Anyone ever thrown a full bottle at a car?

[ComedyPilot]

I am all for self defence, but I think we need to look at the wider problem - the fact we came into conflict with traffic in the first place.

We need good quality segregated cycling infrastructure, like the Dutch, to keep us away from cars.

 

[Flying Dodo]

I am all for self defence, but I think we need to look at the wider prblem - the fact we came into conflict with traffic in the first place.

We need good quality segregated cycling infrastructure, like the Dutch, to keep us away from cars.

What - for every road in the UK? How would that help cyclists?

 

[ComedyPilot]

What - for every road in the UK? How would that help cyclists?

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmXPEB6TLQ


Yes, I can see your point. How will infrastructure like the above ever help British cyclists?

 

[Flying Dodo]

You're missing the point.

1) On the majority of roads, they don't have wide edges of grass so you can't retro-fit layouts as shown in that YouTube video.

2) (and it's a big one) Who's going to pay for it?

3) If you do segregate cyclists so a large proportion only use those facilities, when cyclists end up using roads they will get abused far more than they are currently.

4) Why should one group of road users be forced off the road system? Do you advocate discrimination against other minorities?

Surely a far better solution all round is to enforce better education of drivers not to do stupid things like James Martin did. If drivers had better control of their vehicles and didn't use them as weapons, things would be far better.

 

[Archie_tect]

Very good advice Crankarm. If its a van load of brickies, I'll probably give it a miss. Some tosser in a Porsche though and I'll give as much as I get...

Alarming how many of you youngsters are closet thugs... providing the person giving you grief is incapable or unprepared to retaliate with violence.

 

[ComedyPilot]

I think I have got the point, and I don't wish to get into another online argument.

We could all say, let's make do and mend. But, given the fact the Dutch road network was in as big a mess as our in the 1970's, with all the accompanying cycling fatalities, the Dutch people decided (all 15 million of them) that enough was enough, and they lobbied their government to change things. And it happened.

1) Who said follow roads? I wouldn't want to cycle anywhere near a CO2 belching vehicle if I could avoid it. The beauty of cycles is that they are very agile and cycle paths can wind their way almost anywhere.

2) With a combined population of 20m, and a land mass similar to the UK, the Danish and Dutch managed it with a third of the taxable population of the UK. In my reckoning, with today's incomes (compared to the 70's when the Dutch started) we are better placed to fund this. Maybe if we spent less on having people sat on their @rses, and made them do the work, and/or if we didn't feel the paranoia to have to buy a fleet of nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers etc,and fund large groups of people to occupy (and die in) lands far away for NO reason other than sucking up to zarking yanks there'd be a bit in the pot to make the paths?

3) Provision of cycling infrastructure will lead more people away from the car, and make car drivers aware of the vulnerability of cyclists. The courts should be made to act with more severity on cases of road-rage and injurious collisions, then the message might get through that driving tons of metal at high speed in CLOSE proximity to others carries a GREAT amount of responsibility.

4) I don't advocate forcing anyone off the roads system, I just believe our antiquated system is choking and needs a release. Provide facilities and they will be used. I am not talking about any two penny linemarking schemes, I am talking about real investment for the good of the whole country.

Do you get off on making leading questions, hinting that someone might be racist, sexist, homophobic? I am not, so stop it.

A better solution would be to stop all the macho chest-beating bullshit that is fed to drivers by the media. Magazines, newspapers, TV programs and films all glamourise cars, and the 'Too fast, Too furious' and MaxPower lifestyles.

Trouble is, a LOT of people make a LOT of money from this, and once they have the power that comes with it, they don't want to let it go. I see lemmings everyday in my local town, driving like complete cretins in cars that look like they've crashed into Halfords shop window. Where did they get the idea from? The media.

How much longer will it take for the UK populus to realise that they are being treated like idiots, and are missing out on real life, just so they can carry on with their image conscious (and profitable for 'the man') lives?

 

[Flying Dodo]

Do you get off on making leading questions, hinting that someone might be racist, sexist, homophobic? I am not, so stop it.

I wasn't in fact. However it's a slippery slope to say one group of people should be segregated from another, as if enough people start suggesting cyclists should be off on their own, then we'd lose the right to be on roads at any time.

A better solution would be to stop all the macho chest-beating bullshit that is fed to drivers by the media. Magazines, newspapers, TV programs and films all glamourise cars, and the 'Too fast, Too furious' and MaxPower lifestyles.

Trouble is, a LOT of people make a LOT of money from this, and once they have the power that comes with it, they don't want to let it go. I see lemmings everyday in my local town, driving like complete cretins in cars that look like they've crashed into Halfords shop window. Where did they get the idea from? The media.

