Blood on the streets

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24936942

"He (Andrew Gilligan) pointed out that there were 69 pedestrian deaths last year but that pedestrians do not have as strong a voice in the media."

facepalm.jpg

Boris is also finger pointing in an unhelpful way:

Speaking to LBC radio, the Mayor added: “Some of the cases that we’re seeing just in the past few days, they make the heart bleed, because you could see that people have taken decisions that really did put their lives in danger.

When people take decisions on the road which are very risky — jumping red lights, cycling across fast-moving traffic to get to somewhere in a way that is completely unexpected by the motorist, and without looking to see whether traffic is coming — it is very difficult for the transport engineers to second-guess that.”

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/fifth-cyclist-is-killed-in-nine-days-of-carnage-on-streets-man-dies-after-collision-with-aldgate-bus-8938505.html

They don't regard pedestrian as people (like cyclists), which is why they don't get brought up often.

http://www.lbc.co.uk/boris-tells-cyclists-stop-breaking-the-law-to-stay-safe-81324

Some of the cases that we've seen in the last few days really make your heart bleed because you can see that people have taken decisions that really did put their lives in danger.

does he know something we don't?

/o snap

No need for an inquest or police investigation, eh Boris?

http://www.lbc.co.uk/boris-tells-cyclists-stop-breaking-the-law-to-stay-safe-81324

Victim blaming reporting bullshite!

it's cabbie's favorite LBC, they have form for this sort of thing, i'm hardly surprised.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24936942

"He (Andrew Gilligan) pointed out that there were 69 pedestrian deaths last year but that pedestrians do not have as strong a voice in the media."

facepalm.jpg

No, he's completely right about that. Why should pedestrian deaths not be reported as prominently as cycling deaths? He's not trying to distract from the issue of cycling deaths. It is true that they are currently getting previously unheard-of media coverage, usually nationwide, whereas pedestrian deaths, which are equally as deplorable, don't.

Despite injuries and deaths to cyclists being far too many in London, and injuries having been rising for a few years, it is still important to point out that risk to cyclists in London is actually not very high, but it's a difficult message to get across with such a concentration of tragedies in everybody's attention at the moment. We have around 200 million journey stages undertaken by bike riders in London every year, and out of that we get a couple of hundred serious injuries and 10-20 deaths per year. That's far too many, and everybody agrees that we need to reduce them.

It's definitely not good news, but let's not forget that pedestrians suffer, too, and that traffic deaths affect all modes. They are a global scourge and far, far worse in 'developing' countries than over here. Oddly enough, the UK is among the world's leaders in crash reduction, with fatalities seeing a dramatic drop in the 2000s.

Boris is also finger pointing in an unhelpful way:

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/fifth-cyclist-is-killed-in-nine-days-of-carnage-on-streets-man-dies-after-collision-with-aldgate-bus-8938505.html

It has to be said that the Mayor's allusion to victim-blaming is not altogether helpful. While we probably agree that much of the behavior he highlights is unacceptable and ill-advised, and many here agree that training is important so that people understand traffic, I still adhere to the idea that people should be allowed to make mistakes in traffic that won't immediately get them punished.

We all make mistakes, and our behaviour on the streets should be such that we expect others to make them. There are mistakes about which we really need to get the message out, such as going down the left side of a high-sided vehicle (it never helps), but traffic should be a social environment in which people negotiate space and priority successfully by showing one another consideration. The best way of achieving this is not by blaming victims but by giving everybody better conditions, e.g. less tight deadlines for lorry drivers, as well as better skills not only for cycle users.

"From a culture of compliance to a culture of consideration."

works in paris. 0 hgv deaths last year.

tho the problem appears to include busses.

ftfy.

Don't know what their 2012 status is.

It was 5 in 2012. Here is the data since 2006.

http://www.paris.fr/pratique/deplacements-voirie/prevention-et-securite-routiere/prevention-et-securite-routiere/les-accidents-entre-2006-et-2012-a-paris/rub_8697_dossier_55410_port_20649_sheet_11125

Also read:

http://buffalobillbikeblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/paris-0-london-16/

It has to be said that the Mayor's allusion to victim-blaming is not altogether helpful.

Boris did this before, remember? He eventually admitted he made up the statistic that blamed cyclists for accidents, but he refused to apologise.

