Should drivers in London start paying for the damage, deaths and misery they cause?

[spindrift]

Stop posting made-up nonsense, it's getting close to deliberately disrupting the thread.

[Loathing]

Although I take your point spindrift, Heuristics is a perfectly legitimate way of approaching/discussing a subject...

[spindrift]

If he'd said "90% of the ones I've seen" it would be implausible, but acceptable.

[NCT]

I gave you a set A with a probability of 10% and described set B. You assumed the union of sets A and B forms the whole sample space and concluded set B must be 90%. Where did I ever say the union of set A and set B formed the sample space?

[spindrift]

Bum gravy.

[DarJoLe]

A brilliant article about civilising London's spaces, most of what I've talked about a lot at length on here over the years.

http://www.jonestheplanner.co.uk/201...on-spaces.html

The final paragraph should be a warning to us all.

[billdsd]

Originally Posted by Loathing

Absurd. One doesn't have to study the subject of bloody "Cycle Craft" to get on one's bike and experience the road. I've cycled (carefully) in cities across the world, and no where but in London have I experience the nasal, autistic, arrogant pedant-cyclists such as those being so vociferous in this thread.

Anyone with a brain understands that a cyclists can't have the same rights/presence on a road as a car or a bus, for so many reasons it's not worth my time to delineate. If you're a cyclist, you need to be extra-aware, you need to be looking behind you whenever you manoeuvre, and you need to be prepared to slow down and stop when necessary. And it's not bloody safe to travel on a flimsy, unstable, noiseless bicycle at 30mph ever. If you're already such a cyclist-martyr and safety-obsessive, then you should bloody well be prepared to sacrifice a little speed for the safety of pedestrians and your own safety.

Anyone who actually is intelligent would know that you have to study things to understand them well and in particular, the people who have written these books and designed classes like Bikeability in the U.K. do so based upon a study of how collisions actually happen in the real world and have done extensive work figuring out how to avoid crashes.

And that comment above vis-à-vis double-standards: how is it even possible for you do be so solipsistic that you can't understand why a fucking bus should take precedence over a cyclist?

Actually, you are the one with the ridiculous double standard here. You want bicyclists to act differently than other traffic which is what makes them less predictable. When bicyclists behave in a manner different than other travelers, they make it hard for people to know what they are going to do.

Unfortunately, people like you never seem to get beyond your own arrogant belief that you know everything. As a result, you are incapable of learning. It's sad really. Truly intelligent people have enough humility to learn from others.

http://www.dft.gov.uk/bikeability/
http://www.bikehub.co.uk/featured-ar...g-and-the-law/

In any case, since I got the training, I stopped having close calls. I haven't had an accidental close call in years. That is because I learned techniques which make sure that motorists ALWAYS see me and ALWAYS know what I am going to do before I do it and ALWAYS know how to get around me safely. I know how to make the margin of error gigantic. I almost never feel afraid on the road except when some self-entitled psychopath who doesn't know the rules of the road threatens me because he thinks he's too important to share the road with bicyclists. Even then I'm not that scared because those people are just trying to scare me, which ironically makes me not so scared.

[billdsd]

Originally Posted by NCT

Those TfL figures are pulled out of the arse. On a normal mountain bike you max out at 20 mph while pedalling furiously on top gear. A hybrid bike gives you a slight edge over a mountain bike, and of course a road bike probably pushes it to around 30. I guess your bike is one of the latter. A Boris bike is absolutely awful - much slower than the slowest of mountain bikes.

It's not just about top-speeds either - acceleration is important. The only way to acheive 0-20 in 6 seconds is by going through the gears, which less than 10% of cyclists do.

Really?

I normally ride a road bike on the road. On my road bike, I can only pedal my top gear (50-11) on a downhill and I can spin up to about 45 mph or so with a decent hill. When it gets faster than that, I have to just coast but I don't ride many hills steep enough for that. A lot of riders have 53-11's. 25 years ago I rode a 54-12. I'm a little old for that sort of gear now.

My mountain bike's top gear is a little lower but I can pedal that up to about 35mph on the road.

I see lots of cyclists going through their gears besides me. Your 10% figure is silly at best.

[ill tonkso]

I tend to not break 30. I don't feel safe and on segregated routes I think going too fast is reckless. The segregated route I use follows the shore at Tipner and is used by pedestrians and dogwalkers, going too fast is putting them and myself at risk. With a good hill I could top 45 easily but I won't.

[spindrift]

I topped 50 coming down the Tourmalet but I fishtailed on some scree and decided to slow down. Had to burn those shorts.

[ill tonkso]

What was the speed limit there? Another reason I tend not to top 30 is the speed limit. A lot of roads here are 20 too.

[spindrift]

No idea, but I wasn't the fastest cyclist by a long way. The chances of the French cops fining cyclists on the most famous climb in Europe seems unlikely.

