Sajid Javid blames father of five-year-old cyclist for letting child ride on road in viral video

Hmm... maybe the Celtic nations can share some newer cultural goods!  It'd be great if we in Scotland could pick up the 20mph urban default for example.  I'm not surprised to hear that when the worst worries fail to appear people quickly forget the drama and life proceeds.

Never been to Cardiff but it's now on my list - if only for a Streetview virtual tour in the near future.

Cathay's Terrace is the latest big project. Will eventually connect the bike lane network to the hospital and a major park. Mostly finished now and looking pretty good.

Not on street view yet but it can't be long until the little Google car does its rounds again.

Weird take there. Pretty sure that is a quiet road from the video. Only two oncoming cars on the full length and plenty of spaces for safe passing if only the drivers thinks about it. 

Or it sounds like you would prefer the child to be on a 40mph- dual carriageway as there are no parked cars or adults who might step out on some of them. Of course, no road in the UK is dangerous, it just depends on the drivers that happen to be on them. 

It is a typical motoring viewpoint. Cars create risks, so some attempt is made to constrain them, but the motorists object to being constrained to they ignore the rules. As enforecement is limited, drivers learn from each other that these things are acceptable. Then the law gets degraded by poor case law and Government, in fear of the motoring lobby, fails to rectify these problems.

So we have:

- speed limits - ignored and poorly enforced;

- pavement driving and parking - ignored and poorly enforced.

- cycle lanes - derided and ignored

- bollards, vandalised and driven over

- LTNs - campaigned against, vandalised and ignored

- Pedestrianised areas: ignored and now even plod has encouraged their use.

- Driving standards - rarely enforced, tolerated by other road users.

Yet it remains the pedestrians' and cyclists' problem to deal with the motorist culture which is that careless and inconsiderate driving is the norm and should be accepted and tolerated and those who seek to resist such a culture are at fault.

It is weird, that while many cyclist are also drivers, all drivers are at some point, pedestrians.  I'm guessing they criticise others pavement parking.

I wonder how much is also a generational/upbringing thing?

I was brought up not to litter - I come home with pockets full of wrappers and other detritous, I cannot bring myself to stop on a double yellow, abide by bus lanes and pedestrian areas. I also try to avoid pushing my way out of give ways, that should always be a negotiation and one where I am quite content that several cars should pass on a major road before anyone even considers giving me the opportunity to pull out. So as a driver, I am still aggrieved that other drivers cannot abide by the clearly marked rules. As a cyclist doign gravel rides, I make it obvious I am going wide and slow, and I always thank walkers who cooperate with me on a bike.

It seems to me that there is a social aspect, the working man who feels entitled to brush others out of their way because they've got work to get to (oblivious to the status of other road users), the wealthy entitled (or the fake wealthy who are leasing beyond their means), and the plain anti-social, petty criminal attitude.

Someone told me I had an over-developed sense of right and wrong. A mate defended me, asking "Is that possible?"

its funny to think when I was that age I was riding round on NSL roads in the countryside, unsupervised, didnt even wear a helmet, I wasnt supposed to go to far out of the village but I may have bent those rules once or twice, guess there were less cars then, but risk is that thing that humans are particularly bad at comprehending properly.

it looks a perfectly safe road to teach kids to ride on, drivers just need to be less self intolerant impatient twats about it.

ktache wrote:

Just wondering.

Are there a nationwide network of road cycling simulators?

There will always be a first ride on the roads.

We all did it.

It's how you get experienced.

I would like to simulators mandatory prior to driving tests... pretty sure RAC have had them for decades. However, I would like an additional VR element after your lesson where you get to experience being the recipient of your driving, cyclists, pedestrians etc. The tech is there and I think it would be mind-blowing to a lot of drivers as to how that 'it wasn't THAT close' pass felt.

And all you need is powerful fans so that you can get the hair on the arms (and legs) moving from the draft.

pockstone wrote:

How many children have been killed or seriously injured in their parents' own cars?

Were those parents all hauled over the coals for irresponsibly putting their children in danger by taking them on the roads?

Ah but you don't understand, motor cars are a huge benefit to society and apparently directly responsible for increased life expectancy, so those deaths are a price well worth paying, whereas cyclists are attention-seeking virtue signallers deliberately putting small children at risk for YouTube clicks.

