On 17 Oct 2004 10:10:54 -0700, (Silas Denyer)
wrote in message :

as has been pointed out to you more than once now, this argument
only applies in a situation of unlimited resources. And arguably not
even then, else we would outlaw many things which occasionally cause
injury, albeit with very low risk.

I am perfectly happy to consider both (or indeed many) points of view,
but I think that the point you're somewhat missing here is that the
debate has already been had - riding or driving on pavements is
illegal, as is running red lights. In our democratic society it was
decided many, many years ago that this was so, and laws were enacted.

And where did I say otherwise? I have absolutely no problem with
these laws or their enforcement, provided it does not detract from
saving lives. I go further and actively discourage pavement cycling
even when it is legal.

What I don't support is the idea that enforcement of these offences
should be prioritised over and above other mass lawbreaking. I also
take issue with the idea that mass lawbreaking is in some way
restricted to cyclists. Even the offences you name, pavements and red
light jumping, are not unique to cyclists - you are around 200 times
as likely to be killed by a motorist on the footway than by a cyclist,
and we have all seen people jump red lights in cars. Tony Raven's
thoughts on this are cogent and valid.

I have seen a car mount the pavement in order to drive through a red
traffic light, as well, which I thought probably was a genuinely
bike-only thing. It seems that what is stopping them is not greater
respect for the law so much as less opportunity or incentive; it is
very clear from the levels of FPNs being sent out that where there is
little incentive to comply, a substantial minority if not a majority
road users will happily ignore a law which is personally inconvenient
at the time.

Given that illegal behaviour is rife, it makes good sense to tackle
first that which causes most public danger. Most of us on urc were
happy to welcome the clampdown by Hants plod on cycling offences,
although drivers in a crossposted group were very unhappy that few of
us were willing to do so in a way which specifically excluded
condemnation of all traffic offences. They seemed to have much less
of a problem with singling out bikes for enforcement. I wonder why
that might be?

The debate as to whether the "problem" should be "addressed" is (in
the terms you seem to consider) spurious. The law is the law, and the
debate should be whether we are happy with laws which are applied
inequitably to different sections of society. And are we happy with
those who are charged with enforcing those laws breaking the same laws
themselves?

No, the debate is on where we should apply the limited resource of
police time. If you want to suggest a zero tolerance approach for all
traffic offences, by the driver or operator of any vehicle, I think
you would find widespread - possibly even unanimous - agreement among
cyclists on urc.

My whole point (or intended point!) in my original post was to provide
a few direct (rather than second-hand) observations, and to invite
consideration of suggestions for how the law as it exists could be
evenly applied.

Had you looked at the history of urc you would see that your exactly
the same spurious reasoning has been used many times before, quite
often with exactly the same ridiculous proposed "solution".

You have in common with those other posters a failure to consider the
reasons why successive Governments have never taken up this solution.

In all other areas this debate would be irrelevant - we wouldn't
accept the enforcement of, say, parking laws based upon the colour or
the car concerned, or the serving of noise-abatement orders only on
those who play opera.

Have you never read the tabloid press? Are you not aware that Michael
Howard is actively campaigning against enforcement of traffic laws?

Can I drive my car on the pavement if I like, along your street
whilst your children are playing?

Can you explain how come you are nearly two hundred times as likely to
be killed by a motor vehicle on the footway than by a bike, despite
what you claim to be widespread use of bikes on footways?

Most road traffic laws are applied reasonably even handedly. I have
actually been stopped for speeding on my bicycle, for instance, but
never in my car.

This must have been in a Royal Park, then, since speed limits do not
otherwise apply to pedal cycles.

As a pedestrian I have been hit by a bicycle in an
"illegal place" but never by a car.

Lucky you. As a cyclist I have been hit by three cars and forced off
the road by a car and a lorry. In all five cases I was cycling
legally and the drivers were committing traffic offences. Only one of
them was prosecuted, and they received a trivial fine and no
endorsement. I was hospitalised for a couple of days and off work for
two weeks, and it took me nearly two years to get the money back for
the bike which was destroyed.

I have never, ever, seen a cyclist stopped for running a red light or
riding on a pavement.

I have. I have also seen a council paint bikes on a pavement to say
that this time it's OK to ride on the pavement, and I've seen people
advising parents that the pavement is safer for their children, and
I've seen cyclists berated for *not* riding on the pavement when a
driver wanted to go faster.

