This one is doing the rounds on the newsfeeds and in the media. I’ve linked to the YouTube version because it isn’t screwed up with stupid 30-second ads which papers like the Mail insist on putting in.
[EDIT: As is typical with the halfwits who are involved with these things, the video is no longer available]
It concerns a cyclist’s video of a road rage incident in Farringdon, London. The Audi driver is obviously a prat, but as I’ve pointed out many times before, that’s just evolution at work – it goes for virtually all Audi drivers. However, the cyclist is also clearly seated on that rung on the evolutionary ladder that is typical of his kind.
The Audi shouldn’t have encroached on the forward area to start with. For that, he is at fault. However, the cyclist who opened his big mouth – and who ended up getting punched – was hardly without blame. Let’s face facts: he actually started the road rage incident in the first place because the Audi would just have driven past and that would have been the end of it. By shoving his face into the Audi he initiated the whole affair that developed, and he certainly precipitated the outcome with his subsequent behaviour and language. Indeed, the group he was part of appeared to be deliberately trying to ride in the way of traffic instead of staying to the left, and he was hardly out of the way of following traffic as he veered all over the road in his attempts to catch up with the Audi. This is standard cyclist behaviour, unfortunately: they consider themselves more important than motor vehicles.
As I say, the Audi was wrong. The Audi passenger/driver who punched the cyclist was wrong. But the cyclist was in the wrong, too.
Drivers are required to stop at the first line of the cycle forward area. A large number don’t – just as an equally large number encroach on single stop lines at traffic lights when there’s no camera (taxis are by far the worst culprits there). Encroaching on the forward area unnecessarily is bad driving.
But, then again, cyclists are also bound by rules which they ignore. Many just ride through traffic lights whatever colour they’re on. They’re hardly the angels they’d have you believe that they are.
However, this article in The Independent makes interesting reading. It seems that more and more motorists are fitting dash-cams. The article gives an interesting comment:
Jeremy Clarkson got a flavour of what will happen when he tweeted a picture earlier this month of a cyclist “taking the lane” as he drove behind him in Chelsea in his Range Rover. Clarkson said the cyclist “hurled abuse at anyone who overtook”. He later wrote that he received “a cacophony of abuse from people saying that I was somehow to blame, that they had reported me to the police for taking the picture and that I was basically a bastard for driving a car, on a road”.
This is exactly the point I have been making about cyclists for a long time now.
This story in the newsfeeds is the result of a Daily Mail freedom of information (FOI) request. For anyone who doesn’t know, an FOI request results in a bunch of numbers that Daily Mail editorial staff don’t understand, which are then published for a readership that understands them even less. That readership includes many other driving instructors, judging by the indignation I am hearing from various places.
The story starts by stating that a female instructor in West Yorkshire has a 15% pass rate over a three-year period. One of her pupils has failed 27 times. Sorry, a “staggering” 27 times, in Mail hack parlance.
The article then states that she is working in an area which has previously been shown to have the “worst learner drivers in the UK”. It adds that three other instructors from the area are among the top 12 worst in Britain. It mentions a male instructor in the region with a 23% pass rate, and two females who have each taught pupils who have failed 17 and 19 times respectively.
Continuing on it’s tangled path, it then adds that earlier this year Heckmondwike – in West Yorkshire – was shown to have five of the worst learners in the country (all female). One of these took the test 34 times, and two others took it 32 times. The remaining two took their tests 29 times. However, four other West Yorkshire residents were also among the top 20 worst learners. A male learner took 30 tests, while three women took 30, 31, and 32 tests respectively.
It isn’t clear what point the Daily Mail is trying to make, as it leaps from one set of figures to another. It even finishes the article by referring to a Hampshire instructor with a 17% pass rate, and a Mancunian one who has a pupil who has failed 18 times.
The DSA quite clearly states in the story:
The pass rate of a driving instructor is no reflection of their teaching standard.
‘Instructors may not have trained the candidate but only presented them for the test. Others focus on training candidates who have difficulty in learning to drive.
The Mail has skipped over this. As usual, most Mail-reading driving instructors have not even seen it through the red mist that descended after reading the headline.
