The Seldom Kill
I know that I'm relatively new to these fora and it may be a bit soon to be suggesting changes. However, I think that it may be worth considering a sub-forum of Advocacy and Safety for people to file accident reports.
I appreciate that it is important for people to express that which affects them and am certainly no stranger to doing this myself. However, A&S has a lot of threads which are cut and paste of "cyclist killed" headlines and I think that they are somewhat counter-productive. The inevitable "VC this" and "cagers are evil that" with pepperings of "the media hate cyclists" etc come out and assumptions get made on what it a very emotional subject. The carry over into the debate and dicussion of advocacy and safety issues seems a little inevitable. Not only that but many of the articles are poorly written conjecture of circumstances whch are then taken to be accurate representation.
I would propose that an Accident Report sub-forum might create a useful buffer zone between the high emotional response to the harsh realities of accidents and deaths and the need to calmly and rationally debate the measures required to protect cyclists from them along with the best way to bring them about.
I appreciate that it is important for people to express that which affects them and am certainly no stranger to doing this myself. However, A&S has a lot of threads which are cut and paste of "cyclist killed" headlines and I think that they are somewhat counter-productive. The inevitable "VC this" and "cagers are evil that" with pepperings of "the media hate cyclists" etc come out and assumptions get made on what it a very emotional subject. The carry over into the debate and dicussion of advocacy and safety issues seems a little inevitable. Not only that but many of the articles are poorly written conjecture of circumstances whch are then taken to be accurate representation.
I would propose that an Accident Report sub-forum might create a useful buffer zone between the high emotional response to the harsh realities of accidents and deaths and the need to calmly and rationally debate the measures required to protect cyclists from them along with the best way to bring them about.