A Crash Course in Cycling (or, why everyone should be a cyclist)

[Wolfshade]

Oh no, don't worry I get that. In the grand scheme of things "nothing happened" so should be a low priority. And to be honest my expectiation is that nothing will happen.

It is like when I complain to a certain bus company, nothing seems to happen, or at least given the size of their fleet it does not appear that way.

[Denzark]

I wasn't trying to trivialise it by saying it is a minor issue, just that the police would probably view it as such. I quite agree that bad drivers need picking up before they do something much worse. You are right to purse it, just seems sad that it probably won't result in anything.

Coppers need to have their feet held to the fire. Insist it is recorded as a criminal complaint, insists it is dealt with. It helps if you know which particular offence you think was committed - driving without due care and attention, dangerous driving, using language that causes harassment, alarm and distress (dickhead). Then, if they refuse to give you a crime number and take it seriously, take it to the IPCC. Because everything is stats based, they don't want a crime stat, but they even less want a complaint stat.

[Wolfshade]

Research from King's shows that an estimated 28,416 deaths in GB are attributed to particulate air pollution (2010) (largely diesel exhaust) including 3,389 in London.

To put that into context there were 1,713 road deaths in GB during the 2013.

Pollution kills more than crashes.

But it gets worse. Pollution isn't highest on the pavement where the monitoring kit is, it isn't on the side/middle of the road where the bicycles are. It is in the vehicle itself.

That is while walking around London there was around 6-7 million particles per breath inhaled, while inside a vehicle it rose to 50 million.

Last year 10 cities had days where the pollution levels exceeded EU safety limits.

[Psychosplodge]

[Wolfshade]

I saw that, he was demonstrating the amount of space saved by cycling than with car driving.

[Psychosplodge]

Ah, so it's not the way to keep a safe space?

[Wolfshade]

No, though if it were it is a little churlish.

I have spent the last week cycling in and out of the city centre in rush hour, I have deduced that in the time it takes me to drive a mile, I can be home on my bike. I cannot fathom why anyone would drive into/out of a city centre during these times.

I enjoy filtering passed row upon row of parked cars.

[Wildeybeast]

So they don't get run over? Because they don't have showers at their work?

[Wolfshade]

The shower thing is a good point, but then how many of the work places have parking yet people find a different place to park. Though this is a cultural thing and if I am totally honest if I didn't have teh ability to shower I wouldn't cycle.

Not getting run over, in pure accident numbers 8x the number of driver fatalities than cyclists....

It is a chicken and egg situation, if they don't have cycling facilities then you won't get cyclists. If you don't have cyclists then there is no point in spending money on facilties and I can not see a way around that problem.

Certainly in terms of absenteeism, increased productivity etc medium to large companies would recoup the costs of the facilities within a year . For small firms the cost is more problematic.

[Wolfshade]

[url]http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/zuvvi/media/bc_files/campaigning/BENEFITS_OF_INVESTING_IN_CYCLING_DIGI_FINAL.pdf[/url]