exdulwicher

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-15014665/One-five-drivers-run-red-light-youre-likely-caught-dash-cam-roadside-camera.html So, yes. That said, there's a whole host of "statistics" out there varying from the fairly accurate but only applicable to one or two junctions right up to user-generated surveys (often conducted by road safety organisations or insurance companies) where they've anonymously polled customers and collated the results which often vary from dubious to wildly misleading and can quite routinely be very selectively quoted as well. It's disappointing how few people can read literally the first line in this thread cos there's a few interesting points mixed in with the usual "bloody cyclists!" nonsense.

About 10 years ago now there was a crackdown in San Francisco on this "rolling through stop signs" thing (Americans preferring Stop signs over red lights at many junctions but the principle is basically the same, the law requires all road users to actually stop, check it's clear to go and then proceed). There'd been a load of backlash about increased numbers of cyclists just rolling through so - with a bit of coordination from a couple of cycling advocacy groups - they got all the riders along one notorious stretch to obey the rules to the letter. Single file. Each rider came to a stop (causing everyone behind to also stop), then they proceeded and the next rider did the same. It gridlocked the road almost immediately. https://www.lifegate.com/san-francisco-cyclists-protest-against-rules It's why the Idaho Stop rules (treat a red light as a Stop, treat a Stop as a Give Way) makes so much sense, one of the main instances where trying to treat a bicycle as either a pedestrian or a car simply doesn't work, it needs to be understood as something in between those things.

Part of the issue is that you've immediately pigeonholed people according to a mode of transport and the world doesn't work in that black and white way. PEOPLE flout rules, no matter their mode of transport. But anyway... The challenge with "cycling" (in all its many and varied forms) is that it doesn't fit into such easy pigeonholes very well. At one end of the scale, you've got what is basically an upwardly mobile pedestrian (and in fact for some people - elderly or disabled for example - it can be a form of mobility aid). Kids are another good example, they're basically just slightly faster moving pedestrians, a point that Penguin makes above ^^. At the other end of the scale, a bike can (if ridden by a suitably experienced person) be little different from a vehicle and in fact much of the early (1970's / 80's) literature around cycling promoted what is termed "vehicular cycling", the largely debunked and pretty terrible idea that cyclists should behave like cars on the roads. In the middle of all that, you've got a range of infrastructure that on the one hand specifically says "here you are, ride on this pavement!" https://live.staticflickr.com/7235/7055174953_c208169421_b.jpg (not my pic, just off Google Images) It's hardly surprising that when that shared use foot / cycle path ends, some people will continue riding along the pavemet, whether they know they're supposed tt be there or not. And on the other hand it abandons cyclists at a junction or similar where highways people / the council have gone "nah, too complicated and expensive to do anything for cyclists there..." and expects people to work it out themselves / be brave enough to sit in the middle of a 4 lane junction waiting to turn right while all cars and trucks do the same inches away and where it can be easier and safer to do what a pedestrian might do at a quiet time - nip across in the gaps. And finally - conservation of momentum. This is at last beginning to be recognised in cycling design manuals. Every time you stop, get going again it adds an effective 300m to a journey in terms of effort. Once you've been through 4 sets of dumb lights that don't recognise cyclists, that aren't phased for that speed, that make you wait while you could easily nip through to turn left, you'll be doing whatpedestrians do when they're forced to wait at a pedestrian crossing for ages until the green man shows - many will get bored of waiting and "nip across". That is another bit of terrible highway design, the crossing button forcing people to wait until the light detects that there's minimal traffic - in effect the light is prioritising a driver a quarter a mile away over you standing there right now. Actually there's one more which I've mentioned previously and which gets noted above as well. Hire bike riders are all being charged per minute, delivery riders are paid per drop and not many of them are going to sit at a set of lights and be charged for the privilege when you can effectively become a pedestrian for a few seconds. And by the way I'm not condoning any of the above. You asked for an explanation - there are several factors in it but that ^^ is some of it. Maybe I should now start a thread asking why drivers flout the rules and see how quickly that turns into a "...but cyclists...!" thread... 😉

I've seen police on motorbikes stop cyclists a few times. Often a lot of moto police around the Buckingham Palace area, they're not averse to pulling over traffic (cycle and vehicle).

