Met cycle cops' “Half our enforcement is on cyclists” Tweet gets strong response from London Cycling Campaign and Cycling UK

JonDxxx wrote:

Cycling in Belgium recently there are many streets that are signposted one way except cyclists. Doesn't seem to cause any problems. 

We've got some of them in the UK too, though I think they mostly use a "cycle lane" to show that cyclists can go the wrong way. Personally I think the law should be changed for all one way streets - maybe they'll consider that when the govt. gets around to doing that traffic law safety review they've promised.

srchar wrote:

Quite a few uncontroversial posts deleted from this thread - mods, any chance of an explanation please?

When it reaches the point where contributers are telling one another to foxtrot oscar, then no meaningful discussion can be held.

srchar wrote:

Quite a few uncontroversial posts deleted from this thread - mods, any chance of an explanation please?

Hi srchar – I didn't see the posts myself, but someone complained about the swearing - which to be fair are against the site T&Cs - and after looking at his other posts one of my colleagues brought down the ban hammer.

Tony Farrelly wrote:

srchar wrote:

Quite a few uncontroversial posts deleted from this thread - mods, any chance of an explanation please?

Hi srchar – I didn't see the posts myself, but someone complained about the swearing - which to be fair are against the site T&Cs - and after looking at his other posts one of my colleagues brought down the ban hammer.

Thanks for the explanation Tony. Guilty.

srchar wrote:

Quite a few uncontroversial posts deleted from this thread - mods, any chance of an explanation please?

Is it not the case that if a poster is banned _all_ their posts disappear, even the non-ban-worthy ones?  Is that what happened here?  (I didn't actually see what happened)

Past bannings of certain posters have retrospectively rendered some threads incomprehensible, leaving people looking as if they were arguing with phantom posters only they could see.

Possibly if someone is banned only the posts that actually got them banned should be removed.  But it's not exactly a vitally-important issue.

craigstitt wrote:

I just cannot get over how some of the responses smack of hipocrisy in general.

As cyclists we are the first to call for drivers to be prosecuted for any number of offenses such as close passes, speeding, running red lights etc but as soon as it is mentioned that the police are stopping cyclists for doing something illegal there is collective outrage. 

The long and short of it is....if they are doing 50% of their enforcement against bikes then it is likely that there is a higher proportion of cyclists doing illegal things in comparison with other forms of transport. (SNIPPED)

No, that's utter bullcrap. 

If they are doing 50% of their enforcement against bikes, it only means they're are doing 50% of their enforcement against bikes.

Which shouldn't be the case, since even the smallest of errors from a car driver can cause serious injury or death; they are not only not pursuing vision zero but riding (pun intended) against it.

JF69 wrote:

No, that's utter bullcrap. 

If they are doing 50% of their enforcement against bikes, it only means they're are doing 50% of their enforcement against bikes.

Which shouldn't be the case, since even the smallest of errors from a car driver can cause serious injury or death; they are not only not pursuing vision zero but riding (pun intended) against it.

Even if it is 50% of their enforcement time checking into cyclists why is that a bad thing?

They are the cycling safety team sometimes that involves educating cyclists, in the same way that the roads policing units use the likes of the "Close Pass Initiative" to educate drivers to do things differently. (And bearing in mind the size of the met cycling safety team in comparison with the met roads policing team, it is not such a disproportionate use of resources as people claim)

By bleating loudly about actually having cyclists monitored by the law reinforces the drivers mentality that cyclists are above the law.

But again that part of my comment you conveniently "Snipped" from your rebuttal because you only wanted to take certain things out of context to try and further your argument.

craigstitt wrote:

JF69 wrote:

No, that's utter bullcrap. 

If they are doing 50% of their enforcement against bikes, it only means they're are doing 50% of their enforcement against bikes.

Which shouldn't be the case, since even the smallest of errors from a car driver can cause serious injury or death; they are not only not pursuing vision zero but riding (pun intended) against it.

Even if it is 50% of their enforcement time checking into cyclists why is that a bad thing?

They are the cycling safety team sometimes that involves educating cyclists, in the same way that the roads policing units use the likes of the "Close Pass Initiative" to educate drivers to do things differently. (And bearing in mind the size of the met cycling safety team in comparison with the met roads policing team, it is not such a disproportionate use of resources as people claim)

By bleating loudly about actually having cyclists monitored by the law reinforces the drivers mentality that cyclists are above the law.

But again that part of my comment you conveniently "Snipped" from your rebuttal because you only wanted to take certain things out of context to try and further your argument.

But my impression is that it is _motorists_ who are above the law.  Ergo, they need to put a lot more effort into policing them, so as not to reinforce that impression of mine.

Just today I saw yet another car with huge clouds of foul-smelling black/gray smoke coming out of it's exhaust as it drove down the road, smoke I had to breath in and choke on - seems to me that car can't have been legally on the road, but you think there's any chance the police will do anything about it?  Pull them over and tell them to stop driving and keep the thing off the road till it meets emissions standards?  I see that not infrequently and nothign is ever done about it - absolutely NOTHING is done to police motorists, as far as I can see, the law simply does not apply to them.  Put more resources into that before worrying whether a cyclist has walked their bike a few yards the wrong way on a one-way road, say.  It's a simple matter of priorities.

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

But my impression is that it is _motorists_ who are above the law.  Ergo, they need to put a lot more effort into policing them, so as not to reinforce that impression of mine.

Just today I saw yet another car with huge clouds of foul-smelling black/gray smoke coming out of it's exhaust as it drove down the road, smoke I had to breath in and choke on - seems to me that car can't have been legally on the road, but you think there's any chance the police will do anything about it?  Pull them over and tell them to stop driving and keep the thing off the road till it meets emissions standards?  I see that not infrequently and nothign is ever done about it - absolutely NOTHING is done to police motorists, as far as I can see, the law simply does not apply to them.  Put more resources into that before worrying whether a cyclist has walked their bike a few yards the wrong way on a one-way road, say.  It's a simple matter of priorities.

look if the Met were saying 50% of all their time was spent with enforcement on cyclists, like the daft Operation Safeway they ran a few years back, Id be absolutely agreeing there was a point to be made on the priorities here, but they arent, this is a really small part of the Met police which accounts for not even 1% of the entire size of their traffic division, the traffic division whose role is to police motorists in the main. so is it really a priorities issue for them to say only half the cycle teams work is in enforcement on cyclists ? given they must practically spend nearly all their time dealing with cyclists or problems that impact cyclists, like on all the close pass ops they run

this feels totally like a molehill of an issue thats been turned into something resembling Ventoux proportions for no logical reason I can follow.

craigstitt wrote:

JF69 wrote:

No, that's utter bullcrap. 

If they are doing 50% of their enforcement against bikes, it only means they're are doing 50% of their enforcement against bikes.

Which shouldn't be the case, since even the smallest of errors from a car driver can cause serious injury or death; they are not only not pursuing vision zero but riding (pun intended) against it.

Even if it is 50% of their enforcement time checking into cyclists why is that a bad thing?

They are the cycling safety team sometimes that involves educating cyclists, in the same way that the roads policing units use the likes of the "Close Pass Initiative" to educate drivers to do things differently. (And bearing in mind the size of the met cycling safety team in comparison with the met roads policing team, it is not such a disproportionate use of resources as people claim)

By bleating loudly about actually having cyclists monitored by the law reinforces the drivers mentality that cyclists are above the law.

But again that part of my comment you conveniently "Snipped" from your rebuttal because you only wanted to take certain things out of context to try and further your argument.

If 50% of enforcement is carried out on 5% of road users, then the other 95% are only 5% as likely to face enforcement. You know, the 95% of road users with significant kinetic energy most likely to result in fatalities or serious injuries.

wycombewheeler wrote:

If 50% of enforcement is carried out on 5% of road users, then the other 95% are only 5% as likely to face enforcement. You know, the 95% of road users with significant kinetic energy most likely to result in fatalities or serious injuries.

