I saw this story today in the Northumberland Gazette.
It’s a tragic story, to be sure, but I can’t quite work out what the campaigners are campaigning for. All it seems to amount to is “improved road safety”.
A woman was killed whilst riding a bicycle to London. She was hit by a lorry, which hadn’t seen her.
In March 2010 I posted this story about a lorry which didn’t see a car that was stuck in its front grille on the A1 near Wetherby. I must confess that I was a little surprised that the lorry driver wasn’t prosecuted, as it was accepted that it was quite possible to have a car stuck in your front grille whilst driving a lorry at 60mph and not notice.
Bearing that in mind, a cyclist is a mere speck when compared to a whole car.
Cyclists can be a bloody nuisance. I don’t know what the woman who was killed was doing – the phrase “riding to London” from a newspaper located 300 miles away suggests some sort of special event – but travelling to a lesson this morning on country lanes, I encountered at least a dozen spandex boys riding fast and two-abreast. They don’t do themselves any favours when it comes to gambling with their lives.
I’ve also mentioned how the spandex brigade make a regular habit of deliberately not using adjacent (or dedicated) cycle routes and causing major hold-ups on fast roads. They do it on the A453 towards the Nottingham Knight – though I have to say not many: there are only a few who are so totally stupid as to ride on a 70mph dual carriageway when there are dozens of dedicated cycle routes built especially for them in order to avoid doing that. They do it on the Colwick Loop Road – and that one has a cycle lane on the pavement all the way down it (of course, once the speed limit drops from 60mph to 30mph, they nip on to the pavement to avoid the traffic lights).
Lorry and car drivers don’t deliberately aim to kill cyclists. Unfortunately, cyclists often seem to do everything possible to increase the chances of being hit. One minor deviation by a vehicle at 70mph to avoid another car and a cyclist could be history. One major deviation by the spandex boy to avoid all the crap at the side of the road and he probably will be.
There IS a solution. Keep cyclists off the roads wherever possible. Soft human flesh and hard metallic machinery simply do not mix.