How can the roads be made safer for cyclists? BBC R4 12 middday

You and Yours prog on Radio 4 today:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010gb8z

"How can we make our roads safer for cyclists? A long-term trend had
shown improving safety for cyclists but alarm is growing that the boom
in cycling is leading to that to be reversed. Provisional Department
for Transport figures show 2,700 cyclists were killed or seriously
injured on Britain's roads in the year ending June 2010, compared with
2,673 in the previous 12 months.

There is also concern about the disproportionate number of incidents
involving HGVs and bikes, whilst the Government is currently
considering introducing legislation to deal with riders whose reckless
behaviour leads to fatalities.

Cyclist or not we want to hear from you. To share your views, email
or call 03700 100 444 (lines open at 10am
Tuesday)"

"Squashme" wrote in message
...

You and Yours prog on Radio 4 today:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010gb8z

"How can we make our roads safer for cyclists? A long-term trend had
shown improving safety for cyclists but alarm is growing that the boom
in cycling is leading to that to be reversed. Provisional Department
for Transport figures show 2,700 cyclists were killed or seriously
injured on Britain's roads in the year ending June 2010, compared with
2,673 in the previous 12 months.

There is also concern about the disproportionate number of incidents
involving HGVs and bikes, whilst the Government is currently
considering introducing legislation to deal with riders whose reckless
behaviour leads to fatalities.

Cyclist or not we want to hear from you. To share your views, email
or call 03700 100 444 (lines open at 10am
Tuesday)"

I shall give it a go to see whether it is a sensibly balanced programme but
if it become a diatribe about how cycles should avoid vehicles I will leave
it well alone.

--
From
Trevor A Panther
In South Yorkshire,
England, United Kingdom
www.tapan.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

On Apr 19, 10:10*am, Squashme wrote:
How can we make our roads safer for cyclists?

I think that Guyana Chaddington, Road Safety Expert with the Biased
Helmet Research Foundation, has the right idea here. We make the
roads safer for cyclists by putting in more and more speed cameras and
recommending that cyclists don't use helmets. It's true that cameras
won't actually make things safer for cyclists directly (in fact, they
make things more dangerous by distracting drivers from the important
safety factors), but what they will do is force drivers out of their
cars (and onto their bikes) by banning them and making driving ever
more difficult and unpleasant. The resulting fall in the number of
cars on the road will eventually make things safer for cyclists, even
if they become temporarily more dangerous. A few deaths is fine if
those deaths are eventually balanced out, and I'm sure the families of
the deceased would agree. If the deaths are in a good cause then
there's no problem.

Of course, it's the same "logic" with helmets: saying it's not
necessary to wear a helmet makes things more dangerous by increasing
the likelihood of head injuries, but it also makes cycling more
attractive, which once again means that we'll eventually get more
people cycling and therefore fewer killer cagers. With both helmets
and speed cameras, the plan is simple but effective: tell lies about
road safety, kill people in the short term by telling those lies, but
in the longer term, more lives will be saved than lost thanks to the
reduction in car journeys that the lies will bring about.

In the end it's just a simple numbers game: a mother would be happier
at hearing that her own child had died, but two other people who she
didn't know had had their lives saved, then she would at hearing that
her child had had their life saved but the two other people had died.
Any mother would choose the first scenario over the second, and
cameras and anti-helmet propaganda allow her to have that: they allow
her to sacrifice her child in the short term, so that the two random
people who she doesn't know can have their lives saved in the longer
term, thanks to there eventually being fewer killer cagers zooming
around in their tons of metal.

(PS: the bit about the eventual reduction in car journeys and the
consequent saving of lives contains a load of unverified assumptions,
e.g. that every car journey can and will be readily replaced by a
combination of cycling and public transport, but we'll worry about
that when we come to it, i.e. after we've already had all the
thousands of short-term deaths caused by speed cameras and the lack of
helmet use.)

Apologies to Mr Chaddington for stealing his excellent ideas but I'm
sure he won't mind them being promoted.

On Apr 19, 11:54*am, "Trevor A Panther"
wrote:

I shall give it a go to see whether it is a sensibly balanced programme but
if it become a diatribe about how cycles should avoid vehicles I will leave
it well alone.

Hi Trevor! :-D