Car -vs- Cycle Lane incident 😲

[wiggydiggy]

Now you’ve jumped into the realms of speculation just as paper has. They should not have described him as vulnerable in the article. You can describe him as a danger to others when behind the wheel, which would be more appropriate

One child ended up needing to go to hospital.

To be fair it was the police that said that, the paper is just reporting it.

“At around 8:10am on Monday, 13 October, we received a report that a car, being driven by a vulnerable man in his 80s along a cycle path off South Road in Taunton, collided with two children and a wall at low speed, said an Avon and Somerset Police spokesperson.
"Neither of the children involved, who are of secondary school age, were seriously injured and both continued to school. One of the children was subsequently taken to hospital as a precaution.
"The driver of the car was taken to hospital by the ambulance service as a precaution and officers will make a referral to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency."

So he is getting referred, but only after an incident.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

To be fair it was the police that said that, the paper is just reporting it.



So he is getting referred, but only after an incident.

But who assessed him as vulnerable, were his care workers in the car with him and called it in? Being 80 alone, does not make you vulnerable.

 

[Evil_Breakfast]

Now you’ve jumped into the realms of speculation just as paper has. They should not have described him as vulnerable in the article. You can describe him as a danger to others when behind the wheel, which would be more appropriate

One child ended up needing to go to hospital.

Absolutely. I have no idea. But there’s lots of reasons why he might be vulnerable other than safety but none are mentioned here.

I should, for clarity and transparency, mention that the Somerset County Gazette is - on occasion - guilty of inaccurate/poorly-worded reporting. A habit that is, these days, shared by a lot of online local rag websites.

 

[wiggydiggy]

But who assessed him as vulnerable, were his care workers in the car with him and called it in? Being 80 alone, does not make you vulnerable.

Completely agree, but I'd say the police assessed him as they said it.

 

[HLaB]

I don't "want" any conclusion, I've just looked at the evidence I have, which, unless I've totally misread it, clearly shows there are far more non-driver KSIs than driver KSIs for older drivers.

I've also not at all said that there isn't a problem with younger drivers; you'll see me upthread agreeing with that.

The chart you originally posted said there was more elderly car drivers killed than younger and was posted in response to @T4tomo saying elderly drivers aren't the real problem where as speed etc is. The chart doesn't say how the driver died or the externalities. However, if upthread (its hard to read back on a phone) you are agreeing that there's a bigger problem no worries but I interpreted it as originally you were disagreeing with @T4tomo.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Completely agree, but I'd say the police assessed him as they said it.

The police didn't assess him as vulnerable, as reported it says someone reported the man as vulnerable. Which is pretty hard to do unless you are trained in such assessments. Even, so what the person who called meant by vulnerable we will never know. Maybe there was an angry mob threatening to lynch him for hitting the children as they went to school.

 

[Evil_Breakfast]

The police didn't assess him as vulnerable, as reported it says someone reported the man as vulnerable. Which is pretty hard to do unless you are trained in such assessments. Even, so what the person who called meant by vulnerable we will never know. Maybe there was an angry mob threatening to lynch him for hitting the children as they went to school.

Wouldn't surprise me.
@All uphill may be able to corroborate/confirm this; but, in my area of Taunton, we had a spate of T-Junction road markings being sprayed with the St. Georges flag. A matter, only recently, addressed by Taunton Town Council.

 

[mjr]

In reality, this only made the news because its a very rare incident.

Not that rare. I followed a car up a cycle track yesterday, then pulled into a gap on the right while its driver discovered the bollard at the far end and reversed back until they could turn around in a gap on the left and drive out. It won't make the news because they didn't hit anything or anyone, not because the incident of driving on cycle tracks is rare. Motorists currently routinely drive on anything - cycle tracks, pavements, playgrounds, small no-motor-vehicle bridges - and there's basically nobody stopping them unless someone gets hurt. Give drivers an inch and they take hundreds of miles.

 

[Drago]

I think the effect is so large, however, that it clearly shows there is a real issue with older drivers causing disproportionate hazard.

Although still not as disproportionate a hazard as the young.

Theres a fairly good argument for retesting all demographics if we look at the stats hard enough.

 

[mjr]

Wouldn't surprise me.
@All uphill may be able to corroborate/confirm this; but, in my area of Taunton, we had a spate of T-Junction road markings being sprayed with the St. Georges flag. A matter, only recently, addressed by Taunton Town Council.

A town council is basically a parish council (as seen on Vicar of Dibley) for a town. What the duck do they have to do with road markings? Somerset Council should be repairing the junctions promptly and fining the vandals £125 or whatever it is now for the first offence and double for each further one.

 

[presta]

it is consistently younger drivers that are overwhelmingly involved in accidents. It's the older drivers that make the headlines if they're involved an accident.

It's the unusual that makes an eye catching headline, not the mundane. "Half the population got no exercise again yesterday" isn't a headline that sells papers, but it does address a bigger death toll. It's also a lot more popular to get agitated about something only a minority do than it is about something virtually everyone does.

I don't "want" any conclusion, I've just looked at the evidence I have, which, unless I've totally misread it, clearly shows there are far more non-driver KSIs than driver KSIs for older drivers.

No, that's not what it shows.

The figures are normalised to mileage, so to get the number of KSIs for each age group you need to multiply the data by the mileage driven by each age group. I think the elderly generally tend to drive less, but Copilot can't find me can't find any stats on the subject.

Its not rocket science to see how it shows more elderly drivers dieing as a result of a collision, especially those over 85.

It's already on the linked page. The age distribution of the victims of older-driver crashes is heavily biased to the elderly, which suggests that the main victims of these crashes are the elderly drivers themselves.

 

[mjr]

Not if done properly, only at the entrances to the path, with good visibility. Less dangerous than sharing the path with pedestrian, who arec likely to move in unpredic table ways, while the post stays put.

No, in the words of the Cycle Infrastructure Design manual (LTN 1/20) "There should therefore be a general presumption against the use of access controls unless there is a persistent and significant problem of antisocial moped or motorcycle access that cannot be controlled through periodic policing."

Posts should only be used if there's a known problem and they need to be placed so we have good visibility of them, but also set well back from the entrance to the path in most cases. Path entrances tend to be near junctions, where cyclists will be turning and need to be focusing on traversing the junction, not avoiding a post. Ideally, the posts should be as far as possible from primary position in each direction.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Why would you try to do that?

Posts are put there precisely to stop cars being driven onto the paths. So long as they are sensible, they shouldn't impede cyclists significantly at all.

If they are putting posts up too close together to easily cycle through, that is certainly an issue, but that is installying them wrongly, not an inherent issue with posts.

It shouldn't be too difficult to allow for a gap that can allow a mobility scooter and council small vehicle
but is too narrow for a car

 

[mjr]

It shouldn't be too difficult to allow for a gap that can allow a mobility scooter and council small vehicle
but is too narrow for a car

The general advice in the manual is for 1.5m between post edges (not centres, as my local council recently goofed) but that only allows so-called "minisweepers" through. Any council small vehicle larger than that will have to remove/drop a locking post to gain access.

But this needs to be confined to places with persistent abuse, else it's basically definitely punishing cyclists for a possibility of motorists doing bad things.

 

[blackrat]

It is interesting how the 'clickbait' of an elderly driver catches the attention, but what about Escooters on pavements, on cycle paths, drivers close encounters on roads, driving against the traffic, running red lights, careless roundabout driving, etc. are these all elderly drivers?