Ideas to making cycling safer in London and towns and cities up and down the land....

[The Jogger]

On hearing of the recent cyclists deaths on roads in and around London, one being a young student named Carey from Kingston University, I was thinking maybe we should come up with some ideas/suggestions to make cycling safer.

I was pondering the danger of roundabouts, many of these are now traffic light controlled. What about if included in the lights a cycle, green light which would give cycles a 5 - 10 sec start over the cars in the same section and also working in sequence with the other entries to the roundabout. That should be easily enough time to get the cyclists over the roundabout before the onslaught of cars.

Is this feasable and any other ideas?

 

[Red Light]

Sort out the standard of lorry driving which is responsible for 50% of the cyclist deaths in London - way out of proportion to their numbers on the road.

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

On hearing of the recent cyclists deaths on roads in and around London, one being a young student named Carey from Kingston University, I was thinking maybe we should come up with some ideas/suggestions to make cycling safer.

I was pondering the danger of roundabouts, many of these are now traffic light controlled. What about if included in the lights a cycle, green light which would give cycles a 5 - 10 sec start over the cars in the same section and also working in sequence with the other entries to the roundabout. That should be easily enough time to get the cyclists over the roundabout before the onslaught of cars.

Is this feasable and any other ideas?

How about suspend the licence of any HGV driver involved in killing a cyclist immediately, and revoking it permanently when it's proved that they were guilty of causing the death?

 

[The Jogger]

Hmmm, I think some people might have the wrong end of the stick. We all want to see punishments to match the crime ( if that was possible ) but the purpose of this thread is prevention of accidents . Maybe the thread should be moved, I did consider campaigning......or whatever it's called.

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

Hmmm, I think some people might have the wrong end of the stick. We all want to see punishments to match the crime ( if that was possible ) but the purpose of this thread is prevention of accidents .
.

The best way of preventing accidents is to start with the realisation that the majority of "accidents" are not accidental but are caused by human error. Once you do that ,you then try to eradicate the error, an effiecient way of reducing errors is to balance the consequences of an action ( that previously was called an "accident") with it's creation.At the moment the risk/benefit of driving is in favour of making the risk ( The same problem as the banks have) to gain the benefit, it's an inbalance and needs to be rebalanced Don't think of the permanent removal of the licence as a punishment but as part of the training to make sure that the reason for the removal never occurs.

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

[QUOTE 1647825, member: 3143"]Jogger - you seem like an intelligent fellow, however starting this type of thread in GC is asking for trouble and will receive the type of ignorant responses as above.[/quote]
Feel free to point out which bit of "How about suspend the licence of any HGV driver involved in killing a cyclist immediately, and revoking it permanently when it's proved that they were guilty of causing the death?" you can point to that is "ignorant".

Or maybe your normal technique for dealing with questions that challenge your worldview is to simply start lashing out , with words which might be derogatory, if they were accurate ?

 

[Red Light]

[QUOTE 1647825, member: 3143"]Jogger - you seem like an intelligent fellow, however starting this type of thread in GC is asking for trouble and will receive the type of ignorant responses as above.[/quote]

So User3143, what is ignorant about applying the standard techniques of risk management to the problem viz. identifying the major source of risk and then putting in steps to mitigate it.

Or do you disagree with the facts that lorries cause half the cyclist deaths in London (HGVs one third) which is massively disproportionate to their numbers on the road (<5% and <1% respectively) or that in most cases the driver of the lorry is arrested. Perhaps you think that poor hard done by drivers like Michael Thorn and Dennis Putz were wrongly convicted for killing Emma Foa and Catriona Patel

Or perhaps you disagree with Inspector Aspinall's report to the London Road Safety Forum:

Turning to the issues of lorries, Inspector Aspinall told the meeting about a day of City of London spot checks on HGVs, carried out on 30 September 2008 as part of the Europe-wide Operation Mermaid, which is intended to step up levels of enforcement of road safety laws in relation to lorries. On this one day, 12 lorries were stopped randomly by City Police. Five of those lorries were involved in the construction work for the 2012 Olympics. All of the twelve lorries were breaking the law in at least one way. The offences range included overweight loads (2 cases), mechanical breaches (5 cases), driver hours breaches (5 cases), mobile phone use while driving (2 cases), driving without insurance (2 cases) and no operator license (1 case).​

With 100% illegality in spot checks, a cyclist killing rate 10-30 times higher than other vehicles on the roads of London and a high driver arrest rate in those deaths it seems anything but ignorant to focus on dealing with lorries and their drivers as the top priority. What do you think and why?

