Safe Speed Forums

I stand by all my earlier beliefs.
And surely every cyclist would be only too happy to pay £10 per annum road tax (i.e.£5 less than a small motorbike) ? Just £10 per year doesn't seem to be much to achieve parity, does it?

I dislike the idea of compulsory anything, but accept the necessity when it comes to cars. After all I can do a hell of a lot more damage with a car than a bicycle, so it's not unreasonable that I had to pass a test to show I was fairly competent. But to apply it to cyclists? For one thing there are far fewer of them on the roads, and like drivers only a minority are nut jobs. Licensing all cyclists to deal with the moronic handful seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut to me.

Similar thing with taxation. I used to think that cyclists should pay some sort of VED, but it was pointed out to me that wear and tear caused by bicycles must be so low as to be insignificant. And it's not like cyclists make absolutely no contribution. Unless they don't work and grow all their food they'll be paying tax, and since no tax is ringfenced some their money goes on roads. They made a small contribution by buying a bike on which some VAT will have been paid at some point. A non-driving cyclist is even chipping in to the upkeep of motorways which they're prohibited from using. Just like my taxes go towards things I'll never use (cycle lanes for example ).

Back to the original point about tests for cyclists. It's been said here before, but a return to all schools teaching cycling proficiency would be no bad thing. I'd go further - I'd like schools to teach road user responsibility. By school age everyone is already a road user, and some will be (or become) cyclists and nearly all will eventually become drivers. Half a dozen lessons a year on how to use the roads safely and responsibly whether on foot, in the saddle or behind the wheel, isn't asking a great deal and is going to be a benefit in later life. I'd suggest an hour on the last day of term. They always used to kick us out before lunch on the last day when I was at school, so it's not like it would have interrupted my education if I'd spent an extra hour being told not to walk under buses during the holidays, and incidentally this is what it's like driving a car and how to do it safely - you'll need to know this stuff one day young Gatsobait so pay attention etc etc.

Let me put it like this. At school I was lectured at great length about sex and how to avoid getting the girl pregnant or catching something nasty that would make parts of my body go green and shine at night. Why wasn't the same care given during my education to telling me how to avoid crashing a car?

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

But johnsher - we all have a responsibility for safety here. Und when out on my bike (und I cannot ride as far as MM, IG und rest) but I make sure I look out for traffic per Cycle Craft und per lieber IG's advice

But cyclists do make terrible mistakes - like the one the other night - no lights,, dark clothes in unlit rural roads - anything could have happened as he could not even see road ahead of him. I did decent thing - stopped und fastened a torch to his bars. I could not give him lift as had car full of kittens at time!

Und then there was one who was injured per local paper when he rode out onto roundabout without so much as a finger hover on the rear brake - und no helmet.


Or the one who was nearly felled as he tried to undertake long vehicle indicating to turn left und cars und self (this time on my motorbike) were waiting patiently behind it!

Ist question of being aware - all road users at all times und I will agree that all should have a compulsory education - starting in schools und a cycling proficiency test followed by some kind of on-gong refresher und when I say all - I mean ALL!

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Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
Smiley guy seen when you read
Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

you'd have to rename it first - it's called MOTOR vehicle excise duty, not road tax and it's supposed to compensate for the amount of damage that MOTOR vehicles do to the roads. As bikes are neither MOTORised nor do they do any damage to the road they have to pay - much like pedestrians (I wonder who'll be the first to say that pedestrians should pay footpath tax).
How many people are going to be happy to pay so little Timmy can ride down to the shops or to school? What sort of negative effects is that going to end up having on the general population? You could, as a taxpayer, end up paying twice as much for little Timmy's future health bills just to achieve your supposed parity.


no it doesn't, and yes I am but that doesn't excuse people lumping ALL cyclists in as a single uniform group anymore than you would excuse the lentilistas lumping all motorists together or we would excuse trying, for instance, to say that the English are a bunch of thugs because a handful of idiots start a riot at a football match.
Try dealing with the problem itself. What this site is calling for - better roads policing - would do just that.


what a bloody hypocrite you are. Are you going to extend the same argument to motorists? Have you EVER exceeded a speed limit - as far as I'm aware it is currently illegal to exceed them however safe it may be to do so. What about all those red light runners you see? The tailgaters? The people turning without indicating? The people dangerously parked? The people pulling out of intersections without looking? That's it, no more points or fines, just kick them off the road until they learn how to behave and if they don't stay off we can always lock them up.

here! here!

yes we do, but a significant problem is that most motorists - as already evidenced in this thread - don't realise quite how dangerous their driving is. For example, the complaint of a cyclist turning in front of a car, do I need to tell you how many motorists will just ignore your signal and will overtake regardless? It's not just bikes either, take a look at what happens next time you see a bus trying to pull away from a stop.

