Wiltshire cyclist, 71, killed following collision involving lorry

Jem PT wrote:

RIP, but the A303 just east of Solstice Park Services is a high speed dual carriageway road, with a fair climb when heading east. Not one I would consider cycling on personally.

You're having a laugh surely? Don't blame someone for getting hit for cycling on a road they are legally entitled to cycle on. 

Htc wrote:

Jem PT wrote:

RIP, but the A303 just east of Solstice Park Services is a high speed dual carriageway road, with a fair climb when heading east. Not one I would consider cycling on personally.

You're having a laugh surely? Don't blame someone for getting hit for cycling on a road they are legally entitled to cycle on. 

I regularly do a detour to avoid it - when I'm driving.

It's a complete bloody racetrack, particularly in that section as people MGIF to join the queue a few cars further along going past Stonehenge. And if you're heading east drivers tend to floor it as it goes back to NSL.

I guess it's all about what personal risk assessment you make, but I wouldn't ride, entitled or not, on a road full of lorries doing 60mph and an outside lane running at 80mph+

kil0ran wrote:

Htc wrote:

Jem PT wrote:

RIP, but the A303 just east of Solstice Park Services is a high speed dual carriageway road, with a fair climb when heading east. Not one I would consider cycling on personally.

You're having a laugh surely? Don't blame someone for getting hit for cycling on a road they are legally entitled to cycle on. 

I regularly do a detour to avoid it - when I'm driving.

It's a complete bloody racetrack, particularly in that section as people MGIF to join the queue a few cars further along going past Stonehenge. And if you're heading east drivers tend to floor it as it goes back to NSL.

I guess it's all about what personal risk assessment you make, but I wouldn't ride, entitled or not, on a road full of lorries doing 60mph and an outside lane running at 80mph+

I hear what you're saying. I've used the A303 a lot over the years. The dual carriageway sections are used by fast flowing traffic. I don't mind driving along it in my car or on my motorbike, but there's no way you'd catch me riding it on one of my bikes. It may be legal to do so, but that doesn't make it safe. The A303 carries heavy traffic volumes and vehicles using it will be driving it 60-70mph. Even if someone passes you with a decent gap, which many don't, they'll be coming past quite legally at 60-70mph (and possibly more illegally). No thanks.

My condolences to the family of the person killed. I lost family mebers recently and I understand how devastating this can be.

alansmurphy wrote:

Phil, as brooksby says, too much main stream media influence shapes people's perceptions which in turn leads to more cyclists getting killed.

 

How many times has a car hit a cyclist or pedestrian rather than focus on the human driving it and the lack of care they showed een conveniently ignored?

the same happens for any road incident, be it car, lorry, bus or bicycle that collide. Commonsense tells you there are people using them. What you are expecting from the media is to show partiality and draw conclusions which I suspect is something you’d rather they did not do. The reporting style has been designed to avoid that, to describe the incident without identifying the parties involved or apportioning blame because these matters can go to trial and you don’t want to prejudice the outcome by influencing public opinion. It’s not about convenience or bias at all, but avoiding bias. Reporting of trial outcomes is quite different, the facts have been established by the court and you can use real names when describing the incident that led to the court’s decision. There’s no bias at that point, you’re just reporting a matter of public record.

I guess you dont see the hypocrisy when you refer to “mainstream media” rather than journalists as people who write the reports. And blaming them for the way drivers behave on the road is an absurd conclusion. The stories come after the incidents, not before. If you want the blame put where it belongs, you’re not helping by shooting the messenger.

Philh68 wrote:

alansmurphy wrote:

Phil, as brooksby says, too much main stream media influence shapes people's perceptions which in turn leads to more cyclists getting killed.

How many times has a car hit a cyclist or pedestrian rather than focus on the human driving it and the lack of care they showed een conveniently ignored?

the same happens for any road incident, be it car, lorry, bus or bicycle that collide. Commonsense tells you there are people using them. What you are expecting from the media is to show partiality and draw conclusions which I suspect is something you’d rather they did not do. The reporting style has been designed to avoid that, to describe the incident without identifying the parties involved or apportioning blame because these matters can go to trial and you don’t want to prejudice the outcome by influencing public opinion. It’s not about convenience or bias at all, but avoiding bias. Reporting of trial outcomes is quite different, the facts have been established by the court and you can use real names when describing the incident that led to the court’s decision. There’s no bias at that point, you’re just reporting a matter of public record.

I guess you dont see the hypocrisy when you refer to “mainstream media” rather than journalists as people who write the reports. And blaming them for the way drivers behave on the road is an absurd conclusion. The stories come after the incidents, not before. If you want the blame put where it belongs, you’re not helping by shooting the messenger.

It is always* a cyclist who hit a pedestrian, or who jumped a red light, not a bicycle.

It is always* a car which mounted the pavement, not the motorist who drove it there.

It is always* a car which turned on its roof, and very rarely the motorist who lost control of their clearly wild and untamed motor vehicle.

It's always* a cyclist hit by a bus, not a bicycle hit by a bus.

(*Disclaimer - not always)

(The MSM jibe is silly, BTW, and not comparable - it is generally understood that "mainstream media" is a shorthand used by people who do not want to have to cut-and-paste an explicit list of newspapers or television stations or of named journalists only for someone to shout "Ha! Your argument is completely invalid because you missed off xxxx!")

Philh68 wrote:

... I know where you are coming from, we are always depersonalising motor vehicle fatalities and refer to machines not people, but it does the same thing when we make it about semantics and not the people affected.

No it doesn't.  Language shapes how we see the world, and (IMO - YMMV) the almost constant references to apparently self-driving motor vehicles shapes how the non-cycling population think about cyclists 

alansmurphy wrote:

Was a tricycle involved in a collision with a lorry or a cyclist on a tricycle involved in a collision with a driver of a lorry?

The article is actually correct; sadly. A man/(tri?)cyclist on a tricycle was involved in a collision with a lorry. He didn’t collide with the driver. The result that cyclist and their machines are in collision with vehicles (& not the drivers) explains the sad results and why a lot of drivers don’t give a sh#t.