Since I have been doing this job I have noticed that people from certain groups show a strong tendency to want to go for their driving tests when – certainly in my opinion – they haven’t a cat in hell’s chance of passing. Even when they cannot complete a single manoeuvre, or drive unaided, they still want to “have a try”. I’ve had my fingers burnt in the past and, to be completely honest, I have too much pride in my pass rate these days just to keep hiring out my car to people who think they might get lucky. If that results in them going elsewhere – and it usually does – then so be it.
The locale being referred to in the article has a high immigrant or non-UK national population. In my experience this is precisely the demographic which throws up these “wanna try” learners. A lot of them will keep going to tests in their own cars, but there is a significant fringe group who are prepared to book a handful of lessons with an instructor in order to take the test in the instructor’s car. It stands to reason that if people like me won’t take them on (or who let them go when it becomes apparent what they’re after), there will be others who snap them up. It is also quite likely that instructors from certain other demographics (i.e. the male/female one) will be less forceful when it comes to saying “no”. None of these are absolutes – they’re just general tendencies. My guess is that the FOI numbers here are heavily influenced by all of this: that you have several female instructors who are mopping up all of the “wanna try” learners. Financially, it must be very good for them. If the DSA is happy, knowing the factors involved, what’s the problem?
You often hear the “safe driving for life” mantra – from instructors and the DSA – but it is a very grey area. I remember one time agreeing to take a girl to test before her theory test expired, thinking that I could get her up to the required standard in the time we had. Unfortunately, she turned out to have a real issue with some aspects of driving (basically, her brain exploded like a pan of popcorn at the slightest provocation and she did bizarre things as a result). After she failed her test I apologised to the examiner, and he simply replied “she obviously wasn’t test ready”. In one way he was absolutely right, but in another he was completely wrong. But his comment haunts me to this day.
On the other hand, I had a pupil recently who was a very slow learner. If he were to be assessed as a child now, I’m sure he’d be classed as special needs, but he was in his 20s. When he went to test I was worried he might do something unpredictable on the one hand, but I knew he was capable of passing on the other – because he could do everything; it was whether or not he could do it all at the same time which was in question. In some respects he was similar to the girl I mentioned above. Well, he did do it right, and he passed.
Learning to drive just isn’t as simple as going from zero-to-hero for everyone. Some people will have problems with driving all their lives – and there is a lot of them out there. Until someone somewhere says they shouldn’t be driving, people like me will have to continue to take them to test after training them as best we can. For me, that’s not the same thing as just taking people to test who haven’t been trained at all.
Motorway accidents are a daily occurrence, and this one appears to be just one more such incident (no one was hurt, but there were delays while the cars were removed). However, the Lancashire Telegraph is highly irresponsible to use the headline “Heavy rain causes M65 crash”.
As several of the commenters at the bottom of that article have correctly said, weather doesn’t cause accidents – people do.
And a point about using fog lights in heavy rain, which one of the commenters is getting a lot of stick for. Driving: The Essential Skills (the official DSA driving handbook) says in the Driving On Motorways section:
Wet weather
Visibility can be made worse because at higher speeds vehicles, especially large ones, throw up more spray. So
use your headlights to help other drivers see you. Don’t use rear fog lights unless visibility is less than 100 metres (328 feet)
It IS correct to use fog lights if heavy spray is causing poor visibility. It doesn’t just have to be “when it’s foggy” (something I stress to my pupils when we’re going through the show-me-tell-me questions). It’s conceivable that dust or smoke could also lead to conditions where fog lights would be useful. I remember one summer a few years ago when combine harvesters in fields in Suffolk were causing whiteout conditions due to the dryness and wind. Fog lights may also have been of use in the M5 pile up a few years ago due to the smoke blowing across the road, but certainly if smoke was causing poor visibility in other situations.
I’m sure the pond life out there will have a field day over this one, but a learner driver was on her test near Lewisham when a lorry and a van were involved in a collision. The lorry tipped over and pushed her BSM car into a kerb.
