Stand up and be counted.

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Drago

Legendary Member
Mr G, my human body is as vulnerable to blunt force trauma as yours or anyone elses.

As I pointed out, if we each paid proper attention to what we are each doing ourselves, and stopped worrying about what everyone else was up to then there would be no problem to complain about. If I may respectfully say so, the attitude that one is worse than the other simply perpetuates the problem and does nothing to address it.

Shouting "IT WAS MY RIGHT OF WAY!!!" as you're wheeled into an ambulance is wasted breath. The object of the game is to be alive, not to be righteous.

If you, I, my Mum, Shaun, Accy, everyone on the planet each take responsibility for our actions and pay attention to what we are doing, there will be no problem to complain about. The whole model collapses when just a single sector of society decides they are more important with respect to the model, and someone else should shoulder more blame or responsibility. While such attitudes prevail the problem will never go away. In fact, I confidently predict that such attitudes will prevail, society as a whole will fail to take responsibilty, and in 10 years time we'll still be here complaining about it. We will continue to reap that which we sow while such attitudes prevail.
 
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Smokin Joe

Legendary Member
The best advice I ever got was, "It's none of your business how other people drive, you have no control over that. Your duty is to use the road in a manner that does not endanger yourself or anyone else."
 

classic33

Leg End Member
Indeed. Plenty of bellends on the road, and too many people complaining that Challenger tank drivers should take extra care, blah, yadda, and use that as a justification for doing bugger all themselves.

I have a radical idea - If we stop sticking our noses into that which other people are doing, and each and every one of us pay attention to that which we are doing, then there would be no problem. No one has more or less responsibility - we can all kill with greater or lesser degrees of efficiency but more pertinently, each of us is just as vulnerable to being killed.

Physics, blunt force trauma, major organ failure...none of these things care what you're doing when they come to visit, none of these things care how righteous you are.
No-one tried to pass the Abbott SPG, staying below the 20mph limit recently. Didn't see anyone wanting to argue with the driver for going too slow either.
 

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
That is obvious because of the disparity in speed/size between bikes/cars and the numbers of motorists/cyclists.
The difference in numbers of motorists/cyclists is negated by looking at rates instead of absolute numbers. The disparity in speed/size is a contributing factor, for sure, but we know from government research that motorists are found to be at fault in motorist-cyclist collisions more often than cyclists.

It puts a much greater responsibility on motorists because of the potentially greater implications of their mistakes, but it does not absolve cyclists (or pedestrians) from their responsibilities on the roads. Every road user, including cyclists, must look at how they could contribute to improving safety or little will change.
Sure, and because we know from government research that so-called risky cycling (see, I mention it and acknowledge it exists) is rarely actually risky, our biggest contribution is to campaign for better motorist education and tougher enforcement.
 

glasgowcyclist

Charming but somewhat feckless
Location
Scotland
Shouting "IT WAS MY RIGHT OF WAY!!!" as you're wheeled into an ambulance is wasted breath. The object of the game is to be alive, not to be righteous.

That's not an argument I'm making. I follow the advice of the HC and "always give way if it can help to avoid an accident".

Mr G, my human body is as vulnerable to blunt force trauma as yours or anyone elses.

In the context of road traffic collisions? If that were true, the graph in my earlier tweet would be flat.
 
The difference in numbers of motorists/cyclists is negated by looking at rates instead of absolute numbers. The disparity in speed/size is a contributing factor, for sure, but we know from government research that motorists are found to be at fault in motorist-cyclist collisions more often than cyclists.


Sure, and because we know from government research that so-called risky cycling (see, I mention it and acknowledge it exists) is rarely actually risky, our biggest contribution is to campaign for better motorist education and tougher enforcement.


That's OK then. Nothing to see here, not our fault, move on and business as usual.

I trust you are not saying our biggest contribution should be the only contribution.
 

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
That's OK then. Nothing to see here, not our fault, move on and business as usual.

I trust you are not saying our biggest contribution should be the only contribution.
Indeed I am not. Similarly, I trust you and others are not saying we should devote lots of focus to tiny nearly-irrelevant cyclist-only contributions and ignore the much bigger helpful contributions?
 

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
*You listening god? If a member on here (though probably doesn’t pay the £9 Advert Block)
God has been pwned when trying to upgrade his computer.
 
Indeed I am not. Similarly, I trust you and others are not saying we should devote lots of focus to tiny nearly-irrelevant cyclist-only contributions and ignore the much bigger helpful contributions?

I am saying we can directly, quickly and easily ensure that our actions on the road are not exacerbating safety issues. Continuing to lobby for improved safety consideration (and appropriate legal sanctions) by motorists is vitally important, but is indirectly out of our control, and is a very slow-moving mechanism.
 

Shortandcrisp

Über Member
Some cyclists are just knobs. That's the way it is. Some motorists are too. Again that's the way it is.

Now what is a much, much bigger problem, and one that makes it impossible to make things any better, ever, is this long standing feud that exists between 'the motorist' and 'the cyclist'.

If people just saw other people rather than putting themselves and each other in neat categories, maybe we'd all show each other a bit more respect.

We all know that some motorists disobey the rules and etiquette of the road. That's been discussed at length. But so do some cyclists. Except we're not allowed to say that. We're not allowed to say, for example, that some cyclists run red lights, or that some make no effort to make themselves visible at night, or that some weave in and out of busy traffic while every driver in said busy traffic is doing their best to not miss a single bit of the overwhelming volume of information coming at them from pedestrians, other motorists, cyclists, lane markings, road signs, signals etc. We're also not allowed to say things like that some cyclists who do consider visibility, don't think it through, like those with laser strobe / distress beacons angled straight at the eyes of oncoming motorists, who then become knobs as they allow their vehicle to wander out of the lane briefly as they do their best to make out the lane markings having just been temporarily blinded.

For the feud to end, all sides have to look at themselves rather than constantly blaming each other and categorising people.

I'm a motorist. I'm also a cyclist and a pedestrian. Above all I'm also a human being with a family. I try to do my best by everyone. Like absolutely every one of us, I sometimes make mistakes. I make mistakes in the car, and I make mistakes on my bike. And every time I do, I thank my lucky stars that nobody got hurt, and rather than passing the book, I look at what I did and try to learn from it with the goal of not making the same mistake again.

As our Saturday group leader puts it: “There’s no such thing as cyclists, just people who happen to ride bikes.”
 
Thinking about this, and this is just my own experience. The most scary form of road user seems to be the taxi driver. Most private vehicles, vans, buses, wagons, other cyclists and pedestrians mostly apply a good mix of rules and respect and courtesy. There are always exceptions of course. But I've come to notice that if someone tries to squash me, more often than not, it is a taxi.

Of course I have no stats to support this. Its just my own observation. But it does seem ironic that a group of road users that have to pass some of the most stringent tests, and theoretically have the most driving experience, are also the aggressive on the roads.
 
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