Nuxx:Ce520322-3cae-4034-9ccc-0016a9a7ad67@56g2000hsm.googlegroups.com

Path: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!56g2000hsm.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID:  From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Child Death In Redditch Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 22:13:05 -0700 (PDT) Lines: 37 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.105.129.172 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1217913185 15880 127.0.0.1 (5 Aug 2008 05:13:05 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 05:13:05 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: 56g2000hsm.googlegroups.com; posting-host=88.105.129.172; posting-account=7_6kYAkAAABD6HrjM0VxehwvZOKMxm4g User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Bytes: 2950 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:660813

An interesting message from elsewhere. A 10-year-old boy on his bike was killed on a heavily traffic calmed, bus-only road. Hardly a surprise, then, that there has been no mention of it here on uk.rec.anti-motorist, since no motorist can be blamed, and no anti- motorist measures can be called for as a result of the tragedy.

Something tells me that there won't be the automatic, hysterical, "lock the driver up and throw away the key" reaction on this thread that there would have been had the bus driver been a car driver instead. Deaths which are caused by politically correct forms of transport aren't as bad as deaths caused by cars/motorcycles in this crazy troll-world.

-- Original Message --

Those who live in the West Midlands might have seen the Birmingham Mail where a ten year old boy was killed on his bike by a bus.

This happened 200m from my partners old house on a road where I've cycled myself many times with my 13 year old and her 6 year old. What isnt reported is that it is a BUS ONLY road. Redditch, being a new town, had these bus corridors running through the middle of its suburbs which have no access to cars.

Interestingly this road is heavily traffic calmed, with two pinch points and several central island type crossings where footpaths cross the road. Hardly necessary for a bus every 20 minutes!

However, the road is so narrow that these obstacles have the effect of removing all maneuvring space for bus drivers to avoid anyone who steps out. It was at one of the islands where the child, who wasnt doing anything wrong by all accounts, was hit by the bus and virtually decapitated.

Its possible there was a "tree shadow" effect which hid the child from the drivers view, but on the face of it this looks like a classic case of traffic calming being dangerous to cyclists.