The [DSA] added: “While the driving test can be a little daunting, most pass without incident and certainly expert driving tuition helps avoid any incidents of your own making. This was just an unfortunate freak incident and thankfully there was no harm done.”
She’ll get a free re-sit. She was completely blameless – as was BSM.
Ronald Payot was driving illegally – he was a provisional licence holder and had no supervising driver with him – when he pulled out on to the A120 near Colchester and collided with another car. He pleaded guilty to driving unsupervised and driving without due car and attention.
Chairman of the bench James Addison said: “In reaching our decision we have taken into account your early guilty plea.”
He was fined £207, given six points on his licence, ordered to pay costs of £90 and a victim surcharge of £20. They stopped short of awarding him a full licence and an all-expenses paid holiday.
He should have been banned for a long time. As it is, he can just carry on driving.
This story cracked me up this morning. Arsenal’s draw with Southampton on Tuesday was lessened in its severity by Chelsea’s draw last night with West Ham (a shame Manchester City won again, but you can’t have everything).
Jose Mourinho was obviously beside himself with anger, and is quoted:
This is not the best league in the world, this is football from the 19th Century… The only [other] thing I could bring was a Black and Decker [tool] to destroy the wall.
So, apart from walking right into Eric Cantona territory with that Black and Decker thing, he labelled West Ham as playing “football from the 19th century”. Apparently, when he collared Sam Allardyce about it in the tunnel after the game, Sam was laughing.
It’s a bit rich coming from someone who waited until he’d played Manchester Utd twice before selling one of his best players to them (and before Arsenal had played them twice), when he could easily have got rid of the surplus a week or two before. Those are tactics straight out of the High Seas era of the 1700s.
Big Sam was not in any way gloating over the incident when he said on camera:
He can’t take it, can he? He can’t take it because we’ve outwitted him – he just can’t cope… He can tell me all he wants, I don’t care…. I love to see Chelsea players moaning at the referee, trying to intimidate him, Jose jumping up and down saying we play rubbish football… It’s brilliant when you get a result against him. Hard luck, Jose.
If there was such a device as a sad-o-meter – something which measured how sad some people really are – then Paul Hastings, 45, would have broken it by maxing it out.
Hastings, a company director, was four times the limit as he lurched into a garage and attempted to pay for fuel he hadn’t even pumped into his car. He hadn’t put ANY in his car. He then staggered back to his car and the garage staff alerted police. In the meanwhile he nearly collided with other vehicles as he manoeuvred his car to the correct pump.
His defence lawyer seemed to be all out of ideas, offering only:
We have a wholly exceptional set of circumstances which are never to be repeated.
So we must assume that he has never done anything like it before, but without getting caught. But how sad do you have to be to get into a state like this? Hastings got a 9-week suspended sentence and was banned for 32 months. He was also ordered to pay a paltry £85 costs, and £80 victim surcharge. As a director, that must have hit him really hard.
He should have been put away for a year and banned for life.
Note that Cycling Scotland appealed this ASA January 2014 decision and it has been overturned as of 25 June 2014.
I usually report on ASA adjudications against driving-related sites – notably, scam sites which dupe people into paying more money than they need to for their Theory and Practical tests, or those which make unreasonable claims about their franchises. But this one caught my eye this week.
A TV advert advocating safer cycling – not aimed at cyclists, of course, but everyone else in the known universe – tried to make out that cyclists should be treated the same as horses. Apart from the gross insult to horses (which are far more intelligent), they featured a cyclist who wasn’t wearing a helmet or any other safety gear, and who was riding right in the middle of the road. This was challenged by five complainants as irresponsible and harmful.
Cycling Scotland made a number of weak defence arguments. The best was this:
With regards to the cyclist’s positioning, Cycling Scotland stated that given the width of the road featured in the advert, the cyclist was safer riding out past the parking area where they could be clearly visible to other road users. Furthermore, they informed the ASA that the shoot for the advert was supervised by one of their most experienced cycling instructors.
It doesn’t say much for their instructors, does it? The ASA obviously thought so, too. It upheld the complaint and commented:
…we concluded the ad was socially irresponsible and likely to condone or encourage behaviour prejudicial to health and safety.
