had this group come into my school on Friday and talk to us about road safety
S.C.A.R.D Home Page

 

[rant mode]

Fairly typical. Closing the gate after the horse has bolted.

They'd do better making sure you all learn the Green Cross Code, Highway Code and making Cycling Proficiency compulsory rather than go in to offer counselling after people unaware of the dangers and how to protect themselves from them in the first place have caused havoc. Isn't it strange how we make people wait 'til they're 17yo and supposedly mature before we let them learn how to operate a machine with airbags, seatbelts, crumple zones, side impact beams, laminated glass, anti-sub seats, anti-lock brakes and a host of other safety devices, yet a year earlier they can balance on top of an engine with a bucket on their heads legally. At any age we also allow them, with no formal training whatsoever, or any need for insurance, to balance on top of a large coathanger on wheels even without a bucket on their heads

80% of pedestrians killed or seriously injured step voluntarily into moving traffic, and are within 100m of a crossing, but not on it. Funny how the car is always the demon in these scenario's The car with the trained, qualified and insured driver in it.

Same with cyclists. I'd like to see the uner 12's restricted to 30mph roads and basic CPT taught in schools, and at 12 an advanced CPT should allow you on roads up to 50mph. At 16 I'd open you up to all routes except mways and make 3rd party insurance mandatory. And helmets. And the fitment of functioning lights.

CPT has always been voluntary, and the Green Cross Code was dropped from the school curriculum about 10 years ago. The behaviour of arrogant teenagers I often see borders on total contempt for cars and abject apathy with regards to personal safety and any responsibility towards others. And they wonder why 10 years of narrow minded obsession on speed enforcement hasn't reduced road accidents

[/rant mode]


And, breathe

 

Well not all teenagers, im not that daft to walk out into moving traffic. One of my pet peeves is that when i walk to school, i usually see kids either running out in front of a car when they'res a couple of hundred feet between that car and the next car, or just walking out into the road, like they own the road and everybody must stop for them .. Sometimes i wonder how they actually dont get hit, just as well all, well most that drive past my school, are concentrating or have the decency to stop, well more like the fact they've got no choice to stop or hit them.

 

quality rant, but totally agree

 

well when i say road safety, they talked mainly about how road crime affects the victims family, and they showed us a clip with some people talking about how it had affected their lives. And then the woman told us what happened to her brother-in-law when he was walking his dog, and how she reacted and so on.

 

Unfortunately, youths like you are in a minority in my experience. Shame, as you will often get tarred with the same brush and do not deserve it. It does obviously vary from school to school depending on the area. When I teach around Adel, Lawnswood, Becketts Park etc the kids are usually well behaved, polite and considerate to others. In some of the more deprived areas I get cocky comments, abuse, arrogance and disrespect. Some of those kids may well have decent parents, but have to go with the crowd to fit in and so get tarred, the rest have people whom gave birth to them but cannot in any way be referred to as parents.

 

Bloody Hell. I'm with Dave. Totally!!!

Even down to the insurance for cyclists.

Need a lie down

 

just got the sponge !! just dab sticky's for head after that.

 

A quality rant David

 

[Ex keen cyclist mode]

I see where you're coming from with the 3rd party insurance but I'm still not convinced, if a bike runs in the back of a car which is gonna sustain the most damage? As for apportioning blame for an accident and therefore liability I would think the chances of ever conclusively proving anything are miniscule. For instance, 'the bike swerved officer so I had to take evasive action and that's how I came to hit the oncoming car' - 'I didn't swerve I just wobbled a bit due to a gust of wind'

Did the cyclist really swerve or did he/she just wobble, did the motorist need to take such drastic action or did he/she over react???

Oh and there is also the issue that insurance companies are downright lowlife thieving sons of b****** whose only aim in life is to extract as much money as humanly posible from the pockets of decent law abiding citizens at every given opportunity and as a result a large number of people who use a bicycle as a means of transport as it is the only one they can afford would be priced off of the road.

Helmets, fair point.

Lights, a large number of cyclists cycle for pleasure/fitness, the bikes they use for this purpose are never on the road in the dark and therfore making the fitment of lights compulsary seems rather draconian.

[/Ex keen cyclist mode]

Other than that a quality rant

 

On the insurance issue, your own ramblings show that the cyclist could, and often is at fault. Your analogy is a bit like saying "If a Reliant Robin hit a Hummer......" A bike may not damage a car very much, but that same bike could kill a 90yo toddling off for their pension, and as the vast majority of bikes I see nowadays, including the Police on their MTB's , are ridden on the pavement then this type of accident is on the rise and will so until the CPT, GCC and HC are taught and tested in schools and the CPT is mandatory, and the Police enforce more traffic laws than just speeding and realise there are more forms of transport than cars using the roads.

Helmets, we agree.

Lights, make them mandatory for use on the public highway. That won't affect people out for a sunny countryside ride, unless the route takes them on the road at some point, if so, fit them. If they end up out later than they anticipated they will be glad of them too.

I am out observing the roads of Leeds for 12 hours a day these days and, without exaggeration, pretty much every cyclist I see breaks a traffic law within 30s of me seeing them, if they're not already breaking it when I clock them. Even when it's not illegal, their actions are often stupid or down-right dangerous. I've had the displeasure of seeing two mangled bodies (not sure if they were dead or not) on Lawnswood roundabout in the last year just because they didn't know the correct procedure for a cyclist to take when turning right at a large roundabout. If they had done CPT they may be still cycling today, and the poor car drivers whom were innocently involved in their recklessness wouldn't have had to deal with the trauma of possibly having killed someone.

Motorcyclists are bad enough, making up just 4% of road traffic, yet accounting for 24% of road deaths. At least they're trained and insured, and of a supposed mature age. Think about my post next time an 8yo on a BMX with no seat crosses in front of your Scoob without looking whilst giving his mate a backey. No lights, no bell, no seat, no helmet, insurance, no training, no feckin clue and no care whether their actions may impact on someone else.

 

It seems your experience of cycling and cyclists is very different to mine and maybe times have changed as it's probably 10 years now since I was regularly riding, certainly riding on the pavement never used to be allowed

In the ten or so years that I was riding my bike regularly I never had any major incidents but quite a number of more minor incidents due to motorists who "didn't see me", well at least not until just before I ran out of road whilst trying to avoid their car that was now pulling into my lane or just before I managed to stop short of sliding across their bonnet when they pulled out in front of me. I did however do my CPT so maybe that explains how I avoided anything serious and therefore your insistance on it being mandatory may be well placed.

With regard to lights, the type of bike I'm talking about nowadays costs nearly as much as you can pick up an early classic scoob for, they only ever come out when it's dry and sunny either for a training ride or on race day itself and I for one would never fit lights to them, it's hard to explain to a non cyclist but it would just be wrong. Granted lights are important and anyone that rides at night without them is an idiot I just don't think it is necessary to make them a mandatory requirement that's all.

I think perhaps cyclists fall (very broadly) into 2 groups as do car drivers, enthusiasts like those in this club who drive their cars because they enjoy it and who take great pride in the way they do so only fully utilising the performance of their cars in the right place at the right time and those who use their cars to get from A to B and aren't really interested in the journey itself and just want to get there as quickly as possible with as little inconvenience to them as possible.

As with most things in life, it's got a lot to do with peoples attitude toward it but most importantly it's the people themselves that are the key element, not the mode of transport they have chosen.