Nope.  Your argument has as many holes in it as a seive.

For your argument to hold water you need to factor in the rest of the Roads Policing Department of the Met.  And I would be willing to place money that they don't spend anywhere near as much time policing cyclists as you think.

Assuming the roads policing department is 10 times the size of the cycle safety team (which it will be that and then some - as the cycle safety team has 27 people in it) you are already down to about 5% of enforcement against 5%  of road users.

Chances are it is much closer to about 1% of enforcement ever being applied against cyclists in general.

craigstitt wrote:

wycombewheeler wrote:

If 50% of enforcement is carried out on 5% of road users, then the other 95% are only 5% as likely to face enforcement. You know, the 95% of road users with significant kinetic energy most likely to result in fatalities or serious injuries.

Nope.  Your argument has as many holes in it as a seive.

For your argument to hold water you need to factor in the rest of the Roads Policing Department of the Met.  And I would be willing to place money that they don't spend anywhere near as much time policing cyclists as you think.

Assuming the roads policing department is 10 times the size of the cycle safety team (which it will be that and then some - as the cycle safety team has 27 people in it) you are already down to about 5% of enforcement against 5%  of road users.

Chances are it is much closer to about 1% of enforcement ever being applied against cyclists in general.

Just for reference, cyclists form about 2% of traffic by journey or 1% by distance travelled.

craigstitt wrote:

wycombewheeler wrote:

If 50% of enforcement is carried out on 5% of road users, then the other 95% are only 5% as likely to face enforcement. You know, the 95% of road users with significant kinetic energy most likely to result in fatalities or serious injuries.

Nope.  Your argument has as many holes in it as a seive.

For your argument to hold water you need to factor in the rest of the Roads Policing Department of the Met.  And I would be willing to place money that they don't spend anywhere near as much time policing cyclists as you think.

Assuming the roads policing department is 10 times the size of the cycle safety team (which it will be that and then some - as the cycle safety team has 27 people in it) you are already down to about 5% of enforcement against 5%  of road users.

Chances are it is much closer to about 1% of enforcement ever being applied against cyclists in general.

Your argument wouldn't even work as a seive, it's just one giant hole!

The rest of the 'roads policing department' does pretty much nothing.  Law-breaking by drivers is rarely pulled up on, _even_ on the rare occasions when there's a cop there to see it.

  The point of a 'cycle safety team' I would expect to be ensuring the safety of cyclists.  As the biggest threat to cyclists is motorists, that's who it should be devoting most of it's time to.  You seem to think it should mean 'cyclist policing team'.

craigstitt wrote:

By bleating loudly about actually having cyclists monitored by the law reinforces the drivers mentality that cyclists are above the law.

Is that similar to young black men complaining about being targetted by the police use of stop-and-search powers? Presumably you think that if they complain about institutional racism then they are just reinforcing the racists' views?

We are not complaining about cyclists being monitored by the law, but the utter refusal of the MET police to enforce the law against motorists. There are many examples here on Road.cc showing explicit evidence of motorists not driving safely and keeping to the highway code and yet the MET has refused to act.

Whether or not the police crack down on cyclists jumping red lights or going the wrong way up one-way roads has virtually zero effect on cyclists' safety. It's the 2-tonne metal boxes travelling at speed that are dangerous when driven by people who don't even understand how dangerous they can be.

For a "cycle safety team" to focus 50% of its time on enforcing laws that won't provide any safety benefit (and in the case of the one-way road, will decrease the cyclists' safety) is purely a political move to appease the car driving Londoners.

hawkinspeter wrote:

Is that similar to young black men complaining about being targetted by the police use of stop-and-search powers? Presumably you think that if they complain about institutional racism then they are just reinforcing the racists' views?

We are not complaining about cyclists being monitored by the law, but the utter refusal of the MET police to enforce the law against motorists. There are many examples here on Road.cc showing explicit evidence of motorists not driving safely and keeping to the highway code and yet the MET has refused to act.

