On 3 Jan, 22:36, Nick <
[email protected]> wrote:
> Martin Dann wrote:
> >http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/matt_seaton/2008/01/parris_je_ne_...
>
> > Seems a well written, balanced repost to parris's peice, although some
> > of the comments are a bit OT, e.g. "cyclists kill 80 pedestrians a year"
>
> > Martin.
>
> That sounds like a reasonable ball park figure.
>
> Does anyone know the equivalent global per annum figure for pedestrians
> killed by cars?
That's garbage , one person has been killed by a cyclist in the last
year- and that's in ALL circumstances, including a pedestrian running
into the road.
A survey by the RAC found that, yes, a lot of cyclists run red lights.
It also found that one in ten drivers in Manchester and London crossed
traffic lights more than three seconds after the lights turned red,
and one in five bus drivers ran red lights. There are ten thousand
traffic light camera prosecutions annually in London alone, a small
part of the 1.5 million prosecutions annually based on camera evidence
(I don't know what proportion are speed versus red lights), in turn
the tip of the iceberg of twelve million prosecutions and cautions for
motoring offences by UK police forces in 2002.
Lawbreaking, then, is not restricted to bikes. Motorists break the law
in vast numbers. Speeding, in particular , is rife, and despite the
evidence that the faster you go the more likely you are to kill or be
killed if you crash, when speed cameras are erected we don't laugh at
the idiots who get caught, we rail against the "stealth tax" on
motorists.