Old 01-17-08, 01:24 PM
  #21  
atbman
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Originally Posted by ghettocruiser;5993295Are they really more *visible*? Or were your callers (motorists?) looking to raise an issue that would only require [I
someone else[/I] to change their behavior?
Yes, they are more visible, otherwise there would be an even greater number of complaints about drivers, since they're in the vast majority.

Do you think that there wouldn't be the same blizzard of criticisms if cars pushed themselves through/past groups of pedestrians on crossings or drove along pavements (sidewalks) on a frequent basis?

Do cars jump red lights in large numbers? Yes, but they're more likely to do it while amber gambling and misjudging the timing (been there, done that, got the t-shirt - on rare occasions), so it's not as noticeable as a rider crossing when the lights have been on red for a while and squeezing thro' a gap in the crossing traffic. Do such riders do it recklessly? No, but they're still breaking the law and doing it in full view of drivers and pedestrians alike.

On every occasion I've been called into the local radio station (not because I'm a famous cyclist, but once you're on their "rentaquote" list, you're there for life and I'm retired, so easy to get hold of), the complaints against cyclists are much the same - jump red lights, ignore crossings, ride on pavements, ride wrong way on one-way streets, etc., etc.

And they don't really complain about the danger (except for pavement riding), but about cyclists' perceived, and often real, contempt for the law when it suits them, while, at the same time, cyclists go endlessly on about drivers flouting the law. Hypocrisy is not a pretty sight, nor does it help the case of campaigners trying to make road design safer and driver behaviour better and more understanding of cyclists rights and needs.

Buzzing the pedestrian (if the description here was accurate) was way out of line, he deserved the purse to the head.
Glad to agree with you on this.

Other comments on this post about her being an aristocrat, inbred, etc., are ridiculous. Her peerage was a modern, created one and was not, therefore, inherited or inheritable. Neither did she express the opinion that she was superior to the "common people". Her complaint was against an idiot who believed that he could ride straight across the path of a pedestrian who had right of way, by reason of the lights being green in her favour and her reaction was understandable. It is, furthermore, a common experience of pedestrians in London, so common, in fact, that programmes on the subject pull in scores and sometimes 100s of similar complaints

Or do I have it wrong about people on this forum - I seem to recall the occasional post about reacting to poor and illegal driver behaviour by spontaneous thumping of doors, windows, mirrors, sometimes with a U-lock. Oh, I'm sorry, that's ok because we're cyclists and are therefore morally superior to "cagers", aren't we.

Fools like him are so visibly breaking the law that they give ammunition to those who would prefer us not to be on the road, namely a considerable proportion of motorists. If, with only a few exceptions, riders were seen to be law abiding, we could concentrate our public arguments in the media on the people who are the real danger on our roads, instead of having to waste our airtime trying to counter the general opinion of cyclists as scofflaws.

I repeat what I said in my first post. The fact that, during 1998-2005 530 pedestrians were killed in collision with motor vehicles and only 3 with cyclists, went by the board in the blizzard of texts, emails and phone calls against cyclists.

And if such behaviour is justified, as it so often is on this forum, how come that US cyclists seem more likely to be at fault in MV/bike collisions in higher percentages than in most other places that I've been able to find figures on over the years? In the UK, which has some similarities in public perception on cyclists to the US, the Dept of Transport shows that drivers are responsible for something like 65% of all collisions, a rather higher figure than the US. One survey, carried out by the Automobile Association even put the number at 70%

I doubt very much if many of the RLJers on this and other forums (inc UK) have ever tried to campaign in any useful way in tedious meetings with councillors, council officers and other organisations. They simply go on their merry law-breaking way, making life difficult for those of us who do.
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