jakem' showed his empathetic side by grumbling "By and large, cyclists aren't victims, they're the problem," while enthusiastically ignoring the stats - or the dead bodies - that show otherwise.
'Soundboy42' also willfully ignored the fact that - so far, at least - there's no indication that any of the cyclists killed this week were doing anything wrong, by adding that "If cyclists simply follow the road rules they'll be safe."
So, in the interests of us all getting along, I've devised a little guide that'll help you not to be a total dick next time a family gets a visit from the local police force with some bad news.
'Cyclists should pay road tax'
The piece de resistance of every anti-cyclist argument. If you want to use the roads, you should pay road tax and THEN you'll deserve some respect. It was the justification of Twitter user @EmmaWay20, who knocked cyclist Tom Hockley off his bike before speeding off and Tweeting "Definitely knocked a cyclist off his bike earlier. I have right of way -- he doesn't even pay road tax! #bloodycyclists"
Despite Emma's obvious stupidity becoming national news, there are STILL people who wheel out this idea (yes Louisa-Jane, I'm talking about you), so let's go through this one slowly...
Road tax was abolished in 1937. That's 76 years ago.
You don't pay road tax. You pay vehicle tax and it's based on the CO2 emissions of your vehicle. It doesn't take a genius to work out that you can use some taxpayer money to bring in the taxation of bicycles if you like, but the grand total of money raised will be... nothing.
Using this argument not only automatically eliminates you from any kind of sensible debate about cycling, but should also see your driving licence confiscated and your car towed away and crushed. Be warned.
'Cyclists run red lights'
It's true that some cyclists run red lights, and that's against the law. Most cyclists will join you in condemning the very few who think it's OK to charge, head down, through pedestrians as they cross on a green man.
But consider this: Sometimes it's safer to look both ways, check for traffic and head off before that huge truck grumbles into action and starts turning its monstrous weight into the flimsy wheels of your bicycle.
And you know what makes that even more important? The fact that it's becoming rarer than rare these days to be able to pedal up a clear cycle lane and into the big, blue, safe bike box at the front without a lump of metal and rubber ignorantly blocking the way.
When it's a choice between being boxed in between a ton of metal and a particularly hard road, or nipping off early through the lights, there's really no contest.
And while we're on the subject of breaking the law, do you get similarly irate when a driver edges up to 34mph in a 30mph zone? Does that make it OK when another driver dies in a car crash?
Cyclists running red lights gets on your nerves, but that rarely puts us under the wheels of your truck.
Additionally, before we let these exaggerations run away with us, a study by the Sunday Times found that 90% of cyclists obeyed the red lights in the three cities observed, including London.
'Cyclists should be banned because they keep dying'
An argument that keeps cropping up is that as a punishment, presumably, for dying so often, cyclists should be banned completely.
It's the kind of suggestion put forward by the NRA every time somebody in America is killed by a gun - let's not get rid of the guns that kill everybody, let's make sure everybody has a deadly weapon instead. Aside from the fact that London's roads are already gridlocked without adding thousands more vehicles each morning, it's an argument that defies any kind of reasonable debate.
In 2011, over 1,900 pedestrians were killed on the roads. Should we therefore ban people from walking outside in case they too die and ruin the journey of a poor, defenceless driver?
Perhaps we should take that argument to its logical conclusion and, rather than banning chemical weapons, we should get rid of pesky humankind for all that dying they keep doing as a result of them.
'Cyclists are dangerous. I saw one doing xxx this morning'
I know this is a difficult idea to grasp, but that person who ended up in a body bag in Aldgate wasn't the same person that you saw being an idiot on a bike in Kensington.
If cyclists are all to be judged on that one person who annoyed you this morning on your daily commute, then it seems only fair to do the same back.
Drivers are all speeding lunatics who change lanes without indicating, thrusting their un-taxed, uninsured motor around the road while talking on their mobile phones, blaring out the Radio One Breakfast Show at unbearable volumes and smoking out of the window. Oh, and you can't pass a woman without leaning out and shouting 'oi oiiii larvely! Fancy a shag?' and beeping your horn incessantly.
Put like that, those cyclists don't seem so bad, do they?
So, by all means, let's have a debate about cyclists and why they keep dying. But let's all make a gentleman's agreement to stop using these tired, ridiculous old arguments, yeah?
Failing that, just be nice. Someone just died, and it could have been someone you love.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/matt-glass/london-cyclist-deaths_b_4298701.html
If you need a barometer of just how much a bunch of utter *******s humankind can be, look no further than a story about a cyclist dying on the roads of London.
Tragically, you won't need to look far - six in the last fortnight should give you plenty of ammunition - and it seems everybody has a little bit of hatred reserved for the people who leave home in the morning and end up lying in a morgue rather than sitting at a desk.