As an aside, today I witnessed three cyclists riding through red lights, one jumping on to the pavement and then back out again and holding up traffic as a result, another using the wrong lane in order to get to the front of the queue and then holding up traffic, and one who deliberately forced his way to the front of a narrow, coned lane in road works and pushed off hard at traffic lights within the lane – again for the sole purpose of holding up traffic.
The word “irresponsible” is inappropriate. “Total arseholes” would be far more accurate.
EDIT: The BBC article perhaps gives a slightly more accessible summary. Once again, the “editor’s picks” of reader comments is amusing.
One prat writes:
pootles magnet
29th January 2014 – 11:14
Interesting how many people think it’s wrong for a cyclist to be positioned anywhere other than in the gutter of the road. A bicycle is a vehicle, just the same as a car, and there is no requirement for them to cycle in any particular part of the road. Being smaller and slower than a car does not give you fewer rights on the road.
This attracts 91 positive comments or “thumbs up”. You will, of course, bear in mind that no cyclist on the face of the earth considers themselves to be “a vehicle, just the same as a car” unless it suits them. Most of the time it doesn’t, as they wobble up on either side and then get in the way, or jump on to pavements or pedestrian crossings to avoid red lights (or just jump red lights without any fancy stuff like that thrown in).
Two somewhat more sensible posts attract lots of “thumbs down”:
pharsical
29th January 2014 – 11:30
If you ride a bike you should ware a helmet end of.
Pudwin
29th January 2014 – 11:02
Helmets should be compulsory, a change in the law is required.
This will protect the cyclist, in the same way as seat belts in cars are compulsory and protect the occupants.
Ridiculous that there is even a debate on this.
Why would a cyclist not wear a helmet?
The scores show clearly what the mentality of most cyclists is. Particularly given that Cycling Scotland has appealed the decision and the ASA has given in to a re-review.
I wonder how many other companies the ASA has ruled against would manage this feat? It’s warped cycling politics taking over again. The ASA nearly gave the World a push in the right direction – yet it has apparently caved in and allowed Cycling Scotland to push the ASA wherever it wants it.
As I said at indicated in the edit at the start of this story, the ruling has been reversed. Be warned: cyclists’ general unpleasantness extends far further than just being prats on the road. They have political leverage as well, and can apparently prevent a clear example of poor cycling behaviour being described as such by anyone.
This story from the newsfeeds tells how Julian Evans (a cyclist) was knocked off his bike and killed by Deborah Lumley-Holmes (a motorist).
Before I continue, let me make it quite clear that as far as I’m concerned, Lumley-Holmes should be in prison for what she did (she got a six-month suspended sentence and was banned for a year). It’s not easy to comment on the case beyond that, since pertinent facts appear very hard to come by. But that isn’t stopping some of the radical cycling groups from shooting off both barrels of their mouths.
I’ve mentioned many times in this blog about how the mitigating pleas put forward by guilty parties (any crime) when they go to court are invariably laughable. In Lumley-Holmes’ case, we have:
…an “exemplary citizen” and [her defence] said in addition to raising £18,000 for charity she had worked as a volunteer at a local hospice and had done this even when she had breast cancer.
On the day in question she had taken an elderly neighbour suffering from dementia shopping in Newmarket and was driving home when the collision took place.
The simple fact of the matter is that she cannot remember what happened, she cannot explain how she didn’t see the cyclist for as long as she did (or didn’t, depending on how you look at it), and she has no other defence. This simple collection of details alone should at least have seen her separated from her driving licence permanently (or for several years, pending a medical investigation of her capabilities). Unfortunately, the Law of this land is a complete ass sometimes. Too often, in fact, and it’s something we all have to live with.
Now, you might think that this would be the end of the matter. Unfortunately, the Spandex Fetishists Militant Front sees it as some sort of conspiracy against cyclists. Well, since they want to stir things up – including me – let’s not leave it there. Not yet.
