Cugel wrote:On the one hand you tell me that to suggest that we take political steps to improve road behaviours by motorists is impossible (your "auntie with balls")
Extremely improbable, not impossible. The "auntie with balls" proverb is about saying something would be good does little to make it so.
then suggest I'm "making up lies" about you when I summarise your many posts as "Mjr prefers a seprate infrastructure" for cycling. I feel a touch of over-excitement has entered your thoughts on these matters.
Yes, I get overexcited when someone oversimplifies my views to the point of untruth, partly because I've endured this for years from certain CTC types who seem to oppose anything with a bike symbol on/by it.
I (like you, no doubt) have cycled hundreds of thousands of miles on the roads with little serious mishap involving a car (I was once pranged by a drugged person coming out of a side road in 1980). So the first point might be that although the roads have dangers to cyclists from motorised drivers, they aren't that bad if one is a competant cyclist paying attention; and other road users generally behave themselves.
I was last hit a year or two ago, right-hooked on the carriageway by a motorist. No amount of competence or attention by a cyclist protects against that. It can mitigate, but by that point we've already lost.
Have you also cycled thousands of miles (could be hundreds of thousands by now - I don't record the split) on cycleways with little serious mishap and none involving cars like I have?
Next we might consider the infrastructure so far provided for cyclists. It's all derived from theoretical considerations and based on some sort of idealised model in the head of a road planner who seems unfamiliar with riding a bicycle.
I wish it was, but the situation's both better (we have road designers who are keen cyclists) and worse (until recently, there seemed to be no theoretical considerations underneath many design manuals).
There's no sign that this inadequate or even dangerous stuff with it's inadequate designers will change in future provisons .... which is a moot point since there's no sign either of the huge budget that would be required to design and construct any substantially useful cycling infrastructure at all.
No sign it will change? So, to use an example from the biggest city, you would claim that the latest London Cycle Superhighways are no better than the initial round, which are themselves no better than the old LCN+? Or from a more famous city, that the CCAG half-step redmac cycleways in Cambridge are no better than the paint+signs pavements and gutter lanes they replaced?
We do have a solution, though. Once upon in time (certainly in my memory) there was a far better provision of traffic police, who did tend to curtail the casually dangerous antics of many everyday motorists. Once upon a time, it was regarded as OK to smoke in public rooms, persecute gay folk, beat children and discriminate openly against people with dark skins. In short, we already know how to revive good practices to improve road behaviours; we already know that seemingly intractable cultural behaviours of a toxic nature can be amended or even eliminated via political rather than financial action.
You keep saying "we already know how to revive good practices" without saying how, despite repeated requests. How will you do it if not by changing political views by getting more people cycling by providing protected space for cycling?