OT: Rising Bollards - a reprise

[Matt B]

spindrift wrote:
>
> Only nutjob selfish clowns would oppose these life-saving measures.

Let's examine the evidence that cars pose more risk to pedestrians than
other vehicle types in urban situations.

From Road Casualties Great Britain 2005, the official government
publication of road casualty data, we can see from table 26 the accident
rates by vehicle type on urban (like Manchester City centre) roads:

Pedestrians killed or seriously injured per 100 million vehicle urban
kilometres by vehicle type:-

Light goods vehicle: 1.3
Pedal cycles: 1.6
Cars: 3.0
Heavy goods vehicle: 3.3
Motor cycles: 8.7
Buses and coaches: 11.4

The risk of a pedestrian being killed or seriously injured by a bus or
coach is 3.8 times greater than by a car.

Should we ban buses or cars from urban roads - you decide.

--
Matt B

 

[spindrift]

wafflycat wrote:
> "p.k." <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
> >
> > I guess the gist is the same as not being allowed to set hazard traps to
> > catch burglers or trespassers. Actions to prevent lawbreaking are not (by
> > law) allowed to deliberately put the lawbreaker at risk.
> >
> > pk
>
>
> But it's not a 'trap'. The damn things are made clear to motorists by
> *large* signs including a "no entry" one and "automatic bollards in
> operation" so it's hardly a trap.

It's no more a trap than a brick wall. The drivers are trying to cheat
the system and finally they are being asked to bear the cost rather
than the child they smear across the asphalt.


The bollards save lives, the reduction in pedestrian injuries alone is
worth rolling the system out to other cities.

 

[Alan Braggins]

Mark Thompson wrote:
>spindrift wrote in news:1164616145.626231.31340@
>14g2000cws.googlegroups.com:
>
>> As for H&S issues - I may split my sides! Does this count?
>
>Possibly. The Manchester Evening News reported that the council is
>breaking guidelines that say the bollards shouldn't rise up into a car.

And if you compare the video footage with the MEN version of the
driver's story, it's obvious the MEN hasn't a clue.

 

[spindrift]

Mark Thompson wrote:
> spindrift wrote in news:1164616145.626231.31340@
> 14g2000cws.googlegroups.com:
>
> > As for H&S issues - I may split my sides! Does this count?
>
> Possibly. The Manchester Evening News reported that the council is
> breaking guidelines that say the bollards shouldn't rise up into a car.
>
> The council pointed out that guidelines were only a guide, and they
> "probably wouldn't" be changing things.


The statistics speak for themselves - before the bollards, something
like one pedestrian injury a month, plus at least one death.

Since the bollards, zero pedestrian casualties.

 

[Matt B]

spindrift wrote:
> Mark Thompson wrote:
>> spindrift wrote in news:1164616145.626231.31340@
>> 14g2000cws.googlegroups.com:
>>
>>> As for H&S issues - I may split my sides! Does this count?
>> Possibly. The Manchester Evening News reported that the council is
>> breaking guidelines that say the bollards shouldn't rise up into a car.
>>
>> The council pointed out that guidelines were only a guide, and they
>> "probably wouldn't" be changing things.
>
>
> The statistics speak for themselves - before the bollards, something
> like one pedestrian injury a month, plus at least one death.

Do you have a source for that? A report from the Manchester City
council[1] about the bollards in Cross Street says that there were 9 KSI
collisions there in the 7 years since it reopened in 1999, mainly
involving buses. In the trial monitoring period there were 3 pedestrian
accidents, 2 of which involved buses, in the 5 months before the
bollards were installed, and none in the 6 months since up to the end of
July.

[1]
http://www.manchester.gov.uk/localdemocracy/committees/physenv/2006/1017/report03.pdf


--
Matt B

 

[Tony Raven]

Mark Thompson wrote on 27/11/2006 09:19 +0100:
> spindrift wrote in news:1164616145.626231.31340@
> 14g2000cws.googlegroups.com:
>
>> As for H&S issues - I may split my sides! Does this count?
>
> Possibly. The Manchester Evening News reported that the council is
> breaking guidelines that say the bollards shouldn't rise up into a car.
>
> The council pointed out that guidelines were only a guide, and they
> "probably wouldn't" be changing things.

And they don't rise up into a car. They rise up in front of the car and
when a car gets close, stop rising. Step through the video frame by
frame to see for yourself or alternatively I have posted some frame
grabs at http://www.flickr.com/photos/46913481@N00/

In the 4x4 case they actually stop and then retract.

