Barbara Ellen in the Observer.

thaksin wrote:
Keith T wrote:
JNugent wrote:
Keith T wrote:

As for the car-haters, you come up with a solution of how I can get
my drum kit from A to B and the band's PA system.

There's one prolific poster on transport logistics here who would
probably take the view that you should move house much closer to B
than to A so as to be close enough to carry it all by hand, or
something.


Can't afford all that lot, I'm not an MP you know!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Is it just me or does anyone else think its unbelievably apt that your
answer to the 'prolific poster' mentioned above includes an anagram for
"Naf Catford"?

Actually it'd also cover 'Catford Fan', but that doesn't cover it nearly
as well

On May 11, 5:25*pm, Sir Jeremy wrote:
On 11 May, 14:05, spindrift wrote:



And here's a discussion of how In Gear, Wild Cat and their various
alter egos invaded and closed down a cycling forum:

http://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=4776.45

And he

http://www.bikeradar.com/road/forums...530749&sid=e48...

The Swiss family are deeply unpleasant people, they closed down a
popular forum by threatening and abusing people whose only crime was
moderating a forum where Safespeeding was exposed as a crank outfit.

Out of interest Jeremy, do you seriously believe a man who claims to
put points on a driving licence for cycling misdemeanours is REALLY
aserving police officer?

If so, may I talk to you about buying some shares in a jam mione?

It was your trolling I was referring to. YOU were the one who was
banned from Cycling Plus- YOU were the person stirring trouble.Can't
YOU take responsibility for your actions in spresding lies and
hatred ?
*Safespeed is a serious road safety organisation. Who do the Today
programme call for comment ? Not you, not Guy the Moderator and
Thought Leader, but Safespeed.

You want me to take responsibility for those nutjob swiss freaks
making abusive phone calls?

The Cycling Plus website was closed down after a campaign of
harrassment and intimidation and threats from the main, most vocal
posters on safespeed.

mileburner wrote:
"Peter Clinch" wrote in message

Drivers should expect cyclists to use the standard rules to the same
degree they expect another driver to: it's not a given.

And if the cyclist is a child? Or elderly and perhaps not as inept as they
used to be? or just plain dim?

I think we're in "furious agreement"... What if the driver is elderly,
or driving an improbably be-winged and "silenced" Saxo going
BmchkaBmchkaBmchkaBmchkaBmchkaBmchka with 5 mates in there joking and
laughing, or someone on the 'phone...

You can't completely expect a driver to have a clue either, and can take
cues as to probabilities from all sorts of things.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Keith T wrote:
JNugent wrote:
Keith T wrote:

As for the car-haters, you come up with a solution of how I can get
my drum kit from A to B and the band's PA system.

There's one prolific poster on transport logistics here who would
probably take the view that you should move house much closer to B
than to A so as to be close enough to carry it all by hand, or something.

Blimey, if that were the case, I'd need several homes and several drum
kits to make sure I don't have to drive.
Can't afford all that lot, I'm not an MP you know!

I dare say.

Nevertheless, that has been his view. Mind you, he doesn't always deal with
the detail. He promised to write a report into the optimum residential
location of an HGV-driver and his wife who have jobs about 15 miles apart. He
seemed to think it would be possible to select a location that would mean
that both of them wouldn't need to drive to work.

But the report (promised about 18 months ago) hasn't arrived yet.

"Peter Clinch" wrote in message
...
mileburner wrote:
"Peter Clinch" wrote in message

Drivers should expect cyclists to use the standard rules to the same
degree they expect another driver to: it's not a given.

And if the cyclist is a child? Or elderly and perhaps not as inept as
they
used to be? or just plain dim?

I think we're in "furious agreement"... What if the driver is elderly,
or driving an improbably be-winged and "silenced" Saxo going
BmchkaBmchkaBmchkaBmchkaBmchkaBmchka with 5 mates in there joking and
laughing, or someone on the 'phone...

You can't completely expect a driver to have a clue either, and can take
cues as to probabilities from all sorts of things.

