"Mums, dads, sons and daughters being labelled as killers. It’s just got to stop": Chris Boardman comments on Telegraph '52mph in a 20mph zone' article as it emerges co-author is former BBC fact-checker

We get very limited "education" or training in using public spaces:

a) as children (mostly from parents).  Of course, we could do more of this...
b) driving lessons plus driving test, for those who do.  Once per lifetime.

There's also a very rare:

c) being stopped by road police.

However we get a great deal of repeated feedback - by using the roads!  Other road users are the main "teachers".

I suspect the main way things "work" and people learn is through practice.  Maybe we could do it differently, but historically ... we haven't.  When we changed from no / few motor vehicles to "mass motoring" and vulnerable road users had to adapt was this mainly done though education / awareness campaigns?  No.  (There were some...)

Unfortunately it was practical learning - tragedies, repeated unpleasant experiences, witnessing terrible things or reading horror stories.  Learning "what was no longer your space" and developing caution / fear ("appropriate respect").

So if mass cycling takes hold, it's likely there will be some initial conflict between modes and indeed a lot more collisions.  Because the mass of people cycling will be no "better people" or "careful road users" than when they were driving cars.

Fortunately a) we have a slightly better regard for human life now b) we've developed our understanding of "human factors" and public infra design c) cyclists are less danger than drivers (mass cycling: they'll mostly be going significantly slower and they weight less) and I don't think you can get to mass cycling without overall system being safer for everyone - that includes most pedestrians. (Slight question mark as usual about how best to cater for the visually impaired).

But then stories get shared a thousand times on social media.

But its like a domino effect, Telegraph prints a story thats anti cycling, before long its picked up by the other tabloids repeating the same lies, then its picked up by the news channels repeating the same lies none questioning the facts because they hide behind the Telegraph reported, so it must be true.

Iain Duncan Smith often writes comment pieces for the Telegraph, where do you think his burning desire to tag cycling into the crime bill came from ?

Not the government, if they were that bothered about some kind of culture war on cycling, they'd have included it from the off.

But now we have an MP championing the Telegraph's cause and introducing legislation on the back of one story

So it goes way beyond circulation figures.

True, but it only took 81,000 people (Most of them probably telegraph readers) to leave you with the inexplicable embarrassment of Liz Truss is your Prime Minister.

Of course it has. This is why shit like this winds me up so much - it’s not like I’m thin-skinned, but the constant dehumanisation, demonisation, and disproportionate scrutiny of cyclists does very much embolden those with existing anti-cyclist leanings and makes them feel justified in lashing out.

Every time there’s a campaign against cyclists in the MSM, it noticeably translates to an increase of aggression towards us on the roads. You saw it when the media lied about the HC changes, you saw it when Dan Walker was hit by a car “because he should have been in the cycle lane”.

Stories like this directly lead to cyclist deaths.

BalladOfStruth wrote:

Of course it has. This is why shit like this winds me up so much - it’s not like I’m thin-skinned, but the constant dehumanisation, demonisation, and disproportionate scrutiny of cyclists does very much embolden those with existing anti-cyclist leanings and makes them feel justified in lashing out.

Every time there’s a campaign against cyclists in the MSM, it noticeably translates to an increase of aggression towards us on the roads. You saw it when the media lied about the HC changes, you saw it when Dan Walker was hit by a car “because he should have been in the cycle lane”.

Stories like this directly lead to cyclist deaths.

Sorry, but they don't "directly" lead to cyclist deaths, although they may be a factor. The real issue is with emotionally immature drivers that believe that their vehicle and how they drive is part of their personality. What we need to do is remove the drivers who let emotions lead their decision making when in charge of a vehicle - they are the real problem as they can be highly strung and react violently if anyone dares to comment on their driving skill.

hawkinspeter wrote:

BalladOfStruth wrote:

Of course it has. This is why shit like this winds me up so much - it’s not like I’m thin-skinned, but the constant dehumanisation, demonisation, and disproportionate scrutiny of cyclists does very much embolden those with existing anti-cyclist leanings and makes them feel justified in lashing out.

Every time there’s a campaign against cyclists in the MSM, it noticeably translates to an increase of aggression towards us on the roads. You saw it when the media lied about the HC changes, you saw it when Dan Walker was hit by a car “because he should have been in the cycle lane”.

Stories like this directly lead to cyclist deaths.

Sorry, but they don't "directly" lead to cyclist deaths, although they may be a factor. The real issue is with emotionally immature drivers that believe that their vehicle and how they drive is part of their personality. What we need to do is remove the drivers who let emotions lead their decision making when in charge of a vehicle - they are the real problem as they can be highly strung and react violently if anyone dares to comment on their driving skill.

simple test to find these people, anyone buying a car with more than 200bhp, probably not a mature driver treating their car as a tool, but rather as a toy or an expression of their virility.

I disagree - when the majority of anti-cyclist sentiment is a result of decades stories in the MSM (we know it’s nothing to do with how cyclist act because we can see from statistics how disproportionate it is, and other road user groups don’t get held to anything like the same standard), they are the root cause of the problem. When a driver that has bought into the rhetoric reads a Torygraph anti-cyclist hit-piece and decides to punish the next cyclist he sees, screws it up and accidentally hits them, that story has led to that collision.

Every time there’s an anti-cyclist campaign in the MSM, you can go out an observe the uptick in aggression on the roads. That uptick absolutely leads to more cyclists getting hit.

