Disgruntled Goat said:
So this jacket then.
What happens when it rains?
How do you wash it?
What happens when you wear a rucksack or courier bag?
What happens if the twat car driver doesn't see you anyway cause they are numpties?
It is just another solution to a problem that fails to target the cause.
Bad driving.
Nothing will protect people from motorists except the motorists themselves, until we find some way of making drivers care about the safety of others, no amounts of high-viz and flashy jackets will help us.
Tougher training for starters - this is somewhat of a sore point with me at the moment. There have been rumblings for a long time in the motorbike world about making testing more stringent and equipping new riders with better skills to help keep them alive, as well as stretching out the limits on what capacity bike you can ride and when.
Great. Thats fine, it isn't good to have riders killing themslelves left right and centre because they can't ride properly, but what about the millions of cars on our roads that kill thousands of
other people every year? Most of them will be through sheer stupidity at the wheel, wrecking lives all over the place, but no-one seems to think that car drivers are undertrained? Oh no, these great people were just 'unlucky' or some other bullsh*t.
In the press as soon as a biker kills themselves there are calls for increased training and restriction. When some tit in 1.5 tons of steel wipes out a whole family, it was just bad driving.
Part of why I ride a motorbike, and a bicycle, as transport is that I dislike the reponsibility of driving a car. The way I see it, if I make a mistake, I have much less chance of dragging someone random into it. I think I have a bit of a warped view, due to an experience in my late teens, but I can't handle the destructive potential of a car very often.
Roads will not get safer as cars get safer for their occupants. Here is my call for increased driver training. A sense of realism MUST be installed in the population - cars are lethal weapons. They MUST be treated with respect, and so must everyone they affect. How often do we have someone here complaining about close overtakes and someone giving them a scare? It is just a scare to the driver, but a near death experience for the cyclist.
Ban windscreens. Ban radios. Ban ABS. Ban huge A pillars. Classify cars as weapons and punish their drivers accordingly. Make cars more dangerous to their occupants, and the roads will get safer. Provide realistic, proper training to drivers. Re-test them after crashes.
