I am not a driver, but I have had issues with cyclists who seem to think that road rules don't apply to them. For example, when I was crossing a one way street, if I hadn't been paranoid about only looking one way, then I would have been hit by a cyclist who felt that it was acceptable for him to ride the wrong way down a one way street. On another occasion, I was nearly hit by a cyclist who decided that they didn't need to look when going from one stretch of dual cycle/pedestrian way across a road to the next stretch. I was on the footpath when the cyclist pelted across the road without stopping to look if there was a) any traffic coming along the road, or b) whether there were any pedestrians using the footpath which was not part of the cycle/pedestrian way.
I deplore illegal cycling (and will shout at cyclists jumping red lights, for example), but comments of this form in this context seem to me to be edging close to victim blaming. I'm sure you don't mean to imply that the bad behaviour of some cyclists means drivers are less culpable when the intimidate, injure, or kill cyclists; but comments complaining of the bad behaviour of cyclists in response to an article complaining of the ill-treatment of cyclists by drivers (who are a dominant, better-armed majority) feel like they're trying to divert responsibility away from drivers.
To extend this argument, if a pedestrian complained about cyclists nearly running them down on the pavement, or not stopping for them at zebra crossings, I would think it out of order for a cyclist to go on about how some pedestrians meander all over footways, step out into the road without looking, and so on.
How many times have you been deliberately attacked with a deadly weapon by a cyclist, threatening you with serious injury ? These kinds of attacks by drivers are an experience that almost every cyclist (at least in Cambridge) has often; normally the actual injury and damage is avoided by the cyclist submitting entirely to the motor-lord.
For that matter, how many times have you been on foot and forced to stop by a driver driving on a pavement, or failing to give way at a zebra crossing, or going through a red light ? How many times have you been prevented from walking on the road - as is your right! - by the intimidation you would face from drivers of motor vehicles? (You do know, don't you, that in law pedestrians have an absolute right of priority over vehicles even on the carriageway, with some very limited exceptions. If you feel like walking in the road, perhaps because the pavement is too narrow for the people who want to use it, in law the drivers must give way to you.)
I've been physically struck by a bus while standing still, as a pedestrian, on the pavement in Magdalene Street. Driving your vehicle on the pavement is a crime - but a crime that is never punished unless the vehicle is a bicycle and the risk is negligible!
The vast majority of pedestrians and cyclists just put up with all this as if it were the natural order of things.
I don't condone the antisocial activities of bad cyclists. But they are completely irrelevant to any discussion of problems on the roads. Cyclists kill about one person a year in Britain. Drivers are the leading cause of early death!
If you're mainly a pedestrian I think you should open your eyes to the real problem, which is not antisocial cycling. Antisocial cycling is rude and irritating. Antisocial driving is deadly violence.
The difference is that they can be identified when in a car and penalised. Perhaps cyclist would get a better image if all bikes had registered owners and prominent registration plates like motorcycles, enabling easy identification and punishment of those who disobey the rules of the road.
I hope you don't mind me commenting on several things you've said, but what do you think of the fact that although Ian has identified the people involved in several incidents when his bike was damaged (sometimes severely) and he was even assaulted (and I was a witness to those handprints on his neck) and yet not *once* has the identification led to punishment.
And yet each year in Cambridge many cyclists get fixed penalty tickets handed out on the spot for pavement cycling and lack of lights.
I do think it would be good if poor cyclist behaviour could be reduced. It gives cyclists a bad name, and makes life much less pleasant on the roads for those of us who do cycle carefully and safely and within the law. But I don't think registration would make any difference.
The time his bike was destroyed was a case of someone driving through red lights, not road rage. He got insurance money to replace the bike, but there was no prosecution. So it's not just road rage. And when my sister was attacked by another (female) driver in a road rage incident (and had hair pulled out) after they'd both stopped at a petrol station it was prosecuted, so it's not the case that road rage assaults can't be prosecuted.
I still find it uncomfortable that you can say:
There are just a bunch of assholes out there who choose to use whatever vehicle they are using at the time as a weapon and to intimidate others, regardless of the size of the other vehicle - cars who intimidate and are inconsiderate to cyclists are just as likely to do the same to other cars, or even lorries may times their size. Similarly there are cyclists of the same mentality.
and apparently not see the inherent complete disparity in scale, both in intimidation *caused* and in intimidation *received*.
"How many times have you been deliberately attacked with a deadly weapon by a cyclist, threatening you with serious injury ?"
As a pedestrian? Several.
What weapon did they use ? Did they take their D-lock off its bracket and swing it at you ? Did they have a kitchen knife in their panniers ?
I suspect that actually you're referring to their bicycle, but this is ridiculous. The idea that a bike is anywhere near as threatening when used as a weapon as a car or a knife or indeed any kind of deadly weapon is absurd. Riding a bike into a pedestrian is as likely to hurt the rider as the victim. Deliberately driving a car at any speed into a pedestrian or cyclist will usually maim or kill - and if there aren't any witnesses the murderer can say the victim "stepped out" and get away scot-free!
