My August Rides (week 30)

A stationary vehicle cannot kill.

I have been thinking about cycling safety and safely this week. I have picked up some interesting and quite alarming stories from the blogs and forums which has set my mind working. As always there seems to be extensive criticism of motorists and I am sure they are fully justified.

Now don’t get me wrong when I say that it isn’t all one way here. Some driving is little short of outrageous; the antics of the idiot I mentioned in my week 28 blog being a case in point. But this is not all one way traffic (if you’ll pardon the pun). Some of the cycling antics I see on my commuting journeys make me cringe with embarrassment.

Clearly, on both sides of the ‘divide’ (more on that word in a minute), there are some who know no better. As motorists they should not have (and perhaps have not) passed a driving test and as cyclists they have never received any formal ‘road-craft’ training.


But many are just flouting the law; they live in their own little world of me, me and self, self. They give not a jot for the world beyond. And that’s just the way they are and the world is. There is no sensible level of regulation over peoples driving / riding habits Even as a motorist the chances of being prosecuted for an infringement are minimal; for a cyclist they are non existent.

So we have a situation where a large proportion of road users are; untrained, should not have been trained or in need of further training; are unqualified, under qualified or unfit to achieve a qualification, and no-one is doing anything about it. Collectively we are in control of millions of tons of dangerous metal, powered by billions of horsepower, with inadequate understanding of how to drive / ride safely and no legal constraint.

It is against this back-ground that I turn my mind to our safety.

What is needed is a bit of self discipline, a will to get along; to live and let live. A minute ago I suggested that I would return to the word ‘divide’. This I feel is actually part of the problem. We are afflicted by an attitude of ‘us and them’. Surely this cannot be healthy at any level. Somehow we are all in this together and if we just showed a little tolerance, patience and co-operation things would be a whole lot safer for everyone. Now you may think, in a self-righteous sort of way, that it is the motorists that have got to adjust their attitudes to come into line with us cyclists, and here you would be absolutely wrong. Once again returning to the forums and blogs it is pretty clear that some cyclists are as much addicted to speed as our motoring counterparts. OUR ROADS ARE NOT RACE TRACKS AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS SUCH; not by motorists nor by cyclists. If you want to race then for cars its Silverstone and for cyclists its the velrodome.

Roads are links which enable human communication on a personal level. For high-speed communication we have the telephone and the internet. Roads are for slower but more personal face to face type connections. The operative word here is slower. If we all travelled just a little more patiently and a bit more slowly, just gave ourselves just a little more time to get where we want to go then the world would instantly become a more peaceful place.

This has to be a collective and proportionate slow-down. Obviously motor vehicles are designed to travel much faster than bikes. So I would expect to see a greater speed decrease for cars and lorries than for cyclists. But I do think it should be across the board. When I read on the forums about the speeds that some of my fellow commuters achieve on their journeys I am left wondering how they must treat other road users and all too often I see the evidence for myself. The ‘Get out of my way I’m coming through’, the ‘Get out of MY ASL area’, the ‘This is a cycle lane. What are you doing in it?' attitude prevails. If everyone made a cut of 10% in their speed I am sure their would be at least an equivalent increase in peoples enjoyment of travelling.

Something for you to have a think about: there is one single common factor in every single traffic accident – SPEED. A stationary vehicle of any description cannot kill.

Ladies and Gentlemen I shall be returning to this theme in my future blogs. In the meantime I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

And finally my stats which are for my information rather than yours but here they are if you’re interested:

Rides this week: 5
Miles this week: 117.14
Weekly Average: 3.1
Public transport days: 0
Oyster costs: £0.00

As you can see this has been another solid week for cycling.


TyT