Cycling UK Forum

Postboxer wrote:If the government is ending the daily coronavirus news conference, perhaps it should be replaced with one where they list all the deaths of the day, week or month, just to show the numbers dying due to various factors, perhaps this would highlight the numbers dying in road collisions, then they could show the graph of predicted numbers, presumably something like a horizontal line, as they seem to be doing nothing to stem them.

The shock horror figures would be from air pollution, estimated 40,000 premature deaths per year. in the UK. Gosh, the gov would have to get serious about the internal combustion engine.

Postboxer wrote:If the government is ending the daily coronavirus news conference, perhaps it should be replaced with one where they list all the deaths of the day, week or month, just to show the numbers dying due to various factors, perhaps this would highlight the numbers dying in road collisions, then they could show the graph of predicted numbers, presumably something like a horizontal line, as they seem to be doing nothing to stem them.

Upward slope... given that they want to increase the amount of road traffic.

Postboxer wrote:If the government is ending the daily coronavirus news conference, perhaps it should be replaced with one where they list all the deaths of the day, week or month, just to show the numbers dying due to various factors, perhaps this would highlight the numbers dying in road collisions, then they could show the graph of predicted numbers, presumably something like a horizontal line, as they seem to be doing nothing to stem them.

I don't disagree, however, I'm not sure folk would pay much attention to it, and also people get 'numbed' to stats....... Look at the CV-19 stats early on, and now time has passed folk think 200 pd is an 'acceptable' figure because it was nearly 1000 pd at the peak.

Perhaps the family don't want to be in the media.....

Cheers James

"Do you remember a couple of years ago when a child was hit by a cyclist on the pavement suffering bruising? It made front page news and was on national TV for days on end"

Absolutely - every time this sort of thing happens the average motorist goes frothy to the point of hysteria. Our local MP Andrea Leadsom took up loads of time in parliament for a case where a complete @rse on a bike hit a young woman and she fell and banged her head on a kerb and died. And yet this happens several time a day from cars - nothing said, or at best, oh well, can't be helped. Even a mate of mine has a sort of slightly light-hearted "OMG what am I like!" having written off several cars and a few collaterals in his time. I think I've changed his attitude over the years.

Also consider the recent case where a pedestrian busy on her phone stepped out in front of a cyclist - totally her fault but apparently he should have known she was going to do that and SHE got compensation from HIM and he had to pay all the legal costs, going into 6 figures. OK, actually the highway code's a bit vague about that (or used to be - might be clearer now) - BUT the last time I remember a case like that involving a car and a kid running across the road, the kid died and the motorist got compensation for a dented bumper.

And the great British public look on and regurgitate their inane comments - even before looking at the disparity in stats, one pedestrian killed by a cyclist elicits frothing rage - "cyclists are a menace, hanging's too good for'em" - thousands of pedestrians killed by cars - "they should look where they're going - the road is for cars!"