To ask how we stop dangerous cyclists

Cars, cows, bicycles, lightning, mobility scooters. Have a go at ranking them in order of pedestrian deaths. Look up the stats and then decide if stopping dangerous cycling should still be the priority or if it should be buying insulating rubber boots for all instead.

But that would be an enormous waste of money. You might be fine for your taxes to be spent wasting money in this way but I’m not.

Why are you so desperate to equate cyclists with motorists? I mean, I’m a fair weather cyclist who loves her car and understands full well that cycling isn’t the answer for everyone, but I know full well our roads would be far safer with fewer cars and more bikes.

No because you don't know who's going to step into the pavement. My friend had their arm broken by some twat cycling on the pavement.

I think the same thing could be said for drivers. I am both so must be a double pain I the arse. There's so much bad cycling and so much bad driving. But bad driving results much more likely injury and death of others than cycling (which can on rare occasion cause injury and death but nowhere near as often as driving).

so mots for bikes, drug and drink testing and speed checks shouldn't be a issue

That depends on where you are.

Cycling on a footpath is mostly legal in Scotland. Cycling on a footway (aka pavement - a path next to a road) is not, unless it has been designated as shared use.

It is against the law to cycle on the footpath. It's called the "footpath" for a reason. Other than on a motorway ("motor" being a key word there), roads are for all to use, they are not reserved for cars.

I actually saw a car obeying the speed limit earlier. I was shocked.

There's one of those signs that shows your speed as you come into town (right outside a primary school no less). Normally most cars are exceeding it by 50%, this one actually respected the limit (we'll overlook the odd 1 or 2mph). Never mind considering the limit to be a target, most people seem to think that it's a minimum. It was so weird seeing a car driving legally.

No. It’s illegal for a start so why should cyclists do something illegal to appease impatient drivers?

And you don’t know when a pedestrian is going to appear anyway.

That's illegal though.

Yeah but surely it’s common sense to make use of the pavement if it’s empty!

My PP was as usual far too long! 😅TL;DR: car drivers need to remember that the speed limit is a maximum, not a target. You do NOT have some kind of god-given right to go faster than the rest of traffic, which includes cyclists.

Again, this would penalise hardly any cyclists.

I drive, cycle, walk and take buses in London, and it astounds me there aren't more deaths. Actually, I think drivers are much more cycle aware than they were even five years ago, and I think that's because the electric rental bikes have brought a lot more bikes onto the road. So more drivers are also cyclists, and even those who never use bikes are at least used to seeing a lot of bikes around.

Some of you sound quite unaware, though. In London, where the speed limit is generally 20mph, cyclists are not delaying drivers behind them; we are generally moving the same speed. It would help if, when you're in your car, you remind yourself that you are driving not because you want to get there faster (you won't, not in London) but because you have luggage or children or bad weather or hills. You can still appreciate the luggage/children/warmth in your bubble while going the speed of the traffic around you.

Drivers in the city should not be trying to push past cyclists, especially since the Highway Code (and plain common sense) tell cyclists to stay at least half a metre away from parked cars that can swing their doors open without warning -- so the bicycle has to be in the middle of the lane. And drivers may not pass a cyclist with less than a car's width between them, which means only in places where they could equally pass another car.

Cyclists are supposed to stop in front of the queue of cars at every traffic light, not to the side or behind. That's why most marked intersections in London now have a box painted for cyclists at the front of the queue.

On the whole I do not see a lot of dangerous cyclists, and as far as I do, they're mainly dangerous to other cyclists (us grannies on bikes) rather than pedestrians. And they are not the infamous MAMILs. Some of them are in fact YMIL (young men in lycra), but as a PP said upthread, most of them are delivery cyclists who should be easy to register and number-plate. But by far the biggest danger on the roads everywhere are HGVs. It's astonishing in this age of in-vehicle cameras that any truck or bus is considered road-legal if the driver can't see all the way around his own vehicle.

I would hold cyclists to the same standards as well. Including the state of the vehicle that they use.

Can I remind you all that at this time of year pedestrians too are totally invisible at night. Most people wear black or dark blue and you know, you do have to cross the roads sometimes, you're not always on the pavement. Next time you're driving, notice how hard pedestrians are to spot in the dark and take note for your own safety.

Cyclists are not meant to be on the pavement!

And bikes are part of traffic.

What I don’t understand is when there is a completely free pavement going on forever and no pedestrians but they still decide to go on the road and hold all the traffic up - it’s so odd.

I have seen government statistics on this subject. If I find them again I'll post them. They tot up which party was deemed to be responsible for the many fatalities and serious injuries each year (spoiler: not cyclists)

Given that car drivers routinely get away with murder (literally and figuratively), next to no one would fall afoul.

I think that it's time to hold car drivers to the same standards as train drivers. Zero tolerance of drink & drugs, zero tolerance of speeding, zero tolerance of failing to stop etc. There wouldn't be a single motorist left on the road.

Hardly any. You need to be pretty fit to ride a bike in the first place, and the consequences of road rage in a driver as opposed to a cyclist are incomparable.

Ludicrous comment.

Scientists also reckon that more than a quarter of the microplastics in the ocean were shed from car tyres. That stuff is getting into the food chain!

Wow, you do realise most cycle deaths are not the cyclists fault

If we held cyclists to the same standards as drivers, how many would be found to be unfit to be on a bike?

the issue with this is that its cause of death not cause of accident.