Volvo Life Paint - For Cyclists

[santa claus]

Who says there would need to be a next plan?

Good post Knox; it would be churlish of me to pick through it when you've evidently spent some time thinking about it and expressing your views and I agree with much of it.

Just the one point: I don't believe any amount of training can prevent all accidents; minimise them perhaps but we will still see too many cycle injuries and/or deaths.

I think we need something more radical. The complete segregation of cyclists and motorists to the extent that each has its own designated routes. Gridlock and obesity are upon us; we need to get more people cycling and that means we need to improve safety.

Sharing space with tons of speeding metal driven by people of varying abilities, eyesight, reaction times, attention spans etc is just not a safe place for a proficiency-tested 10 year old.

London would be top of the list if I had my way.

[TheAnimus]

When they start walking in the middle of the road on a constant basis instead of using the pavement, yes. Why not, if we're going to be facetious about it.

So, given that the highest number who die, are pedestrians, you are saying we shouldn't let them outside, until they've got a license? How is that going to work? I'm curious about the implementation details of this, as I nearly hit a woman who stepped out into the road without looking today, very close two inches at most from cracked ribs. It is a problem we have.

The rest of your post I also disagree with, as we can use other nations, like Denmark and Holland for an example. One of the issues is that we've people driving multiple tonne devices who have little training, who clearly and regularly break the law (how many times did that car in front indicate?). We've no retesting.

The most important thing to consider is the externalities of the action. An idiot on a bicycle gets themselves killed, an idiot in a car gets a vulnerable user killed. That is the crucial point. I'd much sooner (as a driver too) see mandatory car re-testing, every 2-3 years, with police given the power to demand it within 3 months. Heck just today a video of someone eating cereal in their car is doing the rounds. This is a 2+ tonne range rover too.

Also, consider this:

We educate pedestrians to the same level

we don't... We really don't.

[BobF64]

Speaking as a cyclist/motorist/pedestrian who does.

True enough. Equality demands everyone is treated equally, and enforcement against all would be a good place to start.

As such, we need more laws applied to pedestrians and cyclists, motorists just need more enforcement.

[Knoxville]

So, given that the highest number who die, are pedestrians, you are saying we shouldn't let them outside, until they've got a license? How is that going to work? I'm curious about the implementation details of this, as I nearly hit a woman who stepped out into the road without looking today, very close two inches at most from cracked ribs. It is a problem we have.

The rest of your post I also disagree with, as we can use other nations, like Denmark and Holland for an example. One of the issues is that we've people driving multiple tonne devices who have little training, who clearly and regularly break the law (how many times did that car in front indicate?). We've no retesting.

I'm not saying that at all chap. What I said, or at least what I implied is that pedestrians do not use roads in the same fashion as motor vehicles and bicycles. If they did, I would indeed press for some higher level of education or indeed licensing than is currently required. You don't tend to find pedestrians in a middle lane trying to keep pace with 40mph traffic though do you?

If you're educated in this country (I cannot speak for other nations having been educated here) you spend a chunk of your early primary education on the green cross code, or whatever it is now called. It probably falls under some kind of "Think" scheme now but I know it's still taught because I live inbetween two primary schools and quite often a classes worth of high visibility jackets can be found standing at a pelican crossing being taught how to cross roads safely.

So, if you're native to this country we are all indeed educated to the same level. Stop, look, listen, look right, look left, look right again, only cross when the green man's flashing and traffic has stopped etc. etc. etc.

I have a hard time believing that even if you're not from the U.K you made it through any kind of education without something akin to what we have.

They are not perfect tenants but if you follow those simple instructions odds are you will not be injured by a motor vehicle unless it mounts the kerb or you aren't paying attention. Like the woman you nearly hit this morning. She has been taught all of this, she knows all of this, she wasn't paying attention and is lucky you were.

I don't see how there can be much argument over that to be honest.

The only thing you can argue is that pedestrian right of way laws should be different and there should be some kind of jay walking legislation as exists in many U.S states that is enforced and reminds you of what you've been taught already.

Personally speaking, I would not call over twenty hours of supervised lessons, three tests and on average thirty to forty hours spent behind the wheel with family members/responsible adults who have held a drivers license for the required amount of time "little training". As I have already said, there are things I believe COULD and SHOULD be improved with regards to that training, both academically and practically speaking and I would also agree that retesting should be more frequent and medical issues of license holders more closely monitored.

