DfT, The cycle lobby, 20s plenty, the charities, what about the drivers?

Is there any wonder that drivers are aggrieved with cyclists? Here, yet again, cyclists scream for more driver jail after an accident. See Cyclist group call to ban careless driving so that drivers can be jailed longer.

Doesn't anyone of authority see the elephant in the room? Road cycling's an unnecessary hazard in the middle of essential infrastructure. Society wouldn't miss cycling at all. They are actually advised by the government, (DfT) to use their bodies to impede and obstruct drivers to force their presence. See it here, I am not making it up. Hit one and possibly face 14 years inside.

Now the same government has teemed up with a rabid anti driver group, see Anti driver cycling group & the DfT to get even more of these hazards on the road. See CTC want more driver jail & CTC another costly charity. that society doesn't need.

see DfT think vested interests & charity are experts on road safety

There are far too many charities running our roads. Like Rod King MBE of 20s Plenty for us. How did he get his MBE?

Rod KIng 20's plenty.

 For saying what someone in the DfT is wanting? We certainly have made a very compelling link to this anti driver charity and the DfT. See Honours. The smoking gun?  and here is some more on the anti driver charity honours too. See Make your own mind up. 

Then of course there is, against the advice of independent experts, the decision to make careless driving a fixed penalty offence. See a dangerous unfair concept & profiteer's charter. 

So what has happened to Robert Goodwill (Roads Minister) since he was shadow transport and we alerted him to what was going on? I would suggest he took over the same, liberal elitist civil servants that ran the Labour Transport Department too. So who are they? Who is pro cyclist and anti driver in the DfT? It's about time they were shifted to somewhere less damaging and lethal isn't it?

The road cycling lobby riding dangerously.

If you depend on motorised road transport and have no wish to start having to get on two flimsy wheels, exposed to all weathers and lots of hard work to travel a short distance, I suggest you stop buying The Times. If you don't want to pay ten pounds a person, a family of four to pay £40 per year, £650 million, for transport that isn't viable for your needs and is highly dangerous, don't buy the Times & don't vote for David Cameron or be a member of the AA either.

If you think I'm making all this up, just look at this tweet and play The Times video. What can't speak can't lie

See these fast cyclists passing things too closely. No wonder they're dying. http://t.co/EZycv9VYCC @thetimes @AAPresident @carltonreid
— Drivers Union. (@DriverUnion) March 11, 2015

In it you will see AA's self promoting Edmund King with his pal Chris Boardman, who makes and sells costly 

 bikes, a pair that seem to be joined at the hip. Do see them being patronised and let off easy by the pro cycling Transport Select Committee here Boardman & King in action again. & also here The cheek of Chris Boardman

But what about the video? 

What the Times has done is show exactly why so many cyclists get doored and struck and killed. They are riding too fast and too close to things; it's that simple. It also talks in percentages too. So New York had a 250% rise in cycling. 250% of what? Three? Five? 75? What was the actual rise in New York cycling? And has this been maintained?

 'Car centric' New York? New York can't be anything else. It couldn't run or exist on cycling and nor can anywhere else either. 

The Times video also says that £650 million a year is 4% of the transport budget. Most cycling is pure recreational and the commuters are only a tiny minority too. 4% would need about 12 billion useful cycling miles a year and that would also need to be carrying heavy loads or carrying several people to justify it too. So this £40 per year is to effectively pay for a jolly, that we don't need at all for no return. Is this the best that the great Thunderer can do to justify its case? All of the transport budget comes from driver taxes of about £50 billion a year by the way.

Come on. Show yourself. Who in The Times is the cycling buff? The Times can't even run or exist on cycling. Even in The Times cyclists will be a peculiar tiny minority. So why impose on the rest of us, what you cannot do yourself Thunderer? The same with Parliament. Come on Cameron, refuse all car travel and try to do all your work by pushbike. 

The old chestnut about health and cycling creating better health. There's nothing healthy about placing yourself in great danger and being killed or injured by it, so there are far better and safer ways of staying or getting fit. 

Why is The Times and Cameron peddling such false promotion?  In any case, society didn't expand on manpower road transport and for a very short time in mankind's history, about 50 years, with no other alternative more did cycle. But if cycling was so viable, more would be doing it still. They are not because it simply isn't viable. They will be telling us we must all jog more next.

This is a blatant cycling lobby dishonest presentation so why is Our Prime Minister promoting it too?

But in many ways the video shoots itself and cycling in the foot. It shows cyclists riding fast among and close to things. That is exactly the reason that so many are in collisions and are killed or injured. Here they are, exposed on two flimsy wheels and a slender frame, mixing, mingling and competing with big essential moving machines. Of course it's highly dangerous. But they are not just a hazard to themselves. Drivers who hit one can do serious jail time and whenever transport needs to slow from a safe sixty MPH to 10MPH and then accelerate again, that costs the country money too. Multiply that by many thousands of times a day and imagine the cost to the community.

