BBC - Campaign to reduce cyclist deaths

[Tim Hall]

On 21 Sep 2005 01:36:24 -0700, "iakobski" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>>> possible on the roads and take extra care when making manoeuvres.
>>This wording won't do. Nor will the 'as much space as you would a car'
>>wording in the HC.
>
>You are so right. The drivers that passed me this morning gave me as
>much room as possible, most of them crossing right to the other side of
>the road to pass. When there was a car coming the other way at exactly
>the moment they reached me, rather than slow down or speed up, they
>carried on at the same speed and gave me the two inches that was
>possible. (Luckily for me, I was cycling well out from the edge so
>could swerve left as they passed. Otherwise the suction from a 4X4 at
>80+ mph could easily have pulled me further out into the road and under
>the car behind.)
>
>How about "give cyclists as much room as you would a skittish horse",
>though that might be lost on the city-dwellers. For them "give cyclists
>as much room as you would a policeman with a camera" might get the
>poiont across.

Or even better "give cyclists as much room as you would like if you
were the cyclist and it was your first day on the road"

Tim

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

I submit that on or about Wed, 21 Sep 2005 08:08:08 +0100, the person
known to the court as Tony Raven <[email protected]> made a
statement (<[email protected]> in Your Honour's bundle) to
the following effect:

>> Funny that, when I took my driving test, in order to pass it I had to
>> demonstrate I could drive at a speed under the speed limit for the road
>> I was on. Seems I could do this, as I passed my test.

>While 'tis true, when I took the test and I presume now, one of the main
>causes of failure was "failure to make sufficient progress" i.e. not
>driving fast enough.

I asked my driving instructor about that at the time: he was of the
view that this was almost invariably a problem of those who were, in
essence, so terrified of the whole business that they could not bring
themselves to move at more than ambling pace. He was mightily
relieved that such people were not granted licenses...

But as I have mentioned before, my old driving instructor, John Milne
MBE, was an unusually thorough man; Head of Training and later
President at the Approved Driving Instructors National Joint Council,
having previously been one of those who assessed people applying to
DoT (as was) to be driving instructor examiners. Sadly now deceased.
<url:http://www.adinjc.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=14&MMN_position=18:18>

Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

 

[Tim Woodall]

On 21 Sep 2005 18:39:29 +0100 (BST),
Alan Braggins <[email protected]> wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>, Jeremy Parker wrote:
>>
>>But under British law every lamppost is a speed limit sign. I
>>wouldn't have thought one's speed could have drifted much between
>>lampposts. This is a fail-safe system, too, except in 20 mph zones,
>>because if you miss a speed limit sign, you will be driving slower,
>>not faster.
>
> Not always. If you are on a road with no lampposts, and you miss
> a 40mph sign, you could still be doing 60mph, or 70mph on a dual
> carriageway.
This is one of the things that I have to agree with the "pro-speeding"
lobby about.

When the repeater signs had to be no more than a set distance apart
there was little excuse not to know the speed limit or, if you missed
the 30mph sign (which can only require a moments distraction on a
roundabout when somebody else does something stupid) then you could
still know with certainty that you had missed the sign and so slow down
within a relatively short distance. (I'm not saying the majority of
drivers are sufficiently alert, knowledgable or attentive to actually do
this but, in theory, it was possible)

Getting off "on a technicality" because the repeater signs had been
stolen, were incorrectly spaced or whatever, was not IMO "a
technicality." You are expected to KNOW the speed limit of the road you
are on and there is no excuse for getting it wrong. The local authority
are expected to correctly sign the speedlimit for the road you are on
and there is no excuse for them getting it wrong.

The new waffly "reasonably spacing" is a backwards step. If the LA can
use a resonable spacing, then drivers can try to justify using a
"reasonable speed."


I know the old law gave some quirks like 40mph repeater signs 5 feet
infront of a NSL sign but people who use this to argue that speedlimits
are stupid are just signalling their ignorance.


Here's a question for the court

You are driving along a NSL single carriageway road at the speed limit.
Clear sight lines etc, no complications. (You have never driven the road
before)

You then enter a 30mph limit in a village. Unfortunately a lorry or car
has demolished the 30mph signs which are lying face down on the ground
so you didn't see them (this has really happened to me although
I was going from the 30mph limit into the NSL limit when my partner -
who did know the road - said "actually this is a 60mph limit here" - I
didn't manage to spot a repeater sign for about a mile after she told me
although the next day I did spot the NSL sign lying on the ground.)

How far into the village should you be before it is reasonable to
prosecute you for speeding. And, at the point where you ought to have
deduced the speedlimit change should you brake hard, gently, or just
release the throttle and let your speed drop as you would have done had
the speedlimit signs been present.

How about if the first you realize that you are in a reduced limit is
when you see the NSL signs at the exit of the village?

(Many 30mph limits now have countdown markers so it's unlikely that all
the signs would be missing but not all limits do)

Tim.
--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t,"
and there was light.

http://tjw.hn.org/ http://www.locofungus.btinternet.co.uk/

 

[Chris Malcolm]

Just zis Guy, you know? <[email protected]> wrote:
> I submit that on or about Tue, 20 Sep 2005 14:34:31 +0100, the person
> known to the court as Tony Raven <[email protected]> made a
> statement (<[email protected]> in Your Honour's bundle) to
> the following effect:

>>More worrying to me is the fact that cyclist ksi has been on a long
>>downward trend in the UK as a whole yet in Edinburgh they seem to be
>>saying it is increasing. What would be interesting is to understand
>>what is it about Edinburgh that is causing them to buck the national trend.

> In such small samples this is bound to happen sometimes.

I know the single cyclist fatality they quoted as the earlier
figure. A new just-graduated student from Edinburgh university was
cycling past the entrance to the slip road which goes up to Calton
Hill, when a crazed lunatic in a hopped up car came screaming down at
high speed and killed him in broadside impact. I know because I lived
near there at the time and was involved in campaigning to stop these
lunatics in the hopped up cars from using that place as a
racetrack. They installed road bumps, but the speeders didn't care, as
could be seen by how quickly the bumps were getting ground away by the
undersides of speeding cars.

More generally, the numbers in question (cyclist fatalities year by
year in Edinburgh) are far too small for anyone except the uneducated
numpties in local politics to draw any conclusions from them without
doing a lot more research and comparisons.

I find it very depressing that the people who are in charge of how
public organisations should react to statistics don't understand
statistics, but I suppose that these days for anyone with half a brain
the prospect of going for a position of public responsibility and
having to spend your working life surrounded by morons is very
off-putting.

--
Chris Malcolm [email protected] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]