Live blog: Giro towns turn pink, South Yorkshire Police targeting close pass drivers + extreme wheelie video
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Tue, Jan 23, 2018 15:00
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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
Blackthorne83 42 minutes ago
Of all the things to morally police on the internet this is a bit ambitious.
chrisonabike 52 minutes ago
@Blackthorne83 Come on. He's already on a fact-free transport diet...
chrisonabike 54 minutes ago
@mdavidford Good spot - it was my zero - one - many thinking there. And were things to get imaginary we could have drivers rotating around the complex plane...
Mr Blackbird 57 minutes ago
Jason Perry is a high functioning, dynamic achiever. And he is only 23. In addition to tackling such a high volume of active transport projects, he recently completed an Airfix B29 Superfortress kit - admittedly he did glue one of the wings on upside down with the engines facing backwards.
quiff 1 hour ago
Nick, brake to a stop. Now take your foot off the brake. No, don't put it on the accelerator. Now what speed are you doing? If it's more than 20, drive to a garage.
mdavidford 2 hours ago
@chrisonabike I think we probably do need a finer grained approach than power-of-ten speed limits, unless you're going to allow for fractional powers, which is going to put an excessive cognitive load on the poor old drivers...
mdavidford 3 hours ago
Were you always missing the first period?
chrisonabike 3 hours ago
@Rendel Harris indeed, but giving this a sympathetic reading it *is* a bit harder to see cyclists especially in low light conditions. I think this usually means "I was a bit startled when I noticed cyclists where not expecting them / so late that if I had needed to I wouldn't have had time for evasive action". That might be when unlit non-reflective cyclists appear from a side road - or where people are salmoning against traffic flow / on and off the footway. We all have tons of experience looking for motor vehicles and are familiar with where they'll be and how they will move. Cyclists are significantly smaller, have more complicated shapes and may not be exactly "where we expect the motor vehicles". They may be moving at unexpected velocities. Plus even if cars don't have their lights on they tend to reflect. I put this one in the "follow the opposite philosophy to 'shared space' for better safety" category. That is: safety between road users is enhanced when a) people can clearly see other road users b) and have as much time as possible to deal with them c) and know exactly where to expect them / what to expect from those other road users. Most humans perform very poorly when faced with the unfamiliar and worse when startled...
chrisonabike 3 hours ago
@ajuk.uk@gmail.com "There does seem to be evidence that 20 mph limits work on roads that already lend themselves to such low speeds, and I do think the lack of a 25 mph limit option is an issue for some roads." Again - not disagreeing that numbers alone are not the best way. But I ask: were people already doing 20mph or near that when those roads that "lend themselves" to that speed had a 30mph sign? I would expect in most cases the answer was "no, people saw thirty and that primed them for the 'expected' speed". Or perhaps "they hadn't noticed the signs at all but it seemed like e.g. a residential area and they recalled from all those years back 30mph probably made sense"? Since we've previously gone through the evidence * that merely changing a number on a sign *does* in fact change behaviour and lower average speeds, and AFAICS nobody has proposed a "a set amount" they hope it will constrain people to ... ... is it fair you're disputing the evidence because it doesn't fit with how you feel it *should* work / your local experience? Or do you believe that eventually everyone will revert back to the old speed or higher because 'freedom' or because nobody's actually getting nicked for ignoring the limit? (And if the latter - what's the point of proposing that the speed limits should help with policing, if there aren't the police?) While I can believe that the truly reckless and *some* less circumspect wrong'uns are more likely also to wildly speed, I think this assertion needs more scrutiny **. As for "forcing the police to target them" I think it's been amply illustrated on this site that many of the police don't feel forced into doing much if any enforcement on the roads (see wtjs etc.). Even where they are more active the level of enforcement isn't such to make many drivers worry about "what happens if I break the law *and* get caught?" I don't feel we need 25 or 32 or other intermediate speed limits. In practice where there's enforcement at all there *may* be the discretionary 10% + a few mph in play - so you might even be fine and not fined doing 35mph in a 30mph limit. But you're far more likely simply not to experience any enforcement. And even if you are detected it's still first chance, then maybe any number of 2nd, 3rd etc. with a reasonable lawyer / sympathetic magistrate. Although if you feel the most important thing is to identify indifferent drivers (and assuming we've got enough police / cameras / "spy in the car" black boxes from somewhere) then having lots of non-power-of-ten speed limit signs might be a way to spot who's paying attention or not. Or ... if we changed to km/h (imagine!) you get a finer-grained 10 / 20 / 30 etc. * The last time this topic came up, or the time before! ** I don't know if anyone has studied this, but I'm not sure of the relative amounts of harm caused by a) a small minority of reckless joyriders and "sod getting a licence" types (who *are* very likely to cause serious harm) and b) vastly more "average reasonable drivers" - who are human and thus cut corners and sometimes make unfathomable errors - who cause damage (up to killing people and destroying buildings) at a small but definitely non-zero rate overall. It wouldn't surprise me if the overall determinant of harm turned out to be simply proportional to the number of drivers times time driven for times some measure of speed. (Since speed reduces both time to do something about a situation and increases the harm, absent a lot of engineering to mitigate it - e.g. evidence shows motorways are statistically safe environments).
belugabob 4 hours ago
Now the wands are gone, I look forward to the cycling lanes being cleaned regularly - and not parked in (thereby leaving plenty of room for the buses and emergency vehicles) (all to delivered before Coventry win the FA cup again)
11 thoughts on “Live blog: Giro towns turn pink, South Yorkshire Police targeting close pass drivers + extreme wheelie video”
So, 2 in 3 drivers think
So, 2 in 3 drivers think they’ll get away with ‘careless’ driving.
