Cycling laws to be overhauled.

[rugby bloke]

This topic is about to be covered on the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 :- waiting with bated breath to hear the quality of the debate.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

This topic is about to be covered on the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 :- waiting with bated breath to hear the quality of the debate.

Shall we bet on how soon things like RLJ & mythical 'road tax' get mentioned?

 

[rugby bloke]

Only half listening as I had to take a call, however certainly the word has already cropped up.

Duncan Dollimore from UK Cycling putting forward a lot of common sense in face of a chippy journalist who has a problem with cyclists in London - she had no view outside of the cpaital though.

Just had RLJ and pavement riding - apparently there is a problem with "high speed" cycling on pavements - I guess it depends on your definition of high speed I suppose.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

Road tax, RLJ, tests & licensing, 'pumped up', 'entitlement' all within the first 10 minutes.

Edit: I passed cycling proficiency as age 11. The certificate is still somewhere so I should be able to get my license easily enough. Phew!

Edit#2: Why is it always London centric?

 

[Apollonius]

Slightly random thought brought about by having to walk in the road while going down to get my newspaper: There are cars parked on the pavement - let's call it a footway. To get there, they must have driven on it. Riding a bicycle on the footway is generally held to be illegal. If we are to have equivalence between cyclists and the drivers of powered vehicles, then surely, the offset must be that driving on the footway must be illegal too.

If enforced, this would cause chaos!

 

[Threevok]

They do make me laugh - Commuting by bicycle is a London only thing.

A bit like BBC Wales believing the world ends at Culverhouse Cross and the only Welsh valley is the Rhondda

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

Slightly random thought brought about by having to walk in the road while going down to get my newspaper: There are cars parked on the pavement - let's call it a footway. To get there, they must have driven on it. Riding a bicycle on the footway is generally held to be illegal. If we are to have equivalence between cyclists and the drivers of powered vehicles, then surely, the offset must be that driving on the footway must be illegal too.

If enforced, this would cause chaos!

And of course if you walk in the road eventually a driver will swerve at you to force you onto the pavement.

 

[Apollonius]

And in said paper, the following:

The transport minister apologised last night for a tweet that claimed that the Conservatives were “cracking down on dangerous cycling”.

The party removed the tweet, which announced a consultation on “dangerous cycling to protect the most vulnerable road users”, after coming under fierce criticism from cyclists, among them the Olympic gold medallist Chris Boardman, whose mother, Carol, 75, died in 2016 when she was knocked off her bicycle by a pick-up truck. Boardman criticised the transport department’s consultation on a plan to introduce a criminal offence of causing death by dangerous or careless cycling. It was prompted by the case of Kim Briggs, 44, who was killed by a bicycle courier in 2016.

The Tory tweet was later taken down and an apology issued
Boardman said that the focus was “on a single tragic case”, when about “66 pedestrians are killed each year on the pavement alone by drivers who are prosecuted for ‘careless driving’.”

Jesse Norman, the minister, replied to Boardman: “I am delighted to say this tweet has now been taken down. It did not reflect either this set of policy announcements or the very careful work the government has done to improve road safety for all users, including cyclists. On behalf of all involved, I would like to apologise”.

 

[ianrauk]

Just had RLJ and pavement riding - apparently there is a problem with "high speed" cycling on pavements - I guess it depends on your definition of high speed I suppose.

15 years doing my current cycle commute through SE London, I don't think I have seen, or can ever recall seeing 'High Speed' cycling on the pavement.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

Well Jeremy Vine seems to be falling into the usual anecdote swapping exercise. I've switched it off.

 

[mjr]

Can a driver be charged with driving carelessly or dangerously if an incident causes no harm or only causes harm to themselves, for instance driving on the wrong side of the road or driving with no shoes on or while eating/drinking etc? I understand that in reality this is unlikely to actually be prosecuted for but is it part of those laws?

Not that old chestnut again: driving with no shoes on is fine if you're used to it. It's far better than getting the edges of one's large shoes stuck under/between the control pedals of modern cars designed for tiny-footed freaks. Would you like more people to fail to release the accelerator completely when the edge of the sole gets hooked behind the brake pedal? Or to push the accelerator down along with the brake when most accelerator pedals have an effect with less travel than it takes the brake to have sufficient counteracting effect? Or do you think people with large feet should not be allowed to drive cars with manual gearboxes? (It's less of a problem in two-pedal automatics.)

Slightly random thought brought about by having to walk in the road while going down to get my newspaper: There are cars parked on the pavement - let's call it a footway. To get there, they must have driven on it. Riding a bicycle on the footway is generally held to be illegal. If we are to have equivalence between cyclists and the drivers of powered vehicles, then surely, the offset must be that driving on the footway must be illegal too.

If enforced, this would cause chaos!

Only until people got used to it and adjusted to it.

One problem is that the law has no regard for logic (maybe because legislation is written by politicians whose grasp on logic can be seen in this consultation) and while it seems logical that the car has probably been driven on the footway to park on it, it may have been lifted there, in the same way that one can legally park a bicycle on the footway by lifting it there. To prove it's been driven on/off, you'd need to watch it. This could easily be done with cameras except that as soon as you start using CCTV to enforce motoring, motorists usually do their nut and campaign against it, resulting in things like the ban on drive-by CCTV parking tickets which I think was introduced by minister Pickles.

 

[mjr]

15 years doing my current cycle commute through SE London, I don't think I have seen, or can ever recall seeing 'High Speed' cycling on the pavement.

Aren't most pavements so lumpy that "high speed" cycling would result in an embarrassing hospital visit to have the saddle extracted?

 

[Tin Pot]

While we’re about it, could motorists stop killing people all the time please?

No?

Oh well.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

While we’re about it, could motorists stop killing people all the time please?

No?

Oh well.

They covered that early on with a caller saying "but we're not discussing that now".

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

No mention of horses, electric scooters or hoverboards?