[QUOTE 554531"]
What? Sorry (what am I on about I'm not sorry) the above is rubbish.
Traffic coming up behind you, do you see them first or hear them first? You may argue that you can check behind you at regular intervals to mitigate this but I'd be more concerned what is in front of me and only check when I need to i.e when I HEAR traffic approaching.
If you want to test this BM, tape up your ears so you can't hear anything then go out for a ride and then tell me you don't think 'it is an importnant secondary.'
[/quote]
I don't think it's rubbish at all and I'll even go as far to say what you hear can be misleading. People become dependent on hearing what dangers may be at hand and forego looking. How many times has a ped stepped out in front of you because they didn't hear you coming? They may have been listening out for a car, didn't hear one, didn't both to visually look to see if the road as clear and just stepped out. I've seen cyclists do the same thing at Give Way signs, they've rolled up to the junction, not heard a car coming and just rolled on through almost colliding with another equally silent bike already on the road.
The only way to be safe on the road is to look and then look again. To use you equal test, folks should learn to ride a bike without hearing anything to get into the habit of using vision as their first and seconday awareness tools.
I've heard the same reasoning before that riders wish to hear cars approaching from the rear. Why, what's that going to do for you? Tell you there's a car on the road behind you. You're on the road, you should always assume there's a car behind and only ever look to see if it's clear. What are you going to do if all cars go electric?
.