Thames Water indeed. Closed til 9pm today (6th Aug) it reckons.

This idea that somehow drivers provide "oversight" is oft repeated but also total nonsense. No-one in a car is ever going to be stopping to offer assistance, partly because it causes almost instant traffic jams and confusion and partly because people feel nice and safe in their little cocoon and, if they've even noticed anything criminal in the first place, they certainly aren't going to get out. They're going to lock the doors and wind the windows up. The car actually removes a lot of the human interaction possibilities - drivers are far far less likely to stop. The people who DO stop and offer assistance - that's almost always pedestrians. And even then many people will walk past, pretend to be on the phone etc; it quite often takes someone with real assertion to get some help in from "outside". There's a critical mass where if one person stops and helps (say someone who's tripped and fallen), then the first wave of people will walk past, ignore it (or pretend to ignore it) and it's not until a second and third person have stopped (or the first person has started yelling for help) that anyone else gets involved. I've seen it a couple of times and there's a similar psychological scenario that happens in building fires. It's astonishing how many people will wait until there are literally flames at the door before deciding that the alarm might be genuine and they should probably do something. And surely (if your assertion is true) that would make pedestrianised high streets the most dangerous places of all yet they seem to be the high streets that thrive best...

I love how you constantly request the data from others yet you get a free pass. You denigrated a report without even reading it. You cherry pick data to suit your needs. You've now alleged - with no proof whatsoever, I'm guessing mostly because it's almost impossible to prove or disprove it either way - that the police are walking round knocking on doors saying "watch out, there's been a spike in crime because a junction was closed to cars 5 years ago" And yet as soon as anyone else dares post anything positive or rebuts your increasingly obvious nonsense, you're straight onto them questioning the source, the data, the authors, the validity, the process...

You're like a one-man Daily Mail headline. You could literally write that in 1990 there were ZERO mobile phone thefts and now there are DOZENS every month! CRIME WAVE! CHAOS on the streets of Dulwich. Oh wait, no-one had mobile phones in 1990, of course there were zero thefts... I think you need to re-examine your ideas of correlation and causation.

The fire brigade also go around telling you to check your smoke alarms (in fact the "community fire" service provides free checks if you ask), turn off your gas, check your escape routes and so on - that doesn't mean every other house is burning down or that fires have increased, that's called preventative tactics cos it's a lot easier and cheaper for all concerned if the fire doesn't happen in the first place. Same with crime - most of it is opportunistic so if you're wandering through a park (any park, not just one with an LTN 500m down the road) looking at your phone and with your earphones in, it's really quite simple for a "jogger" or a hoodie on a bike to nip past you and grab the thing. Sensible advice along the lines of "pay attention to what's around you" is part and parcel of normal preventative policing. I know how much you love data and rely on it for everything so try looking at the actual crime figures. Dulwich has not suddenly turned into gangland LA because a few dozen square metres of road has been closed to cars.

Astonishing isn't it that despite the lack of number plate and the "no insurance" aspect, the cyclist can actually be stopped and fined / prosecuted for wrongdoing! None of that is new by the way, if you search around you'll find hundreds of cases of cyclists being fined for pavement riding and running red lights. road.cc routinely reports on such incidents. Although in this case, the cyclist wasn't actually doing anything wrong - the historically wildly anti-cycling RBKC have outsourced their enforcement to a third-party contractor who is obviously employing some minimum wage jobsworths who don't have a clue about shared-use foot/cycle paths and are issuing fines in error.

Gas works

To repeat what I said earlier, it depends what you are studying. The 2021 report looked at "Covid LTNs" so it's fairly obvious it's not looking at historic modal filters - a concept which by the way dates back way before 2015 and is still the mainstay of planning in new-build housing developments now in the form of cul-de-sacs. In fact to return to my plane crash analogy, if you were looking specifically at crashes caused by pilot error, it'd be a different dataset to crashes caused by engine failure, even though they are all "plane crashes" and there would undoubtedly be some overlap. Engine failure followed by pilot error for example.

