Safe Speed Forums

Does that still get a laugh after the twentyth time?,,,;-)

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I would say yes!
Car drivers are subjected to conditional entitlements, much greater enforcement and considerably broader and harsher penalties than cyclists, but it is still irresponsible to cycle like an idiot, because of their own risk of being run over (not just the risk of running others over).
The aggression is still as irresponsible.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

A simple fallacy: A leads to B; B not necessarily led from A.
I've seen people regularly use gears I would consider 'too low', not out of late braking, but out of either trying to save fuel or just laziness. Your attributing this as a late gear change, then claiming that as harsh braking, are a wild assumptions based on more wild assumptions; hence is far more often wrong than right.


On my bike, over my own breathing, when I have the wind rushing past my ears, over other traffic (more so when in London)?

I can distinguish tyres pushed to the verge of skidding against those not, but I have to say I never hear that so close behind me, even when I'm in the sticks!

Perhaps what you hear is simply the effect of braking around a corner, aggravated by mistracked wheels, or brake imbalance?


"motorcycle"? Your point is so desperately weak that, in a poor attempt to bolster it, you inadvertently introduced a factor that is irrelevant to your argument (no need for bikers to slow to matching speed as they can get around you - unless you are in the middle of the carriageway, tyre noise is not predominant [see below])
Again, please return the goalposts to where they were

Sooooo ... how do you compensate for the different gears and ratios? That was the question!

True story: about a month ago, I heard a car coming towards me in a manner I thought was spirited. I look around for a while but couldn't see any movement that fit that description. A few seconds later I realised it was a Maserati pootling past - laughingly slowly. It's far from the only example, but it stands out because I was so convinced.


How do you compensate for luxury models and different exhausts, and different tyres, and different tyre pressures?


So even though you somehow always been ready, over your hundreds of miles of cycling every week for godknowshowlong, you never felt the need to abandon into a hedge even though you are adamant that 7/8 out of 10 drivers aren't able to stop in time? and you hear an 'awful lot of sharp braking behind' you


I was going to say "all good stuff" until I read the last few words; that's extremely dangerous weepej!
If some idiot is supposedly closing up so fast that you feel the need to evade, or if they are just a "t**t", the very last thing you to is present yourself as an obstacle!

I still can't see how a lack of 'wit' could have resulted with you being knocked off for all the examples you gave. Do you always look behind you when a driver is on the phone, or exceeding the limit? (you might want to think about that for a moment)


Oh yes, you missed one:

Is it really? When do you expect a vehicle to slow when catching a comparatively slow cyclist - before the corner so leaving an unreasonable gap?

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Unequivocally, yes.

I think weepej is confusing irresponsibility with the level of destruction a vehicle can do, although I'm not sure that a cycle couldn't do just as much if the irresponsible cyclist causes a driver to swerve which causes a pile up and death/destruction etc....

Am I getting warm?

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

That's a very dangerous track to go down, as it implies differing levels of responsibility for different road user types, whereas we should all be looking out for each other.

But we've down this path with weeps before, I doubt if he'll agree this time either.

I hope not. To me it is self evident that one should a different level of responsibility from an adult car driver than from young pedestrian. And a higher level of responsibility again from a HGV or PSV driver. And higher again from a police traffic officer. Which is reflected in the difficulty of becoming qualified for each class.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I’m torn on this now if I’m honest and it could be that I’m the one getting confused.

If we liken the various means of transport to arms then maybe the man with the grenade, (HGV driver), should be more responsible than the man with the shotgun, (the car driver), who in turn should be more responsible than the man with the dagger, (the cyclist).
Maybe it's a poor analogy but I think I could be swayed either way here

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

What would that make the motorcyclist?

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

What about a young car driver and an adult pedestrian then?

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

My real point is that ones responsibility should be proportional to the amount of damage one can cause to others.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

That's ok so long as the ones with least damage potential, appreciate the damage potential of the others and show respesct to that effect. You wouldn't expect a man with a knife to taunt the guy with the hand greanade and risk his wrath would you?

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

A pedestrian can cause a lot of damage - by forcing an oncoming HGV to evade so risking an uncontrolled swerve!

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

And my point is that there's no room for irresponsibility on the roads - from any party.
It's the height of folly to assume that someone else has responsibility for one's safety, and therefore one can do what one likes.

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

I think you're confusing responsibility and skill.

By that rationale, as a mere car driver I need take less responsibility for my actions than a bus driver, and that by that rationale if I crash into a bus it's the bus driver's fault. Or is that not what you mean?

By responsibility I guess I mean that we should all aspire to be responsible for our safety and that of others. Clearly an eight year old can't be expected to be as good at cycling down the high street than an adult, but he or she should be taught to try to be as good. Is that fair?

No. That isn't what I mean. You are confusing responsibility with culpability. Fault should be appropriated to the one who's behaviour is errant.


Well, if you want to emulate Humpty Dumpty and redefine words to mean just what you want them to be ...


Quite fair but totally irrelevant to any argument about responsibility.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Seriously?

You think say a driver who get's in a car with no passengers after six pints and drives off is behaving as irresponsibly as a pilot who is equally inebriated and gets in a plane with 400 passengers and tries to take off?

That the two should be treated equally in the eyes of the law, receive the same punishments?

Ignoring the rest of your post, are you making a distinction between responsibility and culpability in this context? i.e. can one road user need to be more responsible but be less culpable than another road user (or vice versa)?

"Fault should be appropriated to the one who's behaviour is errant" seems to entirely chime with my belief that we should all be equally responsible on the road, and directly contradict weepej's idea of differential responsibility. No doubt you will educate me.

But they probably are treated the same in the eyes of the law. The difficulty, as with other examples, is that if you kill one person and get life in jail you may as well have killed a thousand or a million for all the difference it makes to the perpetrator..

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Yes. A bus driver has more responsibility than a pedestrian because he has 70 people under his care. But if the pedestrian throws himself under the wheels of the bus, giving the driver no chance to avoid him, then the pedestrian is more culpable than the driver.


No it doesn't Apportioning blame in the event of an accident is a separate issue to defining a road users responsibilities.



I doubt it. But I will say that the logical consequence of eliminating the idea differential responsibility would be to do away with the current licence structure. If every one is deemed to be equally responsible then any one would be allowed to do anything from walking the pavement of driving a 40 ton artic loaded with explosives.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown