Second incident in New Forest town in two days leaves cyclist seriously injured

I don't like the police "car v bike" wording - rather adversarial isn't it?

Yes, that bit is a glaring hole in the network and no doubt puts people off. A cynic might suppose that's why the Verderers have, apparently, objected to a cycle-friendly link at that point for about 14 years.

Ok, cheers, deliberately obtuse I suspect.

Nothing to address the gaping hole in the off road trails between Holmsley Tea rooms and Wilverley.. ( Capital spend to improve cycling if ever I saw one) currently you see families with small kids trying to ride down the main road which really isn't suitable.

I'd love to see the abandoned railway line from Ringwood re-instated as a cycle track too, be great to get the kids/people safely into the forest.

None of it Verderer friendly though I suspect.

Yes, quite. As I remarked on the Road.cc article about the proposed spending, the appeal of the road from a cycling point of view is that it's reasonably unappealing from a driving point of view. Upgrading and widening the tarmac undermines that balance, making it a more viable choice as a rat-run to bypass Lyndhurst and increasing vehicle speeds on a road with numerous low-visibility bends.

The suggestion that the proposed changes will improve either appeal or safety to cyclists is naive at best, pure deceit at worst. And I don't believe for one nanosecond that anyone could possibly be that naive.

Bez, yes I believe you're correct but even with the stealth widening of the road it will still be a fairly narrow road. I believe all it will do is speed up the existing traffic and even perhaps make it a more attractive option to others avoiding queueing traffic elsewhere. Which will do nothing for improving the safety of cyclist IMHO.

For some reason the site won't let me reply to scoop940's post. Anyhow...

The item at the top of p5 does say "without road widening"; this appears to be a technicality, however. As I understand it, the plan is to remove the concrete hatchings at the road edges and replace them with tarmac. The tarmac surface will widen, though the carriageway will technically not. As it is at the moment, grass, dirt etc shows through the hatchings making the road visually as wide as the tarmac, and cars stick to it; the hatchings provide support when cars need to pass, to reduce damage to the verges.

There is a chance I've misunderstood the proposals, but I believe the above to be the case. It is, to all intents and purposes, road widening.

Das, there's no intention to widen the road as part of that 1.25m

http://www.newforestnpa.gov.uk/download/meetings/id/3393/nfnpa_nffce_pro...

They are making it good for the 139 cyclists a day that use it, not the 1562 cars ...

I ride it often, seems fine to me on a bike.

My sympathies to the victim in this case and the others recently reported on.

Shouldn't the police be using the term "collision" instead of "accident"? For some reason, I thought that was the proper official term now.

You may want to mention that this collision occured on the road that the NFNPA is intending to resurface and widen using the majority (over £1.2m) of its cycling funding grant. It will most likely become more heavily trafficked as a result. They have made no attempt to address cyclist safety on this road.

Sure the New Forrest NIMBY's will be over the moon at this!!! Sure it will all be the cyclists fault......

Bad weekend for cyclists;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-29399854