--
Tony

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using
his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
- Leonardo da Vinci

 

[spindrift]

Alan Braggins wrote:
> Mark Thompson wrote:
> >spindrift wrote in news:1164616145.626231.31340@
> >14g2000cws.googlegroups.com:
> >
> >> As for H&S issues - I may split my sides! Does this count?
> >
> >Possibly. The Manchester Evening News reported that the council is
> >breaking guidelines that say the bollards shouldn't rise up into a car.
>
> And if you compare the video footage with the MEN version of the
> driver's story, it's obvious the MEN hasn't a clue.


Lazy hacks who take the motorist's side even when the video evidence
flatly contradicts what the driver claims. It's never the driver's
fault, it's the bollards, the weather, the speed camera, the bra
advert, the road.

What's that silly cow's solution? Her saving of twenty seconds of her
commute is worth scrapping the bollards and going back to the good old
days of 70 pedestrian injuries and one death?

 

[Mark Thompson]

Alan Braggins wrote in news:[email protected]:

> And if you compare the video footage with the MEN version of the
> driver's story

Have you got a link to that? The MEN coverage started off as neutral
reporting, then they went down strongly on the 'har har, look at the
idiots' side.

 

[Simon Brooke]

in message <[email protected]>, Alan Braggins
('[email protected]') wrote:

> In article <[email protected]>, Simon
> Brooke wrote:
>>in message <[email protected]>, MatSav <"matthew
>>| dot | savage | at | dsl | dot | pipex | dot | com"> ('') wrote:
>>
>>> David Hansen wrote:
>>>> Someone drove a car into the main railway station in Karlsruhe,
>>>> because his GPS apparently told him to do so...
>>>
>>> Not only that, the driver took his car UP a set of steps to reach the
>>> final destination!
>>>
>>> The link is in German, but the picture says it all...
>>> <http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/0,1518,443495,00.html>
>>>
>>It's a BMW. Now who would have thought it?
>
> IIRC, the driver who didn't notice there was actually a ferry where his
> GPS showed a bridge and drove into the river was also in a BMW.

Aber naturlich, mien kind. It is the Ultimate Driving Machine and is driven
only by Ultimate Drivers.

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

'You cannot put "The Internet" into the Recycle Bin.'

 

[spindrift]

> Do you have a source for that?

Can you stop being a ****** and watch the clip in the first post on
this sodding thread you dumb ass *****? Why spam threads you have no
interest in and clog up the threads with your asinine questions that
have already been answered. Back into killfile, ****.

 

[wafflycat]

"spindrift" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
>> Do you have a source for that?
>
> Can you stop being a ****** and watch the clip in the first post on
> this sodding thread you dumb ass *****? Why spam threads you have no
> interest in and clog up the threads with your asinine questions that
> have already been answered. Back into killfile, ****.
>

Even though I have TrollB kill-filed, I recognise a response to a TrollB
post!

 

[Chris Johns]

On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, Matt B wrote:

> The risk of a pedestrian being killed or seriously injured by a bus or coach
> is 3.8 times greater than by a car.

Not all that suprising. Given their task is to move people, they will
drive through some areas with lots of people, such as town centre. A HGV
is going to spend lots of its time on the motorway, where it's very
unlikely to meet a pedestrian!
--
Chris Johns

 

[Chris Johns]

On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, spindrift wrote:

> What's that silly cow's solution? Her saving of twenty seconds of her
> commute is worth scrapping the bollards and going back to the good old
> days of 70 pedestrian injuries and one death?

Of course. 20 seconds of her time is more important that one life and 70
injuries!
--
Chris Johns

 

[Chris Johns]

On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, wafflycat wrote:

> Perhaps the gist of that could be taken as 'don't inconvenience drivers' and
> 'pedestrians killed or injured by vehicles don't count as road users' :-(

They don't pay any "road tax" so of course not (see other thread).
--
Chris Johns

 

[Matt B]

spindrift wrote:
>> Do you have a source for that?
>
> Can you stop being a ****** and watch the clip in the first post on
> this sodding thread ...?

Thank you. I guess when you said 70 earlier in the thread it was an
honest mistake ;-)

Do you know if 66% of those casualties involved buses rather than cars -
as the ones in Cross Street did?

> Why spam threads you have no
> interest in

I don't and I won't. I try to get to the facts and ignore the hype,
fabrications and preconceptions.

> and clog up the threads with your asinine questions that
> have already been answered.

