Forum Replies Created
-
Replies
-
Single vehicle incident !
Let’s hope the passenger did a breathalyser test.
https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/24566748.police-car-crashed-outside-southend-victoria-station/
The traffic sign was not wearing any kind of protective equipment and is currently helping police with their enquiries. It has not presently been charged with any crime.
JLasTSR wrote:
With respect this is rubbish. It is a segregated lane with red lights for a pedestrian crossing and if the light is red you stop. Even if nobody is on the crossing. We all know that is the case. You can argue the timings are wrong or that the rule should be different, that is fine. To break the rule of law and say it is OK is just plain wrong, hideously conceited , and just bloody ridiculous. How cannot it not incense everyone. And I hate having to stop if I don’t have to for precisely the reasons you mention but flagrantly breaking the law is not something I would ever consider.If following a law puts me at greater risk of injury than not following it, then I put my safety first. However, lots of RLJing is done out of convenience and to save energy – that happens because traffic laws are seldom respected by other traffic (e.g. speeding, phone use etc) and so it seems pointless to obey traffic lights that don’t take cyclists into account.
Ultimately, if you don’t want people to break the law, then we need greater traffic policing so that people think that there’s a good chance that they’ll be caught sooner or later. I would happily wait at traffic lights if I knew that other traffic was taking care and not endangering me. (e.g. On a holiday in Copenhagen, it was surprising to see almost total compliance with traffic lights by pedestrians, cyclists and e-scooterists.)
Cyclists jumping red lights
Cyclists jumping red lights is a symptom of how traffic lights are designed for motor traffic and not for cyclists.
There’s plenty of instances where it’s safer for a cyclist to go through on red (when it’s clear, obviously) rather than wait with the motor traffic and then get left-hooked when the lights turn green.
It’d be worth having a look at how other countries try to prevent traffic lights becoming a burden for cyclists (e.g. having to stop and then accelerate back up to speed is energy intensive for commuters) by either providing separate infrastructure that doesn’t need to be controlled by lights or by amending laws such as the “Idaho Stop” to allow cyclists to use their own judgement on red lights.
Have a read of this fine article: https://road.cc/content/news/cyclists-rolling-through-stop-signs-isnt-safety-risk-310053
If cyclists are safer when they don’t always obey red lights, then what is the purpose of people insisting on cyclists having to obey them? To my mind, it’s simply to out-group cyclists and treat them as a problem rather than the solution (to health, congestion and polution).
Don’t touch my car!
Don’t touch my car!
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/man-banned-touching-cars-sheffield-29833148
It doesn’t surprise me at all
It doesn’t surprise me at all as the BBC don’t particularly care about reporting guidelines as they deal with their own complaines (i.e. send an email a month after the complaint detailing that they’re either ignoring it or will change the details for a month old article that no-one will come across and read again). They are bastions of motonormativity and it’s rare that they can have an article featuring cyclists without it being focussed on helmet use.
Here’s the guidelines: https://www.rc-rg.com/guidelines
It does, doesn’t it?Were they aiming for a big flat open field, or did they misjudge how wide the road was?
I think they were aiming to stay in the air a bit longer. A witness said that it “looked like it stalled and nose-dived into the main road”.
Still, any landing that you can walk away from is a good landing.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/local-news/plane-crashes-a419-gloucestershire-inches-9513927
(That pic looks like it’s photoshopped)
Overtaking and passing are two different things. Overtaking a moving vehicle and crossing a solid line is illegal. Passing a parked car and crossing a solid white line could well be regarded as necessary; therefore legal, otherwise all cars would be unable to get past obstructions.
In this particular case the cyclist appears to have priority regardless of whether the lines are broken or solid.I like to apply a simple rule to determine who has priority – the person performing a maneouvre should give way to the person travelling in their lane.
Absolute nutters – anyone who uses a unicycle to get somewhere – and the world is a much better place for themI used to commute to work on a unicycle, but it was only a couple of miles and part of that was on the Bristol-Bath cycle path. When I moved house, I got put off by having to deal with my journey being mainly on the road (or having to deal with lots of kerbs if using the pavement). That’s when I started using a bike instead.
That’s a lot of pedalling, unless they’ve got touring ones!(Yes, you could add gears also, for a price…)
That geared hub is expensive!
Absolutely, I did the calculation at the time and worked out that the extra reaction time at that distance for the motor speed limit of 20 mph instead of the cyclist’s alleged 30 mph would be seven hundredths of a second (0.22 vs 0.14) and neither speed would give sufficient time for a reaction.(It was Regent’s Park btw)
I roughly worked out the speed at which a cyclist could stop within 2m and it was about 3mph or so.
You don’t need to judge the
You don’t need to judge the speed of a cyclist to figure out if it’s safe to step out in front of it – just go by how far away they are and treat them like you would a driver. IIRC, the Richmond Park collision had the pedestrian step out only 2m in front of the cyclist which would be reckless for just about any speed of cyclist. The whole focus on the cyclist’s speed and “racing” is just a diversion as neither is at all relevant.
This morning’s Sun has a long op-ed by Howard Cox of Fair Fuel UK, complaining about how people being fined for being in a hatched yellow junction box is apparently an evil and ongoing war on motorists, so I suspect that old habits don’t exactly die easily…That doesn’t even make any sense. The yellow junction box rule is to prevent traffic getting jammed up at those junctions, so it helps motorists if the rule is enforced so that traffic can flow better. I mean, are they suggesting that drivers want to sit in a queue behind a car blocking the junction?
Does a ditch count as a
Does a ditch count as a building?
Driverless car heads for a ditch on the M5: https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/local-news/car-careers-m5-ends-up-9477717
Rachel Reeves is mulling unfreezing the fuel duty escalator which could generate £3bn annually.Here’s an idea:
Charge fuel duty not just on volume of fuel but also based on engine size and/or fuel consumption in order to encourage motorists to buy less powerful and more efficient cars, and generate tax revenue to pay for government services such as child benefit.
To achieve this, at the filling station, ANPR is used for example to capture the registration plate, which is then used to look up the amount of fuel duty payable in a similar way to other road/vehicle pricing schemes such as LTNs, ULEZ and congestion charging. This technology is becoming ubiquitous.
Filling stations would then make a regular fuel duty return to HMRC.
I doubt this would see an end to 6.3 V8 twin turbo 4×4 supercars being used for the school run and harrassing other road users, but it would help.
That seems over complicated as putting tax on the amount of fuel would automatically provide an incentive to drive less or use more efficient vehicles.
However, I can see an issue with the poorer demographic being penalised for not being able to afford to change to a more efficient vehicle. Maybe have an amount of fuel duty reclaimable for low incomes?