If you read the methodology (I know, right?!) of the various studies, you'll see that it depends on exactly what they're studying and exactly when the LTN was put in. There was one about car ownership inside LTNs as well (slight decrease in general) which looked at a different number again because of how the data was collected and validated and cross referenced with census data. If you're doing a study in 2021 for example and it requires before and after data of a year then it stands to reason that you can ONLY look at LTNs installed at least a year ago (and even then, depending on exactly what data you're examining, not all LTNs will be suitable). If you then do a different study in 2024, requiring before and after data, you'll have a different set of LTNs to be looking at. It's like looking at aviation crashes in 2010 then again in 2020. You'll have a lot more data both in terms of the number of crashes but also the detail available to you since black box data now is way more advanced than it was in 2010. It's effectively a different subset of data. But all these studies require you to actually read what the study is looking at, what dataset is being used and how it was validated. I know you're trying desperately to find some kind of hook to latch your conspiracy theory onto but actually it's completely the opposite - the mark of excellent research.

I find myself in the wholly unfamiliar situation of agreeing 100% with something that Penguin has written! 😉 I think they're an answer to a largely non-existent problem but because politicians and big industry like answers that involve "technology" and especially the exciting sounding "AI", the trials are almost an inevitability. And the last thing London (or indeed most cities) needs is yet more cars cruising around and around waiting for fares.

Very much so. If you go and stand in a road and claim that - as a pedestrian - you have priority, you'll be arrested for causing an obstruction. Liability and "being in the right" also doesn't help much when you're dead. You can step onto a pedestrian crossing and get mown down by a truck or be cycling entirely legally and get taken out by a left-turning car going across you; the fact that you were technically in the right won't really make a lot of difference to your bereaved family. Sometimes, the world does actually rely on everyone looking out for themselves and each other.

In order of your questions: Chances are that the cyclist also falls off and is hurt. Therefore, contrary to popular belief, most cyclists do not ride around looking to run into anyone or anything. Liability - it depends. Are you dancing erratically down a cycle lane, wearing headphones? Have you dashed into the road from between parked cars without looking and straight into the path of a cyclist? If so, you could easily argue that you are much more to blame. On the other hand, are you walking carefully along a pavement when a cyclist hurtles (cyclists always "hurtle"...) around a corner and straight into you? If so, you could easily argue that the cyclist is 100% in the wrong. There will be any number of "shades of grey" around that, much the same as drivers seem to get off significant amounts of responsibility by claiming that they had nowhere to go or the sun was in their eyes. Insurance - this is a complete red herring. Anyone can make a (legitimate) claim for damages against anyone else. If someone in a supermarket car park smashes their trolley down the side of your car, if an uninsured driver is involved in an incident, if you bump into another pedestrian and you both fall over... You do the same as you would with any road traffic collision (witnesses, photos, look for CCTV and so on), you can go via any number of no-win-no-fee solicitors who specialise in personal accident and injury stuff, if the incident is severe enough to warrant medical care then that'll be reported via the appropriate channels. The police may or may not attend (and again, that would depend on the severity of the incident) but you can get a crime reference number (and let's face it, they won't attend the majority of burglaries or other "minor" crimes either). Chances are you'll find that the cyclist (and you as a pedestrian) has some form of insurance anyway - might be legal / liability cover bolted onto home insurance, something within a life insurance policy... Plus there is of course the Motor Insurance Bureau which is a fund paid into by insurers (and ultimately, us) to compensate victims of uninsured and hit-and-run drivers, it will also apply to a hit-and-run cycling incident. And a lot of cyclists will have cycle insurance for incidents as part of membership of any cycling organisation or included within theft cover on a bike. If they're on a Lime / Forest hire bike, they'll be on a blanket insurance policy via the hire company. But generally, the whole insurance thing is a complete distraction. Police - see above. Depends on the severity of the incident and what (if any) crime has been committed. I can't answer the last one because I can't speak for the cyclist in question.

Well the truth is that the two Tory candidates were standing on a specifically anti-LTN platform; it was (allegedly) the issue dividing Dulwich, the main concern for the poor residents. The Labour councillors were going to be sent running for the hills, the majority would speak. Then the result came in and the anti-LTNers were all left scrambling around for an explanation. It's like the data though. The data will come in, it'll show gridlock, smog, chaos on the roads... And then the data comes in and you're left scrambling around for an explanation (oh it's fixed, it's rigged, [personal attack on the researchers], it's not showing the true picture...) I'm not even sure if Rockets knows what arguments he's making or why. This has got to the point of conspiracy theory levels of argument. Doesn't matter how much data and evidence is presented, people will still argue that the Earth is flat / the moon landings didn't happen. It's like playing chess with a pigeon - you can explain the nuances of the game as much as you want but the pigeon is still going to knock over all the pieces, shit on the board then strut around like it's won.

