The war on Britains roads, 5th Dec BBC

unixnerd

It wasn't nearly as sensationalist as I thought it would be.

Agreed. I thought it was pretty good and I'm glad the BBC had it made. Even a few clips from Aberdeen!

I can't believe Cemex were killing a cyclist a year! That's just plain shocking. How many other companies are doing the same? Lot of work to do educating them in same way.

noodles71

unixnerd wrote:

It wasn't nearly as sensationalist as I thought it would be.

Agreed. I thought it was pretty good and I'm glad the BBC had it made. Even a few clips from Aberdeen!

I can't believe Cemex were killing a cyclist a year! That's just plain shocking. How many other companies are doing the same? Lot of work to do educating them in same way.

Hats off to Cynthia Barlow. If everyone had a mum like her I'm sure this country would be the best place to live in the world.

If Cemex haven't killed anyone since she had the modifications fitted to the fleet of their trucks then it makes it a no brainer.... Every truck within the London Low Emission Zone driving outside the hours of 21:00 to 6:00 should have all these measures fitted by law.

It would be another life every year saved at a bare minimum.

unixnerd

Every truck within the London Low Emission Zone

Why just London?

noodles71

unixnerd wrote:

Every truck within the London Low Emission Zone

Why just London?

Sorry for sounding geographically ignorant. I did consider your point before I posted but soon twigged only an EU wide requirement would solve the problem of continental drivers who are increasingly on our roads. An EU design regulation on all new vehicles would be great but hey we have a big problem. It will never appear on most Europeans radar when they don't have this problem because they have invested in the right infrastructure where the traffic gets busier.

jds_1981

Not impressed by the police man suggesting a bell or whistle to alert drivers to presence rather than hitting the car. A whistle may work but I don't imagine it easy to cycle along at speed with a whistle in mouth. A bell would be useless.

DF33

And why between 9:00pm to 6:00am?

My ex is a senior sister on heart surgery / HDU looking after extremely ill people. Who looks after her When she commutes shifts, leaving her house at 5:30am for an early and leaving the ward at 10:15pm to ride home. Cemex?

king_jeffers

Gopro sales just went up 100%

Can't say this will do anything to get newbies out :roll:

jds_1981

DF33 wrote:

And why between 9:00pm to 6:00am?

Because it would reduce the vast majority of interaction.

noodles71

DF33 wrote:

And why between 9:00pm to 6:00am?

My ex is a senior sister on heart surgery / HDU looking after extremely ill people. Who looks after her When she commutes shifts, leaving her house at 5:30am for an early and leaving the ward at 10:15pm to ride home. Cemex?

The road isn't choked with traffic with more space available and the driver doesn't have another 100 moving objects in view distracting them at that time of the day. Some trucks might be deemed unsafe by design but still be needed as we have an economy to run as well. Sensible solutions so we can all share the road is what is needed. I don't believe for a minute 99% of truck drivers would want to be responsible for a death.

No doubt this link has done the rounds; http://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/mixing-with-lorries-dutch-style/

petemadoc

Cycloslalomeur wrote:

Flanders (or maybe Wallonia as well but I've never seen a French-language plate) used to have a bicycle registration scheme complete with licence plates and, yes, vehicle excise duty. It was abolished quite some time ago, probably for being more trouble than it was worth, but I often see bicycles whose owners never bothered to remove the plate from their machine.

OMG I want one of these!! Where can I get one?

rolf_f

Not as bad as expected but more to put the cycle casualties into context would have helped. As would more non-London stuff though probably it is the Londoners who obsess about filming everything. But just to show things aren't quite so bad away from That London. Mind you, this coming from someone who was nearly taken out today firstly by a mother who decided to walk her toddlers into my path and then by a pickup driver who turned right across my path. Oh well........!

What I have just done is plotted a variation to my commute to avoid the only Londonish traffic queuey bit - only last week someone drove at me across the cycle lane as I passed stationary traffic so really it is time to see if the alternative options are better.

PeteMadoc wrote:

Cycloslalomeur wrote:

Flanders (or maybe Wallonia as well but I've never seen a French-language plate) used to have a bicycle registration scheme complete with licence plates and, yes, vehicle excise duty. It was abolished quite some time ago, probably for being more trouble than it was worth, but I often see bicycles whose owners never bothered to remove the plate from their machine.

OMG I want one of these!! Where can I get one?

Well d'uh - Ebay
(this auction ended...)

notsoblue

It wasn't as bad as I expected. Would have liked to have seen more of how routine, uneventful but mostly enjoyable cycling in London can be. Its not all aggravation and danger. If it was, there wouldn't be so many people who choose to do it!

prj45

TheEnglishman wrote:

It wasn't nearly as sensationalist as I thought it would be.

