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Do the police on bikes(presumably)in Edinburgh focus unduly on the Meadows area with respect to dangerous or inconsiderate cycling?
This thought arose after reading the following article
http://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/edinburgh-east-fife/cyclists_pay_the_penalty_1_2092692
Ooh, I can just imagine the comments that are going to froth from that one... 100 in a year doesn't seem that many - I wonder how many speed cameras triggers there are in a year?
Anywa, I think most people on here would agree that inconsiderate riding that tips over into 'dangerous' should be stopped - with the caveat that in comparison to poor driving it's not as dangerous (certainly immensely unlikely to kill, or even seriously injure, anyone).
But it's not an 'either/or' situation. Both could be cracked down on (poor cycling and poor driving) and to be honest you don't need separate intiatives to tackle them apart. Just have a 'good use of the road' initiative and stop any road user who is acting dangerously no matter what their mode of transport...
(I'd be willing to put money on there being more cars pulled over... :P )
#Anth, realised that ;-) but given the miles of cyclepath that exist away from the Meadows thought it was of interest.
What a pointless article....
#recombodna, forgive, but how pointless?
Still waiting on a response to my FOI request about how many / how much time LBP spent in Edinburgh enforcing motoring infractions of cycling infrastructure.
"#Anth, realised that ;-) but given the miles of cyclepath that exist away from the Meadows thought it was of interest."
The police probably respond to 'local concerns', and (this is the generalising bit) with the convenient through route, plus large numbers of students, using the area around the Meadows those local anti-cyclist concerns may be loudest there compared to, say, Gilmerton. I guess in the same way that speed cameras go in where the 'road' is apparently dangerous.
I guess it's easy to drop into the same arguments as motorists about speed cameras and the like - police just looking for easy targets etc. But the same counter holds, if people abided by the rules then they wouldn't get caught and the police presence wouldn't be needed.
That's maybe an FOI right there - does the Meadows have a larger number of complaints about cyclists than other areas...?
It is pretty daft because it doesn't provide any basis for comparison.
If you put a concealed speed camera on a road and it caught one motorist every other day, that would be hounded out as a rediculous waste, whereas if it was a "cycling camera" it becomes a moral panic.
For instance, "30 fines were handed out in the Meadows in a two month enforcement period" (paraphrase), but we know from the Spokes survey that somewhere around 300 cyclists pass north/south there every rush hour - so not including weekends, the enforcers issued 30 tickets out of almost 30,000 journeys, or 0.1%. That's assuming that *nobody* cycles there at weekends or outside of rush hour, and that none of the tickets were for cyclists going east/west...
I think a better way to argue against this sort of thing is not that the enforcement shouldn't happen, but there should be proportional enforcement (for instance, assign policing hours based on a ratio of reported collisions). It doesn't matter how it's worked out because cycle enforcement will never pass that cost/benefit barrier even if cycle use became near universal...
It is what it is - an outgroup being leaned on. Whether there's justification for the police time is so secondary it's irrelevant.
Proportional enforcement would be lovely. Sadly enforcement is more political and populist than that, but can you imagine... It's like the same people who whinge about cops with speed guns not being out catching 'real' criminals being those who ask why the police aren't doing enough to crack down on errant cyclists.
I'm not sure about the 'outgroup being leaned on' aspect though. Do you mean that institutionally the police wants to squash cycling because cyclists are weird? I still think it's more a local concerns/rabid community councils raising things with the police who are reacting in a way to show they are 'doing something'. Are those concerns being raised because cycling is an 'out group'? At what point does perception of someone doing something wrong stop being based on actually seeing something and start being about pre-determined prejudice? (the latter being - in my mind at least - what outgrouping of cyclists means).
Motorists are sort of already randomly sampled for misbehaviour by all those brightly-Battenburged cars and vans you see mingling with them on the roads. A police presence on MMW targeting naughty cyclists is little different to a temporary radar-gun speed-trap on a busy A-road or motorway, which already happens.
Though the MMW presence is picking up 'inconsiderate' cycling. In the urban environment in a car parking and driving in cycle lanes, stopping in ASLs, driving too close to cyclists, speaking on the mobile etc. would all be more equivalent.
Certainly there is a regular and obvious presence on motorways, but then more people are killed by motorised traffic in the cities, and here the presence seems.... lacking....
Cyclists behaving badly enough to come to a police officers attention are an outgroup from me as a cyclist.
@559 what is the point of the article? I think Dave said it all for me.....
"At what point does perception of someone doing something wrong stop being based on actually seeing something and start being about pre-determined prejudice? (the latter being - in my mind at least - what outgrouping of cyclists means)."
To me the clue is that the amount of "someone doing something wrong" is wildly out of proportion with the enforcement effort. A fraction of a tenth of a percent committing infractions is really extremely low, when over 50% of vehicles passing local primary schools may be speeding.
Nevertheless, enforcement is disproportionately targeted on cyclists. I believe this is because of prejudice, rather than an expectation that "this time there really will be so many offenders that it will be a worthwhile effort".
Whether the fault lies with the police, in the sense that they should resist calls to discriminate against a minority by wider society, or we consider them to be hostage to circumstance and the blame lies with society as a whole is also an interesting question.
Re point of original article, thats a call by the Evening News.
