Biggest Threats to Cyclists?

Mids_Costcutter

custardy wrote: »

maybe a little extreme
however something has to be done

lets be straight here
cycling is the future
cities simply cannot accommodate an increasing amount of motorised vehicles
We have an obesitity ticking timebomb

If cities cant/wont provide adequate separate cycling infrastructure,then answers need to be found
how about no construction traffic during rush hour
only large vehicles meeting specific criteria allowed in cities(eg extra mirrors,sidebars,cameras etc)
proper enforcement of cycling infrastructure inplace already with rigid enforcement for both cars and cyclists

Yes, something should be done to restrict HGVs during peak hours. It is time to try bans in the centres of some of the largest UK cities. This may have other benefits: air quality, improved bus journey times. I'm sure more research is needed, especially if the experience in Paris has been a positive one.

It's also time to ask why such a high proportion of freight is carried by road in the UK: 94% of all national haulage, which is way above the 67% EU average. Only Cyprus carries a higher percentage of freight by road and they have no railways any more!

Altarf

Mids_Costcutter wrote: »

It's also time to ask why such a high proportion of freight is carried by road in the UK: 94% of all national haulage, which is way above the 67% EU average. Only Cyprus carries a higher percentage of freight by road and they have no railways any more!

1. Cheaper.
2. England is small (Scotland and Wales don't matter as damn all people live there to deliver things to), Europe is big.

It also depends on how you measure the stats. Are you saying that 33% of EU freight never touches a truck? Or that 33% of the mileage is done on rail and 67% on road.?

HGVs on trunk roads are irrelevant for this issue, and if you still have HGVs delivering from a rail freight terminal into the nearby town, you still have the squashing cyclist problem.

AndyBSG

Johno100 wrote: »

Not when the focus has been on London deaths.

So you want some specific HGV stats for London?

Well, the good thing is there are some fresh stats less than 24 hours old here.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/hgv-drivers-caught-in-bike-safety-operation-8946997.html

Police stopped 20 HGV's at random.

They identified a total of 60 faults across the 20 lorries with only 5 of them showing no irregularities.

5 are still being investigated for defects while 10 were guilty of offences with two being deemed dangerous.

in comparison more than 100 cyclists were also stopped but NONE of them were breaking any rules or laws and were just given advice on safer cycling.

WiggyDiggyPoo wrote: »

Ok, so I think it would be fair to say that you are anti cycling and well frankly a bit of a troll with some of your comments.

In all honesty, I pretty much agree with this post and Wiggy has hit the nail on the head as you're clearly just on here trying to rile people up and spout nonsense as shown by the fact you're ignoring bits of posts that you can't disprove or argue against and just obnoxiously jumping on anything else.

It might be worth you posting over on the comments of the Daily Mail threads about the recent accidents as your mentality clearly matches the majority of that sites readers

custardy

Johno100 wrote: »

A good few reasons to either live closer to where you work (but I guess that is down to either house prices or a lifestyle choice) or move out of the overcrowded hell hole that is London.

I work out of various offices in a 30 mile radius from my house
So how does moving close to work workout?

custardy

Mids_Costcutter wrote: »

Yes, something should be done to restrict HGVs during peak hours. It is time to try bans in the centres of some of the largest UK cities. This may have other benefits: air quality, improved bus journey times. I'm sure more research is needed, especially if the experience in Paris has been a positive one.

It's also time to ask why such a high proportion of freight is carried by road in the UK: 94% of all national haulage, which is way above the 67% EU average. Only Cyprus carries a higher percentage of freight by road and they have no railways any more!

http://sociecity.com/beat-on-the-street/copenhagen-economics-cars-are-a-net-loss-bikes-a-benefit

A study commissioned in 2010 by Bo Asmus Kjeldgaard, Mayor of Copenhagen found that driving cars offers up a $0.20 net loss for each mile driven.

But the major form of transportation in this city of 1.2 million is not the car, but the bicycle. This leads us to what is perhaps the more amazing fact from this study… bicycles offer a $0.35 net benefit to the economy per mile ridden.

Math Note: 1 DKK = 18 cents (2010 currency rates) | 1.61km = 1mi

Other neat facts about Copenhagen from this study:
Sixty-Eight Percent - An astounding 68% of residents bicycle at least once a week
Most Popular Commute Choice - Citywide, 35% of residents bicycle to and from work/school, more than any other transportation method
Sorry Cars, You’re Outnumbered – When taking trips of under 6 miles, bicyclists outnumber cars 3 to 1
Rain, Sleet, or Snow – Most commuters cycle year-round, even with an average low of 28-degrees Fahrenheit during snowy winter months and 2.5 inches of rain during summer months
Kids Rule – A full 98% of children in the city own a bicycle
Any American city would rightly be envious of those numbers, and indeed, Copenhagen sets an example for the world, but are they happy about their position atop bicycle-meccas? Nope.
Copenhagen city government has recently called for even better infrastructure, increased safety measures, and has upped the cycling maintenance budget alone by €1.3 million in the past year.

bugslet

AndyBSG wrote: »

Police stopped 20 HGV's at random.