My aversion to “professional” cyclists is no secret. They ride anywhere where it isn’t technically illegal just “because they can” – and that includes not on adjacent cycle paths, which puts them right into the path of motor traffic that the cycle paths were put there to avoid. Irrespective of the fact that a motorist is not legally allowed to drive over a cyclist, there is also the duty of care incumbent on the cyclist to keep out of the way wherever possible. Unfortunately, this duty is something which is being waived in ever increasing numbers by cyclists. The vast majority of them break the Law (of the road, as detailed in the Highway Code) on a regular basis, and they jeopardise themselves in the process. Whether it is deliberate or through simple ignorance is a point of debate, but the fact is that they DO break rules – and they bend a great many more of them! Often, right in front of motor vehicles.
Against that backdrop, then, it is worth noting that various cycling groups have latched on to the Judge’s comments about Lumley-Holmes being “a good person” (indeed, they have been on the case since the incident happened over a year ago). This has led one of them to say:
I’m sure we’re all just as aware of the abuse scandals in the church as we are of our own recent embarrassment at having spent the 80s thinking what a lot of lovely work for children’s charities Jimmy Savile was doing. Let’s not pretend that either doing some charity work or, even less, being religious are accurate litmus tests for a Good Person.
In the usual blinkered way, this writer clearly misses the fact that if you’re going to invent nonsense based on irrelevant comparisons, and make parallels that are from a universe far, far away, precisely the same must apply to the injured party – Julian Evans, in this case. You see, much has been made of how much of a great guy Mr Evans was by all those who have now heard his name for the first time, and who also ride a bike. I have no reason to dispute that, nor do I want to. But a couple of things not mentioned anywhere else can be explained better in pictures.
This is Newmarket Road (where the accident happened). It is clearly a narrow-ish country lane. Cyclists have every right to use that road, of course, but by doing so they put themselves in danger because – as I have said several times before – roads are primarily designed for motor vehicles.
Looking at the road from another angle – and at both ends – you begin to see what sort of place it really is. At one end, there is what appears to be a breaker’s yard:
At the other end there is some sort of depot where lorries enter and exit. You can see one heading that way in the first picture:
Then, if you pull back and look at the overall area, you discover that Newmarket Road is a short spur which leaves and re-joins the busy A14 dual carriageway:
I stress once more that the Law does not prohibit cyclists from using that area (including the A14, as far as I know). Therefore, they have every right to be there. But by doing so they put themselves in danger.
As an aside, Lumley-Holmes says she can’t remember what happened. Mr Evans unfortunately isn’t here to give his side. So who is to say that he didn’t swerve or something?
CTC – the Cycling Charity – was actively seeking people to attend the trial. Why? They could have just read the news reports afterwards like everyone else. Or rather, perhaps they were simply attempting to forward their radical views. After all, anyone coerced into attending would hardly have been the most objective of observers. Indeed, a comment after the sentence reads:
I met Jules on a London to Paris charity cycle ride in 2008, a nicer guy you could not wish to meet. I was shocked to hear of his untimely death and especially the manner of it. The sentence in no way fits the crime. Mrs Lumley-Holmes has offered no explanation for how she managed to run him over from behind on a straight road in good visibility.
You’d have thought this guy was present and witnessed the whole thing on high-speed video from multiple angles, wouldn’t you? As it is, no one – Lumley-Holmes, the court… and especially members of cycling clubs not directly associated with the case in any way at all – knew the true events.
The Road Justice campaign’s aim is to make the roads safer by making the justice system take a tougher approach to bad driving.
It carefully avoids any sort of balance by omitting the obvious line “and bad riding”. If policing were improved, and applied objectively, these people whose Spandex is obviously too tight and cutting off oxygen to their brains would find quite a few of their own kind answering to the Law. If you look at CTC’s third “example” they complain that a cyclist was charged with “careless riding” instead of the driver in a collision being prosecuted – and they take issue with that. Clearly, they want their cake and to eat it, too!
The way things are going, I think they’re in for a big shock, because society is gradually waking up the the real problem of too many cyclists using dangerous roads in dangerous ways. Cyclists have a duty of care to themselves and those about them. Someone needs to explain that to them in words they understand. After all, dead people stay dead – nothing can change that.
