Nuxx:4e1e0be4$0$2936$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news-out.readnews.com!transit3.readnews.com!news.nosignal.org!nntp-feed.chiark.greenend.org.uk!ewrotcd!feeds.news.ox.ac.uk!news.ox.ac.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!reader02.news.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <4e1e0be4$0$2936$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Another attack on a cyclist. Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:19:30 +0100 References: <3dc014cb-a8cd-457d-9142-4dfbe0edd4c4@d1g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>   <4e1b4293$0$2535$da0feed9@news.zen.co.uk>  Lines: 57 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110616 Thunderbird/3.1.11 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To:  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: 7a9a103a.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=P>GDIFYk > He imagines all cars as unfeeling killing machines

Mad, in other words.

> you imagine all > cyclists as car hating "psycholists" out to frame innocent drivers in > staged accidents.

Incorrect. I am fully aware that the vast majority of cyclists are not like that. Unfortunately the ones who are give the others a bad name, and are usually more vocal. They are also massively overrepresented in "cycling advocacy" organisations, most of which have an obvious anti-car agenda to one extent or another.

"No they don't", you say? See if you can find an example of any "cycling advocacy" organisation calling for any cyclist safety measure which would benefit drivers rather than restricting them, e.g. the dualling of a road which has a lot of overtaking-related collisions. Any organisation which was truly pro-cycling and not at all anti-car would have no hesitation in demanding such measures where appropriate. Yet how many "cycling advocacy" organisations support, for example, opening bus lanes to motorcycles, despite the figures clearly showing that doing so improves cyclist safety? Why are they all so passionately in favour of speed cameras when, at the very least, no-one has ever properly shown that they make cycling any safer?

Unfortunately, it only takes a few cyclists to behave obnoxiously and self-righteously towards a given driver (e.g. by refusing to thank them when they've gone out of their way to help and they didn't have to) for that driver to develop a dislike of cyclists in general. That may not be "logical" but it's human nature to remember the unpleasant incidents and forget the larger number of pleasant ones. There undoubtedly *are* cyclists/psycholists out there who are complete arseholes towards *all* drivers, no matter how courteous they are, because of a (fundamentally flawed) assumption that it is selfish of them to drive and they therefore deserve punishment. A driver only has to encounter a small number of them and it then takes an awful lot to "undo" the adverse impression of cyclists that those psycholists have given him.

It would help if more cyclists would vocally distance themselves from such extremists, by making it crystal clear that they simply want to make things safer for themselves as cyclists, they have no interest in trying to force drivers out of their cars on onto bicycles, and their goal is the same as any other reasonable person's: to make journeys as safe, quick and pleasant as possible for *all* modes of transport (which, despite what some would love everyone to think, is entirely possible: it is dishonest in the extreme to suggest that making things easier for drivers necessarily makes things more dangerous for cyclists in any way).

> Both are as extreme and divorced from reality as the other.

Do you think there are *any* cyclists who are car-hating psycholists out to frame innocent drivers in staged accidents? I know you don't *know*; I'm asking if you *think* there are any.