AIBU to think this event should never have happened.

[DaisiesAreOurSilver]

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mare-newborn-foal-die-because-15637103

Big cycle race of 100 miles in our area yesterday. Road closures from 5.30 am till 12.30 pm. Some streets were totally cut off for the whole time.

Residents were just told they should have parked outside the area the night before. For some that would mean a walk of a mile, given how many roads were closed. One family escorted through because they had a flight to catch but had to wait 25 minutes for an escort.

Carers were unable to visit the housebound clients, meals on wheels couldn't get through and the stewards didn't give a stuff. For some people it wasn't a question of finding a way around there were areas that were totally cut off for the duration.

But worst of all the stewards wouldn't let a emergency vet through and a mare and her foal died. The foal would have been worth a lot of money as was the mare. I hope the owner sues for every penny she can.

Residents are very angry and cannot understand why permission was granted for this to happen. If they try it again vigilantes have said they'll force the roads open if they try to close them. Feelings running very high.

I have to admit to going into ditches for cars (usually 4wD or BMW’s), but to do that to another cyclist (albeit one sans testicles, on a tatty bike and not in cycling gear) is mean.

This happened to small towns outside Glasgow during the commonwealth games. The areas cut off had no train service and relied on buses. Glasgow Cory Council’s solution was work from home....yes because that’s always possible.

I often have to launch myself into ditches on country lanes which are sustrans dedicated cycling routes because of car drivers.

Yeah, that's terrible...I think we all agree on that. It doesn't justify cyclists doing the same.

This thread is a paradigm of trying to debate in real life. The entire point has been missed ("What level of disruption is acceptable when large fun events are organised across large areas of the country ?") and replaced with a debate the OP didn't start ("Why do you hate cyclists ?"). Which allowed it to descend in a pit of viper venom.

It's also a good example of how people in power get away with it. The only people that are going to be concerned reading this thread are cyclists. The real culprits - CSM and their hand-in-glove councils - have dodged the bullet. If I worked for CSM, my only worry would be whether I could spend all the money from this Velo before the next in 2020. Although I wouldn't spend it on cycling.

Reading this thread, I am wondering how some people actually get through life? It’s as if the “professionally offended” are out in force.

I’ve just done the school run now in the Putney / Fulham area and I must have passed or been passed by at least a hundred “lycra clad men” on a 30 minute return journey. So what? They’re commuting to work and having far less environmental impact than me in my car. Yes you do have to adapt your driving style and “think bike”, but again, so what? I don’t see myself as having any more right to take up road space or to determine how the roads should be used than them.

I wouid personally love to cycle more, but what puts me off is the traffic. I’d be terrified.

As for this horse, yes it absolutely tragic, but how many horses, pets or wildlife are killed by cars every day. Not to mention humans. I think people need to get a reality check.

As for the poster complaining that she was held up by cyclists trying to drive through the Lake District, well what makes you think the residents of the Lakes would welcome you and your car any more than the bikes? Traffic is horrendous at all major tourist destinations most of the time. It’s not surprising people cycle to get around it and I think this is another important reason why so many cycle in London. You can get fit, save time by getting through traffic and lower your carbon footprint to boot. By the way, I don’t know any man who drives to work in his “BMW” - you can’t park in Central London! Even in zones 2/3 it can be £7 per hour. People don’t drive into town. There is s congestion charge anyway. They cycle or use public transport.

In Richmond Park it is basically an outdoor velodrome on weekends, but again, there are plenty of places to walk that are not on the roads and paths. I run down the Thames towpath a lot and there’s always bikes, but you just deal with it. I don’t own public rights of way any more than the next person.

Just compromise people.

If course not but ranting about “cyclists” and seeing them as an identifiable group to hate on is unpleasant and unfair. Drivers do far more harm. Dh is a Mamil but avoids large events. He was injured recently due to some idiot having a dog running round the cycle path at rush hour while he was commuting. He fell off to avoid the dog. A van driver hit him in error (driver in tears) and a wanker in an Audi drove into him on purpose just for fun as he hated “cyclists”.

The only people that are going to be concerned reading this thread are cyclists. The real culprits - CSM and their hand-in-glove councils - have dodged the bullet

Superbly put

You should be ashamed of yourself op. The utter irony of car drivers venting their bile at cyclists.

Hilarious. How very dare I complain about a mare dying in agony and a foal dying before it's born. Only a very sad cow would think there is anything wrong with complaining about those deaths. Cap? Fits? @MsTSwift

Daisies - so presumably you’ll be starting a second thread today to argue that all cars should be taken off the roads because only yesterday, x hundred animals were killed by cars? Horses, pets and wildlife alike?

Oh fgs Daisies like you really care about horses, it's just a thinly veiled way to attack cyclists.

a wanker in an Audi drove into him on purpose just for fun as he hated “cyclists”

Really?

Ballistic they'll be moaning about arrogant horse riders next week getting in the way of their previous cars.

The point about the environment was not that a cycling event is good for the environment. It was that the attitude that not being allowed to drive your car is some kind of breach of human rights is bad for the environment. I have no interest in cycling whatsoever so I would gain no enjoyment from such an event, but I still can't imagine getting quite this angry about it.

Cars have priority 364 days a year. They cause a lot of deaths. A friend of mine is in and out of hospital with her 2 and 5 year olds on a weekly basis and she's nearly lost both of them, attributable at least in part to poor air quality. And yet when I said people need to stop and think whether they should really be getting this angry about not being allowed to use their cars for a day I got called lacking in empathy and detached from society.

I am not saying the event was necessarily good enough to justify the disruption. It sounds like the disruption could have been mitigated much better, and the event is not world changing.

