Why does the UK hate cyclists?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Vonhelmet said:
My point is I doubt it. Juries of car drivers are reluctant to convict car drivers except in extreme circumstances. A motorcyclist is not a car driver.
Click to expand...
In fairness, if the cyclist in question had been riding a road legal bike, had tried to resuscitate the victim instead of kicking them and yelling abuse, had refrained from lying about the incident and trashing them on social media, had refrained from perjuring themselves in court and was not a detestable piece of scum in general. Then they probably would not have been punished as heavily.
 
ubersonic said:
In fairness, if the cyclist in question had been riding a road legal bike, had tried to resuscitate the victim instead of kicking them and yelling abuse, had refrained from lying about the incident and trashing them on social media, had refrained from perjuring themselves in court and was not a detestable piece of scum in general. Then they probably would not have been punished as heavily.
Click to expand...
Well, yeah, that can’t have helped their case.
 
Thing is, if it was a car hitting that women they would likely have only minor injuries at 18mph. Bumpers and bonnet are much softer than a person on a modern car (by design) and it's a much larger surface area hitting you. A person hitting another person at 18mph is totally different.

Also a car with good brakes would easily stop well within 6m at that speed. Especially sporty cars with big brakes, stamp fully on the brakes in most of those and they will rip your face off.
 
Last edited:
While the roads are busier at 0630-0700 than they used to be, I'm just glad my direct commute is nothing like the rush hour mayhem. On the way home sometime from 1300-1500, even though the direct route is still nothing like Southampton's rush hour chaos, I purposely choose a longer route that often gets me away from motor vehicles altogether.

Discovering the South Downs this summer is such a lower stress level and makes recreational fitness riding so much more of a pleasure and if I head off at the right time, that feeling of pleasurable riding can be less than 10mins ride away, heading to Horton Heath or Curdridge.
 
Nasher said:
Thing is, if it was a car hitting that women they would likely have only minor injuries at 18mph. Bumpers and bonnet are much softer than a person on a modern car (by design) and it's a much larger surface area hitting you. A person hitting another person at 18mph is totally different.
Click to expand...

A cyclist weighs less than a tenth of a car, though, so it still takes extraordinarily bad luck for him to have killed her.

Nasher said:
Also a car with good brakes would easily stop well within 6m at that speed. Especially sporty cars, stamp on the brakes and they will rip your face off.
Click to expand...
And a car with road legal but bad brakes? Maybe we need to tighten up on acceptable stopping power. Thinking distance also doesn’t improve with a flash car.
 
Vonhelmet said:
A cyclist weighs less than a tenth of a car, though, so it still takes extraordinarily bad luck for him to have killed her.


And a car with road legal but bad brakes? Maybe we need to tighten up on acceptable stopping power. Thinking distance also doesn’t improve with a flash car.
Click to expand...

Weight doesn't have a lot to do with it. It's to do with how the energy is dispersed. When 2 people hit each other the energy from the impact has no where to go except through the body. The damage is far greater that hitting a big "soft" object.

And yes laws do need tightening for brakes and tyre quality. Some are just dangerous in the wet.
 
Last edited:
Nasher said:
Weight doesn't have a lot to do with it. It's to do with how the energy is dispersed. When 2 people hit each other the energy from the impact has no where to go except through the body. The damage is far greater that hitting a big "soft" object.
Click to expand...

Weight does have a lot to do with it, because the more weight (mass, strictly) is involved the more kinetic energy there is - it's directly proportional. If the weight of the car is 15 times the weight of the cyclist then the car has to be 15 times better than the human body at dispersing the energy.
 
It is many times better at absorbing an impact than a body.

If it's a 1960s Chevy then it's a different story. That's built from far denser steel and you probably won't even leave a dent in it.
 
UTmaniac said:
While the roads are busier at 0630-0700 than they used to be, I'm just glad my direct commute is nothing like the rush hour mayhem. On the way home sometime from 1300-1500, even though the direct route is still nothing like Southampton's rush hour chaos, I purposely choose a longer route that often gets me away from motor vehicles altogether.
Click to expand...

It's getting harder and harder to find those quiet times though, mainly down to the sheer increase in traffic but also sat nav taking people down roads they wouldn't usually use.

Perhaps we need to force car manufacturers to advertise cars with the true reality of sitting in traffic rather than the lure of the open road, which is sadly nothing but a fantasy now.

God knows what it will be like in the coming years.
 
Nasher said:
It is many times better at absorbing an impact than a body.

If it's a 1960s Chevy then it's a different story. That's built from far denser steel and you probably won't even leave a dent in it.
Click to expand...
I'm sure it is much better, but then it has to be precisely because the weight differential is so massive and is such a critical factor. As said, it has to be 15 times better at absorbing energy just to do the same damage as a human body, which is not designed for 18mph impacts and is pretty much "designed" not to have crumple zones. If, as ubersonic said, he hit her with his head, then that's like the absolute definition of not a crumple zone, hence why it had such a dramatic result.
 
Vonhelmet said:
The Dutch in their normal clothes are commuting a mile or two in town at ~10mph. I’m commuting 11-12 miles at ~16mph. I need proper clothes for that. I’m not trying to set any PBs on my commute, and it’s certainly not me and my cycling brethren causing the tailbacks...

This is all part of the problem. You can’t conceive of British people using bikes as transport. It’s very unlikely to be recreational cyclists causing you bother at rush hour because - wait for it - cyclists don’t want to be out in rush hour traffic if they can at all avoid it.
Click to expand...

I wear cycling apparel for the same reasons. My commute is only 6.5 miles but I chug along on my MTB at 16mph - 18mph average and get a good sweat on usually. I'd rather not do that in my normal clothes. Also chafing can happen if I cycle in pants / clothing with seams down in the lower regions.

I too do not understand how people are only classing cyclists as recreational road users. Anyone using a bicycle for getting to and from work, to and from the local shops, visiting friends etc etc is using it as transport. What is needed is more people to start doing this!

If you're trying to get around anywhere in Southampton during rush hour for me cycling shall always be quicker. Last time I had to use the car in rush hour was to get from Sholing over to the general hospital with my partner for an appointment. Our average speed was 6mph (I think). It was diabolically slow. I'm dreading if she goes into labour during rush hour (due this Thursday). We've joked about whether she'd be able to make it to the hospital on a bike in that instance :D

Threads like this highlight why I've been telling my partner to be careful whilst out and about on her bike recently. She is still riding to see the mid wife each week and to the local swimming pool each week. It scares me that she has to share the roads with muppets with such appalling attitudes towards those who chose to use a bicycle as a form of transportation.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom