MIG wrote:

I am sure that Boris is not qualified to pronounce on whether any kind
of vehicle is safe.

I'm not sure he's qualified to tell us what day it is, on this evidence.

Are you sure that collisions between cyclists and bendy buses are the
relevant issue?

Well, Boris claimed last year that 'they wipe out cyclists, there are
many cyclists killed every year by them.', so it's relevant to the
question 'is Boris Johnson a competent man to chair TfL and direct
London's transport policy?'. Either he lied or someone lied to him and
he didn't check. Since there are previous examples of him doing both
those things I'm not sure which applies here, but it's one of them.


It would be interesting (if such things are recorded) to know how many
more collisions with other vehicles there are when trying to get past
bendy buses, how many people were injured trying to cross the road
when a crossing was blocked by a bendy bus etc etc.

The figures released in February showed that *when compared to non-artic
buses on similar routes* (a distinction lost on the Boris campaign who
claimed they had 'twice as many collisions' but compared them to London
buses in general, which is invalid since bendies operate only on high
density routes on busy roads) they were about the same in terms of
accidents per million miles operated. Of course, cycling has increased
massively over the last few years in London, bendy bus mileage has
increased from zero to whatever it is now and road accident fatalities
are sharply down, from which you can concluded that whatever
contribution bendies make to accident rates is dwarfed by other factors.
Therefore spending massive sums of money (£60m annually) to replace
them is actually dangerous, considering that it's then money that
couldn't be spent on, say, schemes to improve safety. Not that Boris
has shown any interest in spending money to improve road safety, quite
the reverse, which is a separate but related issue.

There isn't really a way to spin this in Boris's favour from here, a lot
of people have clearly been taken for a ride by a cynical propaganda
campaign led by the 'thinktank' Policy Exchange, which has connections
to Cold War-era US propagandists. Bit beneath them to drum up a
campaign merely on buses, but you've got to keep your hand in, I suppose.

Tom

On Oct 21, 9:26*pm, Tom Barry wrote:
MIG wrote:

I am sure that Boris is not qualified to pronounce on whether any kind
of vehicle is safe.

I'm not sure he's qualified to tell us what day it is, on this evidence.

Are you sure that collisions between cyclists and bendy buses are the
relevant issue?

Well, Boris claimed last year that 'they wipe out cyclists, there are
many cyclists killed every year by them.', so it's relevant to the
question 'is Boris Johnson a competent man to chair TfL and direct
London's transport policy?'. *Either he lied or someone lied to him and
he didn't check. *Since there are previous examples of him doing both
those things I'm not sure which applies here, but it's one of them.



It would be interesting (if such things are recorded) to know how many
more collisions with other vehicles there are when trying to get past
bendy buses, how many people were injured trying to cross the road
when a crossing was blocked by a bendy bus etc etc.

The figures released in February showed that *when compared to non-artic
buses on similar routes* (a distinction lost on the Boris campaign who
claimed they had 'twice as many collisions' but compared them to London
buses in general, which is invalid since bendies operate only on high
density routes on busy roads) they were about the same in terms of
accidents per million miles operated. *Of course, cycling has increased
massively over the last few years in London, bendy bus mileage has
increased from zero to whatever it is now and road accident fatalities
are sharply down, from which you can concluded that whatever
contribution bendies make to accident rates is dwarfed by other factors.
* Therefore spending massive sums of money (£60m annually) to replace
them is actually dangerous, considering that it's then money that
couldn't be spent on, say, schemes to improve safety. *Not that Boris
has shown any interest in spending money to improve road safety, quite
the reverse, which is a separate but related issue.

There isn't really a way to spin this in Boris's favour from here, a lot
of people have clearly been taken for a ride by a cynical propaganda
campaign led by the 'thinktank' Policy Exchange, which has connections
to Cold War-era US propagandists. *Bit beneath them to drum up a
campaign merely on buses, but you've got to keep your hand in, I suppose.

I think you'll find that those of us who hate bendy buses hated them
long before Boris or any Tories ever mentioned them.

However, I hate Tory transport non-policy a lot more, and I wouldn't
suggest scrapping existing buses before their normal life expectancy.

On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, Tom Barry wrote:

MIG wrote:

It would be interesting (if such things are recorded) to know how many
more collisions with other vehicles there are when trying to get past
bendy buses, how many people were injured trying to cross the road
when a crossing was blocked by a bendy bus etc etc.

The figures released in February showed that *when compared to non-artic
buses on similar routes* (a distinction lost on the Boris campaign who
claimed they had 'twice as many collisions' but compared them to London
buses in general, which is invalid since bendies operate only on high
density routes on busy roads) they were about the same in terms of
accidents per million miles operated.

I seem to recall that they were about a third lower than the non-bendies,
actually. This could easily be within the margin of error, however.

tom

--
No Hype Just Science