But was it bad enough to justify this level of anger? People threatening civil unrest and so on? Bearing in mind the harm we are inflicting on people and animals with our cars every day? Some people obviously think it is. I am less sure. So I am obviously thick or on the wind up. It's depressing, we ought to be able to have opinions, express views without it descending to this.

As for the poster complaining that she was held up by cyclists trying to drive through the Lake District, well what makes you think the residents of the Lakes would welcome you and your car any more than the bikes? Traffic is horrendous at all major tourist destinations most of the time. It’s not surprising people cycle to get around it

Completely understand the concerns around road closures for this and other events of this type, however posters like the one you've quoted sound ridiculous. Cyclists have as much right to use the roads as cars and that post just screams of 'get out the way of me and my car, how DARE you use the roads'.

Some stats re horse casualties on the roads

Oh fgs Daisies like you really care about horses, it's just a thinly veiled way to attack cyclists

Did you mean to be so rude? I guess you did because you are very frothy. Another unbalanced post from a lycra lover. Get a grip. I learned to ride when I was 3. At the same place as our local Olympic champion as it happens. I've been riding ponies and horses ever since, although poor health means that pleasure has been curtailed in recent years. I love horses.

Why would you think I'd pretend to care? Don't you care? I know you prefer bikes but these were living creatures. How could anyone not care? Weird.

The only people that are going to be concerned reading this thread are cyclists. The real culprits - CSM and their hand-in-glove councils - have dodged the bullet.

And the sad thing is that, as this thread shows, if such events are poorly organised it just becomes another way to sound off about people who cycle, and threaten them with physical violence. Instead of realising that the problem lies in the organisation, not in such events or the people who participate in them, it's all too easy just to join in the general vituperative and idiotic prejudice against a group who have little in common other than sometimes sitting on a bike.

Still I note that Schrodinger's cyclist has made his appearance on this thread. Cyclists somehow manage both to pedal in excess of 40mph thereby terrorising pedestrians and yet also go so slowly as to prevent people arriving at their destination in time to go to the loo.

I mean I assume those people complaining about how fast cyclists are going are in fact happy to drive slower than cyclists go, otherwise aren't they just terrifying everyone around them?

“I love horses.... I know you prefer bikes...,”

Don’t be silly Daisy. Nobody can reason with this kind of statement.

One thing I think is quite telling is that there were velothons in Wales before this and one of the problems they had was basically this same sort of thinh, coupled with failure to notify for instance that meant quite a few people woke up one day to find the roads in their village were closed.

The failures don't seem to have been admitted at first, so people's main engagement with others on the matter was the rather unhelpful "sorry your humdrum existence was disturbed", "NIMBY" and "just one day" stuff. Eventually the Wales events stopped happening.

Leaving the rights and wrongs of that behind for a moment, it seems like the people organising these events have had ample opportunity to consider the pitfalls and basically failed to make it workable, either because they can't, or because they don't care.

@YetAnotherSpartacus I don't doubt that story at all. It's not uncommon for drivers to aim their cars at cyclists. Some of it is reported in the press but they don't often bother with it and you'll find more evidence on YouTube. I've had it happen personally although I find the most common form of road violence is the punishment pass - i.e. someone getting angry and passing far too close just to show you who's really boss on the roads.

People may think those who get around by bike are entitled, but when someone scrapes past your right leg at 50mph because they're annoyed at being held up for a few seconds, you tend to get a different view about who is entitled and selfish. Clue, it isn't the person trying to cut pollution and environmental damage.

Cyclists have as much right to use the roads as cars and that post just screams of 'get out the way of me and my car, how DARE you use the roads'

That poster was me. And if you read my post carefully you will see that I mentioned that the cyclists concerned held up an entire cavalcade of cars. They were riding in an entitled and unsafe way (making it impossible to pass) and they did not pull over to let cars pass. Basically, they were riding like entitled turds. If they had pulled over and/or let cars past there would not have been an issue.

Belenus you are so right, it is utter hatred for ALL cyclists not for the organisers of the event which seems to have disappeared off the radar.

Daisy I'm not lycra clad, I never ride a bike or even own one, I just think it's disgusting the way people would quite happily obliterate a whole tranch of people just because they get in the way of THEIR lives. You have not one jot of empathy but you do with horse owners because you learnt to ride at an Olympic something or other? Well bully for you, so horses clogging up the roads are fine but cyclists aren`t? The irony is that I own two horses and here I am defending cyclists and you have the audacity to tell me that I prefer bikes to horses!

YetAnotherSpartacus I don't doubt that story at all. It's not uncommon for drivers to aim their cars at cyclists. Some of it is reported in the press but they don't often bother with it and you'll find more evidence on YouTube. I've had it happen personally

Well, I don't drive but I am amazed that so many drivers care so less about the law and the spectre of imprisonment that they are prepared to drive so recklessly.

OTOH I have been walking peacefully and have had to dive out of the way of cyclists who have passed at very close range...

Instead of realising that the problem lies in the organisation, not in such events or the people who participate in them, it's all too easy just to join in the general vituperative and idiotic prejudice against a group who have little in common other than sometimes sitting on a bike.

Which is why ironically, for all the frothing here, the 2020 will go ahead unchanged from the 2019, like the 2019 went unchanged from the 2017. Because all the complaints can be dismissed as "anti-cycling" (and therefore of no interest in todays enlightened Green times) rather than "pro-resident".

In fact the more hate the cycling community gets out of this, the less likely anything is to change. The organisers will have been gifted the moral high ground and they'd be fools to waste such an open goal.