Happens too often "it's just a bike" mentality.

extract from my crash log by way of example
Current bike (Scott G-Zero FX-1) - about 3 years ago. Decending slight incline towards 2 lane roundabout on dry sunny day. Approach speed 30+ (same pace as cars), making RH turn. Look, signal & move to RH lane. Brake. Ejit pulls over in front of me reducing my braking area by 20'. Brake! Brake! Brake!
Now been pulling a 'stoppie" for the last 20' or so even though I'm weighted right back. Just no way I'm gonna stop in space left. So 4-5 feet from impact (potential head through window) I ditch the bike ..... Driver apologises for pulling over into my lane - not a SMIDSY, but "I thought 'cos you were a bike you'd just be going round the outside of the roundabout so I just moved over." ..(ie. accused of being slow, incompetent road user).... Lesson - don't assume the area you can 'see' to be clear will remain so! And ALWAYS take the drivers details! "Hello, accident claim line?""

In defense of myself as a DRIVER & CYCLIST, the levels of cycling ability these days is shocking - and I've nearly hit a few idiots running lights, shooting off pavements or out of junctions, no lights, no brains, no clue as to the highway code, no concept that I WILL KILL YOU if I hit you......

is it any worse than the general standard of driving ability? To put it another way, should we expect it to be any better? Road awareness courses may help the kids but most of the dimwit cyclists I see are adults. So once again we come back to needing more police on the roads, taking care of the 'little' things. Naturally they'd then have to deal with more complaints (see the woman eating apple thread) along the lines of "don't you have real criminals to catch?".

Johnsher, near to me there is a short stretch of dual carriageway that is poorly lit.
It has a locally well publicised history of cyclists being hit and injured or killed, and most of the cyclists were wearing dark clothing, had no lights on, and were riding in the dark.
I must admit, that there are some sensible cyclists that have cottoned on to the idea that lights and light coloured clothing is a good idea, but most of them haven't learned the lessons of those cyclists that were killed or injured.
Why is it, that we are not allowed to buy a motor vehicle without lights fitted, yet a bicycle that is approved for use on the road is?

I have yet to hit a pedestrian or cyclist, either with my car or a Truck, simply because I expect them to do moronic tricks, and give them room.
With cyclists, with or without lights, the minimum room I require to overtake them, is to allow them room to fall off, without running my wheels over their head. I learned this from when I was cycling and found it worrying to say the least to be buzzed by motor vehicles that couldn't be bothered to wait a microsecond for the space to overtake me safely.
I recently did a job doing multidrop around my town driving a rigid.
A number of the delivery points included schools, despite the fact that these points had said "URGENT", I pointedly ensured that I didn't try to deliver at kicking in or out times, isn't that responsible driving?

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Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

It's certainly true that the general standard of driving is less than desirable, in some cases it's bloody terrible (but as long as we all stick to the speed limit everything's rosy....)
This is a bit different from cyclists, an overwhelming majority of whom display an incredibly cavalier attitude to road laws, good practice and common sense, and quite DELIBERATELY ignore the rules and regulations which govern other road users. And, when it goes wrong, it's the driver (or biker) who is under suspicion.

As for the comment that everyone pays towards the upkeep of the roads, sorry- you are SO wrong.
What is spent on roads is A TINY FRACTION of what is taken from motorists in various guises- the rest goes into the bottomless pit along with income tax, VAT etc etc.

Lastly, it doesn't matter if we call it road tax, road fund license, vehicle excise duty or whatever, the priciple is the same- if you use the roads, you pay towards their upkeep/improvement etc

Some of those cycle lanes are suicidal Liebchen Und a "greenwash" fop! They need better planning!

But - in the collective taxation cauldron - some of the cash goes on roads und motorways und cyclists are wrong to say in essence that they do not contribute to wear und tear. They do in roundabout way as the huge lorries which deliver bikes und gear to Halfords und their Tofu to Tescos und their computers to PC world etc do put wear und tear on our roads - so they are indirect consumer of the roadways like we all are. I do not use buses very often - but my tax go toward bus passes for other people und as Durrenmatt (famous Swiss playwright in many of his very thought provoking yet very comical plays) pointed out - society's success ist judged by the quality of services it offers - und quality transport - public und private und roadway network und infrastructure ist measure of that success in same way as the health care und the education on offer!