Yes, he doesn't have a good track record on that.

this is perhaps the best comment i've ever seen in reply to a cycling issue (the reply not the initial comment)

boathgvcarcyclist
14 November 2013 11:55am

Recommend
2
Imagine if you will.
Overtaking a cyclist in an long high sided truck (my experience) or bus. I am leaving as much space as possible and almost touching the center line. Oncoming cars on the opposite side. A motorbike is coming towards me on my side of the road so it can overtake and cut in ahead of all the traffic but there is nowhere to go. Assuming this is happening very quickly and I am at speed overtaking say 25 to 30 mph as is the motorbike (maybe 30 to 40 mph?). I have literally nowhere to go and as usual I hope I am able to slow down in time and use some of the space I gave to the cyclist for a safe journey and end up narrowly missing both of them when the motorbike finds somewhere to stop and hopefully never do that again!
Before you ask I always overtake when it is safe to do so and if not I will hold up traffic and wait to overtake the cyclist. Perhaps every driver of all vehicles should have the same courtesy.

A new advertising slogan.
MOTORBIKE THINK.

ohdeariedearieme boathgvcarcyclist
14 November 2013 12:48pm

Recommended
2
As a professional driver and trained to HGV standard (!), you will know that no matter what habit tells you, you shouldn't change direction to avoid an obstacle ahead (as the motorbike will be once he overtakes you) and you should drive at an appropriate speed so that you can avoid it by stopping or slowing. The drivers behind you, hopefully also having learnt to drive, will allow for the possibility that you might suddenly slow or stop. The motorbike in front of you will, Plan A, should have himself allowed enough space to pull in safely, or Plan B, you can both just stop and he'll look a bit silly.
If anything goes wrong with the above situation, PUSH THE BRAKE AND ABANDON YOUR MANOUVRE.
It's brave for you to stick your head above the parapet here, but you've just accurately described your own actions which regularly put cyclist at risk of death and which constitute careless driving (no less because 'it all happens so fast')
You have more responsibility than other drivers and you are wrong to say you 'only overtake when it's safe to do so' if you overtake as you described above.
Its tempting to repeat
you are a dick.
, but I will try to restrict myself to stopping you threatening more lives:
so,
1: Accept that there will not be many complex situations where you can safely overtake even a cyclist. What you described i snot one. So don;t do it.
2: 25-30mph, while still within the speed limit, is quite likely not to be a safe and appropriate speed for a long heavy vehicle in traffic in inner of London. Slow down if you need to. Even if it slows everyone down. Even if you have a delivery deadline.
3: As driver of a large vehicle, there is not much you can do, short of driving dangerously in retaliation, to prevent motorbikes and cyclists riding selfishly, or indeed stupidly. So accept it. Get some stress balls, put some happy tunes on the radio and be glad that you're out of a situation lived every day where lives can be abruptly ended.

No, he's completely right about that. Why should pedestrian deaths not be reported as prominently as cycling deaths? He's not trying to distract from the issue of cycling deaths. It is true that they are currently getting previously unheard-of media coverage, usually nationwide, whereas pedestrian deaths, which are equally as deplorable, don't.

Despite injuries and deaths to cyclists being far too many in London, and injuries having been rising for a few years, it is still important to point out that risk to cyclists in London is actually not very high, but it's a difficult message to get across with such a concentration of tragedies in everybody's attention at the moment. We have around 200 million journey stages undertaken by bike riders in London every year, and out of that we get a couple of hundred serious injuries and 10-20 deaths per year. That's far too many, and everybody agrees that we need to reduce them.

It's definitely not good news, but let's not forget that pedestrians suffer, too, and that traffic deaths affect all modes. They are a global scourge and far, far worse in 'developing' countries than over here. Oddly enough, the UK is among the world's leaders in crash reduction, with fatalities seeing a dramatic drop in the 2000s.

I had a couple of problems with the quote. Cyclists (and motorists) are Peds too, and that the problems behind the most recent tragedies are also ones that effect people out walking as well as cycling. It's not a 'us and them' thing.

Mostly It seemed a lazy and callous way to dismiss the recent deaths.

Also... what is the % of pedestrian journeys that result in fatility, and is the cause of that disproportionately one type of incident with a particular class of vehicle.

69 ped deaths in a city with a population of however million when most will walk some distance every day is statistically insignificant and probably unavoidable. But 12 cyclist deaths in a city where cycling is not a majority mode of transport and most of the deaths involve females and HGVs suggests that there is something very avoidable in those spikes of data.

It's not the quantity on the whole that is disturbing and needs addressing - if every person in London cycled and there were 69 deaths, we'd probably be OK with it because it would be a significant decrease in risk.

For what it's worth:

calculation of ratio of killed & seriously injured per cycle stage in London

2008 1 KSI per 401,910
2011 1 KSI per 364,361”

https://twitter.com/citycyclists

It's not the quantity on the whole that is disturbing and needs addressing - if every person in London cycled and there were 69 deaths, we'd probably be OK with it because it would be a significant decrease in risk.

Good point which is at the heart of road danger reduction.

More people walking and cycling may lead to higher numbers of deaths (initially?) but should be encouraged due to the overall reduced risk.