Clever marketing. Make it sound really bad and controversial, and it's not that bad or controversial when you watch it. We all fell for it...

CiB

I believe that what we saw tonight was a revised edit, maybe in response to the hostile comments that had been building since the BBC started showing the trailer a couple of weeks ago.

I thought it was ok. The main protaganist didn't come out of it looking too good but how many people have been set up before by having their lucid and reasonable views carefully edited to suit the programme maker's agenda? It was ok, but would have benefited hugely by including a highlights package made up of the best 50 minutes of my commute along the back roads of Bucks & Oxon. That's proper commuting.

petemadoc

Rolf F wrote:

Well d'uh - Ebay
(this auction ended...)

ok clever cloggs, find me a eBay listing, can't see any!

vermin

Good programme, but wrong title. It was all London, intit. Except the brown-trousered chap in Glasgow.

Thought it was nicely balanced and very well scripted. Good demonstration that it aren't two tribes; rather that you can find idiots in cars, in lorries and on bikes. Helpful sequence about truck visibility and suicide alley.

Only thing missing for me was, as NSB hinted at, a clarification that the videos used spanned a number of years and that, as a result, the programme gave a rather grim view of cycling in London.

Blacktemplar

pete54 wrote:

Utter c**p. Was this BBC1 or had someone re-tuned my telly to Channel 5?

^This. Dreadful programme.

For all of those who live outside London (that's most of us btw) it's less than helpful. I've been cycling and commuting for years, and could count on one hand (OK maybe two) the number of times I've come into any kind of conflict with other road users.

Who was the bespectacled smarmy git who had the altercation with the taxi driver? CycleGaz? What a tw@t. Nothing more than a self-righteous provocateur who likes to think he occupies the moral high ground. I only watched bits of it while flicking back & forward during the ads on another channel. Even my wife - who is not a cyclist and is generally a saintly, non-confrontational sort of person - remarked that she'd like to "punch the fecker's lights out"... :shock:

How do the producers (and the BBC) imagine that will play to the extremists on both sides of the imaginary "war". To the Daily Fail readers and their ilk? It will just reinforce unfounded stereotypes. Well done.

pete54

The War on Britain's Roads is about as real as the War on Terror.

petemadoc

Blacktemplar wrote:

Who was the bespectacled smarmy git who had the altercation with the taxi driver? CycleGaz? What a tw@t. Nothing more than a self-righteous provocateur who likes to think he occupies the moral high ground.

+1

complete d1ck looking for trouble

vermin

Blacktemplar wrote:

pete54 wrote:

Utter c**p. Was this BBC1 or had someone re-tuned my telly to Channel 5?

^This. Dreadful programme.

I only watched bits of it while flicking back & forward during the ads on another channel.

Which is why you thought it was bad. Had you watched it through, you would have seen that it was a well structured, balanced, thought provoking documentary. Instead, you dismissed it as a whole work and totally missed the point. Well done.

But Cyclegaz did come across as a bit of a twunt.

Headhuunter

I thought it was very sensationalist to be honest, VERY sensationalist title and basically a grandstand for video clips of people having fights in the street and getting knocked off. No analysis of the number of cyclists killed or injured vs the number of pedestrians etc, not a lot of discussion of what can be done in law, with policing. Nothing about what has happened in other countries like the Netherlands, nothing about the use of helmets or other safety equipment and clothing. Basically just the equivalent of "Rude Tube" but with cyclist's clips of danger on the roads. It basically said "don't cycle as it's incredibly dangerous", if I had been considering cycle commuting and had seen that I would have immediately been put off....

EKE_38BPM

PeteMadoc wrote:

Blacktemplar wrote:

Who was the bespectacled smarmy git who had the altercation with the taxi driver? CycleGaz? What a tw@t. Nothing more than a self-righteous provocateur who likes to think he occupies the moral high ground.

+1

complete d1ck looking for trouble

+2
That Traffic Droid bloke is a tw@t too. Just before the clip of him getting overtaken by the van with the trailer, he made a point of saying "...my positioning on the road was correct...". Well, it may have been legal, but it wasn't correct in my opinion. If you are going to take the lane, TAKE THE LANE! Don't pussy foot around to the left hand side of the lane, as that leaves some drivers with the thought that there is room to overtake.

That driver shouldn't have overtaken there, no doubt about that, but Traffic Droid's positioning didn't do him any favours either. I've just wasted a few minutes looking for the original footage of that incident on Youtube and watched a few of his videos. He comes across to me as a bit of a weirdo, cycling along commentating for the camera and judging the road users around him. I just watched a clip of him stopping a bus to praise the driver and at the end he professes his love for the bus driver. Weird.
53 videos uploaded to Youtube in the last month. Weird.
His moustache. Weird.



