To be scared of cycling on the road in this day and age?

[poshsinglemum]

I'd love to take up cycling but I would just be terrified of taking a bike out on the roads as they are so busy nowadays. I always think that parents with their kids on the seat on the back of the bike are really cool but I'm too chicken to do it myself.
I know there are cycle paths. No doubt if dd takes up cycling I won't sleep at night.

Drivers always get let off killing cyclists. In the US too. Like the driver who shot a cyclist in the head for being on the road with his three-year-old child, he got four months and anger management counselling. www.mountainx.com/news/2009/former_asheville_firefighter_gets_4_months_for_shooting_cyclist This man was given community service in Aberdeen for driving at a cyclist: www.eveningexpress.co.uk/Article.aspx/1674017 And there are hundreds more cases where the police simply take no action.

OTOH, cyclists get taken to court for accidentally hitting (and not killing) dogs on a cycle path: www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/8180225.Cyclist___s_relief_after_dog_crash_case_is_dropped/, whereas cars kill over one million mammals per year, with not a prosecution in sight.

JoanneOfArk - The fact that one group of people is making it difficult/unsafe for you to do what you are perfectly entitled to do does not make ok for you to make it difficult/unsafe for a different group of people to do what they are perfectly entitled to do. If you can't/won't cycle on the road, walk.

People should use some thought about where to cycle, but on the pavement there is a risk from cars backing out of driveways that should be considered** that applies to the road aswell though, it wouldn't be any more or less of a risk - you should always be careful when a car is reversing and car drivers should not be reversing onto the road but reversing onto their drive - so they can see pedestrains or children n the pavement

i am as guilty as hell of driving the car straight onot the drive note that I really shouldn't do this

The fact is that cars on the road pose a far greater threat to pedestrians on the pavement than bicycles do.

If you are concerned about your safety as a pedestrian, you should be doing all you can to reduce the considerable threat from cars.

Over the three period 1998 to 2000, 185 pedestrians were killed by vehicles on pavements. 1 was killed by a bicycle, 184 were killed by motor vehicles.

Why aren't you upset about the motor vehicles on pavements, which are 200 times more likely to kill you than bicycles?

JoanneOfArk - I'm not disputing your facts just your conclusions. It's clearly safer to cycle on the pavement than the road. It's not ok for cars to mount pavements. It's not ok for cyclists to cycle on pavements. The fact that there are worse things than cycling on the pavement doesn't make it ok.

What are you expecting? People to say, 'Yes, fine cycle on the pavement'?

Your choices are cycle on the road or don't cycle.

To address your stats briefly though - according to this ibikelondon.blogspot.com/ which rerferences this www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/nts/ 2% of journeys are made by bike against 63% by car in the uk (I would rather just have figures for London or another urban area but this is what I could find on google quickly so go with me here..)

So 3% of all journeys where someone COULD be killed by a car or bike are taken by bike and 97% by car. So if cars were equally as dangerous as bikes you would expect 31 deaths from a car for every 1 from a bike.

So from your figures cars are about 6 times more dangerous than bikes to pedestrians on the pavement. Not 184 times.

i think all this feardy talk about cycling is just an excuse to be lazy.

Harsher penalties does little to discourage behaviour - better enforcement on the other hand....

15mph is to low - 20 in residential, 30 on main roads and 40-50 on arteries as now seems reasonable. Really, the answer is to separate cycle traffic out. That is difficult in old cities with relatively narrow streets. New development however....

If you're in a lorry, you can mow down a cyclist, stop to remove the tangled wreckage of the bike from your lorry and dump it elsewhere and still only be judged to have been driving carelessly

Two years' jail for 'callous' truck driver

agree!

OK, I'm a cyclist (cycle to work, around town and for leisure) and I do jump some red lights. So flame me.

I do it if I know the road and junction well and there are no pedestrians. I usually cycle to work around 6am when there is no one about anyway.

At other times it can be safer to set off whilst the lights are still red and just before they go green as you get away from teh cars before they all accelerate off.

Can I just ask how they know how far I travelled by cycle? Not being thiick but I know they can account form petrol consumtion and get a figure - but how do they get the walking and bike?

So far this year I have cycled aorund 1000 miles - but no one has asked

Oh and just incase anyone is interested the record for miles for one year was 78000 miles

that is the equevalent of cycling to faro one week and back to Coventry the next for a whole year

TheCoalitionNeedsYou:

"2% of journeys are made by bike against 63% by car in the uk (I would rather just have figures for London or another urban area but this is what I could find on google quickly so go with me here..)

