The biggest danger on Britain's roads is…?

You missed impatience - lack of attention is a bugger too, but impatience wins out for me.

I think impatience comes under the heading of aggression - thinking about it though one of the big underlying causes of both aggression and inattention is the design of the roads themselves which lull drivers in particular in to a false sense of security and then don't build in enough margin for people being human and making mistakes

Inadequate law enforcement across the board, and ineffective sanctions in the unlikely event of getting caught.

I reckon that aggression and lack of attention come under lack of driving or riding skills. If we all drove/rode more defensively and showed more respect for (or fear of!) the other road users we wouldn't be disappointed so often by their behaviour.

Drivers not paying attention definitely - but also us cyclists not always paying attention as well. Can't believe some of the central London commuters I see who just swing out into traffic . . .

Shame we can't tick three out of the four !!!

Not being a reader of the fairytales published in tabloid newspapers, I do not know to which "menace cyclists are" you refer. However having stopped to talk to a lorry driver this morning who nearly knocked me off I think I would concur both lack of attention and impatience.....as later on I watched 2 buses drive through the same red light despite the cycle/pedestrian crossing being on green ..........BUT there was the nice man that let me cross right in front of him and the many other cars which gave me LOADS of room so I would guess, as in life, the roads also have their own a$$h0les

The idea of the "forgiving" road is part of the trend towards "passive" safety, stuff that protects you when things go wrong, as opposed to you preventing things going wrong in the first place.

I can't recall the roads in France and Belgium being much different to ours in that respect, although the conditions for cyclists are vastly different, and seem to be acheived without huge expenditure on infrastructure. I can't help thinking that the attitude to road use here is the root of it, rather than road design or car safety per se. The idea of a right to make progress (however futile) seems deeply held here.

agreed, last night I was running through Bristol and saw a guy on a bike (perhaps would term him a cyclist as we would understand the definition) with no lights, dressed all in black and with some of those fancy skull candy headphones on over his wooly hat go through the red lights at the temple gyratory (very, very busy roundabout at 7pm) and ducked accross in front of a fast moving double decker bus.

Madness and it does the rest of us harm when drivers see that.

Passive safety and making people think about the decisions they are making are not mutually exclusive ideas.

There are lots of things that can be done to mitigate the effects of a driver, pedestrian or cyclist making a mistake - as even the most careful will do. The designing out or re-designing of things like kerbstones, traffic islands, bollards, railings, junction layout. Many of those changes make you have to think about what you are doing whether you are in a car, on a bike, or walking but also contain a large element of passive safety too - there are less obstacles to hit or be knocked against and those there are have been designed to minimise the consequences to the human body of being crushed against them.

A lot of that sort of work has already been done in Europe in Holland, Germany, parts of Belgium - with the resulting massive expenditure on infrastructure, they just did it earlier than us. In a lot of those places the reasoning behind such changes was not just about safety it was to do with helping traffic move more freely and therefore quickly. The reasoning behind getting rid of red lights at junctions is that it forces road users to co-operate, which increases safety, and also speeds up their journey times.

As to attitudes to cyclists being different on the continent - well up to a point. As someone from Belgium commented here before, it depends on what bit of Belgium you live in.

Rather than voting for the "general level of aggression" I chose "drivers not paying attention". In my opinion this is the biggest danger, since stories I read where cyclists have ended up dead are invariably because the driver didn't see them.

I voted for the roads themselves, though all the responses are equally applicable.

Not forgetting:
• Pedestrians using iPods/mobiles
• Shared cycle/bus lanes
• Cyclists wearing headphones or those with an inability to look over their shoulder
• Dustcarts, cement lorries and other long vehicles
• Chelsea tractors
• Anyone turning left

"Passive safety and making people think about the decisions they are making are not mutually exclusive ideas."

Agreed, although we have a lot of one here, and not much of the other (imo). Probably due in part to a lack of understanding on the part of the driver (we're getting to a point where it's entirely possible that a majority will have never ridden a bicycle on the road in their adult life) and our legal & cultural framework, (no strict liability, the widely held perception that urban cyclists are thrill seeking scofflaws..).

Point taken, anyway.

On Belgium, I've ridden most in West Flanders (touring), and around Beernem (can't remember which province that is) which may be less representative, I don't know. I've also ridden in Normandy. Even where things are bad by Belgian standards, I struggle to conceive that they'd be quite as horrible as a bad day on the commute here.