However, that is still not "little training" compared to walking into Halfrauds, buying a shiny new bike, going next door to JJB sports and kitting yourself out in some lycra and calling yourself ready for the road. It just isn't.

If you're driving something bigger than a standard license entitles you to drive, there's even more training on top of that and more testing. If you're towing anything there's more training and another license again... It goes on and on.

The real issue isn't training, it's the bad habits that develop over time and lack of enforcement of the law. I have as little time for drivers in front of me that can't be bothered to move their wrist three inches to hit an indicator stalk as anyone and will not stand up for them but once upon a time they had the same lessons I did, they just don't put what they learned into practice.

The most important thing to consider is the externalities of the action. An idiot on a bicycle gets themselves killed, an idiot in a car gets a vulnerable user killed. That is the crucial point. I'd much sooner (as a driver too) see mandatory car re-testing, every 2-3 years, with police given the power to demand it within 3 months. Heck just today a video of someone eating cereal in their car is doing the rounds. This is a 2+ tonne range rover too.

Also, consider this:
we don't... We really don't.

An idiot on a bicycle gets himself killed, he may also get a pedestrian killed if I swerve to avoid him, or at high enough speeds cause multiple injuries or fatalities to others if I hit them in doing so, or parts of him or his bike hit them.

A cat in the road will get people killed if a driver reacts in an improper fashion...

I do see the point you're making, or at least I think I do. That I with the greatest potential to maim, murder and dismember should be subject to higher expectations with regard to my physical and mental state, reaction times and training. I should be and am as the law stands currently though.

What I'm saying is that training is key for the parties AT risk as well as the parties who CAUSE said risk to mitigate the risks to ALL road users as much as possible, because as santa rightly says, training only minimizes the risks, it will never prevent every possible accident. It certainly won't prevent as many accidents if you only train a percentage and then keep adding to that training while allowing others to go untrained and unmonitored.

Enforcement of the law and better training/education for ALL is the sensible way forward, as it is in any high risk environment. Once we've hit that point, then I think we're in a better position to decide which groups of road users do and don't need more of either one.

[b0redom]

True enough. Equality demands everyone is treated equally, and enforcement against all would be a good place to start.

As such, we need more laws applied to pedestrians and cyclists, motorists just need more enforcement.

What's the difference between applying laws and enforcement? Are you suggesting that additional laws be drafted for pedestrians and cyclists?

[TheAnimus]

I'm not saying that at all chap. What I said, or at least what I implied is that pedestrians do not use roads in the same fashion as motor vehicles and bicycles. If they did, I would indeed press for some higher level of education or indeed licensing than is currently required. You don't tend to find pedestrians in a middle lane trying to keep pace with 40mph traffic though do you?

Sure you do, look at deaths in London, as the data is best.

Interestingly, on that point, motorbikers die at a rate 10 times higher than cyclists. But wait, they have tests? And a license? It's almost as if they mean nothing. See the woman eating cereal whilst driving.
[QUOTE=Knoxville;3484466]If you're educated in this country (I cannot speak for other nations having been educated here) you spend a chunk of your early primary education on the green cross code, or whatever it is now called. It probably falls under some kind of "Think" scheme now but I know it's still taught because I live inbetween two primary schools and quite often a classes worth of high visibility jackets can be found standing at a pelican crossing being taught how to cross roads safely.

So, if you're native to this country we are all indeed educated to the same level. Stop, look, listen, look right, look left, look right again, only cross when the green man's flashing and traffic has stopped etc. etc. etc.

I have a hard time believing that even if you're not from the U.K you made it through any kind of education without something akin to what we have.[/QUTOE]Are you from London? Most people here clearly do not demonstrate any semblance of these rules. Most people in school are taught long division and the difference between Mean and Median average, yet most people who write for the BBC demonstrably don't understand them.
[QUOTE=Knoxville;3484466]They are not perfect tenants but if you follow those simple instructions odds are you will not be injured by a motor vehicle unless it mounts the kerb or you aren't paying attention. Like the woman you nearly hit this morning. She has been taught all of this, she knows all of this, she wasn't paying attention and is lucky you were.

I don't see how there can be much argument over that to be honest.

