Live blog – Driver fined for giving cyclist brother a tow, bus driver cuts in on cyclists, road.cc wins an award and much, much more
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Mon, Feb 26, 2018 15:09
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Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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Latest Comments
jackcycles 1 hour ago
"attributed by experts", yeah sure, ok! Citing 8 year out of date per capita figures shows the weakness of your argument. Here's a couple of reasons I believe that the Netherlands fatality rate might be higher than the UK (independent of the crappy Dutch infrastructure), none of which you and Chrisonatrike suggested or mentioned: 1) not enough people wearing helmets in Netherlands. All sane people know that wearing a cycling helmet can potentially save lives, yet the Dutch seem to think themselves too special to wear one. Despite the fact the Netherlands has a superior privatised health system compared to our rotten, inefficient NHS, post-crash options are limited for people with severe head trauma which will inevitable lead to increased fatalities in the Netherlands. 2) Risk compensation by drivers and cyclists. Cyclists are lulled into a false sense of security thinking that segregated cycle lanes are their special infrastructure which insulate them from accidents. They don't. Then, car drivers take more risks due to increased congestion caused by the same cycling infrastructure, leading to a double-whammy of risky behaviour. 3) Cultural issues. People in the UK are renowned for their stiff upper lip, stoic, courteous behaviour. They naturally protect more vulnerable road users. I, myself, had a magnificent cycling experience earlier today on the local country lanes, waving and saying hello to the locals and cyclists alike. There really isn't a place like the UK (well, outside London anyway) that matches our hospitality and camaraderie. P.s. I'm not sure who Nigel is, I assumed you meant Nigel Farage but I can assure you I'm not him and that he has more pressing things to do than write responses on a cycling website. I hope that's helped your understanding a little, and enabled you to think a little independently rather than just suck in information that self-described "experts" want you to believe. Oh and Norway et Al are terrible comparators as hardly anyone lives there (and who'd want to to be honest? Lol!)
chrisonabike 1 hour ago
Yup. The UK has latterly tried add the safety back in after it was lost for vulnerable road users. (And after giving all the direct routes / valuable space over to motoring). But it's offering a modicum more safety in return for them losing a lot more convenience - so that has been reducing the "problem" also! Plus we lean heavily on "but people can be trusted to be reasonable" and "for any misbehaviour police it better". Unfortunately those are not good assumptions or choices for safety in a motornormative environment. (And road policing isn't a priority anyway). NL isn't the only place in Europe they've realised that mass motoring the old way is unsustainable (for lots of reasons). They're just the furthest on. In NL they still have some challenges because the (larger - thanks US!) car strikes back, and there are some questions about the impact of e-things. But they're *still* investing in improvements, and proportionally significantly more than the UK, even though they're already far ahead...
This Wreckage 1 hour ago
The Stockton Hub which I used occasionally (I don't live in Stockton) was open only during standard office hours, Mondays to Fridays, rendering it useless for families and leisure cyclists. It's a standard problem for a lot of government-funded or charity-run public services which close when many people most need them, presumably because staffing costs would rise substantially. The article also mentions cycle hubs in Redcar and Darlington which, so far as I can tell, have never existed.
chrisonabike 2 hours ago
Ho ho ho! No, we need to stop these idiotic cyclists completely (or limit them to velodromes, parks and maybe "rail trails") - that way there won't be any cyclist road fatalities! Simples! Meanwhile in many parts ofEurope they're finding the benefits of making it such that lots of people don't use cars for every journey - by fixing it so it's convenient and increasingly safe - despite much larger numbers of people getting around outside of cars than in the UK...
Rendel Harris 2 hours ago
The fatality rate in the UK has fallen five years in a row during a period, starting with the Covid years, in which building of "idiotic Dutch roundabouts and segregated cycling infrastructure" has massively increased, so in fact using your own benchmark the statistics clearly show the benefits of increased cycling infrastructure. Not quite the gotcha you seem to think when viewed through non-troll lenses, Nige. The stupidity of your "argument" is further clearly illustrated by the fact that the list-topping Norway, Sweden and Denmark all have massive segregated cycling networks. The Dutch model used to demonstrate clearly the safer nature of the Dutch system, e.g. in 2018 the Netherlands had 8 fatalities per billion kms ridden compared to 21 in the UK; the primary reason for the increased fatality rates in the Netherlands has been attributed by experts to the massive uptake in ebikes (47% of new bikes sold in NL are now ebikes compared to 10% in the UK), particularly amongst the older population, nothing to do with the infrastructure.
leedorney 2 hours ago
It used to be great price this, but they played the ace marketing card and got the popularity and now...
jackcycles 4 hours ago
Many thanks for posting these statistics and showing the downward trend in fatalities. One thing that stood out for me when clicking through to the government statistics page is the UK's exemplary record on this Vs other European countries, especially the much-vaunted record of The Netherlands, which actually shows twice as many fatalities as the UK per million of the population. The question that arises is therefore: why are the greens and other left-wing parties so keen to adopt an inferior and more dangerous road system when ours is obviously working well? It smacks of a need to regulate people's lives and curtail freedom. We need to stop these idiotic Dutch roundabouts and segregated cycling infrastructure, and get people sharing the road in a fair and equal manner, when the statistics show it's safer to do so. (Chart shows road fatalities per million population)
ChasP 4 hours ago
That's where the convertible aspect comes in. I've got a gravel bike but the canal I sometimes commute on has roots under the tarmac and barriers. The mtb with 'drops' is more comfortable for this and fits through the barriers. If I want to do something more technical I can put the flat bars on.
