no need for that, as has been discussed before on here we need to follow the example of some European countries. And put the responsibility/blame for all accidents on vehicle drivers, unless argued in court......They will soon learn to give us all a wide berth then!

 

its called "strict liability"

 

Strict liability - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

what happen here is that you have to prove negligence (if your alive to do it) and why I bought a video camera:rolleyes:

 

Maybe a change to the law approach then, with tougher punishments for careless driving by motorists? For example, if a vehicle becomes too close and doesn't allow sufficient distance, instant penalty points and fixed penalty fine? That might encourage more e-bikers to ride with their cameras to catch bad motorists!

On a different subject, the weather is not bad lately is it! Really mild for the time of year with some sunshine and blue skies I'm just about to take my Mezzo out for a quick ride.. I'm going to test my mini MD80 camera which I've mounted on the handlebar.

 

I can't ride my JetStream as I've removed the rear brake (which was broke anyway when it arrived) and I forgot it's illegal to ride with only one brake!!

maybe we should use the american way and get a gun...............

 

I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Thats all well and good Patrick but for all that, you still cant seriously say that separate cycle paths are more dangerous than being in traffic on the roads......

 

Lynda

 

That depends on the cycle path and the road in question. Cycle lanes painted on the outer edge of roads are often dangerous to use because the put you out of sight and out of mind of drivers, so you'd be safer out in the main flow of traffic where you're much harder to ignore. And there's a local off road section of National Cycle Route 1 which I find more perilous (and much slower) to ride because of the condition its surface than the alternative along a relatively busy stretch of road with reasonably maintained tarmac.

 

In general using a well paved motor traffic free cycle path would be safer than riding along the road, but such paths are few and far between so there's unlikely to be one to take you to where you need, and it would be impractical to try and build a network of them because of all the roads that are in the way.

Yes I know Patrick, but I dont really count cycle lanes painted on the side of the road as cycle paths, they are certainly still very dangerous.

 

I am talking about truly traffic free paths.

Every new bit of road building should now have them included and there are still plenty of places where they would be able to add them.

 

The whole point is that they are still few and far between outside modern urban areas and disused railway lines etc, it WOULD certainly be impossible to build a network to everywhere you wanted to go.....but we still need to continue to build more to encourage people to use their bikes.

 

Traffic fear is still, I think, the main put off for the general public....and yes, tougher traffic laws would help but if the government is serious in its concern for the nation to get fitter then surely the least they should do is put their (our) money where their mouths are and make a concerted effort to improve the truly traffic free routes of this country as far as is humanly possible, instead of painting token white lines in the gutter where they can.......mistakenly thinking they can fool us into thinking that they are doing their best.....wrong....its not enough....not nearly enough !

 

Lynda

.. how many e-bike owners would object to the idea of paying a lower rate of road tax (i.e. £30-£50 a year) and perhaps having bikes registered if they use the roads, if the government pledged to improve the infrastructure for cyclists and/or raise public safety awareness for cyclists using our roads? Perhaps with cyclists paying the tax too, motorists would take a different attitude? Perhaps not!

 

This is one myth that needs exploding. Existing roads infrastructure repairs and maintenance is funded by local authority community charges....Council Tax. Everybody who pays Council Tax contributes to the upkeep of the roads, including those who never drive cars or ride bicycles. Major new road building is funded by Government grants, and once adopted by the County Councils, is then maintained with funding provided by Council Tax payers.

 

Should any government really want to improve road safety for cyclists, and pedestrians for that matter, they could start with a public information advert on national television clearly explaining that all council tax payers have a right to use the roads...not just those who pay Vehicle Excise Duty. The vast bulk of which goes toward supporting the Welfare State.

 

"Should cyclists pay to use the roads"?...we already do.

I am talking about truly traffic free paths.

Every new bit of road building should now have them included and there are still plenty of places where they would be able to add them.

 

And that has been done in many cases of course. Trouble is, most of the population live in large towns and cities and it's the getting to the added cyclepath routes and at the other end getting from them to the town/city address destination.

 

If there's a mile or miles of heavy urban traffic on narrow inadequate roads to get to the new facility and to leave it at the other end, it still won't be used by other than the odd dedicated cyclist. If there isn't door-to-door safety, the majority still won't consider cycling.

Yes exactly Flecc...thats why we have to try harder to push to get this done in as many cases as possible.