BalladOfStruth wrote:

I disagree - when the majority of anti-cyclist sentiment is a result of decades stories in the MSM (we know it’s nothing to do with how cyclist act because we can see from statistics how disproportionate it is, and other road user groups don’t get held to anything like the same standard), they are the root cause of the problem. When a driver that has bought into the rhetoric reads a Torygraph anti-cyclist hit-piece and decides to punish the next cyclist he sees, screws it up and accidentally hits them, that story has led to that collision.

Every time there’s an anti-cyclist campaign in the MSM, you can go out an observe the uptick in aggression on the roads. That uptick absolutely leads to more cyclists getting hit.

I don't dispute the malignancy of the MSM with regards to cycling, but they don't create angry drivers, they just rile up already angry drivers. As I said, these kinds of anti-cyclist nonsense pieces can indirectly lead to more aggression on the roads, but they don't directly hurt cyclists (apart from the excessive rolling of eyeballs)

Car companies market their vehicles as extensions of peoples personality and have done so forever; if only emotionally mature and stable people were allowed to drive, the roads would be remarkably empty.

grOg wrote:

Car companies market their vehicles as extensions of peoples personality and have done so forever; if only emotionally mature and stable people were allowed to drive, the roads would be remarkably empty.

I've got no issue with people expressing their personality through the selection of a vehicle (including bikes) and maybe even customising it with shiny bits, but the problem is when people drive emotionally - anger is the real problem as a vehicle should never be used as a weapon. Someone can be as emotional as they like, but if it affects their driving then they shouldn't be on the road with other traffic.

Yes. Which means it needs relentless calling out more, not less!
And it needs to stop, now!

Is being left-wing a requirement to cycle? I missed that memo..

grOg wrote:

Is being left-wing a requirement to cycle? I missed that memo..

It's more that the UK Tories have declared themselves the Party of the Motorist, so riding a bike is now almost a political statement. It's divisive claptrap - I welcome any political leaning to cycle as much as possible as it can provide common ground between people.

And mr briggs is perfectly happy to align himself with cabbie lobbyists who are campaigning against things like tachometers in cabs, despite long shifts being the cause of several pedestrian deaths. 
 

He is anti cyclist, not pro pedestrian 

the little onion wrote:

And mr briggs is perfectly happy to align himself with cabbie lobbyists who are campaigning against things like tachometers in cabs, despite long shifts being the cause of several pedestrian deaths. 

And who swamp social media with complaints about how unfair it is that they might lose their badges for their illegal behaviour when caught using their phones at the wheel by grass cyclists.

Tachograph not tachometer.

Hate to be that person, but most cabs are already fitted with a tachometer ... It's otherwise known as a rev counter.

Tachograph on the other hand, is a recording device used to record speed, distance, time, work types and as they are digital nowadays (and not the paper disks I used to use), could easily record other functions such as throttle/ brake use, gps location, etc.

When the tachgraph was introduced, it was considered the "spy in the cab", as it gathers evidence to confirm adherence to the Law ...

So no surprise that cabbies are against them.

Apparently according to the latest Telegraph piece titled "I fought the blob after a cyclist killed my wife"

He popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate the announcement.

Took me a bit to process it last night after my 105 miler, at first I thought it was something new but it was the same old Charlie A case from 2016.  As tragic as they are and they should have been avoidable that and the old woman represent 2 pedestrian deaths from interaction with cyclists in circa 10 years.  Some statistician will know the numbers better than me but last year alone there was something like 385 pedestrians killed (5901 seriously injured) by vehicles.  That's the perspective that the rags miss out in the attempt to sell a story.

HLaB wrote:

Took me a bit to process it last night after my 105 miler, at first I thought it was something new but it was the same old Charlie A case from 2016.  As tragic as they are and they should have been avoidable that and the old woman represent 2 pedestrian deaths from interaction with cyclists in circa 10 years. 

I think there are probably a few – though only a few – more than that, if you're talking about deaths from interactions with cyclists rather than cyclists necessarily at fault: there was one in Manchester two or three years ago where the cyclist was acquitted in court, and one in Tower Hamlets in 2021 where a 71-year-old man was killed by a red-light-jumping cyclist. There may be others, still a very small number but definitely more than two in the last decade.

Rendel Harris wrote:

HLaB wrote:

Took me a bit to process it last night after my 105 miler, at first I thought it was something new but it was the same old Charlie A case from 2016.  As tragic as they are and they should have been avoidable that and the old woman represent 2 pedestrian deaths from interaction with cyclists in circa 10 years. 

I think there are probably a few – though only a few – more than that, if you're talking about deaths from interactions with cyclists rather than cyclists necessarily at fault: there was one in Manchester two or three years ago where the cyclist was acquitted in court, and one in Tower Hamlets in 2021 where a 71-year-old man was killed by a red-light-jumping cyclist. There may be others, still a very small number but definitely more than two in the last decade.

it's typically about one a year

so 385 pedestrian deaths a year seems to be ok, but 386 tick it over into "death trap" territory. I also don't think any of the cyclist/pestrian collison deaths occur on the pavement, which is sadly not the case for motor vehicles 

Yep, I think it shows how Briggs is motivated, it's not about road safety at all.

And as I've had to repeatedly point out to people this last week, 3 cyclists from my area of the UK have been killed on the roads in the last 12months by drivers, 4 if you go back another year, and they are only the ones I remember off hand, because I knew 2 of those cyclists killed.

not a single driver has faced any charges or been prosecuted for anything related to those deaths, there hasn't been any media outrage, MPs introducing new legislation, nothing it just gets treated as one of those things

The Telehgraph have been trying to generate increased numbers:

https://archive.ph/t6LPL

How can the quite man of politics keep a straight face? 'Cos he's a Tory....