wtjs 19 hours ago
@FionaJJ These officers deployed next-level stupidity, and it must be difficult for the police to find people this dim. It doesn't even need rolling-roads or whatever, just a reputable bike computer on a quickly changed mount for the difficult cases where a proper EAPC has been modded, although you would need to look hard in Lancashire to find a police officer who knows how to make a pedal cycle go. Most illegal electric motorbikes are immediately obvious, not least because the crim is wearing a face mask. I saw an obvious one tonight coming out of Garstang Sainsbury's, not pedalling but without a face mask because everybody knows that the police only come into the town to hide away in the police station 200 yards away.
bikeman01 21 hours ago
Gustav Gullholm.. that's not a good look mate
9 thoughts on “Live blog – Driver fined for giving cyclist brother a tow, bus driver cuts in on cyclists, road.cc wins an award and much, much more”
The government knew full well
The government knew full well that phone driving was just as likely to kill as drink driving but imposed a much smaller punishment, a hundred pound fine and three penalty points. Understandably, most drivers took the chance, the very small chance, of being caught. Now they are so used to doing it that doubling the punishment has made no difference. The punishment should be the same as for drink driving.
And the same for hands-free, which causes exactly the same distraction as hand held.
Let’s be honest here, the
Let’s be honest here, the research shows phone use at the wheel to be more dangerous than drink driving. And texting or using a phone for Internet use is more dangerous still. The fact is that the penalties we have, six points for phone use at the wheel compared with 12 for drink driving, do not relfect the actual risk. This is part of the problem. Until the penalties match the risk, drivers won’t take them seriously. For using a phone at the wheel to make a call, the penalty should be 12 points and a 12 month ban, as for DUI. For using a phone to send texts or use the internet, the penalty should be a mandatory two year ban. Hands-free kits nee to be banned, as research shows them to be no safer. Check the TRL and FHWA or NHTSA websites. There are plenty of studies.
The police also need to be more open to receiving video use of drivers using phones at the wheel and committing other offences for charging drivers. There simply aren’t enough traffic officers, thanks to Theresa May’s budget cuts to the police.
Surely hanging onto a car to
Surely hanging onto a car to get a lift from someone you know is only a momentary lapse in concentration and not dangerous so should be totally let off, them’s the rules innit?
I just rode to the hospital for a check up appt at 4pm, wasn’t too bad going but driving tiny flakes of snow on the way back on open country roads was certainly stinging a bit so feel Kwia’s pain
Oh and still morons drive too fast and cut the corners even though the roads are slippery, fucktards!
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
Who is it that you think got the fine?
Apart from that, it is a conscious decision by both parties.
hirsute wrote:
Oh FFS!
let me spell it out seeing as you dont ‘get it’
We often see/read the ‘momentary lapse of concentration’ defence, and judges so often like to use in summation when protecting motorists and hand out lean sentences despite having killed or maimed someone so are anything but. They are conscious decions to do something inherrantly dangerous but are glossed over massively.
Pease learn what sarcasm and tongue incheek means!
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
Who is it that you think got the fine?
Apart from that, it is a conscious decision by both parties.
— hirsute Oh FFS! let me spell it out seeing as you dont ‘get it’ We often see/read the ‘momentary lapse of concentration’ defence, and judges so often like to use in summation when protecting motorists and hand out lean sentences despite having killed or maimed someone so are anything but. They are conscious decions to do something inherrantly dangerous but are glossed over massively. Pease learn what sarcasm and tongue incheek means!— BehindTheBikeshedsYou do post quite a number of angry posts, so it’s hard to know if you are being sarcastic. As it is, it was the driver that was fined, not the cyclist, so your orginal post doesn’t make sense.
I pretty much agree with the
I pretty much agree with the comments regarding needing proper penalties, and the need to get the resources to enforce the rules in the first place, although there are a couple of minor things
– the hands-free/hand-held thing may be a bit of a red herring as far as distraction/danger due to loss of attention is concerned; research seems to have shown it’s the amount of cognitition required during the phone use – spoken or otherwise – that looks to be the major pertinent safety factor. Similar presumably can be said about conversations in the car itself. The other wrinkle with having a phone in your hand, unfortunately not qualified that i’ve seen, is that any required interaction with the vehicle will necessarily be slower and unlikely to be as precise or controlled as it may otherwise be. Phone holders are a debate in themselves, I’d happily ban headsets and the like myself though.
– personally I have no problem with someone glancing at sat-navs on phones, when appropriate and safe, nor engaging in brief conversations when the vehicle is stationary for a period of time, e.g. at traffic lights as long as they remain aware of surroundings and act accordingly and their attention is fully on driving immediately prior to, and after, moving off. Safety is the prime concern but 2 years ban for texting Auntie Bessie to say you’ll be late, stationary with the hand-brake on in your 45 minute queue on the Portway would seem a bit harsh and un-necessary to me, .. however it’s also difficult to formulate effective rules that reflect safe-use and common sense without comprimising them.
fukawitribe wrote:
You may want to look at the studies carried out by the TRL. There is a big diference between speaking with passengers in a car and on a phone according to research. Basically, when a driver is speaking with passengers in a car and requires mental processing effort to handle a situation on the road, the person defaults to the driving task and pauses the conversatio. Conversely, when speaking on a phone and also requiring mental effort to deal with a situation in the road, the person’s brain processing prioritises the phone conversation. The TRL has a report on this and so does the NHTSA in the US and the European ETSC. Check the websites of all three.
As for using a phone while stopped in traffic, research also shows that after speaking on a phone it takes around one minute for mental processing to be able to refocus on driving. The time delay is longer for texting or Internet use. Again, the TRL, ETSC and NHTSA websites will have links to the studies into those if you want to search for them.
So yes, a two year ban for texting at the wheel would be appropriate, even in the driver is stopped in a traffic queue.
I do a lot on road safety for my job. I’m up to date with the latest research into driver distraction.
OldRidgeback, nice.
OldRidgeback, nice.