How much longer will it take for the UK populus to realise that they are being treated like idiots, and are missing out on real life, just so they can carry on with their image conscious (and profitable for 'the man') lives?

I agree entirely with what you'd put there, which is why I'd advocated better education of drivers to stop them seeing their vehicles as weapons.

 

[Jonathan M]

We need good quality segregated cycling infrastructure, like the Dutch, to keep us away from cars.

I disagree most strongly with this, I feel that there needs to be better education of road users & pedestrians to recognise that our roads are used by all manner of people. Or that if a segregated network is introduced it is to keep car drivers away from us - subtle difference, but your words would suggest the problem is cyclists, when we aren't.

So as examples, campaigns aimed at all ages of pedestrians to recognise that they need to look both ways and that the attitude of "If I don't look, everyone will stop for me" doesn't work. Old bidies are best at this, usually 5 metres away from a ped crossing, shopping bags in each hand, and they'll put their heads down, and cross. They'll even have the cheek to tut if you ride past them, rather than stop.

BMW & Audi drivers to be re-educated that they are cocks, and attend compulsory lessons in manners & attitudes, at their own costs, that have to be completed before driving a Baudiw for the first time, plus the training below .

Other car drivers - what road markings are for, what traffic lights are for, what indicators are for, what mirrors are for.

Clear "K" plates (to indicate Knob) for any owners aged under 25 of a Corsa/Saxo/Fiesta registered more than 10 years ago and for whom the idea of car servicing is a shag on the back seat on a friday night.

Bus drivers & lorry drivers to go on anger management courses .

Cyclists to all attend appropriate training (is it Bikewise?) at least once. I'm sure that there is likely to be an equivalent training scheme for horse-riders.

The Dutch system works for them, but other countries in europe, France for example, recognise cyclists as road users. Yes, for them it is far more acceptable to ride as a sport, of enjoyment, but they seem to manage quite well without much in the way of road user/cyclist segregation. If the UK went to as much segregation as possible, then within a short time those cyclists who have to ride on a none-segregated part of the road system would have other users assuming that the cyclist is automatically in the wrong for "not" using the cycle path network, even if it does not exist at that place.

 

[sheddy]

What we need is European road law - what is is called ?

 

[Jonathan M]

What we need is European road law - what is is called ?

I don't know, but certainly in France cyclists have the same road rights as motorised users. I think it is meant to be the same in the UK, but something has got lost over the years.

 

[ComedyPilot]

I wrote this on another thread a few days ago:

A couple of paragraphs jumped out at me and summed up our car-obsessed country and this government's attitude to cyclists/peds:

"A 1947 book by J. S. Dean, former Chairman of the Pedestrians’ Association, is instructive here. In his ‘study of the road deaths problem’, Murder Most Foul, Dean's basic tenet is that, ‘as roads are only “dangerous” by virtue of being filled with heavy fast moving motor vehicles, by far the greatest burden of responsibility for avoiding crashes, deaths and injury on the roads should lie with the motorist’ (Peel n.d., 3)."

And

"Yet road safety education concentrates not on the drivers of vehicles, but on those who they have the capacity to kill. Dean saw how placing responsibility for road danger on those outside of motorised vehicles might lead, by stealth, to placing of culpability on those groups, and Murder Most Foul is a tirade against the placing of responsibility for road accidents on children."

And this was written in 1947.

 

[Joe24]

Comedy pilot, do you know how much the Dutch have to pay to put 'road tax' on their cars?
We had a Dutch guy next top us at a camp site, nice chap he was, had a big Volvo.
Anyway, dad commented on how you often see the Dutchies all over.
I can remember the exact amount, but to put road tax on a car is a huge amount. He had a Volvo V70, im sure he said it was over £1000 to tax it a year(but dont quote me on that, it was a while ago and i cant remember exactly!).
This could be a reason why some people use bikes instead.
Should do that over here.

 

[ComedyPilot]

I will email my Dutch colleague at work and get the exact figure.

 

[ComedyPilot]

The dutch pay about €100-€150 a quarter in road 'tax' depending on car size. They pay about €1.60 a litre for petrol, and insurance prices are comparable to the UK.

So we have millions more vehicles, paying less road 'tax' and similar fuel prices and insurance. In my reckoning we have a bigger pot to delve into to pay for the infrastructure?

 

[Jonathan M]

Lets not forget though, road tax is now more of an environmental tax, my understanding is most road & transport projects are funded laregly by general taxation??

I don't think Joe Public would go with the concept of funding a network for none motorised users for many reasons. Firslty, they'd see it as another "green" initiative by stealth. Secondly it would bring peds & cyclists into much closer contact. And the hierarchy in the UK seems to be 4 wheels>2 wheels with engine>pedestrian>cyclist.

Imagine the Daily Mail the first time bike vs granny happens, and the granny comes off worse?