Cyclists without lights - something needs to be done

[J4CKO]

Shakermaker said:

cb1965 said:

The school suggested that when cycling people should have lights and hi-vis, that's why she was looking for both. Clearly if it's only 17 out of 102 it's a non issue though as heebeegeebee keeps telling us

You are saying "something should be done" when of course the straightforward answer to what that is, would be enforcing the Highway Code rules as they apply to cyclists, and educating those using bikes to adhere to them.


Rule 60
At night your cycle MUST have white front and red rear lights lit. It MUST also be fitted with a red rear reflector (and amber pedal reflectors, if manufactured after 1/10/85). White front reflectors and spoke reflectors will also help you to be seen. Flashing lights are permitted but it is recommended that cyclists who are riding in areas without street lighting use a steady front lamp.

Dont see many reflectors nowadays, I used reflective tape on mine.

Some stuff I learned over the last ten years commuting down dark lanes,

I would say, have as many lights as you can, wear hi viz and use the lights to try and differentiate yourself from a car, i.e. try and outline your shape and go for one flashing and one steady front and back, try to have something so you can be seen from the side as well.

Have more than one at either end in case on breaks, keep spare batteries handy.

have the lights as far right on your bike as possible to give you a bit more room as drivers tend to assume that the light is in the middle.

Reflective tyre beads can be good, only if clean though.

[Ares]

cb1965 said:

Ares said:

Sorry CBA reading all that....but Trolling is starting an (usually) pointless argument on a subject that will immediately set to wind people up....especially when the troll in question often starts one per week..

3 in all the time I’ve been here, even with your lack of mathematical ability you can see that’s not 1 a week, but then that’s how you work. Say it enough and it’s folklore.

Riding without lights is not a pointless argument in most normal peoole’s eyes but you seem to imply it’s trivial by your statement that to you it is.

Then your assumptive implications are as flawed as the rest of your ramblings. I've never said it is right or acceptable.

[Ares]

cb1965 said:

Ares said:

Sorry CBA reading all that....but Trolling is starting an (usually) pointless argument on a subject that will immediately set to wind people up....especially when the troll in question often starts one per week..

3 in all the time I’ve been here, even with your lack of mathematical ability you can see that’s not 1 a week, but then that’s how you work. Say it enough and it’s folklore.

Riding without lights is not a pointless argument in most normal peoole’s eyes but you seem to imply it’s trivial by your statement that to you it is.

....and it just feels like it's one per week. I'll believe it is three. Two of those have been in the last 2 months to my immediate recollection. You must just feel the need to comment on every single thread about riding.

For fun, I looked at how many times you've mentioned the word 'cyclist'. 468 times in the last 12 months (223 alone in the 'cyclist dies' thread). Have you thought about therapy? Or riding a bike to improve your mental state?

[anonymous-user]

Ares said:

cb1965 said:

Ares said:

Sorry CBA reading all that....but Trolling is starting an (usually) pointless argument on a subject that will immediately set to wind people up....especially when the troll in question often starts one per week..

3 in all the time I’ve been here, even with your lack of mathematical ability you can see that’s not 1 a week, but then that’s how you work. Say it enough and it’s folklore.

Riding without lights is not a pointless argument in most normal peoole’s eyes but you seem to imply it’s trivial by your statement that to you it is.

....and it just feels like it's one per week. I'll believe it is three. Two of those have been in the last 2 months to my immediate recollection. You must just feel the need to comment on every single thread about riding.

For fun, I looked at how many times you've mentioned the word 'cyclist'. 468 times in the last 12 months (223 alone in the 'cyclist dies' thread). Have you thought about therapy? Or riding a bike to improve your mental state?

Judging by the cyclists commenting on here I am pretty certain that riding a bike does not improve mental state

[giantdefy]

cb1965 said:

Judging by the cyclists commenting on here I am pretty certain that riding a bike does not improve mental state

Here you go
Pedaling Towards Happiness: 7 Mental Health Benefits of Riding Bikes

[Ares]

cb1965 said:

Judging by the cyclists commenting on here I am pretty certain that riding a bike does not improve mental state

Are you sure thats not your own reflection in the screen....?

[anonymous-user]

cb1965 said:

Judging by the cyclists commenting on here I am pretty certain that riding a bike does not improve mental state

Any joy with anyone in the thread saying riding without lights is ok?

Guessing not?

[heebeegeetee]

DoubleD said:

I dont know the figures. But we all know that road safety isnt trivial.

Maybe, but money isn't unlimited, money spent on this will be diverted from somewhere else. If you don't identify the size of the problem then surely there's a great danger of doing more harm than good?

Speaking as a motorist who drives in to work through city streets on dark mornings and drives home on dark nights, if you asked me to rate the problem of unlit cyclists on a scale of 0-100, I'd say 0. I want something done about the gangsta innit bruvs bellowing around Brum in their V8s, I want something done about those applying very dark tints to their windows, I could probably produce a list as long as my arm of things that would appear in the scale of 0-100. Diverting attention from important matters to trivial matters is likely to cost lives, not save lives.

[Killboy]

Your Dad said:

So the opening statement you gave was "she decided to record the number of cyclists without lights while her mum drove" yet the figure of 34 out of 102 is a different record of events? So 17 cyclists out of 102 had no lights.

It's like news reports that say "100 people have been killed or injured", which is different to "one person has been killed and 99 injured". Creative reporting to make the issue sound worse.

Was going to point that out, or decided not to make the reporting different?

Makes less of an impact.

Wait, we cant question the maffs.

[will_]

Killboy said:

Your Dad said:

So the opening statement you gave was "she decided to record the number of cyclists without lights while her mum drove" yet the figure of 34 out of 102 is a different record of events? So 17 cyclists out of 102 had no lights.

