Bike vs HGV

[Dan B]

but hes right...nothing on this is 100% safe, and nothing ever will be.

The fact that nothing is 100% safe is not an excuse not to attempt going from 50% to 80%

 

[Dan_h]

"so far as is reasonably practicable" the newprint industry used to use the same sort of weasel words when dreaming up excuses, for why they coudn't stop killing/maiming people, so did construction, mining, engineering, steelmaking... why are there still so many apologists for the haulage industry? The next time you see a crushed bollard on a corner, ask yourself " Was it the bollards "fault" that it was crushed"? If you come to the conclusion that the bollard was not to blame , then you will then need to consider ( or just shrug and say "not my problem") what caused the problem, that will eventually lead you to the realsiation that it was the moving vehcile , not the bollard that was the cause. Now replace the bollard in your thought eperiment with a cyclist/pedestrian, if it was not the fault of the bollard for being there, and was the fault of the operator of the vehicle how does it sudden;y become the cyclis/pedestrain's fault?


Or if you want to reverse the though experment...


If the cyclist is a "****wit" , is the bollard that woudl get crushed also a" ****wit", or again is the problem coming from somewhere else?

It is not a case of excuse hunting, and the crushed bollard is not the same thing at all. If the cyclist in the video were riding along properly as he should be and the truck went to overtake him and got it wrong and killed him I would agree with you 100% and I would welcome any changes that would make HGVs on the road safer.

The point of this thread though is that the cyclist did something dangerous and the video is trying to make the point that the cyclists actions were a contributing factor here. Had our hypothetical cyclist not chosen to scoot up the left of the HGV he would not have been killed.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

The fact that nothing is 100% safe is not an excuse to attempt going from 50% to 80%

Perhaps that can be achieved by cyclists not riding up the inside of artics?

 

[Mushroomgodmat]

If you agree that there can be situations where a driver can miss-read the road, or be distracted* than logic dictates that not all HGV driver that cause a death are not 100% resposible.

* An example of this might be that driver is stopped at juntion, looks 3 seconds to the left, looks 3 seconds to the right, in that time a cyclest has planted themselfs just under his left mirror, or maybe the hgv is at an angle in the road and his load is obscuring his view further - this can again cause problems is a cyclest is silly enough to be to close.

In this example I coould not blame the HGV driver. And this goes back to nothing being 100% safe, esp when you have factors that are totaly out of your control.

 

[Dan B]

No, however squishy you are there are situations where you DO NOT have priority. Pulling out onto a roundabout for example.

Let me know where the roundabouts are on shared-use paths, won't you?

 

[Dan B]

reasonably practicable taking into account time cost benefit and effort. thats why we don't in industry got to the nth degree to make something safe we asses the risks and control measures .

the control measure here is the warning signs and people not being twonks,

16 deaths this year in London says the control measures are not effective. At least, in my view.

Buses are similarly sized and presumably have similar visibility problems (ok, the driver's not sitting as high up). And yet even the allegedly deathtrap bendy buses which were replaced at a cost of £20 million/year (plus the added cost of the "new routemaster") don't have this poor safety record. How many deaths will that £20 million save?

 

[Bicycle]

Not true, ban HGVs from roads open to cyclists and vice versa and you have instant HGV/cyclist 100% safety.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

But the cyclists will not be 100% safe in their environment, nor the lorries in theirs.

One element of the danger will have been eliminated, but that is not 100% sefety.

In driving an HGV, sailing a yacht and many other activities there is an element of judgement. That suggests there is a fairly good chance of human error. There is also a fairly good chance of mechanical failure of one kind or another.

I've been cycling around HGVs in urban traffic and on fast, open roads since childhood and I really don't have an issue with them. Where I think it appropriate to do so, I give them a wide berth. I have on occasion ridden rather closer to them than is prudent. Sometimes they've done the same to me.

We are all just road users.

 

[Scilly Suffolk]

...the root of the problem is that there is a "blind spot" and that the operators ( in both senses of the word) of the vehicle are quite sanguine about moving the vehicle without checkignn that it is safe to do so.

How do you check a "blind spot"?

Er... surely if it could be checked, it wouldn't be a "blind spot"?

Either way, the point which you keep choosing to ignore, is that when it's "bike vs HGV" the bike will always come-off second best.

"Ma Brompton/Mrs Brompton/Brompton Jr, your Son/Husband/Father is dead/paralysed from the waist down/in a serious but stable conditon."

Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

"However, he was in the right!"

Church bells ring, Champagne corks pop and there is unbridled joy throughout the land.

 

[PK99]

The fact that nothing is 100% safe is not an excuse not to attempt going from 50% to 80%

Straw man alert!

 

[MacB]

Straw man alert!

I think you'll need to check your understanding again

 

[Dan B]

Straw man alert!

If you want a debate free of rhetoric you could start by refraining from posting obvious truisms like the "nothing is 100% safe" statement that that was in response to.

 

[doog]

As someone said, HGV drivers don't intentionally go out to squish cyclists and I am struggling with some of the debate on here. The onus is on the cyclist not to go up the inside of a left turning HGV....end of argument, make it illegal. Trespassing on a railway line is illegal simply because you may DIE....the same should be said for filtering up the inside of lorries.

 

[CopperCyclist]

Not trying to get into the usual shouting match with LYB, as it's never fun and gets nowhere. Here's my summary.

All side of the argument have valid points. This is a cycling forum, so let's concentrate on educating the cyclists about what they can do to help here. There's little to be gained by deflecting onto what lorry drivers should have done on this forum.

 

[col]

Whats a straw man alert?

 

[doog]

Not trying to get into the usual shouting match with LYB, as it's never fun and gets nowhere.

You can make it fun...just mention dog walkers .