CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
I'm not surprised by this story at all.
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/No-one-helped-as-I.6598929.jp
My fall earlier in the year when my pedal snapped off left me lying in the road with no a single person offering even a call of 'are you alright?'
Neither was I... (sadly).
In our nose to tail traffic mentality it's considered 'bad manners' to stop. An even more horrific story was of someone getting fatally run over and then run over again by several cars at night time on the A74. I can't find link but you get picture.
GOING OFF TOPIC AS I OFTEN DO BUT....
Have you skimmed the 'I' yet? (aka The Indy's Greatest Hits with loads of headlines and a para of copy ;-) ...I know I'm outnumbered by Guardian readers
The I. Guaranteed No cycling stories... and no news from anywhere near here... and that's on the day that the law here was changed significantly.
On the odd occasions when I have found my self laying on the black top, I have found that people do stop and ask if I am OK. Maybe I am just lucky.
@LaidBack, do you really expect Scottish news in a London paper??
Doesn't surprise me, but there is no point complaining, far better to set the example ourselves and hope that others emulate.
This morning I had to double back and help a young lady sort her drivechain which had jumped off the inner sprocket on the canal towpath (mental note, must put some surgical gloves in my panniers! :-/ ).
No shakes for me and helped her out, if everyone tries to help each other just a little then things will get better, it works for motorcyclists, no reason it can't work for cyclists. Oh and *everyone* should know basic first aid.
(A work colleague just last week was called outside a chippy to an elderly lady who'd collapsed, he applied cpr and was able to get her breathing again and hand over to the medics, a full recovery and a life saved for half a days training. Bargain)
Laidback: I did pick up a copy of 'i' yesterday (had meant to the day before. the problem is, I read newspaper for analysis and commentary. I get 'quick news' from the radio and the web. So, 'i' is definitely not aimed at me. It just felt lightweight and kind of pointless.
I've never really come down hard and been unable to sort myself out, so I can't really compare personal notes.
When I recently binned it off the MTB as the chain broke coming away from the Bike Co-op, there were a couple of students who were quite concerned and the car behind waited for the light to go red rather than try to force past. So that was, by comparison, pretty positive.
I'm generally more of the "get back on even if partially amputated" school of thought though. Perhaps next time I will sit at the kerb and cry, and see what happens.
SEP field (Someone Elses Problem)
There has been research done into the effect of something bad happening in various situations and it was found that the more people there were around, the less inclined anyone was to do anything about it. And of course drivers are detatched from everything anyway being in a car so probably even less likely. There is no excuse for the women who actually ran her down though.
I find this bl**dy infuriating. But my SEP filter broke at a young age and I don't think it was under warranty.
I'm at the opposite end, will usually yell 'need a hand?' if someone's fettling at the roadside.
One interesting moment was the buckie-drunk man who just went down in front of me,smacked his head on the tarmac and knocked himself out. So I had to manhandle him off the road, put him in the recovery position and call an ambo. One person eventually helped. There was no shortage of folk about.
It's called diffusion of responsibility and is well documented:
http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/0155060678_rathus/ps/ps19.html
I'm in the Stepdoh camp - went so far as leaving my minipump with someone once, and a note of my email address, to get it back to me 'sometime' cos he had a puncture and I couldn't hang around.
Sorry, that last post may have come off a little smug. But don't even recognise the example under that link. Maybe it's an urban thing.
I think I'm a town person, hopefully a fairly cosmopolitan one, but definitely a town person.
The other day I assisted a woman who fell onto the road at the ped crossing outside Waitrose in Morningside. She wasn't hurt and seemed more embarrassed than anything else so there wasn't really anything for me to do.
A few years back I was in the car in Murrayfield Av and saw an elderly man fall as he crossed a side street. I stopped and went to help him, and a couple from another car stopped too and helped.
He was badly shaken but not hurt, and he seemed very confused. We eventually managed to work out that he was on his way to visit his son, but working out the address was very difficult as he couldn't seem to remember it and kept coming out with street names which I'm pretty sure didin't exist.
Eventually with the help of a street map we worked out a destination. The other couple took him in their car.
(I was moving house at the time and was terribly pressed for time, with removal men waiting on me, etc. It would have been a more interesting test of my commitment to help if the other couple hadn't been there of course).
helping people, as a hgv driver I see all sorts of people in dodgy circumstanses, I always try to block the road with the lorry, to protect the injured party and get out to help, push cars etc. One time,A77 ayrshire a woman in a merc has a blow out in front,I stop as she ,heavilly pregnant gets the other baby out, offerst to change tyre to be told that it too was flat ! starts to rain and offers my grotty high vis jacket to her or to cover baby in car seat,no thanks and backing away ! Explained if it were me I would drive very slowly off the road at next exit (25 yards !) and I would travel behind her in huge truck, to protect from 60mph traffic,no thanks she stood in the torrential rain,on the grass verge,and watched as approx 6miles of traffic started to back up at rush hour ! Sometimes you just cant win!
A nice man with one eye (I think he helps out at the bike station) on a bike stopped to help me on the canal when I had a flat and had broken my cheapo-s**t tyre levers by trying to get my cheapo-s**t tyres off my cheapo-s**t rims. Going as far as turning his bike round, cycling home to get his own tyre levers, and the returning to help me and give me a full lesson in flat fixing and tyre installation (such as the all important making sure the valve is lined up with the logo on the tyre!) all for free. He sold me TBS wonderfully and I made sure they got my old bike as a donation when it was no longer needed.
Anyway, back OT, ever since then I've been in the "at least stop and offer help anyone in cycling-related distress" camp. Most will say thanks and wave you on, but occasionally I've been able to help someone who quite obviously had no idea what to do.
I've found kindness breeds kindness in my limited experience - I dropped a wallet in Camden Town tube station and by the time I got home from London I had a postcard from London Underground asking me to call them up so they could post it to me (with all my Scottish money still in it!). 2 weeks later I found a money pouch with £70 in it on my street so I repayed the compliment and handed it in to L&B at St Leonards -I waived my legal entitlement to 15% finders fee when it was reclaimed.
I'm a bit more wary about the sort of kindness outlined above about dealing with the bucky/meths-drunk members of society, as I've been on the recieving end of their irrational violence previously when I found myself inbetween "them" and a female friend walking home one night.
Kaputnik (I think he helps out at the bike station)
That's Tony - he accompanied a lot of the TryCycling Rides when we did these. Good bloke - often seen with a track pump poking out of his bag.
Good bloke
Certainly. A lot of his obvious keen-ness for bikes rubbed off on me as I was all new to it at the time.
He's a star (with fans).
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