It's like news reports that say "100 people have been killed or injured", which is different to "one person has been killed and 99 injured". Creative reporting to make the issue sound worse.

Was going to point that out, or decided not to make the reporting different?

Makes less of an impact.

Wait, we cant question the maffs.

Of course you can't - the guy's a genius you know.

Something needs to be done about an unspecified number of road users not obeying the highway code which has an unspecified negative impact. That's genius for you. See also "they all run red lights."

Next week - cyclists should pay "road tax".

[will_]

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130212-why-you-r...

In summary, people who have an irrational hatred of cyclists are the thicko mouth breathers who are unable to overcome their caveman instincts. Alternatively see "its not fair" :

"This means that evolution has built into the human mind a hatred of free-riders and cheaters, which activates anger when we confront people acting like this – and it is this anger which prompts altruistic punishment."

Which explains a lot.

[DoubleD]

Your Dad said:

DoubleD said:

I dont know the figures. But we all know that road safety isnt trivial.

ROSPA have figures for 2016: 102 fatalities, around 80% in daylight hours.

Common reasons for accidents are not due to deficient lighting:

Motorist emerging into path of cyclist
Motorist turning across path of cyclist
Cyclist riding into the path of a motor vehicle, often riding off a pavement
Cyclist and motorist going straight ahead
Cyclist turning right from a major road and from a minor road
Child cyclist playing or riding too fast

Edited by Your Dad on Wednesday 14th November 16:32

So why worry about cyclists safety at all then when the figures are so low compared to people killed in vehicles?

[Killboy]

Mave said:

cb1965 said:

34 had one or the other or neither, but not both. She said it was about 50/50. Was going to point that out but the usual suspects were struggling enough with the overall discussion.

So one of the usual suspects, who opined that the proportion without lights was a lot less than 30%, was actually right?

Now we start to uncover what the numbers actually were, the positive takeaway for me is that ~70% of cyclists are going beyond the legal requirement in terms of making themselves visible.

This has actually gotten even more funny. I dont cycle with high viz, so I guess I'm part of the problem.

cb1949, I suggest starting a petition at https://www.change.org/start-a-petition to make a legal requirement to wear high viz. Sounds like a productive endeavour for a person such as yourself.

[anonymous-user]

will_ said:

Something needs to be done about an unspecified number of road users not obeying the highway code which has an unspecified negative impact. That's genius for you. See also "they all run red lights."

Next week - cyclists should pay "road tax".

More trivialisation and I have never ever said anything about cyclists and road tax.... you lot do like to create a lot of baseless conjecture about what I'm supposed to have said/supported... suits your agendas I guess.

[anonymous-user]

Killboy said:

cb1949, I suggest starting a petition at https://www.change.org/start-a-petition to make a legal requirement to wear high viz. Sounds like a productive endeavour for a person such as yourself.

No point, there's already a law about lights and a lot of you ignore that!

[anonymous-user]

will_ said:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130212-why-you-r...

In summary, people who have an irrational hatred of cyclists are the thicko mouth breathers who are unable to overcome their caveman instincts. Alternatively see "its not fair" :

"This means that evolution has built into the human mind a hatred of free-riders and cheaters, which activates anger when we confront people acting like this – and it is this anger which prompts altruistic punishment."

Which explains a lot.

You have to laugh at the last paragraph:

article said:

13/02 UPDATE: We've changed a sentence in the third paragraph that readers said implied all cyclists break rules. This was not the intended implication of the original line, and we thank the readers who pointed this out.

Whoops

[Your Dad]

The thread title and opening post are classic journalist click bait material.

Eye catching title (Cyclists with no lights), content that doesn't fully align with the title (cyclists with no lights and high-vis) and then some floored statistics (no lights or high-vis).

When you then look at how many cyclists are killed or seriously injured, the cause of the accident and time of day you see that riding with no lights or high visibility at night is less likely to result in an accident or death than being involved in an accident with a car during daylight.

Yes cycling at night without lights is a fking stupid thing to do, but if you want to reduce the accident rate it's not the primary issue.

[80sMatchbox]

cb1965 said:

will_ said:

Something needs to be done about an unspecified number of road users not obeying the highway code which has an unspecified negative impact. That's genius for you. See also "they all run red lights."

Next week - cyclists should pay "road tax".

More trivialisation and I have never ever said anything about cyclists and road tax.... you lot do like to create a lot of baseless conjecture about what I'm supposed to have said/supported... suits your agendas I guess.

What part of "next week" implies that you've said something already?

[heebeegeetee]

DoubleD said:

So why worry about cyclists safety at all then when the figures are so low compared to people killed in vehicles?

Exactly. Why the multiple, multiple threads? It's not about road safety at all, it's just anti-cycling trolling. Why, I have no idea.

will_ said:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130212-why-you-r...

.

Thank you for this, maybe this will explain it to me, I will go home and have a good read. Having just glanced at the article, before reading it I'm going to say "But only in Britain". I just don't believe that these attitudes are prevalent in Europe, this anti-cycling thing only seems to occur here in the UK.

I'll read this later, maybe I'll be proved wrong.

[anonymous-user]

80sMatchbox said:

cb1965 said:

will_ said:

Something needs to be done about an unspecified number of road users not obeying the highway code which has an unspecified negative impact. That's genius for you. See also "they all run red lights."

Next week - cyclists should pay "road tax".

More trivialisation and I have never ever said anything about cyclists and road tax.... you lot do like to create a lot of baseless conjecture about what I'm supposed to have said/supported... suits your agendas I guess.

What part of "next week" implies that you've said something already?

Because if I've never said anything about it already given the massive amount of opportunities on previous threads where plenty of people have I'm not likely to say it next week am I FFS?