What a bore!

[Helen Deborah Vecht]

"Andy Morris" <[email protected]>typed


> Helen Deborah Vecht wrote:
> > AFAIR, in areas like Glasgow (not a Third World city) there is *much*
> > higher road mortality amongst the less moneyed classes.
> >
> > Risk exposure is a major factor.
> >
> > People who walk have more serious injury collisions than those who go
> > everywhere by car.

> Also posh areas tend not to get big fast roads built thru them to let
> important people get to where they have to go.


Posh area houses are much more widely spaced so there are fewer people per km.

--
Helen D. Vecht: [email protected]
Edgware.

 

[wafflycat]

"Paul Boyd" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 27/02/2006 23:52, Pyromancer said,
>
>> Car drivers doing it can be dealt with - install some cameras and it's
>> soon "game over" for the offenders.
>
> Yeah? Try telling my local council that, please! Mine basically told me
> that they have to wait for someone to be killed before they will do
> anything.
>

That's common. At a meeting about the upgrading of the A47, some villagers
from a village which is split in two by the A47, asked for speed cameras to
be installed, due to the fatalities that had alreasy occurred. They were
told that it was not possible as not enough people had yet been killed to
warrant a speed camera being placed at their village... Never let anything
such as human life impede the flow of the traffic :-(

Cheers, helen s

 

[Richard]

Pyromancer wrote:

>>So, you think it's worth it if far fewer people cycle, with a
>>consequent increase in pollution and risk to those few cyclists who
>>remain, to address a very minor problem in the very complex mess of
>>road incidents that happen each year?
>
>
> "My crime is OK because it's not as bad as his crime" is not a
> sustainable argument.

Nor is it the argument I made.

Using a sledgehammer solution, which may well have disproportionate
detrimental results to others, is not a good way of using limited
resources to address what is a very small problem.

R.

 

[LaidBack]

Jon S (Paris correspondent) made this good point:

<<The "news" in that report is that for some reason that crossing has a
higher than average level of cycle-pedestrian incidents than anywhere
else... a better campaign would be for a cycle training course at the
school.>>

As I said earlier, cars driving through red lights and over pedestrian
phases at junctions is not news. Fact is that pedestrians often put up
with motorised offenders as it's risky to put yourself in way of a car.
Bikes of course are silent (sometimes!) so unless you look you wouldn't
know they were there. No-one relies on green ped phase anymore because
we know that it's sometimes ignored by important people in a hurry (and
cyclists). Cycle training can sort this in the longer term as it
improves all road use skills.
BUT..
Is it possible that some people make a point of stepping out in front
of bikes going through red lights (or pavement cycling) in a way they'd
never do for anything else? Not ones going flat out of course but the
ones that trickle through red lights. I can't believe that a cyclist
running a red light has any more intent to hit anybody than a car
driver. Less I would have thought as he or she is not in a steel box.

 

[Paul Boyd]

On 28/02/2006 22:32, Pyromancer said,

>
>> and the
>> proposed ID cards are going to stop terrorists,
>
> I find that highly unlikely.

I had assumed that the comment was tongue in cheek! "Can I see your ID
card please. Ah, I see it says that you're not a terrorist. On your
way, sir!"

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

 

[Terry]

In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected]lid (Nobody Here) wrote:

> It's not *reporting* bad cycling behaviour that gives cyclists bad
> press, bad cycling behaviour does that all by itself. There is
> possibly noone here that cycles or drives in an urban who does not
> see bad practice each and every day, both by cyclists and by other
> road users. Of *course* it gets used as an excuse by motorists to
> lambast cyclists, much like it gets used practically every day on
> this here newsgroup by cyclists to pillory motorists.

Official indifference to traffic violations by all road users is part of
the problem. At 9am this morning I saw two cyclists cross Googe Street
heading east against the lights. Three rozzers on motorbikes waiting at
the lights coming the other way must have seen them too but did nothing.
Perhaps they had more important things to do like looking for people
driving while black. One of the cyclists saw the rozzzers and dismounted
halfway across, the other didn't bother.

 

[Andy Morris]

Helen Deborah Vecht wrote:
> "Andy Morris" <[email protected]>typed
>
>
>> Helen Deborah Vecht wrote:
>>> AFAIR, in areas like Glasgow (not a Third World city) there is
>>> *much* higher road mortality amongst the less moneyed classes.
>>>
>>> Risk exposure is a major factor.
>>>
>>> People who walk have more serious injury collisions than those who
>>> go everywhere by car.
>
>> Also posh areas tend not to get big fast roads built thru them to let
>> important people get to where they have to go.
>
>
> Posh area houses are much more widely spaced so there are fewer
> people per km.

I was thinking of the York Road in Leeds, Lets posh people for North West
Leeds pass thru plebs area at great speed.

--
Andy Morris

AndyAtJinkasDotFreeserve.Co.UK

Love this:
Put an end to Outlook Express's messy quotes
http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/

 

[Jeremy Parker]

"Helen Deborah Vecht" <[email protected]> wrote

snip]

> > Also posh areas tend not to get big fast roads built thru them to
let
> > important people get to where they have to go.
>
>
> Posh area houses are much more widely spaced so there are fewer
people per km.

and fewer destinations per km. also, thus making it less likely that
people will find it easy to get to anywhere on foot. Contrast the
modern affluent suburb with a town planned in the middle ages, with
all plots deliberately designed to be long but narrow, to pack in the
maximum number of properties per km. of street.

Jeremy Parker

 

[Jeremy Parker]

"Helen Deborah Vecht" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4736916.stm
>

well, they seem to have counted cyclists, which is probably a first
for people making a complaint about red light running.

60% does seem high to me, even for the kind of cyclists we get here
in London. I wonder if there's some special reason. In the USA the
Institute of Transportation Engineers's standards for traffic lights
say that the detectors should detect motor vehicles, not that the
detectors should detect all vehicles. Thus cyclists there get
trained to not expect lights to turn green for them.

Whatever happens in the USA, and that Brit's scorn, always eventually
happens in Britain in a more virulent form. The recent trend, here
in Britain, even among some cyclists, to use "vehicular traffic" to
mean "not bicycles" is a worrying straw in the wind.

Jeremy Parker