Or from a non-troll point of view, that's a very valid point.

I don't see why you are getting so angry at the obvious fact that motorised vehicles increase life expectancy in the aggregate.

If you get really ill, I suggest - rather than calling one of those "pollution spewing" ambulances - you get 4 blokes to take you to hospital on a rick shaw. While you're at it though, make sure you find a hospital that doesn't use electricity, would hate for you to be saved using fossil fuels. Oh, but the hospital also wouldn't have to have any products made out of evil plastic... In fact, don't bother calling that rick shaw, eh?

Rakia wrote:

In fact, don't bother calling that rick shaw, eh?

Rickshaw is one word. I wouldn't normally be so petty as to call someone out for their linguistic ignorance, but as you tried to claim the other day that the police shouldn't be listened to as they made a typo with "hierarchy" I think it's appropriate to point it out here.

Some years ago I was cycling with my son to his football training. He was close passed by another parent taking his child to the same football training session. I challenged the parent about this when we arrived, at the same time incidentally, as the driver had to wait in a traffic queue. The other parent said my child had wobbled on his bike, which was the cause of the close pass. I pointed out that even if my son had wobbled on his bike (he didn't) he wouldn't have been at risk if the driver had kept a proper distance. He shut up after that. I gave the parent the evil eye for weeks afterwards every time I saw him at training. I never said another word to him. He got the message.

Reminds me of:

https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/insert-loved-one-here/gallery

No not really. That road even has traffic calming measures. I am thinking you aint very smart. 
I would comment though that in the Netherlands the parent would have been cycling alongside the child, often with a hand on their back and full control of both their own bike and ready to intervene if necessary if their is a sudden fcktard like the driver in the video doing crap like that. Of course Dutch drivers have a lot more respect for fellow road users. 

Always good to start with an insult...

The traffic calming measures increase the potential for conflict.

They require a driver to see the cyclist and then to cede priority. Anyone that rides regularly through such chicanes will know that neither of those are a given. I've had a few near misses and I'm far larger and easier to see than the child in the video.

I'm glad we agree on the optimal positioning of the adult cyclist though.

Rich_cb wrote:

The father has made a poor judgement call in choosing this road.

It's quite clearly a quiet residential road with regular traffic calming measures, there's even a park running down one side of it so you only have to watch for people exiting driveways on your left. It's completely straight so no problems with dangerous sightlines. It's hard to imagine a much safer road, to be honest. The only thing that makes this road unsuitable for the child is the behaviour of the driver. Anywhere can become dangerous if drivers make it so; I've occasionally seen people driving in London's completely segregated cycle lanes, if one of those hit a child cyclist would the parents have chosen the wrong route? Additionally, in the original tweet by the father he points out that he is less than 100m from his house, so it's not so much a matter of choosing a road to ride on as wanting to ride home.

Hang on - are we missing the elephant again?  Non-moving elephants this time.  Houses on the left (that I can see) have driveways.  And there are vehicles parked along much of that side of the road, and on the other side also.  Right at the start there are (thin) cycle bypasses by the traffic calming restrictions (on both sides, they're marked with a bike symbol) - and look!  My favourite - a vehicle (truck) parked right after the one on the right...

Now this may be "by design" e.g. "parking will narrow the carriageway and slow down drivers".  On the other hand the vehicles also then force people into conflict.  All I know is there is a subtle but maybe important difference from how they do this where there is lots of cycling.

Not relevant to the main point but as a bonus "could do better" - someone reversing out of a side street.  You weren't advised to do that when I learned (rule 201):

I noticed that too.

Also, most (all?) of the cars on drives were facing in so will all be reversing out onto the road at some point.

They'll be doing that with absolutely terrible visibility due to all the parked cars and vans.

Ideal.

It's increasingly obvious to anyone in their right that anyone who responded to this video with nothing to say about the driver and everything to say about the child, should have gheir responses passed to their insurance company for appropriate risk rating.

No, the driver was 100% in the wrong. The size of the cyclist isn't the issue here. If the cyclist was an adult, the driver would still have been in the wrong.

Did you read my post?

I don't think I could have made it much clearer that I thought the driver was entirely in the wrong with regard to the incident in question.

The father erred in his route selection.