Cycling

[Suff]

I must admit that I have some fairly strong views on this. I have cycled in Europe on and off for more than 20 years. In fact Mrs S and I took the children on a cycling holiday through Belgium, Holland and Germany back in 88.

Whilst there is a good network of cycle tracks in Belgium and Holland, this tends to come apart when you reach the cities. Where roads were bulldozed and re-made by the Germans in WWII, the following years has seen excellent cycle management systems put in place. Where, on the other hand, the road systems have remained from before WWII, the situation is quite different. With cycle lanes crammed into roads which were never made to accommodate them.

Where whole families grow up on bikes, cycling sense is instilled from the beginning. But even then teenage hormones and rebellion take off and replace sense with stupidity. But, on the whole, the environment is much more sensible and much safer. Many of the drivers on the road are also cyclists in the evenings or weekends.

Contrast this with the UK. We did not have our towns and cities flattened in WWII. OK London and some of the larger cities were hit. But nothing like war raging over them in two directions. The second time with both sides fighting over land that was not theirs, with corresponding lack of concern to the damage inflicted. So the UK infrastructure has not been built with cycling in mind. You can't just expand roads which have pavement and houses on either side. You can't just take a chunk of the road and give it to a cyclist then expect everyone else to "just deal with it".

Even worse is that cramming the cyclists next to busses and trucks on the same road designed only for vehicles causes even worse proximity and also endows the cyclist with some kind of belief that the white lines they are cycling within are some kind of personal shield which will protect them from danger. God knows what they teach people in schools nowadays but 70kg of flesh and bone travelling at 15mph is always going to lose the argument with 500kg of steel and plastic travelling at 30mph. Or worse, 42 tonnes of steel and plastic.

Then there are the issues with cyclists not having a clue how vehicles have to travel on the road. Take a 22 Ton truck for example. It has a wheel, almost, on each corner. For a truck like that to go round a corner, it must go Past the corner before turning. So the cyclist, hammering to get through the lights, completely ignores the indicator on the truck, sees the front wheels heading past the junction and tries to pass it on the inside. See paragraph above for end result... It's even worse with an arctic of whatever tonnage. Then the truck driver is assumed to have been at fault. Even if s/he got there first, was indicating correctly and doing exactly what should be done. If the cyclist dies, the driver has to live with that and the press will always assume it was the fault of the driver.

A cycle is a road traffic vehicle. That's why you can lose your driving license for riding one drunk. Not because of the damage you can do, but because you are riding a vehicle on the roads whilst intoxicated.

People think that cycling can safely be increased just by painting a few lines and creating some new rules. What they forget is that if we double the number of cyclists on the roads, we will immediately double the number of cycling deaths on the roads every year. This is simple statistics as I tried to point out to a policeman who was ranting on at me about how Linconshire has twice the number of motorcycle deaths that most other counties have. He was not listening to the fact that he should be taking % of motorcyclists. Which was exactly the same.

So if we do have more cyclists, we will suddenly get the press ranting about how many more people are dying on cycles. Which will lead to stupid and draconian restrictions which will make congestion and traffic frustration much, much, worse.

So whilst I would like to see more cycling on the roads, I'd like to see the relationship of education of cyclists to the number of cyclists quadruple.... Or it's just another misery waiting to happen. The parents who simply put no time off to teach their children to ride sensibly, then lose the children to accidents, will always be looking for someone else to blame...

[cromwell]

You are talking a lot of sense there, Suff.

[TheOstrich]

Well said Suff, the cycle lanes painted on Birmingham's roads and the resulting narrowing of carriageways often make them difficult to observe.

According to wiki. the average speed of road cyclists in Copenhagen is a shade under 10 mph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance

With proposals to limit motor vehicle speeds across huge swathes of Birmingham to 20 mph, it's going to become exceedingly difficult for motorists to overtake cyclists safely ......

I would personally like to see a ban on all cyclists from travelling on roads designated over 20 mph.

[Kaz]

We took cycling oroficiency in our Primary school, it involved learning the Highway Code as well as how to cycle safely. Why do they no longer do that? I am sick to death, as a pedestrian, of dodging grown men and women, and teenagers, cycling on pavements when they should be on the road!

[Suff]

I can tell you part of that. Mrs S, who always ran the cycling proficiency when she was teaching, was asked to do it for a school within 6 months of resigning from teaching. She was still a registered teacher with all the checks.

She had to be child protection checked. She was incensed. Had she remained teaching she would have needed no check and, quite rightly to my mind, should have been able to continue in this way.

There are people who would probably volunteer for doing this kind of work, however when they hear the type of checks which are going to be carried out purely for a voluntary role, they decide not to go forward, even if they have nothing to hide.

A case of "child protection" leaving children unprotected. Yes there needs to be protection for children, but, in this case, children are being denied another kind of protection. Personally I used to help out with children's play scheme's when Mrs S ran them. Today I wouldn't even bother, not because I have anything to fear, but because I believe that the whole thing has gone completely overboard.

So children no longer get highway code, don't know how to deal with the roads and the roads themselves are ever more dangerous with a combination of high volumes of traffic and utter stupidity in town planners.

On the other hand, all my children and grandchildren have been through cycling proficiency. It's there if you want to find it. But you need to care.

If I recall correctly I've been riding bicycles since I was 3 years old. Yet I did my cycling proficiency. My parents would not have considered that I did not, even though I'd spent 3 years cycling in Cyprus without it....

I think it is less promotion from schools, less children in organisations which promote it and less engagement from parents who seem to think it's someone else's problem to solve....

Quick problem solver? Ban the bikes. Yep, that'll do it. It's dangerous you know so you shouldn't do it. I wonder which "enlightened" politician will first bring that one up???

[Kaz]

Ah, I can understand that. Can you believe this, that when my youngest Harry was younger and belonged to a group for disabled children that took them on trips and days out, myself and Mick were told that to accompany him we needed to be CRB checked, to accompany our own child

We actually got very cross about it, and refused on principal. I was as angry about that as I can remember being ever, in my whole life His dad went for it and he went on the trips after that.....

[Suff]

After that one time she never offered again. The first time she'd said yes before finding out about the checks. After that her position was this. She'd been a teacher for decades with a perfectly clean record, checked and tested when the checks came in.

To do this to her then was simply insulting and she was insulted. Everyone loses when idiots are in control of the rules. Sadly we seem to breed more and more idiots. Time to stop talking before I become bitter through tiredness....

[Kaz]

I agree with you

[Workingman]

Three of the most vulnerable groups of road users, per capita for KOSI incidents, are pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders. They have a few things in common.

None of them are forced by law:
* to be of a certain minimum age to be alone
* to have training or pass a test before using the roads
* to wear minimum standards protective clothing
* to carry insurance

Anybody see where some problems may lie?