They identified a total of 60 faults across the 20 lorries with only 5 of them showing no irregularities.

5 are still being investigated for defects while 10 were guilty of offences with two being deemed dangerous.

As a sparkly compliant haulier, I'm not one for defending hauliers that don't maintian or comply with drivers hours, but to draw statistics as above and for those statistics to suggest that all lorries are likely to show defect is wrong.

VOSA run what in common parlance is known as the traffic light system. They can see the reg of a vehicle enter it into the computer and instantly get back how compliant a company is. So a red score would suggest previous failures and that they are being monitored, amber that there has been the odd failing, which may or may not suggest there is a problem with the way the company is run, or green which means that the company is, well, sparkly compliant.;) So they don't pull the green scorers, they target those that they are aware that there is a problem already. And actually most of us run very legal. But it means that when you look and see that x many trucks pulled equals x many faults, that doesn't roll out to the truck population in general.

And the other thing, is defining a fault. My vehicles are serviced/inspected every 8 weeks, but I can still have a minor fault on them about which we are not always aware - some things need a mechanic to observe, not talking light bulbs blown which are obvious.

Foreign trucks are pulled on the basis of looks AFAIK.

As for the offences, that can mean frankly bu88er all or an awful lot. Writing your first name before your surname on the tacho is technically an offence, it should be the other way round, but compared to the offence of failing to take appropriate breaks, it's not exactly serious.

Most hauliers want cowboy operators to be put out of business - it makes our life harder to compete with people that cut corners.

If you think that being a cyclist makes you a pariah, you should try being involved in haulage.:( It's one of those jobs that because people have a car license and see trucks all over the place, they know something about the job. It's an incredibly complex business now, one of the most heavily regulated, heavily taxed, which ultimately we all pay for, frequently low-paid for the hours, one where the drivers are treat like second-class citizens ( you try getting somewhere decent to night out, planning for truckstops are invariably opposed), and an industry that is open to competition from the EU with its lower operating costs, who then send drivers over here and they produce no revenue stream to the government. Ooops, went off track a bit there.....:o

Le73Uq86Uv

The biggest threat to cyclists !

CYCLISTS

If there is a Cycle path USE IT.

AndyBSG

Le73Uq86Uv wrote: »

The biggest threat to cyclists !

CYCLISTS

If there is a Cycle path USE IT.

You do realise the reason many cyclists ignore some cycle paths and use the road, which we're legally entitled to do, is because they're poorly designed and more dangerous than the alternative.

In fact, the LCC who organised the Bow protest made it quite clear that they actively advise their members NOT to use the CS2 at Bow.

bugslet

Actually reading that link of Andy's more carefully, it's very oblique. Of the 60 offences, most were hours. And? That really tells you nothing. If you run five minutes over, that's an offence, same as driving for 10 hours without a break, as per your Belgian chap in the article.

I'm not defending non-compliance, but it's just typical journalism, slanted to make every lorrydriver sound like some mad-eyed zombie intent on driving non-stop for hours on end, when it's far from the way the majority of operators behave.

AndyBSG

Here's a little account of my wonderful journey in along the CS2 this morning, crossing the notorious Bow roundabout. So what did I contend with this morning?

- At Bow roundabout I was almost left hooked by a car. What made this so spectacular was that the car in question had jumped the red lights before the cyclist traffic lights... And had overtaken two cars that had stopped at the red lights to do so! The cyclist lights were red so she stopped in the advanced cyclist area then when the cyclist lights went green she moved off... Despite the fact that the car lights were still red. Luckily I had seen her so stopped almost straight away.

- On the A11 just outside Whitechapel station a van pulls out on me forcing me to slam on the brakes... As I catch up to him at the lights I can see why as he's deep in conversation on his mobile.

- Just before the Aldgate Gyratory there's a bus depot with traffic light controlled exit. There's about 4 or 5 cyclists who all wait for the green light before moving off but the bus pulling out decides to ignore the red light and pulls out anyway almost T-boning 3 of us.

- Coming down Bishopsgate two tipper lorries driving in convoy thunder past me. My speedo at the time read 18 MPH so given the speed they passed me at they were very likely to have been in excess of 30 MPH and they passed me with less than a foot to spare as there was a bus coming the other way causing me to have to hug the kerb and wobble from the wind buffet.

That's just one journey in and shows why i'm going to pick up a head cam as soon as possible and will be submitting the videos to the police and Boris on a weekly basis.