[spindrift]

Sorry for linking to the Daily Heil but this is interesting:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ents-cars.html

Killjoy PC accused of 'petty meddling' as he halts pre-school nativity play to order parents to move their cars
PC Paul Baker interrupted show to ask parents to move their parked cars
Parents' cars were blocking pavements and a doctor's surgery parking
PC Baker accused of 'petty meddling' at Redehall Prep School in Surrey
He says: 'I wasn't wagging my finger - any neighbourhood PC would do it'

You can tell from the words the headline writer uses what their stance on the story is, "killjoy" copper asks parents to move their cars during a nativity play. And yet, the comments are almost universally supportive of the copper! The cars were dumped on pavements and verges, nobody with a pram or in a wheelchair could get past. The vehicles were blocking access to a doctor's surgery. this sort of anti-social behaviour is endemic in London, drivers abandon their vehicles on pavements, completely blocking them so anyone on foot has to walk in the road. Complain to the cops and they say it's a council matter, complain to the council and they say it's up to the cops. It's an offence to drive a car on the pavement, yet it's almost never enforced.

[ill tonkso]

Originally Posted by spindrift

No idea, but I wasn't the fastest cyclist by a long way. The chances of the French cops fining cyclists on the most famous climb in Europe seems unlikely.

That doesn't make it acceptable though. Speed limits are speed limits.

I think police need to enforce the lights law more too. It's endemic around here.

[spindrift]

Unlit cyclists can be annoying, they are a factor in less than 2% of accidents:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...ccidents-study

Usually it's the driver's fault.

[ill tonkso]

If they aren't lit it is their own fault for breaking the law. If a car driver drives with no lights they are fined on the spot, cyclists get away with it most of the time.

[spindrift]

If you compare the number of drivers who admit using a mobile at the wheel with the conviction rates, fewer than 2% actually get caught. Look at the Mary Bowers story above and ask yourself whether fining premiership footballers £60 is fair and just. Same with speeding, there are only 3000 cameras covering the entire road network. Drivers get away with breaking the law every single day, and trafpol are being cut even further.

[NCT]

Originally Posted by DarJoLe

A brilliant article about civilising London's spaces, most of what I've talked about a lot at length on here over the years.

http://www.jonestheplanner.co.uk/201...on-spaces.html

The final paragraph should be a warning to us all.

An even more brilliant comment

David Arditti said...

Good article, but one thing I disagree on is the shared space in Byng Place. I have blogged about this here.

I think the Byng Place shared space messed up a perfectly good design that was there previously and damaged the cycle route. Shared space is an appropriate treatment for final destinations, not for places intended as high-capacity strategic routes, be they routes for cars or routes for bikes.

The Dutch get this right in general, and do not put shared space on strategic bike links, but keep clear separation where throughput with speed and safety is required. I have blogged elsewhere about the need to understand correctly the Dutch model of facilitating active travel. We have a tendency in the UK to try to selectively take out unrepresentative parts of their model and apply them inappropriately, as at Byng place and Exhibition Road.

31 May 2012 06:04

[Loathing]

Originally Posted by billdsd

blah blah blah blah

All of your comments are at cross-purposes to mine. Either you didn't read what I wrote carefully, or you didn't understand it, or you've inferred things that aren't actually there.

[cnapan]

If anyone is reading this and wondering whether it can be much fun cycling in London, I had another nice trip home this evening. I decided to count the number of occasions where a car driver was courteous to me on my bike or where an 'agressive cyclist' was causing mischief. My statistics are:

-courtesy from car drivers (e.g. observing my right of way down a road whose other carriageway was blocked by a parked car, or holding back from overtaking till safe) - a good 20 or 30 (I gave up counting by the end of my 10 mile trip).

-mad car drivers: no dangerous ones, but a couple of pointless overtakes-before-red-lights-and-traffic-jams.

-mad cyclists: one irritating chap who didn't see me filtering down the outside of some stationary traffic and decided to cross from inside to outside without looking. I'm always prepared! And a good handful of people cycling through reds, though tonight at least not when people were crossing. Still irritates though.

-mad pedestrians: One brave fool trying to zig-zag through the bunched up buses, taxis, motorbikes and cyclists by Green Park tube. Luckily we *all* saw him!

-courteous pedestrians: Loads. I even waved at a couple to thank them!

So, whilst reading this thread may make you think it is a war out there, actually, it isn't so bad. I don't want to downplay those very bad incidents which do happen, but often you can preempt them and avoid unpleasantness.

My golden rule whether in a car or on a bike is to consider that it really ought not to matter if my journey is held up for an extra 2 or 3 minutes. People do respond to courtesy, so all we need to do is to try to encourage everyone to be like that!

(Glass is half full as you can see!)