 

Its no use any of us being defeatists and saying thats how it is........surely its a case of pushing harder for what needs to be done and not just accepting how inadequate things are at the moment, if we all just sit back and say oh, woe is me, isnt it a shame that it isnt better, then we wont ever get anywhere, and that doesnt just go for getting more traffic free cycle paths.

 

We need a bit more 'get up and go'..... a bit more proactive attitude.... instead of apathy.

 

We cyclists need to turn more into lions than mice.

 

Bradley Wiggins could well be the public figure to help, but lets wait till he gets out of hospital

 

Lynda

Not defeatist, more realist. The problem I posted in my last post can only be solved with bulldozers, and no number of celebrities will persuade any governments to start compulsory purchasing and bulldozing of peoples homes and businesses. In our car culture country, they'd get lynched.

Im sure there are plenty of places that dont need bulldozers to solve the problem......just need to have the will to find the way.....and start with the easy ones....

 

Lynda

Yes exactly Flecc...thats why we have to try harder to push to get this done in as many cases as possible.

 

But there are very few cases in which this would be possible unless you tunnelled to make an underground cycle network, built flyovers for an over head network or banned motor vehicles from roads in built up areas. There’s a very good reason why major cities have underground rail systems, having two completely independent transport networks on the same level is just not possible.

 

Yes, a completely car free cycle network would be safer then shared use roads, but so would a traffic free foot network, should we also be campaigning for footbridges on every street so that pedestrians don’t need to mix with traffic when they cross the road?

 

If the driving culture doesn’t change then there is no practical improvement to the infrastructure that would make cycling into a mode of transport that is perceived as being safe, on the other hand if the driving culture did change so that road users generally treated each other with respect then that would make cycling feel sufficiently safe.

 

Without the change in culture pushing for dedicated cycle routes risks reinforcing the feeling that cyclists should stick to cycle paths (it’s strange that the people that think that don’t also feel that motor vehicle should be limited to motorways). As things stand if you want to make cycling safer then your best bet would be to push for a change in the attitudes of all road users even though that would be much harder to achieve. The problematic defeatist attitude is thinking “that’s just how people are” and pushing for an improvement in infrastructure instead of trying to tackle the root of the problem.

Edited November 8, 201213 yr by Patrick

cloud cuckoo land....while its a great idea to change vehicle drivers attitudes, it is not going to happen anytime soon..Changing the law to Dutch model (strict liability) the only way anything will change. But that is not going to happen either as UK attitude to cycling is abysmal....

 

pedestrians are reasonably respectful of one and other because they have eye contact and are in physical proximity..Car drivers? I mean its like flicking a switch. Personality change almost immediate

 

Then there is the attitude of some cyclists towards pedestrians also..No wonder we get a bad name.

Garry......please sit down in a darkened room.........

 

I have to say that I agree with eddieo........bloody hell......Im off for a lie down too.....

 

Lynda

Just as an aside to this discussion.. how many e-bike owners would object to the idea of paying a lower rate of road tax (i.e. £30-£50 a year) and perhaps having bikes registered if they use the roads, if the government pledged to improve the infrastructure for cyclists and/or raise public safety awareness for cyclists using our roads?

 

No matter what inducement the government offered, it will be a cold day in hell before I pay a penny road tax of any guise to use my bicycle on the road.

Not defeatist, more realist. The problem I posted in my last post can only be solved with bulldozers, and no number of celebrities will persuade any governments to start compulsory purchasing and bulldozing of peoples homes and businesses. In our car culture country, they'd get lynched.

 

Ahem... Olympic Village and stadium complex, East London.

Plenty of noses out of joint there, and I didn't like the roughshod way the locals were over-ridden, one bit.

A lot of it was wasteland though, plus low grade industrial land. Add the fact that it was in the eastern side of London and the social realities of that made the abuse of the locals interests easy. These factors are precisely why it was built there!

 

Trying that in the middle class areas would never succeed, and Britain is a majority middle class country.

Im sure there are plenty of places that dont need bulldozers to solve the problem......just need to have the will to find the way.....and start with the easy ones....

 

Lynda

 

There are Lynda, and many have been used. But using these bits results in the short disjointed cycle paths that everyone complains about.

 

None of them result in complete point to point journeys though, the problem I'm repeatedly highlighting and which doesn't seem to be understood.

There are Lynda, and many have been used. But using these bits results in the short disjointed cycle paths that everyone complains about.

 

None of them result in complete point to point journeys though, the problem I'm repeatedly highlighting and which doesn't seem to be understood.