Schroedinger's LTN. Simultaneously a dramatic drop in injuries and incidents because, in the words of One Dulwich's Senior Researcher, "it's bleeding obvious" Also a dramatic rise in the number of injuries and incidents because "cyclists". We're not the ones doing character assassinations of world-renowned researchers, peer-reviewed journals and award winning journalists...

I think this is where Wikipedia would use the term "citation needed". You seem to know about a vast swathe of incidents caused by cyclists in spite of them never being reported...

That's not how accident reporting works. If someone goes / is taken to hospital for an injury, they are asked how that injury was sustained. Could be falling off a ladder, hit and run (from a car), hit and run (from a bike), being in a car which crashed into something.... That's recorded. That's where the stats come from. It's cross-referenced with police reports if they attend a road traffic collision (they don't always, especially if it's just what the Americans term a "fender bender") and a picture is built up of locations, severity of incidents, frequency of incidents and so on. You can further correlate that with traffic data to look at delays and locations. Insurance has nothing to do with it by the way. Also, the public version of CrashMap only has data on it up until 2023. You have to go for the pro version available to councils to get more recent / in-depth than that.

So... LTNs are good then? You're SO nearly there Rockets... Come on, just that one little extra step...

It wasn't "given", it's freely available online. It's very common that people (in any professional walk of life) will keep an eye on relevant websites, publications etc. Most academics and journalists will be signed up to all sorts of mailing lists, access to journals, social media accounts and so on, literally anyone could have got that report and written about it if they were interested enough. Even you. Strangely, the Mail and Telegraph - in spite of their massive "interest" in LTNs - haven't picked up on it... Wonder why?!

Wheelchairs (manual or powered), mobility scooters, prams / buggies / pushchairs, skateboarding, scooters (nominally manual ones, can only apply to e-scooters when they're part of a hire scheme cos obviously private ones remain illegal on public land but that's a slight tangent to this). Even things like zimmer frames and shopping trolleys. A lot of "wheeled" devices are mobility aids for elderly / disabled so any features such as wider / smoother pavements, better crossing points, seating and so on is really beneficial. Same with a parent pushing a double buggy for example.

Very true. In some respects, "society" has created this issue with delivery drivers and riders (and Uber). Food delivery companies promise you'll get your takeaway within 30 minutes - that doesn't leave much time for the restaurant to receive your order, prepare and pack it and for the rider / driver to then get it to you. They're almost incentivised to break the law. With delivery riders (all of them on zero hours / "pay per drop" conditions), literally the only way they can do this all day every day is to buy a bunch of cheap knock-off batteries and a motor from some dodgy online retailer, strap them to some old mountain bike and blat around on that. Minimal expenditure (cos they can't afford proper legal electric bicycles) and minimal regulation (cos they're all working under dodgy conditions anyway, half of them are probably on the verge of slave labour / exploitation / no legal right to work) so they can't get UK driving licences as required for mopeds / motorbikes. Lime riders are mostly on pay-per-minute (Lime do offer the option to buy blocks of time as a "Day Pass", I don't have any figures on how many people use that option). Uber drivers are all rushing to the next fare, knowing that if they're late they'll get a bad review. The whole system has created a sub-group of road users who are incentivised to speed, use mobile phones (cos everything they're doing is app-based, all their orders are received that way) and jump red lights. I don't really have any suggestions of how to put that genie back in the bottle, I'm not justifying their behaviour, just explaining some aspects of it. There was a long discussion on road.cc a couple of years ago about a proposed law change (which never made it beyond talking about it) and notes a few examples from around the world where cyclists can (in certain circumstances) treat red lights as a Stop or Give Way: https://road.cc/content/news/should-cyclists-be-allowed-ride-through-red-lights-298809

It is very much in the interest of cab drivers to drive to the speed limit and stop at every red light, they earn more that way! Cabbies are normally worse on mobile phone offences though.