Karen Dee and victim-blaming

[Tcr4x4]

Did you read TNM's post before posting this?

Did you read TNM's post before posting this?

No, because I was in the process of writing it when he posted and I relied to his post after.

I went on to say you can't do anything about idiots that do stuff like that, weather you are in a car or on a bike.

Some drivers don't care about anyone else but themselves and don't pay attention, some cyclists are the same.

When a driver hits a cyclist in an event like that, the driver needs to be prosecuted, there is no other answer.

 

[glenn forger]

In BMC Public Health, Andrei Morgan and colleagues studied cyclist collisions in the capital. 40% of incidents involved freight vehicles, half of those on left-turns. The authors — themselves London bicycle users at the School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in Bloomsbury — conclude that trucks should be banned from central London. We can do without them.

 

[Tcr4x4]

All the HGVs I pass, on the left or right, as I see fit either
Have previously passed me before reaching a point that slows them up
or
Are in traffic that is travelling slower than me.
It therefore seems a bit unreasonable for the first group to pass me in the first place and for the second to expect to hold up the traffic quite so much.

What really needs to happen is the government to put in place proper and safe cycling routes to try and limit the times HGVS and cyclist have to share road space. Other countries manage it, just we seem to go in half assed at it like most things.

Round here the cycle lanes are lethal and you are forced to use the road that really isn't big enough for both cyclists and HGVs.

You can legislate and train HGV drivers all day long, but if the two are in constant battles for road space, there will inevitably be casualties.

 

[Tcr4x4]

How come other large vehicles like buses and coaches don't kill nearly so many cyclists then? We share road space with them as well.

I would Imagine because busses don't have a lot of the blind spots that HGVs do. Don't know the science behind it, but its true.

Look at the mirrors on a coach, then look at an HGV. The HGV will have far more to try and cover the majority.
Most coaches only have two side mirrors, some busses only have tiny little things.

An HGV by law must have at least 3 side mirrors looking backwards, one of which is wide angle, one looking down to the road on the left hand side and one in front looking down.

 

[PK99]

It really is simple, if you are on a bike, stay behind a lorry.. Don't go down the left of it, don't go down the right of it, stay behind it until it either turns off or accelerates ahead of you. .

to which I would add (ref cyclecraft) don't allow a lorry to join and share your lane at lights by stopping to the left of the lane: Arrive first stop at the line central in the lane. Arrive after a lorry, stop well behind, central in the lane.

 

[PK99]

Not true, an awful lot of lorry journeys are unnecessary and down to poor planning. Lots of freight could easily be moved to rail or river, .

??? to shops in London???

 

[TheDoctor]

Lots of canals and railways in London...

 

[glenn forger]

Road freight isn’t cheap, it simply avoids paying its bills. We pay for the rehabilitation and lost income of the people hit by the vans. We pay for the care of the people dying from air pollution related diseases and sedentary-lifestyle related diseases. We pay for the trains and taxis and buses because cycling and walking is difficult and unpleasant in a city choked with vans and trucks. We pay for the noise pollution and the water pollution.

Whenever one suggests that the price of the congestion charge should be vastly greater than it is, that there should be stricter limits on the vehicles that are allowed into city centres, or that a significant proportion of zone 1 roads should be closed to vehicles entirely, one is asked what one would do about all the people who simply have no choice but to drive into Central London: the businesses who need things delivering. Vans are essential and the costs they’re already asked to bear are hurting, we’re told.

Well if businesses in the centre of the city are choosing to have ice cubes and water driven to them in vans instead of turning on a tap and buying a £200 ice machine, having contract cleaners cart mops around instead of investing in a broom cupboard, and sending their laundry to a barn on the orbital instead of putting it in the washing machine, I say the costs aren’t hurting enough. Or rather, businesses are not paying their bills. Because, as is amply evident on any journey through central London, the main reason such ludicrous operations manage to survive is by breaking the rules and dumping the consequences on the rest of us.

http://waronthemotorist.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/on-van-dependency/#comments

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

I was down in Erith last week and passed the ASDA and LiDL distribution centres. Both within 100 metres of the Thames*. Neither with riverside access. I seem to remember Sainsbury's is somewhere down that way as well.

*It's a big flat river that runs through London with no traffic lights.

 

[Tcr4x4]

So if buses and coaches are safer large vehicles, then ...



Then this would be shown to be the nonsense it is:



I have just been to the funeral of a cyclist friend today who died in a collision with a lorry, so this is a topic I feel rather strongly about.

I understand you feel strongly, but Im afraid its fact busses are safer. They are lower to the ground, are full of windows and most also have camera systems installed on the side and rear. They also don't bend in the middle, except for the London bendy busses, which had some major safety issues I seem to recall.

Until we have super low trucks with loads of windows, there will always be blind spots. You think HGV manufacturers don't spend millions on trying to alleviate this?

HGV drivers are amongst the most regulated, sanctioned and trained drivers in the uk. I've had to go through medicals, months of training and have continued evaluations to be able to drive.

Cyclists buy a bike and go wherever they choose with no training whatsoever. You cannot blame HGV drivers solely for every accident involving a bike.

 

[glenn forger]

Cameras that eliminate blind spots cost 400 quid. Almost every single haulier doesn't bother to fit them. Bendy buses didn't have any major safety issues, Boris made that up. HGV drivers are routinely criminal, law- breaking is rife within the industry, Google Operation Mermaid. HGV drivers routinely stick two fingers up to the law. That's why they kill and injure so many people.

 

[Moda]

That's why they kill and injure so many people.

Sorry can't find words to say how horrified I am that you think HGV drivers see killing people as an occupational hazard.

 

[glenn forger]

Say what now?

 

[Moda]

Say what now?

Sorry your going to have to decode that for me.

 

[glenn forger]

The hauliers strike was the golden opportunity to divest ourselves of road freight dependency. We blew it. Too many businesses and too many jobs are built on a needlessly wasteful use of road transport.