Mark Beaumont backs campaign to make roads safer for Scotland's schoolkid cyclists

Education is a good idea - a new look at speed limits and fines is another. I'm fully supportive of awareness campaigns such as Saveacyclist but that particular phrase comes across as a desperate plea rather than common sense instruction. I've been considering bring a real srlf righteous b**stard and getting a phrase stencilled on my plain gilet. I favour 'Share the Road' or 'What's your hurry?' or even 'Calm down dear'. Any thoughts?
Most of us drive cars and I'm sure we're all guilty of creeping above 35mph in a 30mph zone ( sadly not on a bike anymore..) but when we see a cyclist we slow down and give them time and room. It's trying to educate everyone else to do the same before we start 'critical mass' School runs that is the next task.

Running red light comments again.... Ho hum. There are far more poor drivers than cyclists in the UK and complaining about cycling behaviour with little redress to motorists isn't helpful. As I've said ad nauseum on this site - speed reduces safe reaction time and needs to be addressed - it just for cyclists but fellow motorists and pedestrians. Even reducing suburban speed to 25mph will help everyone.

The disregard for the 30m speed limit has become critical in the past 10 years and it's the elephant in the room whenever cars versus bikes and safety is discussed. I saw a friend of my son trying to make a right turn on a quiet suburban st this morning and I had to frantically wave at cars in both directions who were both topping 40mph. Both drivers glared at me as if I was mad as they shot past the kid on the centre line on a narrow road.

Maybe I'm naive but to me it isn't right to have to try to teach an 11 year old to ride aggressively to 'own' the road against 2 adults breaking the law - who upon hitting the child would check damage to their cars first and then probably pretend the cyclist was 'all over the
road'. Sloooooow down. If you're worried about being late - leave earlier.

And we all need to be more careful. Been to London today and the attitude of cyclists in general is dreadful. Jumping red lights, wrong way down a one way street, riding on pavements... if you want to be treated with respect by other road users, start by respecting the rules of the road - they aren't just an inconvenience.

I appreciate your frustration don_don - but in my view it's *ALL* part of the puzzle.

In this country with its' firmly embedded infrastructure and long history of giving motorists whatever their precious little hearts' desire, I doubt we are going to see a mass campaign of roads, roundabout and junctions being ripped up to make them more pedestrian & cycle friendly.

We are also never going to see off-road infrastructure available to all end-points.

The other point of course is that road policing in this country is pretty much restricted to fining speeders and working out *after* an accident if someone should be charged.

So while I know this campaign is of limited value I suspect we have to keep on with this sort of thing just to remind the other road users that we're here, we belong here and we're not going away.

There will always be at least some big vehicles, so I think it's worthwhile even if there might be better steps that should also be taken.

Bravo Scotland! Nothing similar nationwide in England, is there?

I posted this on the Singletrack website and I don't think road.cc's (slightly different) coverage changes my opinion:

All very worthy, but (and sorry to be cynical) I suspect all completely pointless.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen campaigners try to ask drivers to ‘be a bit nicer please’ and the results are predictably dire. Remember the ’3 Feet Please’ campaign? Cycling Scotland appear to be doing nothing more than trying to convince kids and parents that their fear of traffic is all in the mind. This is the basic tenet of most cycle campaining (a la CTC etc) and it is a demonstrable failure.

If we want to make cycling to school safer, money needs to be spent making safe infrastructure and reducing the speed and number of cars on the roads. Anything else is just hot-air.

As for figures on Orkney ‘rocketing’ to a miserable 18%, just how many cars are there on the island of Orkney, compared to the rest of the country? Can this island really be compared to, say Aberdeen or Edinburgh, where the number of school pupils presumably numbers in the thousands?

I’m sure Mark Beaumont means well, but if he really wants to make a difference, perhaps he should be campaigning for real ‘concrete’ changes to Scotland’s roads, rather than this nice, fluffy, but ultimately futile (and I’ll bet my Singletrack subsription that it is futile) poster campaign.