"Tony Raven" <
[email protected]> wrote:
| Patrick Herring wrote:
| >
| > How about the willingness of the driver to take more risks, believing as they might that the
| > cyclist has the main vulnerability covered in the case of a collision with them?
|
| I have to say if I analyse my own perceptions as a driver I tend to see a car as a car, not
| another driver, but a cyclist I see as a person, helmeted or not. If I hit a car I'll see a body
| panel crumple, if I hit a cyclist I'll see a person crumple. I don't want to see the latter happen
| and it would not make me feel better that the person hitting my windscreen had a helmet - I still
| see a person hitting my windscreen. Maybe I'm atypical but I don't think so.
This is exactly the sort of question the DTR should fund research into.
The odd nutter aside I'm convinced that motorists don't want to cause death or injury and do see
cyclists as people as you describe (and I agree with how other drivers tend to appear). The context
I'm aware of as a cyclist and as a driver is what things influence road behaviour and what kinds of
behaviour can lead to situations where you effectively cause things you don't want to happen. It's
not at all difficult to find yourself driving too fast to avoid causing an "accident", should other
road users do the unanticipated. So I suppose I'm claiming that there is an effect from cycle
helmets which reduces the safety margin drivers expect to observe, and that reduction can lead them
into situations they wouldn't have wanted to be in had their sense of danger been better informed or
judged. This is all a bit imponderable, though it is the way I bet.
--
Patrick Herring, Sheffield, UK
http://www.anweald.co.uk