Even Boris Johnson threw his barely-used bike helmet in the ring this week, stating that there could be "no question of blame or finger pointing," before finger pointing and laying the blame squarely at the feet of the cyclists who ended up beneath the wheels of heavy goods vehicles and buses on the capital's roads.
The internet swiftly - and predictably - erupted in outrage that humans could be so rude as to meet their maker instead of turning up to work in the morning.
Over on the Daily Mail, the nattily named 'bornfreetaxedtodeath' posed the reasonable question: "How many car drivers have been killed by trying to avoid these lycra two aside idiots & come face to death with a lorry?", before heading over to another forum to complain that the erratic nature of whales could be putting the lives of harpooners in danger.
'Rickz_88' literally misunderstood what the word literally means by suggesting that all cyclists "literally have a death wish", while 'Louisa-Jane' decided that the only reasonable solution is that "cyclists should be banned from the centre of London. They'll never be safe on those roads. If they ARE going to insist on riding their bikes then they should have to pay road tax." More on that later.
'Kay' rounded up the empathy of the nation nicely by pointing out that the dead cyclist "wasnt the only 'victim' here what about the driver? Very biased story, you don't have to read between the lines to notice the glaring ommisions in this one." (sic)
The Guardian's readers enjoyed a rant as well; 'Trilla' argued that "cyclists should not be on the road", before presumably complaining about them being on the pavement as well, and 'Jakem' showed his empathetic side by grumbling "By and large, cyclists aren't victims, they're the problem," while enthusiastically ignoring the stats - or the dead bodies - that show otherwise.
'Soundboy42' also willfully ignored the fact that - so far, at least - there's no indication that any of the cyclists killed this week were doing anything wrong, by adding that "If cyclists simply follow the road rules they'll be safe."
So, in the interests of us all getting along, I've devised a little guide that'll help you not to be a total dick next time a family gets a visit from the local police force with some bad news.
'Cyclists should pay road tax'
The piece de resistance of every anti-cyclist argument. If you want to use the roads, you should pay road tax and THEN you'll deserve some respect. It was the justification of Twitter user @EmmaWay20, who knocked cyclist Tom Hockley off his bike before speeding off and Tweeting "Definitely knocked a cyclist off his bike earlier. I have right of way -- he doesn't even pay road tax! #bloodycyclists"
Despite Emma's obvious stupidity becoming national news, there are STILL people who wheel out this idea (yes Louisa-Jane, I'm talking about you), so let's go through this one slowly...
Road tax was abolished in 1937. That's 76 years ago.
You don't pay road tax. You pay vehicle tax and it's based on the CO2 emissions of your vehicle. It doesn't take a genius to work out that you can use some taxpayer money to bring in the taxation of bicycles if you like, but the grand total of money raised will be... nothing.
Using this argument not only automatically eliminates you from any kind of sensible debate about cycling, but should also see your driving licence confiscated and your car towed away and crushed. Be warned.
'Cyclists run red lights'
It's true that some cyclists run red lights, and that's against the law. Most cyclists will join you in condemning the very few who think it's OK to charge, head down, through pedestrians as they cross on a green man.
But consider this: Sometimes it's safer to look both ways, check for traffic and head off before that huge truck grumbles into action and starts turning its monstrous weight into the flimsy wheels of your bicycle.
And you know what makes that even more important? The fact that it's becoming rarer than rare these days to be able to pedal up a clear cycle lane and into the big, blue, safe bike box at the front without a lump of metal and rubber ignorantly blocking the way.
When it's a choice between being boxed in between a ton of metal and a particularly hard road, or nipping off early through the lights, there's really no contest.
And while we're on the subject of breaking the law, do you get similarly irate when a driver edges up to 34mph in a 30mph zone? Does that make it OK when another driver dies in a car crash?
Cyclists running red lights gets on your nerves, but that rarely puts us under the wheels of your truck.
Additionally, before we let these exaggerations run away with us, a study by the Sunday Times found that 90% of cyclists obeyed the red lights in the three cities observed, including London.
'Cyclists should be banned because they keep dying'
An argument that keeps cropping up is that as a punishment, presumably, for dying so often, cyclists should be banned completely.
It's the kind of suggestion put forward by the NRA every time somebody in America is killed by a gun - let's not get rid of the guns that kill everybody, let's make sure everybody has a deadly weapon instead. Aside from the fact that London's roads are already gridlocked without adding thousands more vehicles each morning, it's an argument that defies any kind of reasonable debate.
In 2011, over 1,900 pedestrians were killed on the roads. Should we therefore ban people from walking outside in case they too die and ruin the journey of a poor, defenceless driver?
