LadyDeliah

Tr? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What hysteria? > This Hyteria: robbin Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Feral low life. Let's not beat about the bush. > > Make apologies for them all you like, but that's > what they are!

Tr? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What hysteria? > > And really there's no need to say that you'd have > given them a piece of your mind. We're all well > aware of what a brave, ne'er a step back, citizen > you are. > It might appear that way, when compared to the recent influx of pampered wimps jumping with fear at all kinds of minor incidents, but in reality, it's just that I'm not scared of my own shadow.

How are they thugs? You guys are lame. I was a youth worker for years and kids this age will test how far they can push adults. It's universal, they all do (with the exception of those of you who were born middle aged). I personally would have told them they were disrespectful little shits myself but the hysteria on here over a bunch of idiot teenagers is laughable.

My brother speaks to aliens on a regular basis, but he smokes way too much weed.

Won't happen though. Too many top drugs lords have too many powerful decision makers in their pockets and have no doubt infiltrated the top levels of power with their own people anyway. I know that's what I'd do anyway if I were a billionaire drug lord.

Legalise it and tax it. Give these budding entrepreneurs a chance to make money in the mainstream economy and prevent wholesale criminalisation of our young people.

I'd say Nunhead is another.

I couldn't come out to play because I hadn't finished my homework. Bedtime now, but yeh, you wait. I'll be back!

When I came down here I thought southerners were thick because I had to speak really slowly for them to understand me. I hated how flash they acted and how they were into money more than they seemed to be interested in people. I hated being told jokes about scousers stealing hubcaps and being asked to tell a joke (I think there must have been a lot of Scouse comics or something in the 80's). I wasn't keen on being told I shouldn't be in London cos I was taking Southerners homes and jobs, despite most of them not appearing to want one and living on a half empty, hard to let estate. I don't like people who beat about the bush and hide what they really mean behind smarm and I encountered many more of those types down here than up North where people tend to be more direct. But I don't like to generalise :-)

Still too many and the numbers could easily be reduced. I doubt telling the family of a victim that the numbers are lower than last year would provide much comfort.

Transport Dept Statistics for 2013: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reported-road-casualties-in-great-britain-main-results-2013 1,713 killed & 183,670 injured, 21,657 seriously. Quite a lot if you ask me.

I think people will look back on the history of driving with the same incredulity as when we look at the history of medicine. In the past anyone could set themselves up as a surgeon and hack people's limbs off and perform all kinds of scary looking operations which resulted in countless deaths. No-one now would ever advocate a loosening of the regulation of surgeons because we expect a high standard of those who hold our lives are in their hands. In the future I cannot imagine that the some of the people who are currently allowed to take inherently dangerous machines out into our public space, would be allowed anywhere near a motor vehicle. If you think about it, it's total madness. We've had huge casualties year after year, but no-one questions the right of drivers to actually put other people's lives at risk. It's so ingrained in our culture that we only talk about the few dangerous drivers when discussing road safety, when the debate should be turned on it's head and only the few extremely safe drivers should be given the responsibility of taking a dangerous machine onto the roads.

Not going to argue with the harsher punishments, obviously, but the regulation of MOTOR vehicles (pedant)was introduced to minimise their harm to others. Other road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders have not had the same regulation on the roads, because the harm they present to others is minimal. In addition the roads have been designed over the past however many decades, with the needs of the MOTOR vehicle in mind and are not adequate for the needs of the cyclists, so actually following the rules of the road in many instances puts cyclists in more danger than if they ignored them. Sight is not the only thing that can affect someone's ability to control their MOTOR vehicle safely. There should be medical tests like there are for pilots and bus drivers in addition to regular re-testing of driving knowledge and skill.

I've pretty much set it out already above. I'd like to see higher standard driving tests and re-tests and an onus on the driver to prove they can operate a vehicle with a very high level of safety. I outlined the laws I would want to be used to prosecute drivers for injuring or killing others. The ones the rest of us are subject to if we kill or injure someone, not the ones covered in the driving offences which are an insult to victims and their families. Plus much more serious punishments and cancellation of the driving licence. A crackdown on complusory HGV safety measures which are barely monitored and regularly flouted (30% from recent sting). Banning HGV's from inner city roads between 7am - 7pm. Far more prosecutions of the unlawful dangerous and careless driving that we see daily already and higher penalties and all of the 10 points in the Stop The Killing list, to start with. Re the video, if someone could recommend a good free video editor programme that is simple to use, I'll be able to start doing the police's job for them forthwith :-) Oh and for anyone who thinks that these measures are too harsh, if you are one of the skilled and careful drivers, you have nothing to worry about and wobbly kids starting to cycle to school won't have either.

Ok, here's another way to look at it. If all the bikes disappeared overnight, would the death toll on our roads be ended? Or the pedestrians? What about if all the vehicles disappeared and there were only pedestrians and cylists? How many deaths do you think there would be on the roads then? About one a year on current data. It is clear that the root cause is the dangerousness of vehicles. Taking safety measures such as lights, hi-viz etc play a very small part in road safety. If there were no bikes, pedestrians would still be killed. If there were no bikes or pedestrians, there would still be other drivers killed. It comes down to how intrinsically unsafe vehicles are and how our regulation of them is woefully inadequate.

I can't say how many people were killed purely because of some idiotic act on their part and neither can you. If the proper measures are brought in to make vehicles as safe to others as possible, then the liklihood of anyone, idiots or not, being killed or maimed will be drastically reduced. We account for people's idiot self-harming behaviour in our control of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes (which I would guess don't harm as many people as vehicles do). We have some regulations to attempt to minimise the harm done by vehicles, but if these were drastically ramped up, the harm would be far less and would benefit everyone (except those who feel that it is their divine right to drive no matter the consequences of their actions on others). In order to even begin to tighten up the controls on vehicle use, we need to get a massive change in people's attitudes.

