View Single Post
  #15  
Old August 17th 18, 01:35 PM posted to uk.legal,uk.politics.misc,uk.rec.cycling
Incubus
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 54
Default 'Death by dangerous cycling' law considered

On 2018-08-17, Yitzhak Isaac Goldstein wrote:
In uk.politics.misc Incubus wrote:
On 2018-08-17, Yitzhak Isaac Goldstein wrote:
In uk.politics.misc Incubus wrote:
On 2018-08-16, TMS320 wrote:


And that one occasion put you at enormously higher risk of injury than
all the others combined.


Actually, it didn't. The driver started driving away from a red light
early and wasn't going very fast. The times I have almost been hit by
lycra louts, many of them have been cycling at high speed.


I was bored just there, and so sat and worked out kinetic energy for car
+ driver as opposed to cycle + rider. The formula being 1/2 mv2 (can't
do superscript in ASCII), take a 1,500 kg car travelling at 30 mph.
Take a 100 kg bicycle with rider. At what speed would the cyclist have
to ride, to have the same kinetic energy as a car? And of course, 'show
your work'.


It's a fun mental exercise but in this case, I estimate the driver was
doing no more than 5mph.


Funny you should say that, but I'd be very surprised if you - as a
non-driver - actually knew what 5 mph looks like on a car, because believe
me, it is very difficult to drive a car at that speedi. OK, 'difficult' is
probably the wrong word, but it takes a concerted effort to keep a car
below 5 mph. Our local supermarket has a sign at the entrance saying '15
kph' which is about 9 mph and on the occasions where we take our not very
powerful car (a Skoda Octavia estate) in there and are driving at what we
_imagine_ is very slowly, we glance at the speedometer and it's reading
something like 25 kph, or 15 mph. 5 mph on a modern car is going to
involve a lot of slipping of the clutch. Let the clutch out fully and
don't touch the accelerator, and the car will slow where it starts to
'hunt' and then will stall. When you start to accelerate from a stop,
you'll pass that speed in I don't know - half a second?

So unless you were standing a few feet in front of this guy's bumper and he
didn't have any time to hit 10 mph, believe me - he was likely going faster
than 5 mph.


He just started to pull away and then promptly stopped. He was inching
forward; nothing more.
Ads
 

Home - Home - Home - Home - Home