Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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This is so sad. My condolences to the victim's family.
As a society we really need an attitude change. People use the road network to get around. Some need licences and drive vehicles, some cycle, some walk, a few even ride horses. I am commuting 9000 + miles a year on a bike and I see my fair share of incidents. Sadly I have been driven to use a head cam as form of insurance in case I should come to grief.
I am quite active in lobbying highways to improve some of the awful “cycle friendly” infrastructure like the lethal bus-shelter-in-the-bike lane on Kirkstall Road in Leeds (blind sides the next road junction) and I send the police short clips of some of the worst things I see happen.
I have never had a reply from highways.
The police always acknowledge my communications but never take any action to educate motorists, even when I sent them a video of a vehicle swerving into the bike lane and stopping dead, which knocked me off, over the pavement and into the shrubbery, or when an artic turned left with no warning, when a cyclist was beside it in the bike lane. It must have come within a couple of inches of killing the man.
One would think that the police simply don’t care, but they are probably spread too thin to be an effective agent of change to improve safety on our roads. It’s all very well reacting to a fatality, appealing for witnesses and so on, but in all honesty it’s too late. When you’re dead, you’re dead. That’s it.
Almost every cycle commuter I know rides as an alternative to driving. So they are not jamming up the road by cycling, they are in-fact unjamming it. We need a much more concerted high profile campaign, to highlight the benefits of cycling, not only to cyclists but to those who choose to remain in their cars. Not to mention the need to be really careful of each other’s safety when out on the road.
How many so far this year, it just seems to be getting worse and the stats for the last few years have not improved in the slightest, only got worse!
It's wasting our breath even mentioning the fact government are more interested in law change for cyclists but not looking with extreme urgency how motorists are increasingly killing and maiming people on the roads!