I apologise for asking the question - but, perhaps, when quoting facts
figures etc, you could clearly state the source to avoid
misunderstandings. When you said 70 earlier, I assumed you had another
source. If you had said "70 in 4 years, from the BBC video clip..." it
would have been obvious you had made a 'typing mistake', and saved all
the aggro.

> Back into killfile, ****.

Charming. Why are you so defensive? Is your interest primarily 'road
safety' or 'motorist bashing'?

--
Matt B

 

[Alan Braggins]

Mark Thompson wrote:
>Alan Braggins wrote in news:[email protected]:
>
>> And if you compare the video footage with the MEN version of the
>> driver's story
>
>Have you got a link to that?

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/225/225258_infamous_bollards_claim_more_victims.html

(Unless, as Tony Raven says elsewhere, it's a different car looking very
like a Toyota Starlet, on the same day.)
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=104984&sid=de14ad9b37963ab64f2a1856eeeab4ff#104984
has a scan of the paper version.)

The MEN coverage started off as neutral
>reporting, then they went down strongly on the 'har har, look at the
>idiots' side.

 

[Matt B]

Chris Johns wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, Matt B wrote:
>
>> The risk of a pedestrian being killed or seriously injured by a bus or
>> coach is 3.8 times greater than by a car.
>
> Not all that suprising. Given their task is to move people, they will
> drive through some areas with lots of people, such as town centre. A HGV
> is going to spend lots of its time on the motorway, where it's very
> unlikely to meet a pedestrian!

That is true. That is /exactly/ why I only used the figures for _urban_
roads, and then only those factored on the actual exposure in vehicle
kilometres. Buses, in towns, kill or injure 11.9 pedestrians for each
100 million km they travel there, 3.8 times more than cars do per 100
million km that they travel there.

On motorways heavy goods vehicles killed 0.1 pedestrians for every 100
million km traveled.

On _rural_ roads the pedestrians killed or seriously injured per 100
million vehicle kilometres by vehicle type are:-

Light goods vehicle: 0.3
Heavy goods vehicle: 0.4
Cars: 0.5
Pedal cycles: 0.9
Motor cycles: 1.2
Buses and coaches: 1.9

--
Matt B

 

[Matt B]

wafflycat wrote:
>
> "spindrift" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>
>>> Do you have a source for that?
>>
>> Can you stop being a ****** and watch the clip in the first post on
>> this sodding thread you dumb ass *****? Why spam threads you have no
>> interest in and clog up the threads with your asinine questions that
>> have already been answered. Back into killfile, ****.
>>
>
> Even though I have TrollB kill-filed, I recognise a response to a TrollB
> post!

Another poster perhaps, complacently and arrogantly drawing inaccurate
conclusions based on preconceptions rather than on facts.

--
Matt B

 

[Jim Higson]

Matt B wrote:

> Chris Johns wrote:
>> On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, Matt B wrote:
>>
>>> The risk of a pedestrian being killed or seriously injured by a bus or
>>> coach is 3.8 times greater than by a car.
>>
>> Not all that suprising. Given their task is to move people, they will
>> drive through some areas with lots of people, such as town centre. A HGV
>> is going to spend lots of its time on the motorway, where it's very
>> unlikely to meet a pedestrian!
>
> That is true. That is /exactly/ why I only used the figures for _urban_
> roads, and then only those factored on the actual exposure in vehicle
> kilometres. Buses, in towns, kill or injure 11.9 pedestrians for each
> 100 million km they travel there, 3.8 times more than cars do per 100
> million km that they travel there.

Interesting.

By those figures, if each bus takes over the journeys that would otherwise
be done in more than 3.8 cars, they're still saving lives though. I used to
live in Manchester, and the buses around the centre tend to be pretty full
so 3.8 cars taken off the road isn't a very high figure really.

I notice those figures only count pedestrians killed or injured... I suspect
if they counted driver/passengers too, the numbers would be more weighted
towards cars.

Still, interesting.

 

[Jim Higson]

Matt B wrote:

>> But it's not a 'trap'. The damn things are made clear to motorists by
>> *large* signs including a "no entry" one and "automatic bollards in
>> operation" so it's hardly a trap.
>
> Mantraps have been illegal in England since 1827. A sign warning of
> their existence does not excuse the barbaric act.

The bollards couldn't really be compared to a mantrap any more than the
automatic doors at the entrance to flats that close themselves after
someone is let in could. A burglar could try to follow someone through the
doors quickly and get hurt by running into the glass - that doesn't make it
a trap.

By this logic, a rising bridge could be called a trap - clearly designed to
punish those who try to cross when they're not supposed to!