do we blame ourselves

jeremyrundle

I often read here about "Man down in..." or Woman off at", and wonder how much is poor riding.

When I began a year ago I took all the advice I could here from people who had been riding on a regular basis, and still have a lot to learn, but I do believe a lot of it is avoidable.

Sitting at my desk yesterday at home looking over the monitor, I noticed for an instant a Woman, clad in helmet, yellow rainproof top and gloves al;l new, as was the bike, the next thing she had obviously decided to stop riding on the pavement and use the road, duh!, then she was "on" the road, and pavement

She had obviously taken the pavement at too shallow an angle and lost it. However I see many fools, mainly 30 something Men on MTBs belting along on the pavement with no consideration for peds, then TOWARDS oncoming traffic hop off the pavement and back on again having avoided another ped. Teenagers are as bad.

Can some of the blame be levelled at the lack of brains when cyclists off, NOT all the time but had she gone roadway instead of pavement she could have been killed.

dhope

Is that a first draft?

gtvlusso

"Oops upside your head, say, oops upside your head, yo"!

jeremyrundle

dhope wrote:

Is that a first draft?

In case you are being ammusing I am dyslexic ( I have said that before on this forum) and rely a lot on grammar and spell checks when writing, and sometimes my son to read it, what changes do you want. Happy now, or do you want me to begin all comments with the fact I am dyslexic.

Monkeypump

I think part of what you're illustrating is the difference between "cyclists" and "people on bikes".

And yes, it's impossible to blame motorists for all accidents involving bikes.

notsoblue

Its a bit of a logical jump to relate accidents involving commuting cyclists to people who ride on pavements and don't know how to mount kerbs.

What would be interesting to find out would be how many accidents have been caused by cyclists riding badly (i.e. on the pavement, blindly riding out into traffic, jumping reds). My guess would be much less than you'd think.

Its not just bad cyclists that have accidents.

dhope

jeremyrundle wrote:

dhope wrote:

Is that a first draft?

In case you are being ammusing I am dyslexic ( I have said that before on this forum) and rely a lot on grammar and spell checks when writing, and sometimes my son to read it, what changes do you want. Happy now, or do you want me to begin all comments with the fact I am dyslexic.

Just seemed more of a stream of conciousness, less to do with spelling or grammar in particular. I had just being browsing LFGSS though so maybe I still had that hat on.

hatbeard

oi you, don't blame us! :P

dhope

hatbeard wrote:

oi you don't blame us! :P

Dunno, I'd just been posting bitchy replies to the tool selling the £650 blue fixed

Shit, rumbled.

notsoblue

Jeremy, I think you should repost your OP here: http://www.lfgss.com/forum4.html

Greg T

I blame wiggle

I realise the Wiggle boat has sailed - I am nostalgic

jeremyrundle

hatbeard wrote:

oi you, don't blame us! :P

:P

hatbeard

ha, I was actually referring to Dhope but it works both ways it seems.

rick_chasey

I think the man-down threads are not too much to do with who was to blame, and more concerned with the fact that a cyclist (who may or may not be on the forum) might be hurt.

Confusedboy

Monkeypump wrote:

I think part of what you're illustrating is the difference between "cyclists" and "people on bikes".

And yes, it's impossible to blame motorists for all accidents involving bikes.

But you can't expect motorists to make the distinction; they think anything with two wheels and no engine is a bicycle, and actually, it is.

'POBs' on 'BSOs' are an easy get-out for those of us who think we are 'proper' cyclists, but really smack a bit of elitism and bike snobbery. There seems to be a bit of an attitude among some cyclists (and these people are cyclists by the reasonable definiton that they ride bicycles) that they can ignore the traffic laws in the name of what they think is thier own safety-hence the pavement riding which is almost always done on low-cost mountain bikes whose owners think they are designed for mounting pavements and can 'go anywhere'. There doesn't seem to me to be an easy way to address this in the cycling media as those people don't read it, and the answer is for the police to enforce the laws more effectively, which they don't have time to do.

But the OP has a good point, and I also wonder if many of the downed cyclists have contributed to thier own misfortune. There is in the cycling media a bit too much of a 'cyclist good, motorist bad' viewpoint for my liking. BTW, Monkeypump, I'm not trying to suggest that you are a bike snob; you are simply using terms we all recognise the meaning of in context. It is the terms I don't like, not your use of them.

attica

Greg T wrote:

I blame wiggle

I realise the Wiggle boat has sailed - I am nostalgic

Wiggle do boats now?
Have the coastguard and the RNLI been informed?

jonny_trousers

I blame you Jezza, for making up yet another fib about what you 'saw'. I can smell your pants burning from here.

veronese68

A couple of problems in the original post. Surely going from the pavement to the road at a shallow angle is not a problem, if there are no cars, as it is a drop. Trying to mount a kerb at a shallow angle can cause problems. That would also contribute to falling onto the pavement.Falling whilst going from pavement to road would cause you to land in the road. A person falling doesn't usually change direction without hitting something. I can smell it too.

cee

this cyclists vs people on bikes things baffles me.

I have come to the conclusion that:

although I ride a bike almost every day, sometimes to get to work, sometimes to pop to the shops, sometimes just for a pleasure cruise, and sometimes on a muddy trail as part of my hobby.....

; I do not really consider myself to be a cyclist....

I just don't get it....people who consider themeslves better than average bicycle pilots use it in a positive way to differentiate themselves from less adept riders, and yet other people use it in a negative way when describing most any person on a bike...

i can't cope with that. it makes my eyes shake.

OP....yes...when people crash...its either:

a) All their own fault.
b) Partly their own fault (in a range of 1% to 99%)
c) Entirely someone else's fault.

Ben6899

Some of the cycling I see by commuters in London leaves a lot to be desired so I am pretty sure that some of the time "we are to blame". I often meet my better half outside her offices when she is finishing and I generally spend any time waiting just shaking my head at commuters RLJing, filtering dangerously, going the wrong side of traffic islands etc. It's mental.

And some folk look really shaky and in this case I would like to think more experienced cyclists try and offer advice to obvious novices. I do realise RLJers and folk taking a choice to ride in a suicidal manner will probably not listen!

puncturemagnet

Where there's a claim there's balme... oh no hold on a minute that's not right is it???

As long as there's always someone else to blame for our little tarmac/face interfaces everything is good, must keep the self-belief at 100%

A small minority of the folk I see riding bike's shouldn't be allowed out the house un-accompanied never mind in charge of something that can potentially kill them.

The vast majority though are spot on, as are the vast majority of peds/car/van/bus/lorry/motability scooter drivers!

If it wasn't for the f**kwits life would be a lot duller