Perhaps we should take that argument to its logical conclusion and, rather than banning chemical weapons, we should get rid of pesky humankind for all that dying they keep doing as a result of them.
'Cyclists are dangerous. I saw one doing xxx this morning'
I know this is a difficult idea to grasp, but that person who ended up in a body bag in Aldgate wasn't the same person that you saw being an idiot on a bike in Kensington.
If cyclists are all to be judged on that one person who annoyed you this morning on your daily commute, then it seems only fair to do the same back.
Drivers are all speeding lunatics who change lanes without indicating, thrusting their un-taxed, uninsured motor around the road while talking on their mobile phones, blaring out the Radio One Breakfast Show at unbearable volumes and smoking out of the window. Oh, and you can't pass a woman without leaning out and shouting 'oi oiiii larvely! Fancy a shag?' and beeping your horn incessantly.
Put like that, those cyclists don't seem so bad, do they?
So, by all means, let's have a debate about cyclists and why they keep dying. But let's all make a gentleman's agreement to stop using these tired, ridiculous old arguments, yeah?
Failing that, just be nice. Someone just died, and it could have been someone you love.
Good to hear. Too much road rage around, nice to hear a positive story.
Brilliant article, the last sentence sums it up perfectly.
Arthritic Toe
Well-known member
Totally disagree re. Brussels. It is very cycle friendly. There are marked cycle routes throughout the city. Often these are completely separated from the road. In places they also use dedicated lanes on the pavements. If you ignore these routes and take your chances on the road, then you are on your own.
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Hysterical! First you advocate not playing the blame game then almost immediately go on to state 95% of drivers don't follow the highway code. 95% based on what? Of course there are some very poor drivers but there are equally very poor cyclists. What part of the highway code are you referring to. Driving at 31mph in a 30mph area is breaking the highway code but isn't anywhere near as serious as not checking your nearside mirror when turning left. As for your assertion that drivers bear greater responsibility well that is ludicrous. The cyclist is in a far more vulnerable position but having said that I would suggest that road users have an equal responsibility to each other.
You have implied that it is the drivers fault whether you used those words or not. Your comment about the car driving over you is irrelevant if you don't take into account who is at fault.
Having said that, I agree that there is more that can be done. Motorists can pass a test at 17 and never have their skills checked again. Cyclists don't even have to prove any aptitude whatsover. Perhaps as a start, motorists should be periodically re tested and cyclists should be forced to have passed a proficiency test.
fosters headband
Well-known member
One thing I would like to know from the cyclists on here is, why a lot of them prefer to ride on the road when a safer cycle lane is provided?
I travel a lot from Patcham to Peacehaven and I am still surprised that I have seen cyclists using the road instead of the new cycle lane over Falmer Road and this is a road I would describe as extremely dangerous for cyclists.
The other, is the cycle lane from Rottingdean to the Telscombe/Peacehaven border, where I have seen them cycling in the bus lane when cycling towards Brighton, when the cycle lane is right next to the bus lane.
Neither of these roads can the drivers be accused of parking and blocking the cycle lane as they are both separate from the road.
The thing I have notice about the cyclists that do this on these roads are, they are in the main the lycra brigade and I wondered if this is significant, do they think that if you wear this uniform you can ignore the safety of cycle lanes?
I travel a lot from Patcham to Peacehaven and I am still surprised that I have seen cyclists using the road instead of the new cycle lane over Falmer Road and this is a road I would describe as extremely dangerous for cyclists.
The other, is the cycle lane from Rottingdean to the Telscombe/Peacehaven border, where I have seen them cycling in the bus lane when cycling towards Brighton, when the cycle lane is right next to the bus lane.
Neither of these roads can the drivers be accused of parking and blocking the cycle lane as they are both separate from the road.
The thing I have notice about the cyclists that do this on these roads are, they are in the main the lycra brigade and I wondered if this is significant, do they think that if you wear this uniform you can ignore the safety of cycle lanes?
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Because the 'lyrca brigade' are safer on the roads.
Personally I want to be in the position where, at 30-40mph, my carelessness will result in me being killed to death.
Cycle paths and lycra don't mix for all manner of reasons, whether it be design, lay out, quality of the surface, but mainly pedestrians, esp those not old enough to know better.
Edif oh and see if you can find the thread where HB&B was a very proud daddy the time he physically assaulted a cyclist who had the audacity to warn the Family Hove that he was approaching from behind by ringing his bell. (It's a long story - the truth gets pieced together on about page 3)
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The cycle paths in and around Coventry are generally in a sorry state of repair. I guess they are OK if you ride a mountain bike with suspension but on my racing bike the number of potholes and bumps make it easier and safer to ride on the road. Not sure what they are like in Brighton.