Otta, so you don't beleive any of the measures outlined above would make any difference to road safety?

Otta - Pedestrians should be included in any discussion about road safety and the high numbers of pedestrians killed by cars only underlines my point about the inherent dangerousness of vehicles. Jeremy - Re-tests would be useful because it would force drivers to address their bad habits, give a chance for re-education on road safety issues or changes in the law and if the re-tests were set to a much more appropriate (higher) standard then presumabley those most at risk of being a danger to others would no longer be entitled to be on the roads. I have a helmet cam and have almost daily evidence of dangerous or careless driving, some of which is very serious. I'd be happy to hand it over to anyone who wants to edit the hours of footage so I can report them! It's very time consuming and policing of drivers shouldn't be down to individuals. I have my helmet cam primarily so my family have evidence to push for prosecution of anyone who kills me, or I can do the same if I'm hit but don't die. A side-effect of having the helmetcam is that many drivers pull back when they see it rather than try overtake when there is no room. It acts as a traffic calming device, when they see it, so I beleive that visible policing/monitoring of drivers' behaviour, zero tolerancce re prosecutions and appropriate punishments would have a pretty big effect on road safety.

I'm not actually apportioning blame. It's about inherent dangerousness. There should be a higher standard of skill & care expected of anyone who is in charge of anything that has the capacity to kill or maim in the way vehicles do. I agree that current infrastructure is a massive problem, but that will take years and a political will to fix, but measures to improve the standard of driving skill and hold drivers to account in the same way as anyone else who cause death or damage, are things that can be introduced more quickly.

You should check out @cyclehatred if you think that nobody thinks like that. I'd be interested to know if, ignoring the lights issue for a moment, whether you agree that the root problem is the inherent dangerousness of vehicles.

I agree that cyclists are better off using a light, but as I've said over and over above, this does not tackle the root of the problem, which is the dangerousness of vehicles and the cultural acceptance that maiming and killing by vehicle is somehow the fault of the victim.

The money spent on facilitating vehicle use over the past century is enormous, cycling should be facilitated properly, not just as an add-on to the investment for vehicles. " The Government‟s National Infrastructure Plan 2010, published in October, describes planned investment in infrastructure of ?200 billion over the next 5 years. Between ?15 billion and ?20billion will be spent each year directly on renewals and capacity enhancement projects and programmes" http://www.scribd.com/doc/45758700/Infrastructure-Cost-Review-HM-Treasury-and-Infrastructure-UK Why shouldn't a sizeable amount of that spending be attributed to cycling and pedestrian provision?

Some people may be interested in this: The National Funeral for the Unknown Victim of Traffic Violence Saturday 15 November 2014 http://stopthekilling.org.uk/the-national-funeral-for-the-unknown-victim-of-traffic-violence/ The 10 demands are: 1. Stop the Killing of Children ? set up a national, multi-billion pound programme to convert residential communities across Britain into living-street Home Zones and abolish dangerous rat-runs. 2. Stop the Killing of Pedestrians ? establish a national programme to fund pedestrianisation of our city and town centres, including the nation?s high-street, Oxford Street. 3. Stop the Killing of Pensioners from excessive speed ? introduce and enforce speed limit of 20 mph on all urban roads, 40 mph on rural roads/lanes and 60 mph on all other trunk roads. 4. Stop the Killing of Cyclists - invest ?15 billion in a National Segregated Cycle Network over the next 5 years. 5. Stop the Killing by HGVs - ban trucks with blind spots by making safety equipment mandatory and strictly enforce current truck-safety regulations, to reduce levels of illegally dangerous trucks down from estimated 30% to less than 1%. 6. Stop the Killing without liability - introduce a presumed civil liability law on behalf of vehicular traffic when they kill or seriously injure vulnerable road-users, where there is no evidence blaming the victim. 7. Stop the Killing from Lung, Heart and other Diseases caused by vehicular pollutants ? make it mandatory for particulate filters that meet latest EU emission standards to be fitted to all existing buses, lorries and taxis. 8. Stop the Killing at Junctions - introduce pedestrian crossing times long enough for elderly disabled to cross. Legalise filtered junction crossings by cyclists with strict legal priority for pedestrians and carry out urgent programme of physically protected left-hand turns for cyclists. 9. Stop the Killing from Climate Crisis caused by CO2 emissions ? all transport fuels to be from environmentally-sustainable, renewable sources within 10 years. 10. Focus on Life! - Transport governance must make safety and quality of life the top priority. Reform all council transport departments, the Department of Transport and Transport for London into Cycling, Walking and Transport Departments with formal pedestrian and cyclist representation. I'd go further by banning HGV's in towns & cities between 7am-7pm and using negligent or unlawful act manslaughter for cases where a driver kills someone by careless or dangerous driving (the unlawful acts). I'd also use ss.47, 20 & 18 Offences Against the Persons Act 1861 for anyone who causes actual bodily harm (no need to show intent) or grevious bodily harm, with intent/recklessness, with their vehicle. The current offences which somehow excuse a driver from committing these crimes, just because they do so with a vehicle are repugnant and promote a culture of immunity for drivers which does not exist with any other group of people.

My point is nothing to do with whether they are optional or not. My point is that no matter how many lights, bells, whistles etc you put in a bike, if you fail to address the inherent dangerousness vehicles pose to other road users, then it's like putting a sticking plaster on a smashed skull or broken bones.

Maybe you should read before you post. I use lights and a helmet cam.