Hatred against Cyclists

Bonefishblues
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by Bonefishblues »

reohn2 wrote:
Bonefishblues wrote:Me too. Not sure why it merited the pre-broadcast headlines.

It just serves to rack up the antagonism :? :twisted:

Drivers came off worse, by far, surely?
reohn2
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by reohn2 »

Bonefishblues wrote:
reohn2 wrote:
Bonefishblues wrote:Me too. Not sure why it merited the pre-broadcast headlines.

It just serves to rack up the antagonism :? :twisted:

Drivers came off worse, by far, surely?

Ask a driver who watched it and who isn't a cyclist for the answer to that question.

EDIT,what we're dealing with is a skewed perspective provided by the program for the majority road user.
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Bonefishblues
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by Bonefishblues »

I thought it signally failed to make the case tbh.
reohn2
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by reohn2 »

Bonefishblues wrote:I thought it signally failed to make the case tbh.

From a fair and honest perspective I would agree,the problem being the motorists perspective isn't always a fair and honest one,predominantly it's a selfish one from a position of power.
I experience this whenever I use the roads both as a cyclist and a driver,displayed in close overtakes,overtakes against a right hand turn signal,overtakes on blind bends,and other dangerous manoeuvres by motorists with regard to myself and other cyclists.
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Bonefishblues
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by Bonefishblues »

reohn2 wrote:
Bonefishblues wrote:I thought it signally failed to make the case tbh.

From a fair and honest perspective I would agree,the problem being the motorists perspective isn't always a fair and honest one,predominantly it's a selfish one from a position of power.
I experience this whenever I use the roads both as a cyclist and a driver,displayed in close overtakes,overtakes against a right hand turn signal,overtakes on blind bends,and other dangerous manoeuvres by motorists with regard to myself and other cyclists.

I'm luckier in that I'm away from urban streets, but there's still an odd one. I find much more discourtesy and danger car-on-car in my everyday life.
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horizon
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by horizon »

Bonefishblues wrote:I thought it signally failed to make the case tbh.


Agreed. There were a number of interesting ideas (empty lunchime cycle lane, riders on the pavement, number of people using mobile phones, effect on local residents of influx of cyclists etc) any of which might have merited a five minute feature on the news but which together simply didn't add up to anything, one way or the other. Channel 5: scourge of good programme making?
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by AjJay »

Well I saw up to the first commercial break....
It was getting me so angry, that I just could not see any more and judging by the most recent postings, looks like my guess was correct and I don't want to see it now.
There was something said by one of the taxi drivers, something about us being in swarms. Well what are motorists doing! Look on any road and there are swarms of them. Definitely a skewed perspective, as another poster put. And as for the other comment about watching out for the "racing cyclists", well that's what motorists do; are we supposed to go no faster than walking pace?
Getting angry again, so I'll stop there. Fume!
Stradageek
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by Stradageek »

Just a boring programme, badly made, which didn't include a realistic analysis of any of the issues.
Oldjohnw
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by Oldjohnw »

I'm on holiday at present so never watched it. Given that it was channel 5 I wonder if most of the audience can be found in these pages.
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Bonefishblues
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by Bonefishblues »

AjJay wrote:Well I saw up to the first commercial break....
It was getting me so angry, that I just could not see any more and judging by the most recent postings, looks like my guess was correct and I don't want to see it now.
There was something said by one of the taxi drivers, something about us being in swarms. Well what are motorists doing! Look on any road and there are swarms of them. Definitely a skewed perspective, as another poster put. And as for the other comment about watching out for the "racing cyclists", well that's what motorists do; are we supposed to go no faster than walking pace?
Getting angry again, so I'll stop there. Fume!

You should watch it all - there was a deal of 'anti-car driver' material later, plus input from police.
reohn2
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by reohn2 »

Bonefishblues wrote:
reohn2 wrote:
Bonefishblues wrote:I thought it signally failed to make the case tbh.

From a fair and honest perspective I would agree,the problem being the motorists perspective isn't always a fair and honest one,predominantly it's a selfish one from a position of power.
I experience this whenever I use the roads both as a cyclist and a driver,displayed in close overtakes,overtakes against a right hand turn signal,overtakes on blind bends,and other dangerous manoeuvres by motorists with regard to myself and other cyclists.

I'm luckier in that I'm away from urban streets, but there's still an odd one. I find much more discourtesy and danger car-on-car in my everyday life.

From a cyclist POV,it's practically everytime I ride,overtaking on bends with oncoming traffic in evidence,giving me plenty of room I might add,seems to be in vogue ATM,four in the last three rides causing the oncoming traffic to take evasive action by swerving to their left or having to perform an ES.
What concerns me most in those situations is which way the loonie motorist doing the overtaking is going to swerve to avoid a collision :shock:

I had a young woman in a small H/B this week overtake me on a blind humpback bridge that I couldn't see over in my elevated position on the bike,so how she could I've not the foggiest :roll:
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al_yrpal
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by al_yrpal »

The programme did a pretty good hatchet job against the idiot faction in our midst. That, along with the vigilante cyclist hate figure is bound to just reinforce predjudice against cyclists. A thoroughly unbalanced programme. Remind me why I seldom watch anything on Channel 5?

