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news
Viral video debated on Jeremy Vine show (screenshot Twitter video/ @azb2019)"Only road user to come out with any credit is the child": Ashley Neal reacts to "terrible driving" in viral video of five-year-old cyclist
YouTube driving instructor Ashley Neal has joined the debate around the video of a five-year-old cyclist and a driver meeting at a pinch point which has gone viral since being first shared by the child's father ten days ago.
Since then it has been discussed during a segment on Jeremy Vine's Channel 5 show, attracted much-criticised comments from Conservative politicians including Sajid Javid, been viewed more than 2.7 million times and subject to national newspaper coverage.
Neal, whose "driving education" YouTube videos have earned him a large platform of 120,000 subscribers, released a video to give his "hot take" on the footage, in which he is complimentary of the child's cycling and describes the driving on display as "terrible".
In the final portion of the video Neal then questions the father telling his son to carry on when it is "obvious" the driver will not stop, comparing it to allowing your child to run around the edge of a swimming pool.
"The big lesson that people should be taking from this clip is obviously the terrible driving and the fact that motorist should have stopped and given way to the more vulnerable," Neal concludes.
"But there is also the added point that even when you think you have priority you should not continue into an escalating risk. The father of this child [by telling him to carry on when he asked if they should pull over] has effectively told his kid to keep running around that swimming pool even though the kid wanted to walk.
"The only road user to come out of this clip with any credit, and it is full credit to them, is the child. The father seems like one of those I've got priority brigade and the motorist is simply dangerous — it is quite ironic that the young child is the only one with any common sense."
Addressing the view expressed by many on social media, including by Conservative politicians Susan Hall and Baroness Foster, that the five-year-old cyclist should not have been on the road, Neal disagrees.
"I think it is lovely to see a young child like this being taught the skills at such an early age. There has been some discussion about the age of the child but for me it has got to be child-specific and there has got to be risk assessment for the road conditions.
"Some children you would be happy that they are going to follow your instructions if you are in charge of them, others not so. This road was traffic calmed and the traffic was quite light so for me there was nothing wrong with this child cycling here.
"This five-year-old also followed his father's instructions impeccably, I would have been totally happy in charge of this child trying to teach him the skills that he needs to ride safely. The speed that they were cycling at and the distance that they were keeping from the parked vehicles was all good and the five-year-old also held a good steady line."
"The most dangerous part of this clip"
"The most dangerous part of the clip" is the motorist, Neal tells his viewers, explaining that as the cyclist is "obviously more vulnerable" the driver should have given way, advice backed up by the Highway Code's 'hierarchy of road users'.
"Plainly and simply the driver should have given way but instead they barge through a narrowing and endangered the life of a five-year-old," Neal said. "What if this child fell off? We would be dealing with a fatality.
"Another thing that backs up my opinion with this is the fact that the cyclist does not have to venture outside of their lane to proceed through the pinch point, the motorist obviously cannot say the same.
"Some people will think whoever gets there first goes first, and even with this incorrect mindset the five-year-old cyclist does arrive at the pinch point before the motorist, but the motorist still barges through.
"They do slow down, but not enough. They should have stopped but because they chose to keep moving this increased risk dramatically. The distance away from the cars on their side of the road was way too close and if another young child had run out between those vehicles it would have left the motorist no option but to swerve in the direction of our five-year-old cycling.
"Another reason to slow down and stop was the close proximity to the oncoming cyclists, but in my opinion this is a grey area that needs clarification. Even if I was driving on my side of the road and it was totally clear the cyclists in the oncoming lane might still be quite close."
Showing the following scene to his viewers to demonstrate such a situation, Neal says he would "still slow down and look after them".
"I do not think the updates in the Highway Code are clear enough on this point. Overtaking cyclists at speed up to 30mph you need to give them at least 1.5 metres clearance, but what if they are coming in the opposite direction?" Neal continued.
"If you did not know my opinion you now do. Try to follow this advice because it keeps everyone safe."
Last week Neal released a video criticising reporter Richard Bilton for cycling through a red light in a clip seen in the recent Panorama episode 'Road Rage: Cars v Bikes'.
Bilton told road.cc the incident demonstrates "how difficult" some junctions can be to navigate on a bike, as well as the wider "reality of cycling on UK roads". Neal had said it "makes a little bit of a mockery when the question is asked 'are the UK roads too dangerous to cycle on?'"
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
Latest Comments
- SimoninSpalding 8 min 39 sec ago
Agreed but in the HGV sphere at the moment as far as I am aware there are no courses that would cover these issues and as the legislation is...
- Hirsute 12 min 24 sec ago
Specific and limited ways surely ?
- quiff 13 min 17 sec ago
Fair point - I was restricting myself to pedal bikes. As I've never spent that kind of money on anything though (mortgage doesn't count), it's kind...