Since this video was made, incredibly the Select Committee didn't have the witnesses back as we requested, but actually recommended the bike maker's £10 a head from us all. This has since been ratified. Family of four? £40 per year, £650 million and no-one needs cycling at all.

It's not too late to tell Cameron that if he doesn't reverse it he's out at the next elections.
  

A deliberately emotional anti driver Guardian story

Do read this Guardian story first.  It's all about a bereaved mother, Kerry Dean,

Kerry Dean

who's son was killed in a road accident, the driver left the scene, returned some hours later when he was tested and found to have evidence of drugs and drink in his blood. After a full investigation by police and a coroner, the driver was charged with whatever offences could be proven, but there was no evidence against him that he had caused the accident or that it was his fault. In total he was jailed for three years for the offences that were disclosed.

But that is not enough for Kerry or Pacts it seems. Here is a bit more about PACTS. and Much more here too. No friends of UK's drivers they.

‘Just because someone has been killed by a car doesn’t make it less of a death’ http://t.co/6bmzJSYyWg
— PACTS (@PACTS) March 10, 2015

Kerry is demanding drivers are jailed just because they have an accident it seems. She even wants the word accident not to be used, as all anti drivers do too so that more can be jailed for having a 'collision' and not an accident. The Guardian has now elevated her to that of an accident and road collision expert. Yet she clearly isn't aware that we already jail drivers for long sentences under existing law for careless or dangerous driving or  for causing death when on the phone, texting or even when not driving As in this example 

How dishonest and anti driver of The Guardian to paint a graphically emotive image at the start of the article, 'When he was found he had his hand curled up near his face in the position he had adopted to soothe himself since he was a baby'  then end it: 'Who cannot be dismayed by this story?'.No; not from the way it is written.

 Sorry Kerry, but how your son was when found has no bearing on the issue  Yes leaving this lad to die was reprehensible and worthy of its own severe punishment but that is not evidence of bad driving or that the accident was the driver's fault; even if it probably was. We cannot jail people for an accident without evidence of the cause and The Guardian should know that and gently explained it to Kerry instead of exploiting her grief.

Kerry wants passengers in vehicles held liable for leaving a scene of an accident too. Well they already are, as the article acknowledges. They can be guilty of perverting the course of justice which carries a two year sentence. But then why not charge bus passengers or by-standers who walk off too if we are to create a specific offence of leaving a casualty unaided as Kerry seems to be asking?  

The other two sad examples fall precisely into the same category. Bereaved becoming lawyers and experts yet motivated by grief, emotion and revenge because the available evidence wasn't good enough for them.

Then all becomes clear later in the piece. Now, feminists having changed the onus of evidence for rape, want exactly the same principles applied to road accidents.They want accident victims to be accorded the same victim-hood as for a deliberate crime or act.  They refuse to acknowledge that to rape and to murder is a deliberate act, but road accidents are exactly that. Unintentional and from a very dangerous scenario that society must have to exist. What these anti drivers simply cant accept is, that without drivers all of us would die, and from a scenario where people are mixing and mingling with heavy, fast machines of infrastructure there will be death and injury. But Look at the perspective here. and See less proof used in jailing drivers than murderers.

Well the anti drivers are the same people who don't like anything industrial and essential for our survival. The loud, left leaning, green, anti people people. Susanna Rustin and The Guardian may well be part of that movement and because of that drivers must use their voices against people like The Guardian who will exploit human grief to achieve their ends.

Promoting this, PACTs just demonstrates that when it comes to road safety and drivers, it really isn't objective at all. MPs please note.

We cannot run road safety by exploiting grief and emotion; it's a cheap stunt.

But be warned. Here it is in black and white. Like rape victim law, they are looking for the same principles against drivers to be applied now.  

Help us to prevent it.

www.driversunion.co

Claire Perry is too anti driver to remain.

Claire Perry, MP for Devizes has already come to our attention in her support for anti driver cars & that they can be trusted to take our unaccompanied kiddies to school and collect them again safely having intelligently identified the local child snatcher and zapped him or her. See here. I mentioned the 'her' child snatchers since Claire is a feminist so wouldn't want women to be left out of that activity.

How do I know she's feminist? Well she has gone completely ga ga over a PC who has done nothing more than issue a fixed penalty ticket to a 'White Van Man who cut up a women cyclist.' Even to the point of blowing him a kiss no less.

@MPSNorthcote on behalf of female cyclists everywhere - thank you. X
— Claire Perry (@claire4devizes) February 26, 2015

As I write, the rest of the Cyclist Lobby have heaped so much praise on the PC Sims, not just from a minister but high ranking police officers too, that his action has been re tweeted over a thousand times and Favorited almost as much. My word. The possibility of a George Cross for so much courage in writing out a fixed penalty! Has the world gone mad? Here you can see a small sample of the tweets.   Well a tiny minority of the electorate can look quite massive when lobbying or on Twitter but nothing compared to the majority of the 33 million driver voters out there Claire. If only we could wake up this supine and silent majority! I live in hope that my next blog or even this one, may be the breakthrough.

