"JNugent" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> > your criteria fall a long way short of either of those conditions. The specific instance of the
> > 4x4 driver with two wheels on the pavement driving briskly to bypass a queue at traffic lights
> > is undoubtedly an example of egregious pavement use, but you've carefully excluded it.
> Not at all. It is merely that I was comparing like with like.
Right, so I condemn without reservation all users of cycles which are not less than five feet wide
and with four wheels, cycling at 30mph with all four wheels on the footway. Like with like.
> > In this case the pavement is not actually wide enough to acommodate the full width of the 4x4,
> > so even if he were to crush the bollards and put his left wheels right up to the retaining wall
> > he would still fail your test.
> If that sort of situation was anything other than the rarity it is
(assuming
> it exists at all, that is), it would be worth mentioning.
If it were as rare as you claim the council would not have needed to erect bollards.
> >> What none of us have ever seen - because it doesn't happen is a motor-vehicle merrily trundling
> >> along a footway at 30mph, four wheels on the pavement.
> > I've never seen a bike doing 30mph on a pavement either.
> You have certainly seen many bicycles bowling along at their normal road speed on the footway.
> If you hadn't, you would not find it necessary to condemn it "even when legal", to use your
> own phrase.
I have never seen a bicycle travelling at anywhere near my normal road speed on a footway. One of
the reasons I consider shared use footways to be a work of Stan is that they slow you down.
> > We have, on the other hand, seen drivers screaming obscenities at cyclists who are on the
> > roadway, and in amongst the obscenities have been impolite requests to use the pavement. Seems
> > we can't win.
> Pull the other one.
Check the archives of uk.rec.cycling for more examples than you would ever want. One of the regulars
was assaulted with a missile (egg) last week.
> AAMOF though, the obscenity-screeaming cyclists do seem to have decreased
in
> the last year or two; possibly the too-tight Lycra was restricting the
flow
> of blood to their brains.
Ah, so it's fitness envy. I thought as much.
> > Me? I'm not the one laying down detailed (and in some cases impossible) criteria which must be
> > met before I'll condemn pavement cycling.
> There is nothing impossible about condemning footway cycling without reference to any other
> road users.
Nothing, other than the fact that it would be hypocritical, since I also drive - especially since
more poeple are killed on the footway by drivers in an average year than are killed or injured by
cyclists, despite the alleged prevalence of pavement cycling.
> I did it, and two other self-avowed cyclist contributors also did so.
So did I, in a thread in uk.rec.cycling while you were still happily under your bridge.
> The reason you say you "can't" condemn footway cyclists is that you don't *want to*.
No, the reason you *can't* accept my condemnation of pavament cyclists, along with all traffic
infractions by all road users, is that *you* don't want to.
> You aren't fooling anyone (except possibly yourself).
Nop, nobody is fooled at all. Everybody apart form you is entirely clear on my views on pavement
cycling. You aren't because you seem intent on exempting the major source of risk from the exercise,
which is either a futile exercise in self-delusion or an attempt to get me to raise hostages to
fortune. I'm not playing.
> >> And as you well know, I harbour no grudges towards law-abiding cyclists (who I consider to be
> >> in the majority outside Central and Inner London). It isn't *their* fault that the government
> >> has failed to ensure proper standards of training, a proper licensing system, compulsory
> >> insurance and compulsory tests of vehicle fitness and licensing for bicycles.
> > None of which are actually necessary for enforcement, as has been proven in Portsmouth recently.
> It isn't only *about* enforcement, though, it is?
This thread is.
> It is also about ensuring safety through improving standards, whether of vehicle maintenance or of
> cycling standards. And of ensuring that victims (whether of injury ot damage to property) can be
> properly and surely compensated. Those are reasonable, nay, modest, aims, aren't they?
Sadly I lack your inability to distinguish between the scale of risk posed by a defective cycle and
a defective car, so I can't join you in that perverse view.
--
Guy
===
WARNING: may contain traces of irony. Contents may settle after posting.
http://chapmancentral.demon.co.uk