Indeed and my own attitude toward *all* other road users is that they are
complete idiots and a danger to me, others and themselves. Some of them
prove me right, some of the actually surprise me with their consideration
for other road users.

But this is the point, you cannot *expect* other road users to be anything
else than a complete numpty.

Phil W Lee wrote:
Keith T considered Wed, 13 May 2009 11:29:09 +0100 the
perfect time to write:

As for the car-haters, you come up with a solution of how I can get my
drum kit from A to B and the band's PA system.

Trailer.

Next?

If I didn't have a sense of humour I'd accuse you of hanging around
bridges waiting for the goats-gruff siblings.

Just the hardware box with all the stands and pedals is barely liftable.
Not entirely sure where I'd put the subs* for the P.A. either.



*ukkin' great boxes for thunderous bass

On 13 May, 15:45, spindrift wrote:
On May 11, 5:25*pm, Sir Jeremy wrote:





On 11 May, 14:05, spindrift wrote:

And here's a discussion of how In Gear, Wild Cat and their various
alter egos invaded and closed down a cycling forum:

http://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=4776.45

And he

http://www.bikeradar.com/road/forums...530749&sid=e48...

The Swiss family are deeply unpleasant people, they closed down a
popular forum by threatening and abusing people whose only crime was
moderating a forum where Safespeeding was exposed as a crank outfit.

Out of interest Jeremy, do you seriously believe a man who claims to
put points on a driving licence for cycling misdemeanours is REALLY
aserving police officer?

If so, may I talk to you about buying some shares in a jam mione?

It was your trolling I was referring to. YOU were the one who was
banned from Cycling Plus- YOU were the person stirring trouble.Can't
YOU take responsibility for your actions in spresding lies and
hatred ?
*Safespeed is a serious road safety organisation. Who do the Today
programme call for comment ? Not you, not Guy the Moderator and
Thought Leader, but Safespeed.

You want me to take responsibility for those nutjob swiss freaks
making abusive phone calls?

The Cycling Plus website was closed down after a campaign of
harrassment and intimidation and threats from the main, most vocal
posters on safespeed.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I want you to take responsibility for your own actions in trolling.
(fat chance)

mileburner wrote:
"Matt B" wrote in message
...
It is a balance of risks. A driver weighs the risks (often
subconsciously) between what he sees and knows of the environment around
him and his speed.

Fair enough, but the driver may (and will) also fail to take into account
the possibility of unknown events happening such as children running out
between parked cars, traffic pulling out from side roads, driveways, or from
the kerb.

If drivers are shielded from the risk, or even given the false message
that there is no real risk, and so do not correctly perceive the true
risk - by being given legal (or de-facto) priority by the use of
kerbs, lines, signs and green signals for example, then of course they
will not react appropriately.

But they do not give any worthwhile input to the risk processing
computation unless strong enforcement is likely. Which is why the limits
themselves are useless as a road safety device.

That suggests that drivers refuse to conform with the rules unless it suits
them.

Not so much "refuse", more just ignore.

That may be the case to a certain extent, but if you were to allow
this to go unchallenged, drivers would pick and choose whatever rules they
wanted to.

Bad and ill-conceived rules will never be given full respect.

What can we call it then - a virtually safe speed - a speed which could
not normally cause a serious accident?

I think "Safer" speed would be more appropriate.

Fair enough.

But safer speed suggest slower speed,

Yes, and probably much lower than the prevailing speed limit in many
places in many circumstances.

which is not the message that Safespeed (sic) want to convey.

What have they or that got to do with this discussion?

What they want is faster speed which they think is safe. So they try to hide
that by calling it Safespeed.

In what way is that relevant - even if it's true?

And here we see again the consequence of giving "legal priority" to one of
the streams of traffic at a junction. This is probably the single largest
cause of serious accidents.

The cause of this type of accident is the combimation of one party not
giving way when they should, and the other party taking priority.

Which is inevitable when road safety relies on rules never being broken.

