PDQ Mobile wrote:AlaninWales wrote:PDQ Mobile wrote:There you have it.
Alan thinks I am to blame.
Yet I cycle sensibly and politely, above all politely, to all I meet.
Yes, you are to blame. It doesn't matter how polite you are.
By your own admission you found it hard to see them with the light you were using.
By your own admission you might easily have ridden into them at the speed you were riding.
The choice of light and the choice of speed are your own, yet you ride at a speed where you risk hitting unlit pedestrians; and say you must not be told to slow down.
Your choice, your control of the danger to others as well as to yourself. Certainly you are to blame. Yet you seek to pass the blame on to your potential victims, because they (who constitute no danger to others whilst walking along the path in normal clothing) have not complied with your requirement to make themselves more visible so that you can ride at the speed you choose.
To be frank I think it's incorrect.
You are just selectively interpreting what I said.
I have selected the parts where you described the incident, your light and your speed. In this reply, you said you could barely see them (quoting
https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=134910&start=149)
PDQ Mobile wrote:Do you know I think I could have very nearly hit them. My eyes are ok.
Older but ok I just had an eye test in the last 2 months.
Your eyes are OK but you could "very nearly" have hit them. Well you were either able to see them in time or avoid them, but you appear to be putting some blame on them:
PDQ Mobile wrote: They were three teenage girls engrossed in their phone right across the path backs yo me. Dressed in dark clothes as it happened!!
I have a simple Aldi single LED well bright enough on miles of narrow and unlit lanes to see and be seen well.
The path in question is very dark on account of the high 2and a half meter stone wall on one side. It is called The Cob.
It is dead straight, a mile long, totally unlit and commences with a gentle downhill for 20 or 30 meters. So one gains a good lick -perhaps 17mph.
And one has just left street lighting so eyes are not fully adjusted to the full dark.
At the far end away are the not bright lights of a railway yard.
Most folk carry a light.
IMV wisely.
I am used to unlit peds on the route and I have always seen them up to now!
One keeps one's light "dipped" so to speak because of oncoming others.
However the point is, and you don't seem to grasp it, is that they were hard to see.
Because they were hard for you to see and (at the speed you were riding) this made it worrying enough for it to stick in your mind and be quoted as your example of bad practice. Which later in the same post, you used to blame (by associating with these pedestrians) "a man lying badly hurt in the road on a dark wet night." .. in your view "probably avoidably". With of course no evidence whatsoever, except your victim-blaming preconceptions.
Then in
https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=134910&start=166, when mjr suggests that 17mph is obviously too fast for the conditions (dark lanes with - let's remember, a light that you choose to use), you reply:
PDQ Mobile wrote:Now you tell me as a cyclist to slow down!
From 17mph downhill! Sorry.
I cycle for fitness, pleasure and practicality.
This is not some Sunday sightseeing outing.
It is patently obvious that you believe that you have a right to ride on dark lanes at a speed of your choice and it is up to others to make allowances for you and adjust their clothing choice (no matter where they may have been going or returning from) for your convenience.
PDQ Mobile wrote:Why don't you address the point about 2 cyclists meeting on a shared path?
One with lights and one without.
What speed is safe?
You now tell me that, seeing as you seem to be so certain.
That's very simple indeed and I am certain who would be to blame: The one who is unable to safely stop, under control, within the limit of what they can see to be clear. If both are able to stop within that limit, no collision. If one is not able to stop within that limit, they will collide.
This is of course the nub of the matter. If the police and "road safety" campaigns repeatedly made this point:
That anyone using the road is responsible for being able to safely stop in the distance they can see to be clear. Then there would be no victim-blaming arguments about who else should do what. Wear what you like! Bright glowing pink, green, nothing at all or black (anything apart from a Hogwarts Special Invisibility Cloak). The onus is morally and should legally always be on the person bringing the danger. In the case of the incident at 17mph with a single LED light on dark country roads that you described, the onus is on you.
PDQ Mobile wrote:Who is to blame in any collision?
By your criteria the faster cyclist.
I disagree.
I think the one without lights is to blame.
Then you would be wrong, as I show above. If either cyclist is riding with due care, ensuring that the path is clear that they are riding along, then they are blameless. If either is riding at reckless speed and unable to stop within what can clearly be seen, then that cyclist (potentially both) is (are) to blame.