Rider down, Bank

elbowloh

Just an aside.

I work for a construction / civils company and we had a meeting yesterday where TfL's programme manager for freight and road transport came along to do a talk on CLOCS http://www.clocs.org.uk/ and everything they are trying to do with the construction and fleet operators to make their vehicles and drivers safer. Although TfL is obviously London based, the CLOCS scheme now has about 66% of their operators signed up outside London and even a few in Europe.

They've engaged with Loughborough uni to model all major types of HGV and their blind spots (no one had done this before, including the manufacturers) and then gone to the likes of Mercedes, DAF, Renault, IVECO etc) with info who have started designing lorries with better visibility from the cab. With the operators, under the FORS scheme, they have improved their fleets and given the drivers training (which includes getting them to ride a bike on the roads to see life from the cyclists point of view.

My company is signed up with CLOCS and a FORS gold member btw.

veronese68

A couple of points spring to mind reading this.
Firstly, RIP to the poor girl and condolences to all that knew her.
Dhope is right in that people need educating. We, as the vulnerable ones need to look out for our own safety though.
I have seen appalling driving by HGVs, they are not immune to road rage. I had one drive at me when I was on a motorbike because I filtered to the front of a queue. I heard him start moving and managed to get out of the way. He then started swinging at me with a length of lead pipe! But that sort of thing is mercifully rare.
I sympathise with drivers of HGVs though, I wouldn't like to do it. I was talking to one of my neighbours that drives a tipper truck and he hates going into London as it is so stressful. He was saying that with all of the cameras and mirrors you can see all around you, but it takes time and once you have checked them all everything around you has changed.
As they used to say at the beginning of Hill Street Blues, "Let's be careful out there."

Ben6899

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19632249#p19632249]laughingcavalier[/url] wrote:

http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/environment-and-planning/Documents/Part11-proposals_BankJunction.pdf

This is a very disappointingly vague document. All it says is "we could make it like this junction in this other part of London or this place in Europe". No actual drawings or diagrams how it would be done.

But, I used to be a consultant... so I'm not surprised.

hegyestomi

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19633015#p19633015]Ben6899[/url] wrote:

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19632249#p19632249]laughingcavalier[/url] wrote:

http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/environment-and-planning/Documents/Part11-proposals_BankJunction.pdf

This is a very disappointingly vague document. All it says is "we could make it like this junction in this other part of London or this place in Europe". No actual drawings or diagrams how it would be done.

But, I used to be a consultant... so I'm not surprised.

I thought the same: no real suggestion other than "shared space". I was wondering what they propose to do with the 210 buses/hr? That is 3.5 bus/min which is about 1 bus in every 17 seconds. Not mentioned yet all other type of traffic.
Proposing the shared place based on a Dutch example which (just looking at the picture) nowhere near to the volume of the traffic at Bank !and! stating that it may or may not work is ludicrous.
Proposals like that are pure waste of time: no decent research or knowledge and no real plan or idea to present :evil: .
Rant over...

awavey

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19632990#p19632990]Veronese68[/url] wrote:

A couple of points spring to mind reading this.
Firstly, RIP to the poor girl and condolences to all that knew her.
Dhope is right in that people need educating. We, as the vulnerable ones need to look out for our own safety though.

Im open to new ideas, but sometimes you just have to accept that as cyclists, we can do everything we can to be safe, but we cant stop people driving unsafely around us.

ugo.santalucia

the problem of speculating is that it's often short of facts... what do we know about these victims?

Were they experienced cyclists or last minute enthusiasts? Were they wearing a helmet? What was the dynamic of the accident? Was the HGV found guilty of wrongdoing or not? For what we know there might be a pattern or there might not be a pattern at all... are the findings of the investigations shared with the relevant authorities (TFL, London Assembly, LCC etc... ) or just filed for police/insurance use?

meanredspider

I'm having a bad time with bike accidents: firstly the young barista at the Amsterdam RCC tragically killed, also two of my team at work have been involved in collisions with cars (one has a cracked pelvis the other mostly just bruising) and having a rare off myself on the Rapha Prestige. Take care, people!