11 things we’ve learnt this week

(Usual reference to speed being the major issue as kinetic energy goes up with the square of velocity / much greater braking distances required etc)

@mdavidford steady on - an 80kg cyclist on a 20kg bike would only need to be doing a little over 89mph to have the same kinetic energy as a 2 ton car at 20mph. So same ballpark, really...

Yes, although it may be telling us as much about decision fixation as it is about the impact of such statements. By asking them about their plans before viewing the adverts, they primed those who said they would consider an SUV to ignore or rationalise away information that pointed against that decision. Ideally, they would have had additional cohorts that were not asked in advance and therefore not committed to a position, for comparison.

"in --substantial-- slight excess of a speed limit considered to offer reasonable safety to vulnerable road users *from two tonne metal boxes*." FTFY

I think we have forgotten that cars do way more damage and we still haven’t got a comprehensive-lasting solution to deal with dangerous drivers

What's wrong with that? Most of the best comments here are silly ones. More often than not involving squirrels.

@Robert Hardy hard to evaluate that - what are you comparing to? Motor vehicles? But things are quite different: Obviously there are fundamental differences of speed (and acceleration) / size and audibility / visibility. Then there's behaviour - most people aren't trained (by experience) to expect cyclists. Most of us are educated then trained or perhaps to look for the *motor vehicles* though - sometimes such that people look straight through/past the cyclists. And of course even on roads cyclists aren't cycling exactly like drivers drive. But there are other things which make collisions more likely: given where people mostly cycle vs. where they drive I think it's far more likely that cyclists will "interact" with pedestrians. That factor only increases when you think that much UK "infra" is in fact simply signs legitimising the use of unchanged *pedestrian* infra by cyclists. And of course the UK also hosts other sub-optimal infra which may make things more problematic. Like cycle lanes at the side of the road (compare eg. a standard Dutch signalised crossing with a UK one). And in general "non-standard" designs which even if they aren't actively increasing danger aren't good because it may be unclear who is to go where and what they will be doing. Currently many people in the UK get so little exposure to cycle infra and cyclists they wouldn't get much chance to "learn" even if the designs were more standard.

@Bikebeer77 American Fork police being an example of the worst of USA police. Some interesting stuff on line.

I should know, I was one Must be why you're so good at writing bollocks, especially pro-police bollocks

the excuse that cycles are not fitted with speedometers seems very lame in this day and age The police just love their dodge that no cyclist speedometer is anything other than a worthless child's toy, rather like the bike it's monitoring, so I'm not keen on the idea that the b******s can suddenly choose to accept them when looking to victimise cyclists. LancsFilth initially said they couldn't do anything about offences like this because I 'might have been travelling at less than 10 mph which would make the manoeuvre legal '. https://upride.cc/incident/t27gjh_astra_dwlcross/ This was before they hit on the Master Dodge of just ignoring all reports of driver offences from cyclists.