"Cyclists kill about one person a year in Britain"
By direct collision, perhaps. How many more injuries do they cause by illegal/reckless behaviour which causes other road users to take emergency evasive action?
Firstly, this is the ridiculous and contrived scenario of the form "I had to kill the second pedestrian because the first one stepped out into the road" Do you know anyone to whom anything like this has ever happened? Do you think that these kind of circumstances make up even a tiny fraction of the 3000 deaths and 30,000 maimings a year involving to motor vehicles?
And I don't mean it "nearly" happened. I wasn't "nearly" deliberately run into and then assaulted! My bicycle wasn't "nearly" destroyed. I mean actually. If we are counting "nearly" then I am "nearly" driven into about once a week! (But I'm an experienced and careful cyclist, so with one notable exception I manage to stop or swerve and thus avoid a crash with the red light jumping drivers, and the drivers who pull out in front, and the drivers who pull out onto roundabouts "without seeing me", and so on.)
Secondly, there is a hidden bias even in your very question. Walking and cycling are inherently very low risk both to the walker or cyclist and to others. It is quite unreasonable that drivers are permitted to introduce the enormous hazards of tonnes of heavy machinery and then impose on everyone else a requirement to behave especially carefully and follow a complicated and inconvenient set of rules to try to avoid some of the resulting injuries and deaths!
When a pedestrian "steps out without looking" in town, and is killed, that is not their fault! It may be their fault in law, but this is grossly unfair. People who want to operate heavy machinery in a public place should take full responsibility for doing so safely, and should not be allowed to impose onerous conditions on everyone else.
Imagine if you were to walk through the fair on Midsummer Common right now, and there was a complicated system of pedestrian traffic lights, and areas (marked on the ground with paint or kerbstones) where you were allowed to walk and areas where you weren't allowed to walk. Imagine that if you were to obey the rules you had to make long detours, wait for a chance to proceed sometimes for minutes at a time, and if you got it wrong you were likely to be decapitated by a flying piece of machinery.
Imagine that children had to be specially trained to submit utterly to the operators of fairground equipment - to look both ways for flying ride cars, to check for cars that haven't stopped when they should have done, and implicitly told that if they don't do that they would get very badly hurt and it would be their fault.
Imagine that 3000 people a year were killed this way.
No-one would stand for it. But that's the situation every day in every town dominated by the motor vehicle. As the Transport Select Committee put it,
It is inconceivable that any transport system invented today would be accepted, no matter what its benefits, if it involved this level of carnage.
I wrote so with one notable exception I manage to stop or swerve and thus avoid a crash which needs clarification. I have on all but one occasion managed to avoid accidental crashes.
Unsurprisingly I have less often been able to avoid crashes where the driver is deliberately driving at me, but in these cases I have always (so far, touch wood) avoided injury, although there has been damage to my bike. Unfortunately, nowadays part of defensive cycling is managing these confrontations in a way that minimises risk of a seriously bad outcome.
For example, when being tailgated I tend to slow down gradually (while signalling clearly that the driver should keep back) and in a number of cases this has resulted in a slow speed ramming from behind. (Most recently, after the taxi driver rammed me, he got out and asked me "why were you waving me away?". Obviously I don't regard the collision as an "accident" - he deliberately disregarded my very clear signal.)
But I count that as a successful outcome compared to the alternative which would often be to allow the driver to sqeeze past without enough clearance, or make some other risky manoeuvre myself such as diving onto the pavement. I'd prefer to take a large risk of yet another trashed rear wheel than a small risk of a life-changing injury.
But why am I forced to make this choice, many times a year ? Because drivers can attack people with their vehicles with almost complete impunity.
Regardless of their relevance in general their behaviour is irrelevant as to the question of whether cars should give them plenty of room when overtaking. Bad cycling does not mean Rule #163 does not apply.
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(no subject)
To extend this argument, if a pedestrian complained about cyclists nearly running them down on the pavement, or not stopping for them at zebra crossings, I would think it out of order for a cyclist to go on about how some pedestrians meander all over footways, step out into the road without looking, and so on.
(no subject)
For that matter, how many times have you been on foot and forced to stop by a driver driving on a pavement, or failing to give way at a zebra crossing, or going through a red light ? How many times have you been prevented from walking on the road - as is your right! - by the intimidation you would face from drivers of motor vehicles? (You do know, don't you, that in law pedestrians have an absolute right of priority over vehicles even on the carriageway, with some very limited exceptions. If you feel like walking in the road, perhaps because the pavement is too narrow for the people who want to use it, in law the drivers must give way to you.)
I've been physically struck by a bus while standing still, as a pedestrian, on the pavement in Magdalene Street. Driving your vehicle on the pavement is a crime - but a crime that is never punished unless the vehicle is a bicycle and the risk is negligible!
The vast majority of pedestrians and cyclists just put up with all this as if it were the natural order of things.
I don't condone the antisocial activities of bad cyclists. But they are completely irrelevant to any discussion of problems on the roads. Cyclists kill about one person a year in Britain. Drivers are the leading cause of early death!