This rather gives the lie to a lot of what is seen as (and comes before the courts as) so called careless driving.
How can you premeditate a ‘lack of care’ and make a judgement about the likelihood of getting caught?
As I, and I’m sure a lot of readers, have long suspected, ‘careless’ driving is often calculated and deliberate risk taking, conscious omission (E.g. indicating), plain old ignorance, impatience and bad manners and a perfectly predictable endangerment of other road users.
Driving above the speed limit
Driving above the speed limit, driving through a red light, driving whilst under the influence of drink or drugs, using a mobile phone whilst driving – all these are against the law.
I could (I wouldn’t however) drive around my local area, North Somerset, whilst on my mobile phone and speeding and I am very confident wouldn’t get caught.
Why? Because I can’t remember the last time I saw a police car patrolling here. There is very little, if any, enforcement for most traffic offences.
I do hope most drivers think
I do hope most drivers think the way I do and the survey has picked that up. I too think it would be unlikely that I got caught doing some of thes things, I still never would think of doing them :-/
Having driven and ridden
Having driven and ridden bikes and cars since the early 80’s I think it’s pretty much always been the case that the odds were low that you’d get caught. What has changed is the nature of the stupidity.
We have less drink driving https://www.drinkdriving.org/drink_driving_statistics_uk.php but we now have the curse of the mobile phone (which may actually be worse http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1885775.stm). I also suspect that the problem of exceeding speed limits in urban areas https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/623261/vehicle-speed-compliance-statistics-2016.pdf is now worse than it used be because of traffic volume, cameras and the cars being much faster.
Overall, as someone who is a “techie” I find it hard to understand why we do not automate compliance. Why on earth do we still allow new cars to be sold that are capable of exceeding speed limits on our roads and people to use mobile phones whilst driving. Both are (and have been for a number of years) very very fixable problems e.g. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/5300462/Speed-restricted-car-a-review.html, https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208090 It’d be a prime opportunity for a government to grab a technical world lead in such systems, we just need one to show a bit of leadership and care more about its citizens than pleasing the automotive lobby.
shufflingb wrote:
I can’t remember which manufacturer it was, but one of the interviewees on Radio 5 this morning said they had a car that detected they had a mobile phone and automatically placed it into “Do not disturb” mode as soon as they got in.
As for auto-compliance on speed, I agree in principle but … in some circumstances it is safer to accelerate out of trouble rather than brake and it would be foolish to remove that option from drivers because they were already at the speed limit.
And, even if manufacturers were only permitted to sell cars that couldn’t exceed 70mph, they could still wreak havoc in a 20/30/40mph zone.
The only way to make enforced speed limits work would be to build electronic speed controls into our roads that limited the top speed of the cars driving along it. Installing that across the whole road network would be a nightmare.
Whilst I am sure there are some theoretical circumstances where a burst of acceleration might avoid an accident, I have never experienced such a thing in 50+ years on the road in almost all categories of vehicle. I have however, permanently etched on my memory, several horrific collisions where excess speed was a major factor.
I would actually go further than a speed limit and I’d also support an acceleration limit that removed the temptation to outsprint the other driver to the next set of lights. If all cars could only manage 0 – 60 in, for example, 20 seconds what a relaxed world it could be.
mike the bike wrote:
Whilst I am sure there are some theoretical circumstances where a burst of acceleration might avoid an accident, I have never experienced such a thing in 50+ years on the road in almost all categories of vehicle. I have however, permanently etched on my memory, several horrific collisions where excess speed was a major factor.
I would actually go further than a speed limit and I’d also support an acceleration limit that removed the temptation to outsprint the other driver to the next set of lights. If all cars could only manage 0 – 60 in, for example, 20 seconds what a relaxed world it could be.— shufflingb
I agree. The only situation I can think of where a burst of acceleration might avoid an accident is during a misjudged over-taking manoeuvre. In which case if the driver hadn’t f****d it up in the first place it would not be necessary.
Jetmans Dad wrote:
Excuse me, I have something called a sat nav in my car and it displays the local speed limit. Link that to the car computery thing and tell it not to speed whatever the limit.
Electronic speed controls in the road………. what?
Just had a thought though, it would be brilliant, the day it came into force there would be zero car sales and dealers would be falling over themselves to sell cars.
grumpyoldcyclist wrote:
May sat nav displays the wrong speed limit on some roads, but compliance woukd rise to 98% instead of probably about 50% at the moment.
On the contrary, only today I
On the contrary, only today I was driving along to find red and white barriers and “BRIDGE OUT!” blocking the road. Fortunately I was able to accelerate out of trouble, and I cleared the creek and made it to the County Line.
50%, a bit optimistic. Drive
50%, a bit optimistic. Drive at the speed limit, see how many overtake or the large queue that will form behind.