Should be one lesson per week in PSE Und nagging as constant! Kittens need reminders as constant .... we have rather a lot of them

But it should also be part of parental education as well - und started in simple terms when crossing road with toddler.

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Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
Smiley guy seen when you read
Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

Exactly Liebchen! Ist problem with automation und ist leading to severe deterioration in all standards of road use from pedestrian to cyclist to biker to motorist. We do not need a bunch of academics to research this und tell us the obvious in a peer reviewed magazine either!

Ist also why vandals und other yobs are also not copped! It has not "freed police time" - just given us less real to deal with these problems.

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Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
Smiley guy seen when you read
Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

In terms of the old cycling proficency, LA safety departments had funding chopped and the teachers were being shafted on pay so it slowly fizzled.

Given the benefits to society surely we could scrap up the cash for road safety education ???

Also going back many years, our head master used to check bikes for lights etc, and write to parents saying if little Johnny or Jane wanted to cycle to school would the parents please ensure that they had lights so they could be seen ??

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

there you go again spouting completely unsubstantiated rubbish. How can you come up with such utter twaddle when 10 people a day are dying and a substantial number more are being injured on our roads at the hands of motorists?



A few reasons I guess: because most bikes are never ridden, let alone at night, and until very recently the lights were useless anyway - the 'compulsory' reflectors being far more effective for being seen.


[quote=Dratsabasti]
It has a locally well publicised history of cyclists being hit and injured or killed, and most of the cyclists were wearing dark clothing, had no lights on, and were riding in the dark.
[/quote]
regardless of the stupidity of the cyclists, as a motorist you should be able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear. It's quite obvious that many motorists don't abide by this simple rule - only last week there was yet another multi-car pile-up in foggy conditions and on my drive down to Folkestone on Friday night when I was doing 30mph due to foggy conditions people were coming by me doing at least double that - including an HGV in L2 who himself was being overtaken in L3.
Knowing that, any cyclist who ventures out in the dark without lights and/or hi-ves clothing is clearly insane. Once again I ask, if as you say this dual carriage way has a well publicised history of cyclists being hit WHERE IS PLOD?

John - that's the official statistic - but it's a braod band figure. Cyclist deaths were up all over the coutnry and even we reported increase here - but a couple of those? No other vehicle involved - they crashed on a badly maintained road and went over the bars... Lot behind those stats beyond just figures and that's part of the problem - people read to much into them and they are not meaningful without the footnotes behind them. You cannot say "at hands of motorists" when some of them were single vehicle tragedies - such as car skidding into a tree - killing no one but the driver - yet he's in the 10 per day...nor are the 10 per day cyclists or pedestrians alone.



A few reasons I guess: because most bikes are never ridden, let alone at night, and until very recently the lights were useless anyway - the 'compulsory' reflectors being far more effective for being seen. [/quote]

The law is very clear over lights at night and we do prosecute this, red light jumps and pavement rides when we see them and if they are aged 12-14 and misbehaving - we have a talk over road safety - with the children and their parents We think this is part of the service and those people don'[t whinge over it nor do we fine those kids or their parents for that matter as our concern is keeping as many alive as possible here.


For record and for our squaw Wildy's benefit and to welcome Heap Big Injun Scout Raging Bull - " Big Heap Chief Geared Up Cycling Nutter" : has already gone through a number of issues on best buy lights and need to be lit up and for headbands, bows and arrows whatever - to be "heap big visible" in the Cycliing Sub Forum

But for record Raging Bull - we are cyclist friendly, horse rider friendly and - in fact - all road user friendly on this site and would agree we need to establish a culture of being prepared to learn, develop skills and if we make a mistake on the roads out there - we have to sit down and really have a hard think as to what we did, how it affected the other person and how we might do better next time out. That applies to everyone on the roadside however they travel.

Real problem lies in how to establish this - and one way as Gatosbait says - is start early - in the home and in schools and reinforece through infor adverts and all other incentives- which we all have ideas on



True - we've been busy in bad weather - and have even been out with our flashing lights and slow signs on the cars too.

