The bendybus argument is foolish, but you hear it so many times that it bears rebutting. Accidents between buses of any kind and cyclists are very rare. I do recall that there have been two fatalities in recent years - a young woman was killed on Blackfriars Bridge, and a young Polish man was killed in Clapham Junction. Neither collision was with a bendybus. There are a number of low-level side to side collisions between bendybuses and cars. The point is this - TfL, with the help of the LCC, have made it their business to educate bus drivers, and the results are available on any street at any time. Bendybus drivers, in my experience, deploy a level of consideration and foresight that would, in times gone by, lead to beatification. Watching three doors, and about six mirrors while sitting in a chair surrounded by people can't be a recipe for contentment.
Were the same degree of care exercised by drivers of construction lorries we'd lead happier, safer lives, and four cyclists would not have died this year. It bears repeating that the HSE, a body that concerns itself with the most trivial risk in the construction industry has no interest whatsoever in construction traffic, nor the design decisions that generate the traffic.
So the point about bendybuses is instructive in that Johnson siezed upon their newness and their famed ability to delay car traffic, and made it into a cycling issue. Equally he suggested that lives would be saved if cyclists were allowed to turn left against a red light, as women were, apparently, more at risk from crushing by lorries. Sadly it is the lorries that are turning left, not the cyclists, and three times this year cyclists have died in London where they have been going straight on, and the lorry has been turning left.
All this betokens a degree of opportunism allied to complete ignorance - but bear in mind that this is a man who cycles head down through red lights, so a degree of ignorance is clearly the route to bliss.
People like LLB would have us behave 'fairly'. The internet is the last resting place of 'fairness' which is usually a name we give to our own prejudices. I'm suggesting that fairness has nothing to do with it. What matters is the result. Motorcyclists are not a priority in London - their vehicles are not sustainable, they generate a huge number of hospital admissions relative to their own numbers, and they're declining in number. Cyclists are more important - their vehicles are sustainable, and they are increasing in number. Equally, there are places or routes where cyclists have to consider that others have priority - I excited a lot of outrage when I suggested that cyclists should obey the speed limit in Richmond Park on the grounds that Richmond Park was......a park. Cyclists shouldn't take their access to canal towpaths for granted - I'd turf them off the Regents Canal, and have said as much to the BWB, because they're a nuisance to the walkers, particularly under bridges, many of whom are elderly.
People like LLB argue ex nihilo because they enjoy arguing, and they're unwilling to consider the consequences of decisions. 'Fairness' is their calling card. Keeping PTWs out of bus lanes might be fair or it might not be fair. I don't care either way. His alleged riding of motorcycles in London is neither here nor there. I've no interest in the experience of motorcyclists in bus lanes - it's the cyclists' experience that matters.
no you are right, but I've motorcycled in London on many occasions which is relevant to this debate - as this is the point being argued
