Panorama, BBC1 tonight. 8.00pm

[Brandane]

I think that Panorama is unlikely to be what the "knuckle draggers" watch in the evening.

Not sure about that, there are some quite sophisticated knuckle draggers these days, they drive BMW's and Range Rovers, and live in nice houses. I'm sure they like to keep up with the issues of the day. To say otherwise is probably knuckle dragger phobic and could get you into more trouble than if you were to knock a cyclist off their bike by going round a mini roundabout on the wrong side.....

 

[fossyant]

Got called a banker last night by a driver coming the opposite way. I was waiting to turn right, behind a car, but they were really hesitant, so I saw a gap and got over. As I'd turned right, a driver shouts out of his window. Why ?

Colleagues moaning about traffic and public transport this morning. I said 'I can lend you a bike, I've got a few spare'. "Get lost" was the answer !

 

[Kingfisher101]

I've found drivers are getting more impatient and I get beeped at more often. A couple of days ago I turned right, nothing was behind me then its right again after about 15 Metres. So obviously I move to the right, a car then roars up behind me and starts beeping. Obviously I'm turning right and I'm in the middle of the road. I did put my hand out.. I'd just let the cyclist make their move etc.
Then hes giving me the finger etc.
Theres been quite a few accidents where I am with pedestrians getting run over by cars.
Someone I know hates driving where I live as he says the drivers are much more aggressive and will never let you out etc.

 

[Wooger]

The market trader in her van pointing out the empty bike lanes. This does happen a lot where people say that nobody is using them.

If there was a single competently designed, consistent and useful cycle path network anywhere in the country that'd be a thing. London is close.

In Birmingham the few major off-road segregated routes are both extremely patchy, never maintained/cleaned, frequently require crossing roads at slow beg-button crossings and generally double my journey time vs the road.
They also peter out to nothing (arguably worse than nothing) before you even reach the city centre, with as far as I can tell no legal route to get across it at all - certainly none that's logical.

 

[Arjimlad]

The Land Rover footage at the start & partway through is mine - I didn't know they would be using it but have no issues that they did.

I don't know the outcome of that matter other than it was a "positive" report to Avon & Somerset Police who sent a warning letter, fixed penalty, conditional course offer or prosecution. Seeing what else has been prosecuted from my reports I would lay a fiver that this one was prosecuted too.

I have to say I don't believe that survey at all. The proportion of drivers who knowingly execute a close pass is minimal, and most drivers allow space for cyclists on the road. Having said that I have two to report from this morning's ten mile commute, a close pass by a commercial vehicle driver and an impatient nutter overtaking me around a blind bend with a coffee in his right hand. But there must have been 50 other drivers who drove well.

I'll watch the Panorama programme sometime. I have read various reviews of it already.

 

[mjr]

The market trader in her van pointing out the empty bike lanes. This does happen a lot where people say that nobody is using them.

Why doesn't she do at least some of her journeys by cargo e-bike, if the bike lanes are so quiet? That was what Italian market greengrocers were doing in cities with "ZTL"s (LTNs) this autumn. Seemed to work. Cambridge cargo ebikes pull such huge sheds along behind them that I reckon two would replace typical small market van loads. But then she would realise why usage is low so far: they probably aren't joined up, or cargo bikes don't fit, or the lanes require gymnastics, or...

That was an example of the biggest problem with the show: it emphasised the problems and didn't even question some pretty outrageous statements, especially from Rod Lidl, the discount supermarket Boris. They could have asked why complaining motorists didn't try switching... but I suspect that would have gone badly with trying to dress them like the MAMIL host rather than a more relaxed city/Dutch/ebiker.

 

[a.twiddler]

I saw the Panorama programme last night which used these clips and found it a bit, well, underwhelming. The presenter, a cyclist, started off by displaying a misunderstanding of the Highway Code changes relating to cyclist lane use -they're not new rules giving cyclists extra rights but a clarification of existing rules which have been in place for decades.

It went downhill from there with a rather sensationalistic approach using frankly lazy journalism and isolated examples. It didn't attempt to understand the reasons behind the views expressed by various parties interviewed or give sufficient detail. For example a quote that a particular junction in Holborn had seen "nine cyclist fatalities since 2008, 7 of which involved trucks" doesn't go into detail but that's less than one per year which is tragic for the individuals concerned but considering the traffic levels is a vanishingly low level of risk. The whole message of the programme seemed to be that cycling is incredibly dangerous which in real terms it is not, but the perception of danger is what puts people off and the skewed perception of the presenter (who supposedly cycled from Yorkshire to London for the purposes of this half hour programme) doesn't help. I wonder how the selection of drivers chosen was carried out? It would suggest that there is a severe problem with driver training, and the sample suggests a lack of updating or even reading the Highway Code since they passed their test. A view of the cycle lane system in Leicester was shown which seems fabulous but does it actually take people where they want to go? It's not like that in other parts of the country.