We are back to training and we used to see an advert about slowing in the fog when I was a lad. But it's not just fog - it's low sun as I brought up in the Cycling Sub Forum and driving rain whcih also affect visibility

We try to stop and advise here - and I would think colleagues elsewhere do too. We even get the local radio to issue "drive carefully" in traffic news as well. But ...sigh ... too many numpties ....and we need the input of safety adverts to make people a lot more aware that road safety is not just "30 mph for a reason" - it's about being aware of road, weather , traffic condtions ... and of course - COAST



Johnsher... wish I knew in this case. We cannot be everywhere and we have to prioritise resources - but if someone tells us such and such a road is dangerous or we are aware that the road is dangerous - we do keep an eye on it here. But we have the luxury of a good team and have used our PSOs too if stretched out on the rack.

Perhaps the area in question is stretched beyond the limit?

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

I think Jonsher is unfairly laying ALL the blame with the motorist - but partly in response to comments from others.

When I cycle, I have better lights, better clothing and better audible warning device than most I see around here - but it is only my choice.
I do feel that too little is done nowadays to educate ALL road users.
TV has become an even better medium for learning than it ever was when I was younger, and is more widely viewed than cinema, or heard than radio were when I was a nipper, yet the Government have all but abandoned any attempt to make use of it!!

It's worth bearing in mind that they throw grants at SUSTRANS etc. for cycle lanes etc. yet make no measures to offer any protection despite roads being more widely used by vehicles.
In France, road safety messages on TV are a nightly occurance, and ALL bikes are sold with front and rear lights, pumps etc. INCLUDED in the price.
It SHOULD BE SO HERE too, because too many choose NOT to spend £5-£10 on a set of lights, thus becoming a hazard to themselves, and to anyone forced to avoid them having only seen them at the last minute.

My last encounter only last week, came driving into Southport along the A59, and being confronted witha cyclist riding against the flow of traffic, on the wrong side of the road.
My language when he suddenly appeared as he rode around a parked car was the least of his worries!! When I looked in my mirror next, a vehicle two cars back seemed intent on teaching him a lesson he was not bothered learning and was continuing towards him unswervingly, with the horn full blast! The oncoming driver who I had surprised with my avoiding manouvre was also joining in the horn concerto, yet the stupid idiot continued on undeterred.

Maybe we should start a thread and have people post as many road safety slogans they can remember. I'm sure that the fact we remember them is a guide to their effectiveness.

I'll start you off:
"Ooh! Iv'e been Pinched" [correct procedure at BOX JUNCTIONS ]
"I'm convinced it's a major contribution to road safety" [ADVERT. for tyres which featured stopping distances ]
"Think once, think twice, think BIKE" [Check mirrors for M/bikes ]

"See and be SEEN" [Urging pedestrians to wear something white and VISIBLE ]

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

"Always let the other fella know where you're going" [Use indicators on roundabouts when other motorists are on approaches]

In fact the think once thinkk twice think BIKE was an early day attempt at using windscreen and/or side windows twice to overcome blind spots rather than mirrors, wasn't it ?

That's what I believe.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Yep.
There was more than one - the side windows one featured the motorcycle running into the front wing of a car exiting a T-junction.

Not long after it ran, a friend was on his new Honda 400 four, when a taxi turned across his path into a driveway which was at an acute angle to the road, thinking he could make the turn before the bike reached him.
The car was an Austin Ambassador, 6 weeks old, and it got cut in two nearly, with the bike ending up in front of the rear seat. All the local motorcyclists used to chant the words whenever they saw a taxi afterwards.

Same taxi driver reversed into our Maestro years later, and tried to claim it was the other way round, and claim loss of earnings, etc. etc.
His witness - a passenger on his way to get his methadone made a statement 6 months AFTER the accident, saying the taxi was travelling forwards at between 0 and 2 miles per hour, and our insurance company wanted to give in at that!! I on the other hand wished to see him in court, to prove he was not only responsible for the accident, but was fraudulently claiming for a new rear light cluster and fitting, which he claimed he had to wait 24 hours after ordering it. I had a statement from the person who sold him the secondhand one within an hour of the accident! He also left the scene despite my wife having whiplash and shock (our newborn son was in the car) without giving his details - we had to trace him via the taxi company!

I dont think he ever learned his lesson - I wouldn't want to be on a bike on the same stretch of road with him, so I guess you need to wish to learn first.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

not more than people want to blame anyone but themselves for their bad driving. Don't forget I'm also a motorist so I can see the issues from both sides.


70w lupine front light, 3 rear facing lights, hi-vis helmet cover, hi-vis backpack cover, reflective strips all over my clothing and yet some people still can't see me.


that would work until the batteries died a few weeks later.



and just last week someone else drove up the wrong side of a motorway. What's your point? That there's idiots on the road? We already know that.