The only thing you can argue is that pedestrian right of way laws should be different and there should be some kind of jay walking legislation as exists in many U.S states that is enforced and reminds you of what you've been taught already.

What I'm arguing is that far more people die on a mode of transport other than a bicycle. Yet no one suggests pedestrians should have 'walking licenses' to avoid them being smooshed by a lorry. This is the part I find idiotic. You know 40 people were killed last year by cars that mounted the kerb. 40 people, by something which is a must not. Maybe they were swerving on the pavement. Maybe they shouldn't have been walking so slowly, maybe their clothes were dark, maybe they lacked protective cloathing. Of course no one says this. Those 40 people are seen as victims of bad driving pure and simple.

Personally speaking, I would not call over twenty hours of supervised lessons, three tests and on average thirty to forty hours spent behind the wheel with family members/responsible adults who have held a drivers license for the required amount of time "little training". As I have already said, there are things I believe COULD and SHOULD be improved with regards to that training, both academically and practically speaking and I would also agree that retesting should be more frequent and medical issues of license holders more closely monitored.

3 tests?! That's concerning.

However, that is still not "little training" compared to walking into Halfrauds, buying a shiny new bike, going next door to JJB sports and kitting yourself out in some lycra and calling yourself ready for the road. It just isn't.

Which is representative to the deaths caused. Do you know how many people have been killed by bicycles since records began? It's in single digits. How many have been killed by cars? It's not even 11am and it's probably more than that number already.

If you're driving something bigger than a standard license entitles you to drive, there's even more training on top of that and more testing. If you're towing anything there's more training and another license again... It goes on and on.

Not so, a friend of mine, who is a terrible driver, got her license in the 80s, she can drive more than I can on my license which I only got in 2010.

The real issue isn't training, it's the bad habits that develop over time and lack of enforcement of the law. I have as little time for drivers in front of me that can't be bothered to move their wrist three inches to hit an indicator stalk as anyone and will not stand up for them but once upon a time they had the same lessons I did, they just don't put what they learned into practice.

That is where re-testing comes in. I've got to study next week because my pilots license is up for it's two year re-test. This comes after my 6 month re-test, and my mini haven't-flown-in-a-month retest. Ever wonder why aviation is so safe?

An idiot on a bicycle gets himself killed, he may also get a pedestrian killed if I swerve to avoid him, or at high enough speeds cause multiple injuries or fatalities to others if I hit them in doing so, or parts of him or his bike hit them.

If you hit the ped, because of any action, you are responsible. Next you will be saying that his backside distracted you.....

A cat in the road will get people killed if a driver reacts in an improper fashion...

Yet another reason I find it fascinating we avoid CRM training for people driving at 70mph in multi tonne devices. Bonkers.

I do see the point you're making, or at least I think I do. That I with the greatest potential to maim, murder and dismember should be subject to higher expectations with regard to my physical and mental state, reaction times and training. I should be and am as the law stands currently though.

It does nothing. A driver knocked me off, bragged to a witness he did it on purpose (because I called him a w-starting word). He got a driving awareness course only after an ex at a magic circle law firm got involved. They'd have done nothing otherwise.

What I'm saying is that training is key for the parties AT risk as well as the parties who CAUSE said risk to mitigate the risks to ALL road users as much as possible, because as santa rightly says, training only minimizes the risks, it will never prevent every possible accident. It certainly won't prevent as many accidents if you only train a percentage and then keep adding to that training while allowing others to go untrained and unmonitored.

I would say look at Copenhagen, look at Utrecht.

The way to solve most of our big city planning problems is not by discouraging cycling, but by promoting efficient road use. My commute in my car takes me over 1.5 hours, on my bicycle 30-35 min. The externalities of using my car are worse than using my bicycle, I take up less road, less noise etc.

The problem is right now there is a culture of victim blaming, I've experienced this first hand from the police, it was only in the back of the ambulance when they found my pilots license and drivers license that they remotely started to believe I had right of way. I found this perplexing, as I had green gravel in my knees, green being the colour of the single white lined cycle lane.

There is an inherent confirmation bias in this, people identify with a group they belong too. Drivers ignore bad driving, how often do you see someone on a mobile phone (waitrose delivery van last night ffs!) not indicating or speeding? All the time. So it is ignored, because they are part of the group. What it comes down to is roughly a third of any large enough group are idiots, and that doesn't matter if we're bikes, motorbikes, trucks etc.