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

[QUOTE 1648119, member: 3143"]Dunno Yellow, maybe because the above would be on the presumption of guilt, where as in this country 'Innocent until proven guilty' goes back a long old way.[/quote]
Seems to work for doctors, nurses, teachers, train drivers, police officers, civil servants etc... whilst there is an investigation into their conduct they are suspended , it is claimed that lorry drivers are "professionals" shouldn't they then expect the same sort of procedures to apply to them?

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Hmmm, I think some people might have the wrong end of the stick. We all want to see punishments to match the crime ( if that was possible ) but the purpose of this thread is prevention of accidents . Maybe the thread should be moved, I did consider campaigning......or whatever it's called.

Returning to the OP's theme/intent:

ASL's at all traffic light controlled junctions with a 10 second pedestrian "scramble" phase followed by cycle "scamble" phase of 10 seconds or so.
Cameras on all traffic light controlled junctions to enforce offences against ASL's. We do it for bus lanes.
20 mph urban speed limits (coming to a county-town near you Jogger)
Strict liability (or whatever it is more correctly called)
Black box style data recorders in cars linked to the cloud. Yep it is time for Big Brother to start watching.
Segregated cycling infrastructure where motor vehicles and cycling cannot safely mix with the needs of the cyclists prioritised over the needs of the motorist. We run on sweat. They don't.
Removal of whatever % of the UK's existing useless cycling infrastructure as is necessary to avoid a charge of bringing cycling into disrepute.

 

[MissTillyFlop]

There was a guy on here a while ago who was interested in exploring the possibilities of DSRC to alert drivers of large vehilces that there was a cyclist in their blind spot.

 

[Alien8]

Removal of pointless cycling features, such as cycle-lanes, with the intention of promoting the intergration of road users and awareness.

 

[brokenflipflop]

In my humble opinion, I see cars and lorries hitting cars and lorries and by and large due to being in such vehicles with modern safety devices (airbags, crumple zones etc) most people get out relatively unscathed. Now apply the same logic to a little pushbike darting in and out of the traffic and it stands to reason there is going to be collisions leading to deaths/serious injury. I drive a bloody big white van and there are people out there who can't see me !! The one and only way to reduce these deaths significantly is to completely separate cyclists from motor vehicles. In my opinion, as a WVM and a cyclist, imposing more severe sentences for poor drivers who cause accidents will have absolutely no effect whatsoever - motorists minds are never on the safety of cyclists or in many cases anyone else. People are complacent, selfish and they have deadlines and kids to pick up and there are millions of people like that in vehicles every day. The only answer is everyone get about in a hummer or like I said, bikes and vehicles have to be separated.

 

[totallyfixed]

While I agree with your sentiments separating cyclists from motor vehicles it is the thin end of a very thick wedge to my thinking and will only lead to the general belief among motorists that cyclists have no right to be on the road anywhere. I have said this on another thread, the only way forward is to change the law as per most other countries in Europe and give way to cyclists. None of this nonsense of having to stop if you are on a cycle path for every road, drive or track you cross. We need to make the penalties high for any vehicle that hits a cyclist, full stop.

 

[totallyfixed]

While I agree with your sentiments separating cyclists from motor vehicles it is the thin end of a very thick wedge to my thinking and will only lead to the general belief among motorists that cyclists have no right to be on the road anywhere. I have said this on another thread, the only way forward is to change the law as per most other countries in Europe and give way to cyclists. None of this nonsense of having to stop if you are on a cycle path for every road, drive or track you cross. We need to make the penalties high for any vehicle that hits a cyclist, full stop.

 

[Titan yer tummy]

Perhaps the answer is to come at this from a slightly different direction.

I suggest that we could halve the size of HGVs allowed on Britain's roads. Move freight to the railways and then have it delivered by van sized vehicles (driven by drivers trained to current HGVS standards) from local distribution depots.

This would obviously put up the price of goods, on the other hand it would create employment and encourage retailers to try and locate local produce rather than ship stuff half way round the the world.

TyT