Whether or not the police crack down on cyclists jumping red lights or going the wrong way up one-way roads has virtually zero effect on cyclists' safety. It's the 2-tonne metal boxes travelling at speed that are dangerous when driven by people who don't even understand how dangerous they can be.

For a "cycle safety team" to focus 50% of its time on enforcing laws that won't provide any safety benefit (and in the case of the one-way road, will decrease the cyclists' safety) is purely a political move to appease the car driving Londoners.

I'm now utterly confused.  How can you liken a blatent abuse of police powers in terms of racial profiling..... to the police actually enforcing the law.   I could understand if the police were say only enforcing the going the wrong way up a one way street to cyclists breaking the law, but not applying the law equally to cars going the wrong way up a one way street.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes I am fully aware that cars can and do more damage than cyclists but to cry that we are being picked on by the "cycle safety team" which makes up about 1% of the roads policing departments of the met are spending 50% of their time enforcing laws against cycling is just absurd.

Lets do the numbers 50% of 1% is 0.5% therefore somewhere way in excess of 90% (probably close to 99%) of the roads policing enforcement is actually applied against..... yes you've guessed it - motor vehicles. 

craigstitt wrote:

hawkinspeter wrote:

Is that similar to young black men complaining about being targetted by the police use of stop-and-search powers? Presumably you think that if they complain about institutional racism then they are just reinforcing the racists' views?

We are not complaining about cyclists being monitored by the law, but the utter refusal of the MET police to enforce the law against motorists. There are many examples here on Road.cc showing explicit evidence of motorists not driving safely and keeping to the highway code and yet the MET has refused to act.

Whether or not the police crack down on cyclists jumping red lights or going the wrong way up one-way roads has virtually zero effect on cyclists' safety. It's the 2-tonne metal boxes travelling at speed that are dangerous when driven by people who don't even understand how dangerous they can be.

For a "cycle safety team" to focus 50% of its time on enforcing laws that won't provide any safety benefit (and in the case of the one-way road, will decrease the cyclists' safety) is purely a political move to appease the car driving Londoners.

I'm now utterly confused.  How can you liken a blatent abuse of police powers in terms of racial profiling..... to the police actually enforcing the law.   I could understand if the police were say only enforcing the going the wrong way up a one way street to cyclists breaking the law, but not applying the law equally to cars going the wrong way up a one way street.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes I am fully aware that cars can and do more damage than cyclists but to cry that we are being picked on by the "cycle safety team" which makes up about 1% of the roads policing departments of the met are spending 50% of their time enforcing laws against cycling is just absurd.

Lets do the numbers 50% of 1% is 0.5% therefore somewhere way in excess of 90% (probably close to 99%) of the roads policing enforcement is actually applied against..... yes you've guessed it - motor vehicles. 

I was pointing out how selective enforcement can be abused.

For a "cycle safety team" to be spending half their time on enforcing laws against cyclists that has virtually no effect on safety seems to me to be a complete waste of time. I'd much rather they went out and about on bikes (plain clothed, preferably) and made more of an effort to teach drivers about close passes and paying sufficient attention whilst driving (e.g. not using phones).

Do you seriously think that half of cycle incidents are caused by cyclists?

OK, I'll bite...

craigstitt wrote:

...

As cyclists we are the first to call for drivers to be prosecuted for any number of offenses such as close passes, speeding, running red lights etc but as soon as it is mentioned that the police are stopping cyclists for doing something illegal there is collective outrage. 

Except that the police very often don't know what is illegal in relation to cycling/cyclists, and stop people for things they think are illegal, or which the Highway Code recommends but does not mandate.

Quote:

The long and short of it is....if they are doing 50% of their enforcement against bikes then it is likely that there is a higher proportion of cyclists doing illegal things in comparison with other forms of transport.  If the people doing 4% of the journeys are doing 50% of the misdemeanours, then they are commiting 24 times as many misdemeanours as the remaining 96%..... but no all cyclists are angels.

...

If you really believe that the cyclists are committing twenty four times as many misdemeanours as the motorists then I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you... 

I'd comment on the rest, but Real Life is calling.