[Knoxville]

Motorcyclists have also been the subject of lengthy educational and awareness focused advertising campaigns and had the way they're trained and licensed changed in an attempt to abate that mortality rate. That more motorcyclists die than cyclists is due to the inherent risks of the vehicle they operate, lack of proper protective clothing and improper bahviour of the drivers around them, not because the training they have recieved is worthless.

Deaths and serious injuries amongst motorcyclists have actually fallen since these changes were made. I wonder why that might be? Obviously not by changing the way they're educated and licensed and by making drivers of other vehicles on the road more aware of their vulnerability by educating them in kind... It must be magic beans.

I'm not sure how pedestrians killed by drivers mounting to kerb relates to people dying ON a mode of transport. Several of those deaths will also come back to one particularly bad incident in which a wagon driver suffered a heart attack behind the wheel if I'm remembering last years news rightly too. If the argument is that fewer cyclists die year on year than pedestrians and hence we should license them before we license cyclists the logic still doesn't fit because they don't use roads in the same way cyclists do. A pedestrian doesn't need to know what lane they should approach a roundabout in for instance, or how to properly use hand signals (I can't remember the last time I saw those from anyone on a bike) a cyclist does. As pedestrians, they need to know how and where to cross roads safely. Which as I've already said is something we all learn at an early age.

The level of training cyclists receive is directly proportional to the level of injury a bicycle can DIRECTLY inflict upon a person. I agree. However it is not directly proportional to the level of risk they can create by behaving erratically, without due care or by being completely uneducated.

Aviation is a whole other ball game which to be honest, I don't want to get into because I have the upmost respect for pilots. Even so, as highly educated and trained and monitored as they are how many scandals have there been relating to drunk or drugged up airline pilots over the years?

To be honest, I could go quote by quote and apologise for forgetting that license holders of a certain era can tow more than 750kg, unbraked on a single axle legally. Or agree that yes, more efficient use of the road network could help but that it is not easy to do or cheap.

I feel this thread has been dragged about as far off topic as it needs to be though. My point was and still is that increasing visibility of cyclists is part of the battle that for the most part we have already won and that the next stage is to properly educate that group of road users, to enforce the laws we have currently with regard to drivers and ensure they straighten up, fly right and drive the way they were taught to while continuing to educate them about the vulnerability of those around them.

Speaking for myself, it has nothing to do with victim blaming, confirmation bias or discouraging people from cycling. It has to do with safety and minimising the risks out there to all parties which is best done by educating and testing ALL road users. Not increasing the level of education for some to make up for the lack of education of others because the figures say they cause fewer deaths. Cyclists might also find their opinion of what caused an incident they were involved in carried more weight if they could prove they actually have some knowledge of the highway code.

Going back to aviation for a second, drone pilots have to be licensed for commercial work do they not? Despite the aircraft being unmanned, much smaller and much less likely to cause deaths or serious injury if operated safely, we don't let them off because the figures say so or because what they're flying is smaller, lighter and slower than a 777. As I said, aviation is not my forte, I will gladly sit here and be educated if I'm wrong but the principle seems very similar to me.

Aside from that, I'm afraid we shall have to agree to disagree on this one chap. I bear nobody any ill will and am happy to share the road with other drivers, cyclists, horses and riders and even that nutty old bloke that tools around my estate on his mobility scooter as long as they are properly educated and operate within the law. I've made it clear that I feel driving licenses should include more knowledge and more training but that doesn't mean it's ok to simply rely on that and change massive portions of our road network rather than educating everyone and levelling the playing field somewhat first.

[satrow]

I feel this thread has been dragged about as far off topic as it needs to be though. My point was and still is that increasing visibility of cyclists is part of the battle that for the most part we have already won and that the next stage is to properly educate that group of road users, to enforce the laws we have currently with regard to drivers and ensure they straighten up, fly right and drive the way they were taught to while continuing to educate them about the vulnerability of those around them.

Getting drivers to pay attention to the road and to actively look out for other road users is what's needed, no amount of glowing paint will make drivers put down their smart devices or actually look - they're in a comfy cocoon, safe from the real world, safe from prosecution for their illegal actions.