- brooksby 1 hour 15 min ago
And finally: I wonder how many of the "more than 3,000" signatures on that petition are actually locals, who live or work there (and are not just...
- Doug_D 2 hours 51 min ago
Another book suggestion - I can highly recommend "Lost Summers and Half-Forgotten Afternoons: A Mint Sauce collection" - a beautifully presented...
- chrisonabike 4 hours 4 min ago
But... the last is only not the case with drivers on normal roads because driving on the cycle path / footway / rolling a vehicle up there is seen...
- mdavidford 4 hours 42 min ago
I think you're missing an opportunity to pack even more tech into it - add accelerometers that can detect whether they're pedalling or stepping....
- chrisonabike 5 hours 7 min ago
Thanks. I guess the question is "need". If the road is busy, it sounds like it is a desired route between places? In which case (given this an...
- mdavidford 5 hours 15 min ago
Don't know what you mean. I thought my suggestion was entirely practical.
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146 comments
No sign of ashley neal posting to explain his comments on extreme cycling views and that there are plenty of people on here who have them.
I've come to the conclusion that he just threw that comment in for a laugh and had no intention of combing through comments to find something extreme.
I think he's trying to promote himself and his videos at the moment by prodding the comment sections with a stick (which is fine by me as long as he keeps it interesting).
Mmm "...or hateful comments on road safety campaigners such as Nick Freeman."
The resident troll doesn't even try and hide the fact he's had multiple accounts before.
Anyway I'm not sure why Ashley Neals views merit a separate headlined article?
The guy who's made a career for himself getting dangerous drivers off the hook on technicalities and now spends large amounts of his time being interviewed by the gutter press, regurgitating long-disproven anti-cycling lines?
Sounds like the opposite of a road-safety campaigner to me.
Let me just re-iterate that for the people at the back. The guy has spent his career making sure there are more dangerous drivers on UK roads, not less.
Ah but he is a "top lawyer".
That's what he's described as on Wikipedia. If you have a problem with the top lawyer description, take it up with them.
More lies - it doesn't say that.
Talking of slander, here is Rendel Harris calling someone a liar when the text is directly verifiable on Wikipedia. According to Rendel you get banned from Road.cc for slander. Let's see if Rendel gets banned.
From the CyclingMikey page on wikipedia:
"In April 2021, he filmed Frank Lampard using a mobile phone and holding a hot drink while driving,[8] but the prosecution was later dropped, due to insufficient evidence, after Lampard hired TOP LAWYER Nick Freeman to deal with the case."
I look forward to an immediate personal apology and a lengthy ban for Mr Harris.
Watch now as Rendel edits the Wikipedia page and pretends those words don't exist... Unfortunately for him Wikipedia page history exists indefinitely.
I am happy to apologise, I admit that you are sad enough to trawl through every Wikipedia entry referring to your hero in a desperate attempt to support your words and I'm sorry that I'm not sad enough to do that, I naturally assumed you were actually referring to the Wikipedia page on Mr Poophole, which does not contain the words "top lawyer".
You clearly are not a top lawyer or you would know that slander refers to verbal communication, not written, which is libel.
While we're on the subject of people telling the truth, are you going to actually admit that you are the user previously known, and banned for racism and libellous comments, as Nigel Garage, Nigel Garrage, Youallarecyberbullies, TTDanger, Lance Strongarm, Great Eastern and Enjoy the Ride, amongst others?
You missed out his first name he was banned under. Someone called Booboo something.
And it is surprising that "Rakia" knows about the contents of CM page. I have never looked at Wiki history before. I wonder when the changes were made. Hold on, who is this BooBooBeaker who has been banned from Wiki for making changes to the CM page adding inflammatory language to it.
Worth checking out this Talk (look under CyclingMikey section) and it all seems vaguely similar.
Just a shame that Road.cc have still not re-banned him when he has all but admitted he is the same PBU the other week with his comments.
Good detective work there, yes it's got his fingerprints all over it, hasn't it?
Certainly has, this is one change, done to 'emphasise the controversial nature of cycling mikey':
lol, just had another look, the admins weren't happy, ended up with a ban:
Ha ha, that says it all! Nigel gets himself blocked from Wikipedia for "edit warring". What a tosser!
Does he have some kind of infantile/weird crush on Mikey?
More likely they've been caught out by Mikey
Wikipedia famously isn't a democracy and you can't add things because they're "true" or "factual". You can only add information that is sourced reliably - though this has been taken to the extreme over the years, with them banning many news sources as too biased to be used, just because they don't like anything not left-leaning. Jimmy Wales has spoken out on this, but doesn't have power to do anything other than complain about it.
It would be better to stop editing Wikipedia and just let it die under it's own mammoth politically extreme beurocracy at this point.
Wikipedia has a high level of accuracy and it's a very good source on most things, but I'd agree that it can't be relied on for contentious/political topics.