Much better approach than road safety aiming to purely reduce numbers which leads discouraging walking and cycling.

The next element is to focus on reducing the source of danger ie the driver behaviour. I have always thought it better to report using language like 'A driver killed a person" rather than "a person was killed" which focuses on the source of danger rather than the victim.

(http://drivetoworkday.org/2013/11/14/its-not-only-cyclists-that-die-on-the-road/)

69 ped deaths in a city with a population of however million when most will walk some distance every day is statistically insignificant and probably unavoidable.

This study suggests deaths per hour of walking/cycling are similar, so maybe not.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0050606

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest/541221/london-cycling-in-crisis-now-is-the-time-for-change.html

"This is not a war on the motorist, this is a war against the dehumanisation of our city"

Gotta say I don't live on London but commute 20 miles a day down some very busy roads, mostly around Cheltenham but also in Bristol. All these deaths are leaving me feeling very raw

1. I heard somewhere that the only way that Drivers would begin to pay more attention to Bicycles is if they had at least one rider in their immediate family.

2. The current transport infrastructure is woefully insufficient for the task

3. Cycle training as an integral part of the divers license.

i have a bitch-blog about a shittily parked HGV on my route if anyone's interested.

http://norwood4lyf.tumblr.com/

/cbb

Just tweeted this to them

to be fair - the molsoncoors lot have been pretty forthcoming - i ran this on twatter last week and they were suitably contrite, saying they would treat this as a matter of urgency blah blah...

that last pic was taken yesterday.

Did you get anywhere with this? I know the guy who runs the dogstar. Happy to have a word if it helps. Do you want to PM me?

What can they do? the best solution is to suggested an alternative place to park that HGV, otherwise there's no other way to solve this.

My dray (almost) always turned up bang on 6am, it was gone by 7.

I think the hgv delivery drivers attitude is just fuck it.

superdrug in morden get deliveries by hgv and once a week in the morning you'll have a hgv reversed down this back street so its cab is in line with the door on the right

http://goo.gl/maps/0LnkY

and a queue of vans from the other shops sitting there waiting for him to move the fuck out of the way so they can get to their own business.

I've not seen it arrive before but i can imagine it causes a clusterfuck trying to do the reverse in that area as well.

i have been in touch with yer man from the DS as you can see from the correspondence included on the page, as well as a number of tweets wherein he claims to have brought this up with the brewery so i'm sure he's aware of the situation. If you know him personally i would appreciate it greatly if you could have a word anyway, i harbour no ill will towards the man and i appreciate that he has done everything in his power to effect change.

it genuinely appears to be down to the driver of the lorry who appears to just not give a shit regardless of what his brass tells him.

1) he can make his deliveries during the proscribed times
2) there is a dermarcated loading zone not 20 yards away on the other side of the road. he's just too fucking lazy to use it.

I contacted Lambeth about it and quickly got this back:

We have spoken to the pub manager several times who has been reasonable (he himself cycles) but the difficulty seems to be in getting the lorry driver to deliver at their agreed time (0630 to 0730). The pub manager has also told the driver not to park in the ASL.

It is difficult to enforce as they are legally allowed to unload for 20 mins, though of course he should not unload in the ASL. I will ask our enforcement team to ticket the driver for stopping in the ASL.

We have just spoken to the pub manager again since your email and they have agreed to insist that the deliveries are made and completed by 0730 in the mornings and they are happy for us to bust the driver if he keeps breaking the parking rules.
Let's see what happens.

It is enough to send a cyclist less sure of their right to be on the road into the gutter where they are more at risk from being invisible to the next driver. At least 70% of cyclists I see in London ride so close to parked cars they're almost brushing wing mirrors. And who can blame them for wanting to stay away from traffic?

Nail on the head.

I contacted Lambeth about it and quickly got this back:

Let's see what happens.

thanks for that oliver - i emailed the council some time ago but failed to get a response. would you object to me including your correspondence on my blog?

i have seen the driver getting ticketed by a parking attendant more than once, the drivers attitude is one of 'i don't care, it's not as if i have to pay the things'...

thanks for that oliver - i emailed the council some time ago but failed to get a response. would you object to me including your correspondence on my blog?

My contact said it was fine to put it on the forum, so I see no reason why you couldn't put it on your blog.

thanks Oliver. i shall change the names to protect the innocent... or should i say... Debbie from Romford

Are we supposed to believe that delivery drivers from a major brewery are responsible for setting their own schedules?

"Should probably get up and deliver this beer. Nah, fuck it, I'll have another 30 mins in bed".

thanks Oliver. i shall change the names to protect the innocent... or should i say... Debbie from Romford

leave nurseholiday out of this.