Reg

Jimbob Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > maybe i was brought up differently to the > rest of you all but in my eyes thats more that > justification for responding in kind. Don't worry Jimbob, many people were brought up in the UK to believe that it is more important to protect property from damage than people from serious harm - indeed it permeates the entire justice and enforcement system, and you have company in Keef. That is the basis for your mistake: the bus driver was not "responding in kind", as this would have meant simply trashing the cycle. Not that there's any evidence of any property damage at all. Seems no-one saw the incident start off, but in my mind the idea that any cyclist would be so enraged if he had not been dangerously fishtailed or barged into the gutter, is laughable. Clearly the driver had no confidence in his own driving standards else he would have called the police. For anyone to take the slightest entertainment from the whole scene is disturbing. Where do you draw the line in tacitly approving violence? If the cyclist had been female and the driver had proceded to incapacitate and then rape her, would there also have been "that little bit in all of us" which found the situation amusing? Let's face it, the British public has form on this (a teenage gang raping a girl on a packed train a couple of years back - cue newspapers rustling). I would have been ashamed to have ridden on that bus and not banged on the driver's window myself to get a full picture profile for the police. I think none of those on here who take every opportunity to demonise cyclists have ever had the courage to front up to a white van man parked on a pedestrian crossing as the green man chimes.

zephyr Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > IS there a nice stretch of Walworth Road? ... Baldwins? The new frontage looks spectacular, and it's probably Southwark's smartest shop at a canter. I think the pavement widening and token tree planting have made a difference, although there is a limit to what you can do for the jaundiced atmosphere when ghetto communities of disparate income groups live in such close proximity. Hueguenot's shopping list is good, if expensive and even a little environmentally unfriendly (with intermittently raised road levels increasing fuel consumption and emissions). I would just put a 20mph zone down LL eastward all the way to the Chandelier etc. and enforce it with average speed cameras, with 21mph resulting in an auto-fine and three points. Provide highly visible cycling visitor infrastructure in the form of racks adjacent to the road, doubling as protective fencing/bollards. Also, as you say, restrict parking on LL itself, and you have an area of pedestrian safety which could make LL into a leisure destination from outside the Borough. It's cheap, realistic and can happen tomorrow with the kind of political will - so to speak - which you have in East Dulwich. It is also the perfect way to neutralise the only advantage which out of town hypermarkets really have - that your life is not in danger when you decide to browse a different product range.