From: https://www.livescience.com/32950-how-accurate-is-wikipedia.html
So, good for technical topics and not so much for music bands.
Also, amusingly, here's Wikipedia's article on Wikipedia's accuracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
Though it has problems, I'm likely to use Wikipedia for casually looking up information. If you're going to use if for anything serious then it's a case of following the references and doing a bit of work.
They have the same problem today they had 15 years ago, only worse today: The editors add topics they have an interest in and know about; which means certain things and technical fields don't go into the depth required because the editors don't understand them or don't have an interest in them, and people who do understand them can't just add to them since everything which could be challenged needs to be sourced reliably, without using primary sources or those which aren't too well known, aren't like Wikipedia, or lean to the right politically, and also with the huge beurocracy and manual of style requirements that the average non-Wikipedian wouldn't bother to learn just to correct a mistake.
This issue even carries into BLP/Biography of Living People areas. It's quite common to see the person in question asking on the talk page for an article to be edited or corrected, only for editors to refuse as the real person in question isn't a reliable source, and even ban them for bias or edit warring when they try to change it themselves.
Wikipedia was a model of how the internet could work, but will die under the weight of it's own rules in the future as the editorship keeps decreasing. It certainly doesn't help with their lurch to the political left and demonisation of their predominantly white, male and Western world based editor base.
Conservapedia might actually outlive Wikipedia in the long run...And those people are fruitcakes.
I'm not aware of Wikipedia's political bias (possibly due to my left-leaning) - have you got any good examples of that? I'm not disputing that encyclopedias can be biased, but I'd considered Wikipedia to be reasonably neutral.
I was an editor for around 12 years before semi-retiring. The blatant bias and POV-pushing pushed me away. Certain areas such as Wikiproject LGBT are just becoming extremely far left, toxic and often racist and it's not something i want to contribute to anymore.
I'd expect LGBT campaigns to be left (not necessarily far left, though - what has sexuality got to do with destroying capitalism?) as most right-wing politics involves pretending the issues don't exist or throwing people into prison. I'm very surprised to hear that they are racist though - any examples?
I don't think it's the left/right leaning that impacts whether a source is trustworthy or not, but the sources' general accuracy. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unreliable_sources
The Daily Mirror is included in the untrusted list even though it's left-wing and there's right-wing papers (e.g. Telegraph) which are still considered trusted sources.
There's been debates of banning sources on political affiliation, some even bought to the talk page of Jimmy Wales just because of how toxic they've become. Right leaning sources are absolutely at a disadvantage and deliberately targeted.
Well, as Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias", so is it instead a bias towards facts?
Okay, I've fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole now.
Was looking at the Wikipedia entry on RationalWiki to see how politically biased it was (it's described as liberal) as I've occasionally used it to look up debunking info and found out about Conservapedia. It doesn't look like the two sites are friendly though
[Citation needed] - oh, I see hawkinspeter got there first.
I think Wikipedia was set up by an admirer of Ayn Rand, having variously described himself as interested in objectivism, libertarian and "centre-right". What Wikipedia is now is a moot point. Some sections inevitably are influenced (or even taken over by) gangs, major groups or governments (possibly) who can afford the people time - seeing as it's a go-to reference source by most people. Whether that eventually produces some kind of armed truce because it's too useful to "our side" to fundamentally break it for others (e.g. like GPS) remains to be seen.
From everything I've read and observed about Wikipedia it falls into a pro-establishment, centre-left bias, a bit like the BBC. It reflects and amplifies the biases already present in the media and academia. It isn't a good place to find dissent or alternative viewpoints, as it is precisely those viewpoints which are considered unreliable or biased.
This might mean it gives Jeremy Corbyn a hard time as much as Liz Truss for example, as they fall outside the centrist / centre-left viewpoint, but it doesn't mean it is free of bias. It also tends to flag political groups and individuals as "far-right" when they aren't, because it places too much weight and credence on sources such as The Guardian, which tends to use the term as a smear. The right-leaning press tend to use the term "far-left" far less, so you won't see the term used in Wikipedia so much.
I therefore agree that it's better as a source for factual scientific articles rather than political or subjective pieces.
I was listening to rip rig and panic the other day. Apparently Roland Kirk wasn't his real name. No. He changed his name. From Ronald.To Roland. I don't know if I'd have bothered. I think Ron Kirk sounds nice, or Ronnie. I bet some of his friends even called him Kirky. I quite like that, I wouldn't mind being called Kirky. But not Ronald. Or Roland. A pint of milk in my local co-op costs a pound now - I'm sure it was only 50p last year. Doesn't really bother me as we normally buy a four pint bottle, or six pint bottle if my wife is doing some baking. We sometimes have some left over. He added the Rahsaan bit later. What happened to the Pink Fairies?
Also - bring back Boatsie!
Boatsie was great - I wonder if they just cycled off into the clouds one day and never came back to earth...
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