If you're mainly a pedestrian I think you should open your eyes to the real problem, which is not antisocial cycling. Antisocial cycling is rude and irritating. Antisocial driving is deadly violence.
Ian Jackson
(no subject)
I hope you don't mind me commenting on several things you've said, but what do you think of the fact that although Ian has identified the people involved in several incidents when his bike was damaged (sometimes severely) and he was even assaulted (and I was a witness to those handprints on his neck) and yet not *once* has the identification led to punishment.
And yet each year in Cambridge many cyclists get fixed penalty tickets handed out on the spot for pavement cycling and lack of lights.
I do think it would be good if poor cyclist behaviour could be reduced. It gives cyclists a bad name, and makes life much less pleasant on the roads for those of us who do cycle carefully and safely and within the law. But I don't think registration would make any difference.
(no subject)
I still find it uncomfortable that you can say:
and apparently not see the inherent complete disparity in scale, both in intimidation *caused* and in intimidation *received*.
(no subject)
As a pedestrian? Several.
What weapon did they use ? Did they take their D-lock off its bracket and swing it at you ? Did they have a kitchen knife in their panniers ?
I suspect that actually you're referring to their bicycle, but this is ridiculous. The idea that a bike is anywhere near as threatening when used as a weapon as a car or a knife or indeed any kind of deadly weapon is absurd. Riding a bike into a pedestrian is as likely to hurt the rider as the victim. Deliberately driving a car at any speed into a pedestrian or cyclist will usually maim or kill - and if there aren't any witnesses the murderer can say the victim "stepped out" and get away scot-free!
"Cyclists kill about one person a year in Britain"
By direct collision, perhaps. How many more injuries do they cause by illegal/reckless behaviour which causes other road users to take emergency evasive action?
Firstly, this is the ridiculous and contrived scenario of the form "I had to kill the second pedestrian because the first one stepped out into the road" Do you know anyone to whom anything like this has ever happened? Do you think that these kind of circumstances make up even a tiny fraction of the 3000 deaths and 30,000 maimings a year involving to motor vehicles?
And I don't mean it "nearly" happened. I wasn't "nearly" deliberately run into and then assaulted! My bicycle wasn't "nearly" destroyed. I mean actually. If we are counting "nearly" then I am "nearly" driven into about once a week! (But I'm an experienced and careful cyclist, so with one notable exception I manage to stop or swerve and thus avoid a crash with the red light jumping drivers, and the drivers who pull out in front, and the drivers who pull out onto roundabouts "without seeing me", and so on.)
Secondly, there is a hidden bias even in your very question. Walking and cycling are inherently very low risk both to the walker or cyclist and to others. It is quite unreasonable that drivers are permitted to introduce the enormous hazards of tonnes of heavy machinery and then impose on everyone else a requirement to behave especially carefully and follow a complicated and inconvenient set of rules to try to avoid some of the resulting injuries and deaths!
When a pedestrian "steps out without looking" in town, and is killed, that is not their fault! It may be their fault in law, but this is grossly unfair. People who want to operate heavy machinery in a public place should take full responsibility for doing so safely, and should not be allowed to impose onerous conditions on everyone else.
Imagine if you were to walk through the fair on Midsummer Common right now, and there was a complicated system of pedestrian traffic lights, and areas (marked on the ground with paint or kerbstones) where you were allowed to walk and areas where you weren't allowed to walk. Imagine that if you were to obey the rules you had to make long detours, wait for a chance to proceed sometimes for minutes at a time, and if you got it wrong you were likely to be decapitated by a flying piece of machinery.
Imagine that children had to be specially trained to submit utterly to the operators of fairground equipment - to look both ways for flying ride cars, to check for cars that haven't stopped when they should have done, and implicitly told that if they don't do that they would get very badly hurt and it would be their fault.
Imagine that 3000 people a year were killed this way.
No-one would stand for it. But that's the situation every day in every town dominated by the motor vehicle. As the Transport Select Committee put it,
Ian Jackson
(no subject)
Unsurprisingly I have less often been able to avoid crashes where the driver is deliberately driving at me, but in these cases I have always (so far, touch wood) avoided injury, although there has been damage to my bike. Unfortunately, nowadays part of defensive cycling is managing these confrontations in a way that minimises risk of a seriously bad outcome.
For example, when being tailgated I tend to slow down gradually (while signalling clearly that the driver should keep back) and in a number of cases this has resulted in a slow speed ramming from behind. (Most recently, after the taxi driver rammed me, he got out and asked me "why were you waving me away?". Obviously I don't regard the collision as an "accident" - he deliberately disregarded my very clear signal.)
But I count that as a successful outcome compared to the alternative which would often be to allow the driver to sqeeze past without enough clearance, or make some other risky manoeuvre myself such as diving onto the pavement. I'd prefer to take a large risk of yet another trashed rear wheel than a small risk of a life-changing injury.
But why am I forced to make this choice, many times a year ? Because drivers can attack people with their vehicles with almost complete impunity.
(no subject)