Views from Londoners who just seem to hate each other let alone cyclists v motorists are probably less than representative of other parts of the country. I've already spent more brain power writing this than was probably spent on the entire Panorama programme, so I'll let others who can be a*sed respond.

 

[Alex321]

Yes, I don't believe for one moment those "survey" numbers are representative of the actual numbers of drivers who feel that way.

 

[Alex321]

For example a quote that a particular junction in Holborn had seen "nine cyclist fatalities since 2008, 7 of which involved trucks" doesn't go into detail but that's less than one per year which is tragic for the individuals concerned but considering the traffic levels is a vanishingly low level of risk.

It is an absolutely ludicrously high level of risk, which should be leading to a redesign of that junction.

How many individual junctions do you know of which have had 7 fatal accidents in 14 years?

The whole message of the programme seemed to be that cycling is incredibly dangerous which in real terms it is not, but the perception of danger is what puts people off and the skewed perception of the presenter (who supposedly cycled from Yorkshire to London for the purposes of this half hour programme) doesn't help. I wonder how the selection of drivers chosen was carried out? It would suggest that there is a severe problem with driver training, and the sample suggests a lack of updating or even reading the Highway Code since they passed their test. A view of the cycle lane system in Leicester was shown which seems fabulous but does it actually take people where they want to go? It's not like that in other parts of the country.

Views from Londoners who just seem to hate each other let alone cyclists v motorists are probably less than representative of other parts of the country. I've already spent more brain power writing this than was probably spent on the entire Panorama programme, so I'll let others who can be a*sed respond.

I agree that I do not feel the views expressed represent the views of significant numbers of motorists in most parts of the country.

 

[a.twiddler]

Just one fatality is one too many. I rather suspect that hard pressed councils in places like London have similar view of fatalities as the airline industry used to have, balancing a certain amount of attrition versus the financial cost of prevention. It shouldn't be like that, placing a financial value on human life, but it just is.

 

[Arjimlad]

Yes @a.twiddler ,

People who tried petitioning the council to put in a protected pavement or crossing for pedestrians over a narrow busy bridge near me have been told to the effect that because nobody's been killed yet, the scheme is not given enough priority. None of us are willing to lay down our lives for this particular cause, though.

 

[Mike_P]

Maybe we should bombard Panoramas contact addresses with requests for investigations on the state of cycle paths. My nearest one has signs pointing down the road not the path, negligible markings including on a blind bend on a shared pavement, virtually no signs beyond those direction ones and if you follow it fully you end up on a cycling prohibited footbridge.

 

[mjr]

Maybe we should bombard Panoramas contact addresses with requests for investigations on the state of cycle paths. My nearest one has signs pointing down the road not the path, negligible markings including on a blind bend on a shared pavement, virtually no signs beyond those direction ones and if you follow it fully you end up on a cycling prohibited footbridge.

That would be considerably more use than yet another "cars v bikes" manufactured-conflict show. It would be nice for someone with a bit of clout to pick some of the most bonkers examples and, for each one, push at the bit of government responsible for it (often county councils, but sometimes National Highways and the DfT who really ought to know and do better) to find out how it ended up in that state and why it's taking so long to bring up to standard, maybe comparing with how quickly defective carriageways get changed... and I can think of some roundabouts that weren't defective but drivers proved themselves incompetent to drive on correctly, so the council changed them to make it easier. No enforcement, no attempt to remove incompetent drivers from the roads.

Or they could look at the shocking state of maintenance, with examples like 4 months of buck-passing before anyone covered a 1m x 1m x 1m deep hole in the middle of a cycleway and another month to repair it; or half the tarmac being broken up by weeds "does not meet our criteria for intervention" (directly contradicting published policy documents); and that's before considering the widespread roadwork cowboys who stick non-reflective fences in front of deep holes or work vehicles dumped on cycleways with no warning signs and no diversions on the approaches. For comparison, similar holes in the middle of the carriageway get fixed within 2 hours (they have appeared at Necton a few times over the years), roads get weedkilled and winter salting does a lot to reduce weeds too, so they rarely break up as totally before being repaired; and roadwork cowboys failing to follow the safety code of practice are moved off carriageways within minutes (or hours at worst).

If the government is going to achieve its stated aim of doubling cycling (which is already fairly pathetic, from about 1 in 50 commuters to just 1 in 25), then cycleways are going to need at least as good construction and maintenance as carriageways, or there has to be greater enforcement on carriageways to get the 1 in 4 knowingly-close-passing motorists to stop or be stopped. It could make excellent TV to get to the absurdities in government actions which are stopping those from happening.

 

[united4ever]

The driver speaking to cyclists saying "Just so you know, I've killed one of your lot and injured another and got away with both" was outrageous - could that footage not be used to revisit those incidents by the police?

 

[Mo1959]

The driver speaking to cyclists saying "Just so you know, I've killed one of your lot and injured another and got away with both" was outrageous - could that footage not be used to revisit those incidents by the police?

Good grief. I’m glad I didn’t watch it!