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"Make all cyclists take a test, says sister of woman killed by truck"

(42 posts)
  • Started 11 years ago by chdot
  • Latest reply from Instography

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  1. crowriver
    Member

    Cyclist's boyfriend calls for action to make London safer

    21-year-old Maria Karsa was riding to work in London when she became the latest cyclist to be hit by a lorry. She was knocked off her bike at a busy junction in Aldgate.

    A week later doctors at the Royal London hospital - where she worked as a nursing assistant - took her off life support and sadly she died. Now her boyfriend Tony Young is calling for action to make cycling safer in the capital.

    (Video of interview with the young man here)

    http://www.itv.com/news/london/story/2013-09-25/cyclist-killed-aldgate/

    VERY different angle from the scandalous Evening Standard smear piece.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  2. 559
    Member

    Re Livi, I don't live there but did do some school trips there back in the 70s, and one of its "selling" points in design terms was the arrangement of paths, now I think the logic was to keep these for peds and bikes. But I don't know if that was a formalised legal thing.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  3. 559
    Member

    Any cyclist training requirement would quickly default to being a prime method to further normalise and internalise the UK's hyper-aggressive intolerant motorised road culture

    What? so we don't even try to train or educate. By educating cyclists, they are being equipped to deal with the motorised road culture, their families also become more aware, and so on. We have all, had directly witnessed instances of poor cycling.

    If an environment was created where people could learn in a constructive positive manner, rather than shouted advice/challenges from fellow cyclists, which usually has little background context, principally due to the time constraints of the exchange, that can only be welcome.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  4. gembo
    Member

    Cycling proficiency / bikeability is still going well in some schools

    Posted 11 years ago #
  5. chdot
    Admin

    The "some" is the problem.

    There is no mechanism/money to make it universal.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  6. Claggy Cog
    Member

    Interestingly perhaps...or not, there are over 11m people live in London and 8 cyclists have been killed, Scotland has a population of approaching 7m in total and 12 cyclists have been killed this year. Speaks volumes as far as I am concerned. I am not saying that eight is in any way acceptable, it is not, just a comment or perhaps an observation on percentages.

    I think that this woman's sister perhaps feels that she was unprepared for traffic, and had not had enough or any training at all to prepare her for it. However, I cycled in London for years, and yes, I had some hairy moments, but overall I actually felt safer there on the roads than I do cycling in S. Edinburgh.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  7. wee folding bike
    Member

    I got a few surprised looks in school this week when I said it was illegal to cycle on pavements. This was from the staff, not pupils, although pupils are usually surprised to hear it too.

    I wouldn't be happy with my boy's school teaching Cycling Proficiency but that is at least partly because of who would be doing it.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  8. Nelly
    Member

    Re: pavement cycling in Livi, I grew up in gilmerton, and we used to cycle everywhere without thought of infra - sometimes road, sometimes on the interconnecting paths between housing schemes in ferniehill, moredun and hyvots (now largely demolished).

    Always helpful when trying to outrun some other gang of pre teen thugs !

    We did cycle proficiency at school, but it was no substitute for the reality of cycling so many different scenarios in that area.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  9. gembo
    Member

    @claggycog

    There was a times article, still there if you google, citing 122 deaths in 2012. Fourteen in London, three in Edinburgh. One death is one too many and your original point still stands that for its population London deaths are lower than for example Edinburgh deaths.

    Population of Scotland estimated in 2012 as 5,313,600 - highest ever, your point still stands

    population of London 2011 8173941 third biggest city in europe

    Posted 11 years ago #
  10. Tulyar
    Member

    At University (MANY years ago) I came across a few examples, even then, of students who had, through their upbringing, failed to gain the appropriate degree of street awareness to survive as an independent 'adult' in a city. One girl who had lived in a village, with no exposure to city life, shocked us all when she walked alone through a notorious red-light district going back home after we had packed up after the groups one Saturday night. Others went through mental back flips as they were exposed, abruptly to the vastly different ways of life on offer.

    Many young people today have been 'cotton wool' kids, overly protected against the educational benefits of grazing knees and bashing their heads in low hazard activities ie crashing a bike in the park through showing off, which sets them up to be more risk aware when transferring from a bike to a car.

    Thus many will head out on to the streets with a naieve innocence that leaves them with a greater risk of coming to harm in many ways. Discovering that it is unwise to be focussed on texting or making a call when walking might set you up to be less likely to do this when driving. Then perhaps we will need less of the B*** obvious notices on coffee cups and other everyday items, advising that a hot drink "May be Hot - can cause burns"

    A simple lesson being that when moving around, you should cut out all distractions that prevent you being aware of surrounding activity that may be harmful. Whether that actually needs training or should be part of a rounded process of growing up is a matter for debate.

    Posted 11 years ago #
  11. Dave
    Member

    It's interesting that "training" has become the new silver bullet, perhaps because so many people have been brow-beaten into wearing hi-viz/armour and are still dying at a rate of knots.

    Since ~90% or so of cyclists in the morning peak probably hold a driving licence, you might think they have a reasonably functional working knowledge of the roads.

    Conversely, I've never seen any evidence that cyclists who can't drive have even a slightly higher casualty rate (wouldn't this be an easy and obvious study for someone to do?)

    That's not to say that cycle training, like pedestrian training or extra driver training wouldn't be a great thing for people to do, but it seems like it would be simpler to tackle the deaths at source?

    Posted 11 years ago #
  12. Instography
    Member

    Training becomes the solution when inexperience and the lack of a defensive or avoidance strategy is identified as the problem. Cyclists aren't avoiding the traffic - train them. I'm not sure that any of the vocal advocates of training who are setting this agenda would be recommending even a vehicular approach to cycling. I suspect when they want cyclists trained, they want them trained to simply stay out of the way. It leaves the responsibility with the most vulnerable road user and has nothing of substance to say to drivers who are supposed to have already been trained.

    Posted 11 years ago #

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