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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by mattheus »

Bonefishblues wrote:
AjJay wrote:Well I saw up to the first commercial break....
It was getting me so angry, that I just could not see any more and judging by the most recent postings, looks like my guess was correct and I don't want to see it now.
There was something said by one of the taxi drivers, something about us being in swarms. Well what are motorists doing! Look on any road and there are swarms of them. Definitely a skewed perspective, as another poster put. And as for the other comment about watching out for the "racing cyclists", well that's what motorists do; are we supposed to go no faster than walking pace?
Getting angry again, so I'll stop there. Fume!

You should watch it all - there was a deal of 'anti-car driver' material later, plus input from police.

I watched about 10mins (after the Tour highlights, obvs!) - perhaps the 3rd quarter? Mainly the West Mids police bike guy; he was excellent, which didn't surprise me based on the stuff coming out of that force in the past year or two :thumbsup:

The cycling vigilante-camera guy was er ... interesting. he wasn't the perfect advert for activism (not everyone has Chris Boardmans media training and communication skills), but when you watched what he did, every single offender shown on film was indeed plainly guilty of a traffic offence! So good luck to him, I say.

So THAT SEGMENT probably did more good than harm, in my view.
Bonefishblues
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by Bonefishblues »

mattheus wrote:
Bonefishblues wrote:
AjJay wrote:Well I saw up to the first commercial break....
It was getting me so angry, that I just could not see any more and judging by the most recent postings, looks like my guess was correct and I don't want to see it now.
There was something said by one of the taxi drivers, something about us being in swarms. Well what are motorists doing! Look on any road and there are swarms of them. Definitely a skewed perspective, as another poster put. And as for the other comment about watching out for the "racing cyclists", well that's what motorists do; are we supposed to go no faster than walking pace?
Getting angry again, so I'll stop there. Fume!

You should watch it all - there was a deal of 'anti-car driver' material later, plus input from police.

I watched about 10mins (after the Tour highlights, obvs!) - perhaps the 3rd quarter? Mainly the West Mids police bike guy; he was excellent, which didn't surprise me based on the stuff coming out of that force in the past year or two :thumbsup:

The cycling vigilante-camera guy was er ... interesting. he wasn't the perfect advert for activism (not everyone has Chris Boardmans media training and communication skills), but when you watched what he did, every single offender shown on film was indeed plainly guilty of a traffic offence! So good luck to him, I say.

So THAT SEGMENT probably did more good than harm, in my view.

Just watch the programme.
Pete Owens
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Re: Hatred against Cyclists

Post by Pete Owens »

I didn't think it was anything like as bad as folk are making out.

Motorists will have been cringing at the people put up supposedly to represent them. All of them seemed to be the sort of obsessives that you would avoid at a social gathering.

There was the tiresome drone from Surrey who whined on-and-on-and-on about cyclists going to fast, cyclists going too slow, cyclists overtaking on the right, cyclists overtaking on the left... Then cut to interviews with happy normal looking people of different genders clearly enjoying a ride out in the countryside. Could you imagine any of them defecating in your front garden? And the final nail in is credibility was shot through when he passed through the barrier closing the road he had been filmed driving along!

There were the angry taxi drivers whose gripe appears to be with cycle lanes rather than cyclists (a distinction that seems to be lost on some here). They couldn't seem to make out whether their problem was too many or too few cyclists. And when your complaints include the fact that cyclists are not subject to speed limits you have clearly lost it.

There was the self-publicising solicitor. The hypocrisy of someone who make a living getting people off traffic offences on technicalities calling for stricter enforcement is not going to convince anyone. His sole aim in getting involved in these things is to generate name recognition (so make sure to never mention his name).

One sign of progress is they now all feel the need to qualify their remarks by claiming to be in favour of cycling; in the same way you know what to expect when someone starts a sentence "I'm not a racist, but ... ". They know that overt cycle-hating is no longer socially acceptable.

On the other side we had the authoritative voice of the West Midlands Police - and the fact that they are targeting close-passing motorists cannot be exaggerated enough. They might not have had the same amount of air time - but that time was much more effective.

Even the camera wielding cyclist was not as bad as I had worried about. He came across as good humoured, if a bit overenthusiastic, and some of his videos were pretty shocking - the sort even the most committed motorist would think need to be dealt with. We could have done without the trivial van parking incident.

The only one on the anti-cycling side to come out well was the chap who had been hit by the pavement cyclist. He seemed remarkably composed, even in the immediate aftermath.
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