Cyclists in the City pointed me to this article titled 'On Your Bike' published in issue 65 of 'The Transport Professional's Magazine: Facts' and written by Phil Flanders, the Scottish Director of the Road Haulage Association. Maybe the magazine should be re-named 'Rants' or 'Stuff What I Reckon' or even 'Rubbish'. Unfortunately it's yet another badly-researched, factually-incorrect and quite damaging article…not at all 'professional'.
Article is in
italic, my comments are in
bold:
There have been a spate of accidents involving cyclists and lorries recently and as usual the lorry is the big bad bogeyman.Actually it's mostly been police and The Mayor of London that have been blaming lorry drivers. Oh, also the media reporting things like 'arrested for dangerous driving', but don't let that get in the way of rhetoric - in I can't think of a single cyclist that actually has an unreasonable problem with lorries. We're, understandably, quite wary of them though.It reminded me of an article I read last year in New Zealand where they have a similar problem. It appeared in the New Zealand Herald and was written by Eric Thompson. He refers to a report mentioning Mercedes-Benz Vice President of Safety Engineering, Ulrich Mellinghoff, told a road safety conference in Melbourne that mixing bicycles with motorised traffic was an 'unsafe practice' that needed changing.Now call me cynical if you like, but can a VP of a company that sells vehicles be absolutely unbiased in this? But this is something I agree with. Unfortunately in cities we only have so much space and anybody that has tried to campaign knows how hard it is to get any council (or Transport for London) to spend money of cycling infrastructure. Given the choice of purpose-built cycling lanes or a road that you have to navigate through speeding vehicles; not many cyclists would pick the latter! I'm going to also go out on a limb here and suggest that Phil would probably also have a problem with cycling lanes being built with 'his' money anyway.A public road with motor vehicles is no place for a cyclist, no matter how much they bleat about having every right to be in the same place as a car.In fact cyclists do have the same right, bleating or not. My suspicion is that the word 'bleat' is used here as it exposes just how many times Phil has probably been told this, but still it hasn't sunk in yet. Roads were around before cars, and guess which group they were often built by and for? Yep, cyclists!A cyclist will always come off second best in an accident with a motor vehicle. No matter whose fault it is, in any type of motor versus pushbike altercation it's not going to take a rocket scientist to work out who's going to end up in the back of an ambulance.Also pedestrians will come off worse, people in smaller cars or mobility scooters. Maybe we should only allow armoured cars of exactly the same specification on the roads so that when they crash into each other each driver has a fair chance of dying?He suggests that for road safety reasons: All pushbikes must be fitted with rear-vision mirrors - as all other vehicles on the road are required by law;Now we get to the details...
In fact this would have little or no effect. Some people do use them, but for them to be effective they'd have to protrude quite a distance from the bicycle itself, thereby requiring that passing vehicles to give even more distance. Aside from that, cyclists can simply look over their shoulder - unhindered by bits of metal!
All pushbikes must be fitted with indicators, or similar deceives - as all other vehicles on the road are required by law;Most 'pushbikes' in the world are fitted with indicators as standard...they're called arms! Again the fact that this is missed from the article would suggest that it doesn't merit much thought by our mate Phil there. My other question would be; if bicycles did have 'indicators', wouldn't drivers just ignore those too?They can only ride single-file on a single-lane road unless overtaking - as all other vehicles on the road are required by law;Aside from the net result of introducing even more congestion, mostly it seems to be Phil suggesting that riding in twos means it's harder for vehicles to get past. In fact if you find it difficult to get past two riders, then it's most likely the case that it's too tight to get past one cyclist. Although one cyclist is easier to bully into the gutter, I suppose.Be fitted with headlights that must be on at all times - as other two-wheeled vehicles on the road are required by law;I can't think of any evidence showing that 'headlights' being on 'at all times' would increase the visibility of cyclists in most situations. In fact with a low sun behind a cyclist it could actually mask them from view. All bike riders must pass a road-license test - as are all other people that venture on to public roads;Lots of cyclists do indeed have a driving licence but choose to cycle. For example I have a car licence, IAM Advanced Driving certification and a full motorcycle licence. In my experience tests get harder in a direct correlation with how much damage you can do with the vehicle in question. You can do about the same amount of damage with a bicycle as you can with a shopping trolley, so I'd like to also see people pass a test if they want to use a shopping trolley. Ok, so I'm being a bit facetious, and I would like to see more bicycle training, especially awareness, road-sense and defensive riding. However if there was more cyclist training then drivers may see an increase of cyclists taking primary position on the road, for example, and knowing they can't be bullied!
Anyway, what's a 'road-license'?
All pushbikes must be registered and pay a road tax - as all other vehicles on the road are required by law. They should be able to get a reduction for low emissions!
I knew this was coming! Bet that was what he really wanted to get to. Well, hey, guess what? Trucks don't pay road tax either! Trucks, cars, vans, buses etc all pay Vehicle Excise Duty and it's based on emissions. So even if bicycles did have to pay VED, they'd pay based on their emissions which are zero, so pay nothing. If this was going to happen it's conservatively estimated that to set this up would cost £25 million…only to collect no revenue. 'Road tax' doesn't exist anymore. The roads are paid for from general tax, so if you work and pay tax then you pay for the roads too! There's also the rather glaring fact that many cyclists have vehicles too so will be paying VED - and if they're cycling they're not driving so the driver near them isn't being held up by them! Rather than getting all bent out of shape about this, these 'professional drivers' should be thanking cyclists from the bottom of their heart!I would go further and add that all must have adequate insurance for any accidents they cause and maybe even liability insurance for those who knock people down.While I'm no actuary, I'm going to guess that people who are hit by vehicles come off a lot worse than being hit by bicycles. Having said that, I believe everybody should be responsible for themselves so if they ride into and injure somebody then they're responsible for that. Ergo, they pay medical bills etc. It's only fair!Those cyclists, and there are many, who play their iPods or other types of mobile music should also be charge for committing and offence of cycling without due care etc. etc. as they have no chance of hearing any vehicle approaching and are totally unaware of what is going on around them.I hear this a lot. Unless you have military-grade, noise-cancelling, full-enclosure headphones and have Napalm Death turned up to 11, you can still hear plenty on the road. Maybe drivers have a false sense of what really is going on on the roads, but it's noisy! When a car beeps next to you it's seriously loud!Further, the obvious fact is that it's pretty much impossible to buy a vehicle nowadays that doesn't have in-car entertainment including a myriad of screens, sat nav etc. So if it's 'without due care' for a bicycle, it'd really have to be the same for a car driver - no more drive-time radio for you, Phil! Oh, also, you have to now drive around with all your windows down because your car is too well sound-insulated!Some however have started to fit small video cameras to their helmets. If you are unfortunate to upset them on the roads they will report you to the authorities and will have evidence of whatever it was that you did. There are cases of this already where the police have taken action.
This pretty much speaks for itself! 'they will have evidence of whatever it was that you did'? Surely that's a good thing then! Means you can't abuse people on the roads and hope to get away with it. Plenty of drivers drive very well and they don't provide any 'evidence' at all.
While I poke fun at this article, it's really just the lowest-brow rubbish peddling a 'tribes' argument that totally ignores the fact that some lorry drivers do cycle, and cyclists do respect lorry-drivers.
Unfortunatly all Phil has done here is exposed his prejudiced and ignorant opinions...Fact!
