Cyclist Gets His Just Dessert

Once upon a time, I worked near Leeds city centre on a downhill run. The volume of cyclists " keeping up momentum" and disregarding traffic lights was shocking!

I always wondered, what would happen if an innocent motorcyclist was wiped out by their actions, who would fund their pride and joy repair plus loss of wages due to injury etc.?

Err my fault , my light was on green so go and prove it otherwise?
Plus, I'm a student so sue me!

Just to balance the perspective.... in my teenage years I was a very active cyclist, doing lots of touring miles all over England, Scotland and Ireland including competitive racing.

 

Please send this to Jeremy Vine.

 

Lots of cyclists are a law unto themselves,running red lights, riding on pavements etc. Grrrrrr

 

The law does seemed to have changed. Cyclists no longer seem to need to have any thought about keeping themselves safe. It’s now everyone else’s responsibility to keep the cyclists safe. Cyclists mean time can ride however they wish and any resulting collision will always be anyone but the cyclist’s fault. Crazy rules and laws now.

 

It's all thanks to the new hierarchy of road user safety/responsibility with pedestrians being at the top and cars & larger road vehicles at the bottom which means that a lower priority road user will be assumed responsible in the event of an accident unless proof to the contrary is available. What I don't get is the attitude of some cyclists where they think they can ride, maybe not so much "as they like" but with less regard to their safety than you might expect as they assume the law is in their favour. The law of physics isn't and it's obvious who will come off worse in a cyclist vs car/van/motorcycle incident. The driver of the vehicle may well be held responsible and prosecuted but the cyclist is far more likely to end up dead or worse. Kamikaze pedestrians wearing headphones and staring at their phones are another hazard for us "lower priority" road users to be uber aware of. JMO

 

It would be a far fairer system to all have equal responsibility for our and other road users safety. Perhaps this would make cyclists take just a tiny bit of responsibility for their own safety.
Around here we have a lot of horses being ridden on the road. They don’t cause half the problems the cyclists cause. It does seem as if the majority of cyclists have an entitlement issue.
The horse riders don’t ride two abreast to deliberately holdup other road users. They also try to let others pass whenever possible. Shame cyclists aren’t more like the equestrian riders.

 

I know the Highway Code says cyclists should ride two abreast. This does make it much more difficult to past them though. It might be a shorter overtake but the overtaking vehicle must wait much, much longer for a bigger space to get past. Not that cyclists give a shit about that. They really don’t care that others might want go a bit faster.

 

As a person who walks, cycles, drives a car and rides motorcycles, it makes me cringe to see how many people randomly disregard the traffic environment around them.
Most "cyclists" will ride with a high level of attention and consideration, mostly as self defence because a random vehicle or person crossing the road looking down at their mobile phone or large pothole can cause immeasurable physical damage to them, a mates cycling club was taken out by a person driving a car who pulled out from a side road and "didn't see" a group of 15 brightly clad guys in a large cluster.
What this thread is discussing is people who buy bicycles and use them because they are pretty well the cheapest form of transport out there and largely, being young, know that they are indestructible (remember that time?). You'll see the same attitude amongst those who ride other forms of cheap transport; skateboards, electric scooters and motorcycles.
When a lot of us were kids we did cycling proficiency courses, not sure that happens any more and maybe everyone should do that in primary school. And as prerequisite to obtaining a provisional driving licence.
As someone else here has said; You can never legislate for scrotes