Hackney closes 20 roads to through-traffic; Wiggins gets fit on Brighton seafront; COVID-19 "cycling like a shark" says PM; Police appeal to find MCR cyclist after collision with pedestrian; Confrontation with a fisherman; And So We Rode film + more

That's not in the same league as headlining that a "man suffers serious head injuries after falling from bike", with no mention of the car (or motorist) being involved until halfway down the page.

I have less time for the somewhat pedantic issue with car/motorist vs bike/cyclist. Truth is, in a collision, what hurts is the meeting of car with cyclist. We tend not to collide with the motorist. It's generally understood that the car was piloted by a motorist.

In your example, the pedestrians were hit by cars (not motorists). In the bicycle collisions likely the cyclist themselves also impacted the pedestrians.

Being 'hit by a motorist' tells a different story, like they got out and thumped you.

Change it to '531 pedestrians were hit by cycles' and the whole thing is depersonalized. Change instead to '23, 805 pedestrians were hit by drivers of motor vehicles'. 

There's a story going around in the current news cycle where a child was killed and their mother injured after a car went into a charity shop in Scotland.

I've looked at various outlets, and yet as far as I can tell the car was acting entirely independently and of its own volition.

There are reported calls from the police for cctv footage of the incident, and witnesses talking about what happened, but no mention of a driver being arrested or questioned or taken away by paramedics.

In point of fact, no comments about a driver at all.

And will the police even care? There have been people zipping around the footpaths and roads of central Bristol on electric scooters and those weird single wheel electric things for years and I've never seen one get stopped.

A lot of the scooters will be branded - like the share bikes. But anyway this will be so far down the list of priorities for the Police that it won't matter where the scooter comes from. They have been buzzing around London for years - and they are supposed to be illegal. 

Get with the programme: they're cyclists riding Car Shaped Objects & go on the pavement all the time!

Maybe in true Council 'efficiency' the barriers are too heavy for the pavement?

I live in the next borough across, Southwark. It honestly is Wild West around here sometimes - just at the weekend my wife and I were waiting (on bikes) at a red light on a roadworks contraflow in Peckham; while we were waiting half a dozen drivers drove up, stopped, clocked there was no oncoming traffic so drove straight through. The last one did encounter an oncoming car, so stopped nose to nose with it and leaned on his horn until it backed up.

Virtually every "Near miss of the day" on here is something one encounters four or five times in a ten mile ride in London, every day of the week.

Well if it eases your political conscience Suffolk county council is Tory led and here are their plans https://www.suffolk.gov.uk/coronavirus-covid-19/active-travel-improvemen...

Awavey wrote:

Well if it eases your political conscience Suffolk county council is Tory led and here are their plans https://www.suffolk.gov.uk/coronavirus-covid-19/active-travel-improvemen...

That's impressive, but I note that they are only plans; did any of them actually happen?

Aiui the page lists the majority of changes that have been enacted already under the active travel spaces section,there are minor changes happening that dont seem to get mentioned so can never quite sure if its coincidental or not. But at least 10 roads have been closed already to motorised through traffic in Ipswich with planters blocking them,with that number growing weekly. Apparently Sustrans have been providing them with guidance on what to do. Whether it delivers the full 148 routes it promises,we wait and see. But compared to their near neighbours in Norfolk or Essex for that matter, virtual silence on the issue,certainly those councils arent pushing or promoting it as hard even if again minor changes are happening on the ground.

I did think that, are we going to start to see "Why can't escooter riders behave more like cyclists?" comments?

I assume the shark is an air bag as there doesn’t seem to be any other way of stopping, unless it has hidden chub brakes

Cyclecynic wrote:

I assume the shark is an air bag as there doesn’t seem to be any other way of stopping, unless it has hidden chub brakes

It's a fixie. Clearly intended for use in a velodrome and therefore doesn't need a front brake.

hawkinspeter wrote:

Never debait a fisherman

Fishing for compliments? Or spelling lessons?

At last, a use for the furry little feckers!

I walked past a couple of fishermen the other day and noticed that one of them had a huge pile of fish and the other one had hardly any. They were both using what looked like insects as bait, so I asked the more successful one why he had so many more.

"You see those ants that bloke is using? ...They're ants taken from woodlands, whereas these ants that I'm using are taken from riverbanks - they're much more a fish-ant."

And they all drive white vans for a living. Not that I'm stereotyping!

eburtthebike wrote:

Aren't all fishermen miserable? I thought it was their defining trait. Be interesting to find out whether they become miserable through fishing or go fishing because they're miserable.

They might just be miserable from following current events.

hawkinspeter wrote:

eburtthebike wrote:

Aren't all fishermen miserable? I thought it was their defining trait. Be interesting to find out whether they become miserable through fishing or go fishing because they're miserable.

They might just be miserable from following current events.

Clearly a staged photo, designed to mislead; squirrels don't eat fish.  I'm reporting you to fb.