I can just imagine you all, sitting for fifteen minutes at a malfunctioning traffic light, given that there are apparently no circumstances in which you think it would be OK to go through a red light.

You choose obedience, and I choose sanity.

Would riding on the pavement be another cardinal sin in your book? The knowledge that I spent 20 hours this week doing so perfectly safely and also *legally* will surely send your head spinning with cognitive dissonance. I’ll make a mental note to do it for a few minutes illegally to. By your standards, those minutes will be more foolhardy and Darwin-tempting than the 20 hours.

@Pro-reason, I think you’re obviously a cyclist like me and have an antipathy to some drivers because of their behaviour and the danger they pose. Me too. But I don’t agree with you about not observing red lights in certain circumstances.

I also don’t actually think that Delster was twisting your words, it seemed to me that you were stating clearly that there are circumstances in which you think it would be ok to go through a red light: I don’t agree. Delster gives a clear example of one reason why it’s a bad idea to do this.

Delster was a bit ascerbic of course with his or her apposite reference to the Darwin awards (apposite in that it was the anniversary of Darwin’s birth this week). But he has a point, I think.

“I was sat waiting for a light to go green…at 2:30am…when a car went sailing straight through the red light that was showing on their direction….and ploughed straight into a car coming through the light that was currently green.”

There’s no talking to you if you just conveniently ignore the important parts of what I say and focus on a part you feel you can twist.

The time only served to emphasise just how quiet it was. If there are no vehicles in the vicinity, there is no danger. You can’t do anything about that fact.

Assertions and facts are not mutually exclusive.

To quote you “Here’s another one: it’s pointless to stop all by yourself at a red light when it’s 2am and you could hear a pin drop.”

I was sat waiting for a light to go green…at 2:30am…when a car went sailing straight through the red light that was showing on their direction….and ploughed straight into a car coming through the light that was currently green.

I ended up calling the police & ambulance and keeping the guy who’d been hit alive till they got there.

There is a reason for these rules which is why you should follow them.

Just because it’s 2am it doesn’t mean it’s safe to go through the red light….it just means it’s a lower risk than in rush hour.

Quite frankly if somebody is dumb enough to do something like this and get’s killed then it’s just Darwin in action as far as i’m concerned.

PS…you might want to look up what an assertion is as opposed to a fact

But it’s not very good really, is it?

We can however read it as a piece which actually shows the value of the proposal, rather than as an ‘argument’ against. Why is this bloke laying into a perfectly sensible proposal, we wonder?

I remember young Tone when he and Julie Birchall were writing ‘edgy’ stuff for the New Musical Express.

Plus ca change….

An old article in the Daily Mirror whinges about a European Union initiative to implement such a law across Europe and conforms to the usual piss-poor standard of public responsibility of what passes for journalism in large sectors of the British media. This article actually shows just why this law would be excellent (while spitting bile about it). But this law was never introduced into the UK, of course. It would save lives and reduce suffering from injuries.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/parsons/2002/08/05/i-just-don-t-lycra-these-cycle-yobs-115875-12091697/

The facts remain: if you are in control of a powered vehicle you can kill or seriously injure cyclists or pedestrians. If you hit a pedestrian or cyclist, then, you should be held accountable. A defence would be that the cyclist or pedestrian was at fault. But, like at sea where a vessel under steam has to account for running down a sailing boat, so on the roads.

One thing I see a lot is people driving too fast down a narrow street with parked cars on either side. 20 mph should be the rule in cities, this way if a child steps out from behind a parked car, the driver has a chance of braking in time or if he or she hits the child the child may well survive. When we have a change in the law in the UK, in this scenario, there could be no defence if the driver was driving at 40 or 45 mph (or indeed 30 mph) following a death or injury. And rightly so!

Go to Berlin and watch the vehicles proceeding sooo decorously and slooowly.

You’re now talking nonsense about shit not stinking, when all I did was reject the baseless assertion that I don’t cycle safely.

I’m the only person on here who knows me, so if I say that I’m a non-smoker, or a safe cyclist, or have green eyes, then that establishes it as a reasonable fact to go on, until such time as you have some particular reason to dispute it.

The example of rule-breaking that I gave before involved the fact that it doesn’t matter which way you travel along a street designated as one-way if there is ample room for traffic both ways, and there is no one else there anyway. It’s less dangerous than riding down a normal road with cars on!

Here’s another one: it’s pointless to stop all by yourself at a red light when it’s 2am and you could hear a pin drop.

You basically have to be a motorist to think that any of these silly rules ought to rigidly apply to cyclists. As our society becomes more rational, and the number of people driving decreases, we will see your sort of opinions die out.

Cheerio.

As I said before, let’s look forward to the day when the law is changed in the UK to be like in Germany or the Netherlands, where if you hit a cyclist or pedestrian when you’re in charge of a powered vehicle, the onus is on you to show it was their fault. I certainly don’t support bad cycling, and with this change in the law bad cyclists would be held much more to account as case law would build up laying down when a cyclist was behaving unreasonably (ie going through red lights).

A simple change in the law would dramatically reduce the deaths and injury to cyclists.

I said that the insults emphasise the points others have made about the attitude of many cyclists (i.e. that you come on the internet and act like arrogant cocks whose shit does not stink). I said nothing about how strong or weak your argument was.

It is also funny that you believe that you stating something (i.e. that you are a safe cyclist) also “establishes” it. Assertion and proof are really not even similar concepts. Again, you seem to be getting a bit confused here.

I am afraid that you are conforming to the internet-cyclist stereotype now, so I’ll leave you to your whining. Cheerio.

I’ve stated that I cycle safely, with the only accident I’ve ever had being due to a motorist pulling out of a side road without looking. He had to pay compensation, by the way. Those are the facts, and if you contradict them without evidence, then you are insulting me for no reason, and can expect a response.

People like you give cyclists a bad name, and give bad drivers an excuse not to care when they take one of you out, and to act in ways that make it more probable. Sadly, it is as likely to be a polite cyclist as one like you.

“Drivers don’t kill anyone collectively, any more than cyclists collectively die.”

That is utterly stupid and meaningless.

“Cycle safely”

We’ve already established that I cycle safely, shit-for-brains.

“and obey the rules of the road, they are there for a reason.”

They are there to stop cars killing people. They are then mindlessly applied (by motorists) to people not in vehicles. If it’s not appropriate for me to walk/cycle/skate in the road in a given situation, I’ll do it on the pavement. The fact that it’s virtually never appropriate for a car to do the same is not my problem.

‘Tis a bad omen, I tell thee!

Be careful out there!