 

You misunderstand me Flecc......I am actually talking about the short bits needed to JOIN UP existing traffic free routes, not indiscriminate short bits around the country lulling us all into a false sense of security mistakenly thinking we are in a traffic free utopia........only to come to a swift halt at the next 6 lane motorised hell

 

Lynda

You misunderstand me Flecc......I am actually talking about the short bits needed to JOIN UP existing traffic free routes,

 

Lynda

 

But that's the bits that need the bulldozer Lynda! It's precisely why they aren't joined up now and it's what I've been talking about all along.

 

Everywhere there are any number of examples where existing infrastructures interrupt sections of well intentioned good cyclepaths. Only compulsory purchasing and extensive bulldozing of homes and commercial properties can appreciably improve on the present situation, and no national or local government dares in our car-loving, anti-cycling country.

 

Even I wouldn't support such a program since it puts a tiny minority before the much greater majority interest.

 

Much easier in the countryside of course, but that doesn't help the 86% of the population who live in towns and cities, who mainly ride in them, and would still struggle with traffic and narrow roads to reach any new countryside facilities.

Yes...I do realise that flecc I am merely commenting that 'some' places will not need a bulldozer and they should be joined up.

I can think of a few in my area alone that only need the will....not the bulldozer....to get them joined up.

 

So they could start with those...simples

 

Lynda

I can see Kitchenman coming up with some clever idea to prevent motorists getting too close.. I imagine it would be like some coke bottles on rods extending two feet either side of his rack with some flags on them or a little sign that reads "if you can read this, you're too f'kin close"

Lack of standardization is the e-bike's downfall. During the time we've been riding our e-bikes we must have had hundreds of interested people inspecting them and offered dozens of test rides. Interest is rapidly lost when we answer questions about batteries. The cost, the lack of standardization/competition and the time taken to charge all act as dis-incentives. If Ford cars could only run on Q8 petrol, available at only one garage and it would take 6 hour to refill a tank - we'd still be galloping about on horses.

Sorry - it's raining and my battrey's flat!

E-bikes make more sense than EVs, so why do EVs get all the attention – and subsidies?

 

 

I’m in the e-bike business, (founder of justebikes.co.uk)

 

At the moment, it seems government support for e-bikes mainly consists of not getting in the way. Which is helpful. But is it enough? The government’s own climate advisers say it needs 1.7m electric cars on the road by 2020 to meet emissions reductions targets. At this rate, that looks pretty unlikely, even according to EV industry optimists. The climate advisers have next to nothing to say about e-bikes.

 

This is a copy of latest article on James FitzGerald's blog CLEANAIRMILES.COM

 

If the 'powers that be' wanted to see electric vehicles at the fore of the publics consciousness, i'm pretty sure they could make it so.

 

'They' would simply have to insist on our dramas including some reference to electric transport. This would be one of those subtle top down directive which program producers and commissioners etc, would pass on to their production staff. In time it would become another of those defacto ideas to inform our collective consciousness.

 

As it is, you are left to ask who benefits from e-bikes? Young people are presummed fit enough not to need e-bike assistance, whilst the the middle age, on bicycles seems tainted by its connections to the immature. Cycling at your age? The petrol head, goes hand in hand with our ideas of Maturity and success and achievement. Let's face it, the ecological angle is the last thing on people's minds, simply because there is no such argument in the public arena.

 

Maybe it comes down to product placement, and then the question is how do you make the point that its electric? I would say its precisely because electric vehicles are indistinguishable from mainstream, that they aren't part of the latest fads.

Making ebikes "Stealthy" - not looking as if they Are ebikes, has to be contraproductive to making them popular, surely.

 

I can see the point for those who want to do 20 or 30mph without pedalling (not wanting to get nicked), but for those of us who just want a bit of a shove up the bum on gradients & be generally within spitting distance of legality, maybe we should make it obvious we're on an electric bike.

There are next-to-none ebikes where I live & I've been shouted at for riding mine on shared-use trails, until I have explained the legality of doing so & made plain that I ride with a reasonable level of respect for walkers & their dogs.

Unfortunately, some dogs don't like the motor whine, so I tend to freewheel past the more excitable specimens:

This all helps spread the word about what ebikes do & don't do, but will all be undone the first time someone goes howling past with their feet on the handlebars

One thing that could greatly increase the popularity of cycling and e-biking is beyond our control of course.

 

I'm speaking of that feature of the almost forgotten past, long UK summers with blue skies and sunshine.

 

"Summers" like this one just departed are a killer for cycling popularity but ideal for the motor trade, reinforcing all of Britains preferences and prejudices.