What has caused all this excitement and joy among our cycling friends is that a driver, who was merely perceived to have cut up a cyclist, who has never complained so far, has been issued a fixed penalty for presumably driving without due care. 

We had vigorously opposed the use of fixed penalty for such a top driving offence on the basis that it warrants the full process of a court hearing and prior to this new option for lazy coppers, fixed penalty had only ever been reserved for absolute offences and not those of subjectivity as in this case. See more on this here. Would the PC have bothered unless he could just issue a ticket? My comment to him was that I would have made him prove his case at court and so should this driver have done too. 

But if drivers want to know about the anti driver war being run by the cycling lobby perhaps this tweet should convince them. 

@MPSWandsworth @MPSSuptWallace @MPSNorthcote @MPSRTPC hopefully @MPSWestminster & @MPSCamden are also taking note! 😉🙏
— Cyclist London (@cyclist_london) February 27, 2015

As for Claire Perry, she really can't be so anti 33 million drivers and stay in office can she? Devizes drivers take note. 

Now Practical Motoring understates the driver.

See the Practical Motoring piece here

But this piece is totally to the advantage of cyclists.

Why? Well the definition of road cycling is unprotected humans, mixing, mingling, competing with and impeding large essential fast moving machinery which is operated by complete strangers of varying ability and mental capacity. Normally humans wouldn't ever consider such an activity.  

Drivers, being human make lots of mistakes.  But this piece is written to assume that it is deliberate or careless conduct by the driver. Mostly it's the perception of the cyclist, from his self imposed insecure position, that most complaints against drivers stem when the drivers action has been endorsed by no collision or incident at all. From his perspective everything was fine.

But Isaac Bober fails to explain why, in 2015, we must have road cycling at all? Society must have walkers and drivers on the road to exist but cyclists? I don't think so.

So start the conversation there please? Why must we have cyclists risking their lives? Why must we have an unnecessary hazard on the road? 

Anti cyclist? No. Just being pragmatic.  

I have also responded to a similar article four-wheels-good-two-wheels-good here.

Cyclists still demanding jail of others for their hazardous activity.

Why is it that cyclists are so keen on retribution and jail after a horrid accident? See it here.

It's occasions such as this that drivers are entitled to demand that unnecessary hazards are removed from roads.

Here we are again, cyclists failing to acknowledge that, by pure definition, road cycling is a hazard to all concerned.

So is it necessary? No. Society really doesn't need road cycling at all. Last time I raised this on Twitter, all that the Editor of this group could do was keep repeating F... off Keith. See the tweets here. So much for reasoned debate from the cycle lobby.

When will the cycle lobby wake up to the fact that by attacking drivers and demanding their incarceration for accidents, drivers are entitled to ask why must we have them? It's a perfectly reasonable and fair question. 

Mike Penning is a pro-cycling minister Now he's at The Ministry of Justice.

Hi Mr Penning,

I see the cycle lobby are after more driver jail after horrid accidents. I hope you will be realistic and hope these blog comments will assist you. http://bit.ly/18UxHfC

Road cycling, by definition, is a hazard to all concerned which is being imposed upon drivers. It's hardly fair then that allowing humans to mix among large, moving, essential machinery, operated by people of varying skill and mental capacity, society wants to jail drivers when, inevitably it all goes badly wrong. It begs the question, why must we have road cycling at all? It's a fair question isn't it?  

I know your sympathies are with cyclists but the reality is that there are only two types of road user society depends on now and that is walkers and drivers. Jailing people after a cyclist has been killed or injured doesn't bring them back or repair them. It just adds another misery to an already miserable situation. Jail is only a deterrent to deliberate acts and it simply doesn't stop mistakes, errors and accidents; it only achieves revenge.. 

I do not suggest we stop road cycling, but for goodness sake don't let's keep pandering to it or encourage people to be an unnecessary hazard for themselves and other road users and then jailing people.

Wishes

Another area to consider a silly passing rule.

As another area considers a ridiculous passing rule

Such a law is utter nonsense. 

For a start drivers don't drive with a tape measure so therefore using a distance in any law is totally unworkable. But the perception of cyclists as to what is too close is based on the fact that road cycling is so dangerous so the first thing to ask is does the community need cyclists at all? It certainly needs its drivers and if the pass was successful without any mishap, it tends to support the drivers' actions. 

Finally, don't impose this rule without insisting that cyclists stay single file, not allowed to pass other cyclists or more than a set number of parked cars in the same pass without having to get off and walk. Why ever not?

See more on this issue here