On 11/03/2011 06:56, Mrcheerful wrote:
Tom Crispin wrote:
On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:41:20 -0000, "Mrcheerful"
wrote:

Tom Crispin wrote:
On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 20:23:11 +0000, JNugent
wrote:

On 10/03/2011 20:20, Mrcheerful wrote:

Steve Walker wrote:
Mrcheerful wrote:
Mr Pounder wrote:

Look, I like cyclists as much as you do.
The car pulled out in front of him.

yes it did, and a competent road user would not have collided
with it.

You would rather be provocative than accurate? Fair enough.

not at all. any competent road user would not have hit that car.

To be fair, that's imponderable. Maybe they would, maybe not.

I would still have expected a sufficiently cautious traveller to
make a serious attempt to slow, stop or change direction.

It appears to me that the cyclist did attempt to change direction,
but it was too little, too late.

The motorist slows down as he approaches the roundabout, then enters
the roundabout appearing to accelerate.

According to the cyclist, the motorist claimed he stopped at the
roundabout, but dazzled by sunlight moved cautiously forward. This
is evidently untrue, but from the cyclist's headcam it does look
like the driver is about to stop.

At the moment the driver enters the roundabout the cyclist
blasphemes, and tries to swerve to the right, but there is no time
to avoid the collision, even an instantaneous stop would not have
helped at that point.

so he was travelling too fast for the situation.

Evidently, yes. Had he been pootling at 5 mph he would have been able
to avoid the consequence of the incompetent driving of the culprit.

But that says little. It is not reasonable to expect cyclists to keep
to 5mph in case an unfit driver is approaching. The correct course of
action is to punish the unfit driver, and make him accept appropriate
remedial consequences.

If 5,mph is the right speed for a situation then use it. You can always
speed up later, it is after all a junction which is where most crashes
occur. More care by either party would have prevented this crash.
5mph, no injury sounds like an excellent result to me.

Quite so, although in the case cited, the cyclist could have proceeded more
safely at rather *more* than 5mph, but less then the 20+ mph (perhaps as much
as 30) it looks as though he was actually doing. IOW, 5mph is a bit of a
strawman.