Maybe I'm a little jealous that I can't grow a moustache, but I still think he's weird.

gtvlusso

I did not watch the programme in real time, but caught up with a few bits later on; my analysis is based on the snapshots that I saw after a bottle of wine and whilst working last night (ugh - America!)

Anyway, I felt that the programme was relatively well balanced, from the bits that I saw, but, we cyclists just looked like provocative, righteous knobends in some of the situations encountered. I don't think that I want to be associated with this vigilantism and unfortunately these negative aspects is what will stick in the minds of most people.

I don't think that it has done us any favours, but I think the harm is minimal - I was expecting far worse. I will re watch it tonight, if I get time and can be arsed.

Question: Will any of you adjust your riding style or take anything from the programme, learn anything - maybe even as extreme as stopping filming?

bails87

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. But as said, there was no analysis or detail, no 'cars: give cyclists space, cyclists: don't RLJ' advice. Just video clips.

I left for work this morning thinking 'I don't want to be like them' (agree that Traffic Droid comes across as odd). But passed a junction where a skip lorry driver was waiting to pull out. He was on the phone. I made the phone down gesture as I went past, cue lots of t&sser gestures and knuckle dragging from inside the cab. Then, in my view, he aimed his lorry at me as he caught up with me, while beeping the horn and still gesticulating. Luckily I was able to veer off into a side road to avoid being hit.

I phoned the company, starting telling them what had happened. I get "Oh, like that thing on the BBC last night...."

Not sure if that's good or bad.

EKE_38BPM

gtvlusso wrote:

Question: Will any of you adjust your riding style or take anything from the programme, learn anything - maybe even as extreme as stopping filming?

If I see Traffic Droid near me I will get as far away from his as quickly as possible for fear of being judged!

I used a helmet cam for a short period of time but stopped as I found myself getting all vigilante-ish. It changed the way I felt when I rode, I was almost looking for trouble, I lost my zen.
When I stopped using the camera, I got it back.

unixnerd

Will any of you adjust your riding style or take anything from the programme

Think I might be even warier of peds on dual use paths!

One thing that came across is that cycling in London seems totally different from anything I've done even in big cities like Aberdeen. Drivers come across as being more aggressive and I can't believe the number of cyclists that just ignore what's going on right next to them and pretend they're not there. Only been to London once but it comes across as having a very different atmosphere.

Headhuunter

jds_1981 wrote:

Not impressed by the police man suggesting a bell or whistle to alert drivers to presence rather than hitting the car. A whistle may work but I don't imagine it easy to cycle along at speed with a whistle in mouth. A bell would be useless.

Yeah I thought that was completely ridiculous and showed a complete lack of understanding from the police officer... At what point whilst you're travelling at 15-20mph or more and a van cuts in front of you are you supposed to pick the whistle up and blow frantically? After you've face planted the side of the van and picked yourself up off the tarmac?! I'm certainly not going to cycle along with a whistle in my mouth, sounds highly dangerous. As for a little ting ting bell, no one in a vehicle would ever hear that...

gtvlusso

EKE_38BPM wrote:

gtvlusso wrote:

Question: Will any of you adjust your riding style or take anything from the programme, learn anything - maybe even as extreme as stopping filming?

If I see Traffic Droid near me I will get as far away from his as quickly as possible for fear of being judged!

I used a helmet cam for a short period of time but stopped as I found myself getting all vigilante-ish. It changed the way I felt when I rode, I was almost looking for trouble, I lost my zen.
When I stopped using the camera, I got it back.

Interesting. Did you feel morally obliged to 'make it safer' for everyone else, compelled, if you will?

TBH, the documentary would never have been made if the footage was not on the internet.....Just sayin'.

il_principe

vermin wrote:

Blacktemplar wrote:

pete54 wrote:

Utter c**p. Was this BBC1 or had someone re-tuned my telly to Channel 5?

^This. Dreadful programme.

I only watched bits of it while flicking back & forward during the ads on another channel.

Which is why you thought it was bad. Had you watched it through, you would have seen that it was a well structured, balanced, thought provoking documentary. Instead, you dismissed it as a whole work and totally missed the point. Well done.

Wait, are you serious? It was a terrible programme. Dishonest and completely unhelpful (aside from Cynthia Barlow's contribution).

EKE_38BPM

unixnerd wrote:

Will any of you adjust your riding style or take anything from the programme

Think I might be even warier of peds on dual use paths!

One thing that came across is that cycling in London seems totally different from anything I've done even in big cities like Aberdeen. Drivers come across as being more aggressive and I can't believe the number of cyclists that just ignore what's going on right next to them and pretend they're not there. Only been to London once but it comes across as having a very different atmosphere.

Don't take that programme as a fair representation of London (apart from the fact that it is always warm and sunny). The atmosphere is very different down here, you can see it, for a start.