My point was and is that Police coverage appears geographically skewed, which tallies with my experience of the Roseburn path, only seen the Police 3 times in 4 years.
Just an observation on most posts on this forum, there a tendency to drift off focus with respect to the issue raised. Usually to bemoan our "victim" status with respect to car drivers, transport planners etc.
The issue I was keen to highlight was that Police coverage is poor and focussed on the Meadows area, too the detriment of other busy routes.
@559 I don't think CCE has thread drift (sounds slow and glacial), it's more like we have thread ceilidhing, think "Strip the Willow" specifically!
Robert
#Roibeard, yup drift is too slow a word.
Agree your description is more accurate ;-)
"...there's a tendency to drift off focus with respect to the issue raised."
There's also a tendency for the focus to drift.
At least everything that gets said is written down, so there's none of that "how did we get onto this topic?" that those verbal conversation things are sometimes subject to.
"The issue I was keen to highlight was that Police coverage is poor and focussed on the Meadows area, too the detriment of other busy routes."
I suppose it's because the Meadows is so much busier than other routes?
I see many cyclists on the Roseburn / Leith paths but not a lot compared with standing at the big junction on MMW. If I had a quota of tickets to issue, that's where I'd deploy them too.
It probably also has to do with which section of the police covers which area, because they have separate geographical responsibilities.
I'm enough of a cynic that I don't think a police presence makes a significant difference wherever it's deployed, not for stuff like this (including both driving and cycling here) - better viewed in terms of public relations / spin rather than enforcement of genuine problems.
@Dave, being also a cynic, suspect traffic on MMW is more constant over the day, where as on the other paths peak before 8am and after 5pm (ie outwith Police day, perhaps?)
I see quite a lot of police at the crew toll part of the path but I've never seen any at bingham. Come to think of it I've hardly seen any in the meadows...... maybe I'm there at the wrong times.
559 I am very bad at veering off topic so not best to comment. However, that has not stopped me before. Your original post that the police re out in force on the meadows compared with elsewhere, dependent on time of day you skoot through would appear to be a universally given. You nailed it first go so all other posters drifted off topic. polis there as they will catch more speeding bikes as the number of cyclists in the short stretch is the highest in Edinburgh. Again the peter's yardinistas will assume this as a given and not reply except to veer.
One possible explanation is that the forum whilst populated by controversialists/idiots like me is also full of experts. As you doubtless know, expert discourse assumes far more knowledge than non-expert discourses. At least you got plenty of replies. My fascinating observations are frequently ignored.
I presumed reason for MMW focus was simply because most bike cops in LBP are in st leonards nick?
I admit to being a bit peeved about this though - yet another friend was knocked off his bike this week outside Makro, car driver drove off. That is the type of outrageous behaviour which needs sorted - not daft students who are more of a danger to themselves than anyone else.
P.s. gembo, sorry for ignoring your points ;-)
Police under pressure to make arrests and have a visible presence. This initiative helps them do both at same time. Trickier to track down drivers leaving the scene of their crime. Hope Nelly's friend is Ok.
Not sure why cyclists have to be blemish free to get fair treatment. We are often smug. We can't hep it. Cycling is fun, good exercise and you'd don't get held up in traffic. This appears to make us unacceptable in the eyes of some people.
PC Quentin was claiming that various campaigns joined up. So more sensible cycling going hand in hand with targeting speeding drivers. We jut don't clock these campaigns as they don't affect us?
tendency to drift off focus with respect to the issue raised. Usually to bemoan our "victim" status with respect to car drivers, transport planners etc.
Hmm. I resemble that remark.
But victim...?
I'm mixing it on the dual carriageway daily.
Balls of steel, son.
No victim.
Says "victim" tho I am with Mr Chekov and pronouncing it Wictim. The forum has for some time contained a fair amount of complaint about the lot of cyclists. I imagine in the springit will all get rosy again with audax, trips out in the nice weather and the long days. Looking forward to it.
I think it's natural that discussion tends to be around cycling issues (cost, convenience, danger / road maintenance, enforcement, whatever) rather than mutual congratulation over the bits that aren't an issue.
For instance, every day I get up, roll my bike out of the front door, scythe through town in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take, arrive with nothing more exciting to comment on than how many traffic jammed drivers I passed on the way in, and get stuck in to the job feeling g-r-e-a-t. But there's nothing to discuss there, really - it's just "base state".
When the exceptions come up (trees fallen, iced over, dangerous driving, daft police intervention, blah blah) that's when the discussion happens, no?
I count not being subject to any aggressive revving, close-overtaking or ah-what-the-heck-I'll-pull-out-in-front-of-him-anyway exceptional. The car which tried to three-point-turn me into the kerb this morning is normal background.
Police are not under pressure to issue tickets at all; I dont know where this rubbish comes from, but its not true. The average £40 fine costs £120 to process through the justice system; they are used where they are effective at deterring future offending. Police targets are about reducing crime and making people feel safer. The extra 1,000 police have coincided with a 30 year low in crime and an increase in detection rates. The stats when you see them are quite stunning. But community safety is the other part and takes in work like this; people do feel that they want incosiderate cycling tackled, including many cyclists. Yes there are other things for the police to do, but there arent any issues that they dont tackle at all.
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