I almost never see cyclists indicating on the
roads anymore, or bothering to display legal (or indeed any) lights,
or observing give way signs or zebra crossings, etc.,

Blah blah blah. When was the last time you saw a BMW use indicators?
When was the last time you exceeded the speed limit in your car? When
was the last time you saw a car illegally parked? Road users will
break whatever laws they feel they can get away with. I have no
problem with zero-tolerance, but singling out for priority the group
which is (a) behaving illegally partly in response to the illegal
behaviour of others and (b) responsible for an almost unmeasurably
small proportion of the danger out there, is simply absurd.

yet they are
likely to be legislated for as always non-culpable (source: [1] - see
links below)

You need to check your sources more carefully. The proposed EU Fifth
Insurance Directive covers both cyclists and pedestrians, the group
you are championing, and does so despite the fact that pedestrians are
far more likely to be the authors of their own demise (in about half
of all cases, for cyclists it's less than one in five). On the other
hand, 90% of injury crashes are directly attributable to driver error,
according to the police, so again it looks as if you are pinning the
blame on the wrong target.

if we're not careful. That is the point, and the one I
had hoped might be discussed, but it appears that the majority of
posters to this thread are genuinely unconcerned with any of this.

No, it's simply that these are very far from being original views and
have already been discussed ad nauseam.

First, RoSPA's stats (which obviously only deal with reported
accidents - usually only about 3% for non-fatal, source: [2]) for 2002
are 170 pedestrians collided with a cyclist - three of those died, and
40 sustained serious injuries. Not the same as those for powered
vehicles, but still there all the same. For reference, 775 pedestrians
were killed in 2002 in total in road accidents.

So, cyclists responsible for 0.4% of deaths. Better start with the
99.6% cause, don't you think?

Now, for some context. The West Midlands Road Accident Review 2000
concluded that, of 34 pedestrian fatalities in that sample, 0 were
caused by vehicle failure to accord precedence at a pedestrian
crossing, 1 was caused by a vehicle failing to conform to a traffic
signal/sign. 21 of 34 (62%) were caused by pedestrians randomly
stepping, walking or running from the footpath (source: [3]). So if we
exclude those factors from the equation, we're looking at only 38% of
pedestrian fatalities being caused by motorists.

So 62% of fatalities are caused by the ped running out into the road
(as reported by the driver, obviously, who clearly has no incentive to
lie). An obvious case for compulsory licensing of pedestrians.

You also have to remember that fatalities are sufficiently rare that
they do not form a sound basis for statistical analysis, which is why
KSI is more usually used. And of course you ignore the fact that you
are, as I have said before, nearly 200 times as likely to be killed by
a motor vehicle on the footway than by a bike.

This implies (on linear scaling, with all the caveats that implies)

First among which being that the sample quoted is statistically
insignificant. You seem to be going to great lengths to build your
straw man, though.

Now let's consider miles driven / ridden to get some further
statistical context.

Oops! The figures quotes are also inaccurate because of sampling
methodology. They don't include cycle paths, and mixed-mode journeys
are counted solely by the majority mode by distance, so cycling (and
walking) are both under-represented. Other figures discussed on urc
recently put the risk from cycling as between one and two orders of
magnitude less than driving, per unit distance.

And even that is not the full picture, if you assume (as you clearly
do) that a large proportion of cyclist mileage is on the pavement.
Drivers kill pedestrians on the pavement all the time, yet they rarely
drive on it (except to park illegally) so the risk per unit of
pavement travel is clearly massively more for cars.

So it looks like pedestrians are something like 60 times more likely
(per billion kilometre cycle-miles travelled) to be killed by a
bicycle hitting them than, say, by a car failing to head a sign or
signal.

Which assumes that failing to obey a sign or signal is the only reason
why cars kill pedestrians. That is not true.

Of course, you can decide to arbitrarily exclude the offences drivers
commit and include the offences cyclists commit, but that is not a
very honest way of making a case.

Much more honest to look at the figures. Cyclists kill one or two
people in a bad year. Drivers kill several thousand /every/ year, to
the point where more people have died in motor crashes since the
invention of the car than in all the wars fought in the same period
put together. I think Bush is trying to change that, but he's not
managed it yet.

- the average bike is far more likely to kill you than the average car
running a red light!

You are more likely to be killed by a cyclist throwing his bike at you
than by a motorist picking up his car and throwing it at you. Is that
a particularly good reason to ignore the fact that motorists kill
hundreds of times more pedestrians than cyclists do?

What you have done is:

- cherry-pick the offence drivers are least likely to commit, not
least because they are constrained by other traffic

- extrapolate data from a tiny data set without looking into the
underlying detail or the national picture

- apportion blame to that offence without noting the documented fact
that many tens of people are killed by cars on pedestrian crossing
every year so clearly your data is misleading in some important
respect

- ignore the effect of all other offences, including those most likely
to be fatal and most likely to be committed other than by your chosen
scapegoat, in order to make a case.

It's an extraordinarily weak argument, and marks you out as a chippy
petrolhead rather than a pedestrian. Genuine pedestrians - those who
are not simply people who have found somewhere to park the car - are
if anything more concerned about motor danger than cyclists are.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University