If you
took away the rules and priorities, you would end up in a situation where
"might is right" IOW the bigger and more threatening the vehicle, the more
everyone yeilds to their presence.

What makes you believe that? It doesn't happen in similar situations
away from the roads. Big strong men often give way to frail old ladies
- in shop door ways for example.

Its a system used in may 3rd world
countries and not a prticularly great one.

What is?

Remove the priority, and all users will take a more appropriate level of
care at each and every junction, probably resulting in much lower speeds
(without the use of speed limits) - and accidents will be reduced, if not
eliminated.

What will happen is that people will naturally yeild to the HGV and the bus
and the pedestrian will get squished if they are not careful.

Why? Even today, HGV and bus drivers are often the most courteous.

This is why
pedestrian crossings were invented.

No it isn't. Pedestrian crossings were invented to "solve" the problem
created when cars were given priority (legal and de-facto) on the road
between the kerbs, so took it and cherished it.

The only exception to that is if you remove: traffic in conflicting
directions, road junctions, slow moving traffic and pedestrians. There
you have a Motorway, Freeway, Expressway (or whatever) and traffic is
safer at a constant speed. This does not apply to other roads.
Which is one of the reasons that we need much more of them - to keep the
volume of through traffic off the less suitable roads.

Great idea!

Yes. Most of the rest of Europe think so. Especially those with the
best road safety and congestion performance records.

They have been doing this for half a century and all that
happens is people travel further, for longer, and traffic increases.

They started the job about 50 years ago, yes, and with all good intent,
but never finished it. Britain lags a long way behind most of the rest
of Europe in terms of providing an adequate motorway network - and has
the worst congestion. The UK comes 13th in terms of motorway density in
Europe, with Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Cyprus, Denmark,
Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Spain France and Portugal ahead of us (in that
order with Belgium having the highest density).

I tend
to think if they started to close roads that would reduce the volume of
traffic more effectively.

It depends what you mean by "effectively".

--
Matt B

Peter Clinch wrote:
Adam Lea wrote:

Because everybody is sharing the same space so the potential for
collisions is much higher, therefore the risk compensation effect
kicks in which makes the drivers drive more carefully. Thus risk
compensation takes the place of regulation.

Up to a point, Lord Copper. Matt loves to point to Naked Streets
initiatives and I think most here agree with him that they can be seen
to work. Where there is less agreement with him is his assumption
that the system will scale well between a piece of busy high street
with high pedestrian and traffic density, often with the peds not
paying /that/ much attention, and a fast bit of bendy rural road or a
dual trunk.

I'd agree with that, although I guess rural roads without pavements are a
form of shared space since every transport mode has to use the same bit of
tarmac.


Motorists in general do not want to collide with other people.

Indeed, they don't want to collide with anything much at all. But on
those bendy, fast rural roads where many feel free to set their own
limits, people collide with both other vehicles and stationary objects
and get dead as a result. I don't think the victims /want/ that, but
it still happens.


This is an example of learned responses. If you consider the case of a road
with a gradual bend with trees on each side then a driver negotiating the
bend for the first time will tend to go cautiously, because they are
unfamiliar with it. If they drive round it over and over again they
gradually speed up as they get more confident. The problem is that their
experience may be based on previous experiences that nothing else is in
their way as they go round the bend, thus they go round at close to the
maximum safe speed to negotiate the bend based on nothing being in the way.
Then one day there is someone doing tree cutting half way round on one side
of the road and cars overtaking on the other side, nowhere to go, SMASH.

Phil W Lee wrote:
Keith T considered Wed, 13 May 2009 11:29:09 +0100 the
perfect time to write:

As for the car-haters, you come up with a solution of how I can get my
drum kit from A to B and the band's PA system.

Trailer.

Next?

It would depend on the size of the drum-kit/PA. Mind you, I can think
of a few I've seen that are strictly van territory in any case, and even
a V70 would be blushing just thinking about getting it all in.

Also depends how far: gig 50 miles away really isn't going to work with
a bike.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/