So from your figures cars are about 6 times more dangerous than bikes to pedestrians on the pavement. Not 184 times"

No, 184 times. You can't say 'if there were 30 times more bicycles around, they would be far more dangerous'. Because there aren't. You can't say 'but if there were much more bikes, the threat would be much greater'. That's true of anything. If we had more adders, or rabid dogs, they would be more of a threat too.

What are you expecting? People to say, 'Yes, fine cycle on the pavement'?

Your choices are cycle on the road or don't cycle.

Well you could say 'your choices are to drive within the speed limit and always park considerarely or not drive at all'. But you don't, and people don't - when I went out to buy uniform there were four cars parked on the pavement outside, because of parents too lazy to walk 150 yards to the free, clearly sign-posted car park round the corner (no cycle parking of course, cyclists don't pay tax doncha know, and are entitled to nothing). And on any given school day, schools are crowded with killer 4x4s, blocking driveways, parked illegally at the closest possible point to the school.

All this is fine, and cars are a-ok, yet whenever there's any discussion of bicycles, people start spouting nonsense about how dangerous they are.

I have cycled to and from school/work in four countries for over 30 years, and have only been knocked off y a car once (have hit the deck more times than that but without help from a car, mostly down to nbad nike maintanance). Cycling is much safer if you cycle defensively - for instance cycle well into the road so you have a place to escape to if someone comes too close. DH has a motorbike and is also a keen cyclist. he says that the motorbike training that he had to take to pass his test (CBT, compulsory basic training?) was invaluable in teaching him how to ride defensively. He's rightfully given out to me about not doing shoulder checks (bike equivalent of checking mirrors before manuvering) which has really improved my safety.

OP - if you're worried how about taking a cycle safety course, or even sitting your CBT? You can also find bike buddies in some places, I know my ex-workplace had a bike user group that offered bike buddies for new cyclists so people could show newbies where the cool shortcuts were that avoided scary bus lanes, which dangerous intersections to avoid and things like that.

I wish car users would realise that when I cycle to work, I'm taking a car off the road, and leaving more space for them to drive in as well as cutting my burden on the NHS by staying healthy, physically and mentally. Oh and don't get me started on people who think cyclists should pay road tax. We do - it's just I left the big dangerous, polluting steel box at home and am doing substantially less wear and tear on the road surface with my nice light bike. Rant over.

No. Your statistic just says that IF you are knocked down and killed on the pavement it's 184 times more likely to be by a car than a bicycle.

The contribution that each car makes to the risk of a pedestrian being killed is six time greater then that a bike makes.

The number of each vehicle on the road is critical to interpreting the statistics.

I haven't said anything about cars, and I agree with most of your points. Just not the way you use statistics or your conclusions.

Your argument seems to be "Car drivers inconvenience and cause risk to me, therefore, in order to minimise this, I am entitled to inconvenience and cause risk to pedestrians".

This is the same argument as "Some people let their dogs shit in my street, therefore I am entitled to chuck any shit I find into the front gardens along the street"

You are prioitising your needs over another persons and blaming it on a third party, who is not responsible for your actions.

I thin that the more people cycle, the more tolerant drivers have to become. i live in a city where cycling is very popular and as a relt, drivers are re accustomed to giving them room etc. Of course you still get the occasional scuffle, but generally the greater presence of bikes makes people more olerant.

Just on the comment about bikes (i assume motorbikes) being safer, as far as i know they are disproportionatley over represented in the accident stats. And in the countryside near us, you see them all zooming round like loons. They are a pain in the neck here.

Apologies for apalling typos...

It's nothing to do with my needs. I don't ride on the pavement. But, I'm not upset about people that do, because I'd rather they did that than drive, or wobble along the edge of the road inviting cars to cut them up and crush them to death.

Dog shit is antisocial and dangerous. To compare it with pavement cycling, which is legal in some areas (but not in others with similar characteristics) is ludicrous.

Sigh.

I'm not comparing cycling on the pavement to dogshit, I was just trying to use it as a concrete example. Maybe I need to abstract it instead.

Your argument is that because person A performs action X that effects person B, that therefore to mitigate the effects of X on person B, person B is entitled to perform action Y that effects person C.

I don't think this is a valid moral equation.