Death by dangerous cycling, potential offence

[dyqik]

waah waah waah i wanna go as fast as i can

Waah waah waah, I want everyone to drive cars and kill many more people. And for the Tories to pass more and more unnecessary laws that don't do anything except give the police more exercises for selective prosecution.

[noggins]

really? waah waah waah I can't go fast on my bike so i'm gonna drive instead ?

[dyqik]

really/ people are going to drive because they can't go faster on their bike?

People are going to drive because biking is suddenly more expensive and difficult. So there's fewer advantages for cycling over driving.

We already know that cycle helmet laws reduce cycling. Your suggestion for mandatory bicycle registrations, testing and installation of speedometers is much more onerous.

And before you say that you aren't suggesting that, you are in fact suggesting that.

[dyqik]

Unless of course, you are instead suggesting a hard numerical limit that can only be prosecuted subjectively, with all the biases and inequality involved in that.

[noggins]

yes, i'm advocating a speed limit that can be enforced against those taking the piss

[dyqik]

yes, i'm advocating a speed limit that can be enforced against those taking the piss

We already have that. It's called peddling (or driving) furiously.

[dyqik]

Which means, as per usual, a new law isn't needed, just half a dozen more police officers tasked with actually enforcing the law, against both drivers and cyclists.

[lpm]

Believing an unenforceable rule cannot be successful is a logical fallacy. Most rules in life are obeyed but never enforced.

[dyqik]

Believing an unenforceable rule cannot be successful is a logical fallacy. Most rules in life are obeyed but never enforced.

No, it's not a logical fallacy.

It might be wrong though.

[IvanV]

yes, i'm advocating a speed limit that can be enforced against those taking the piss

We already have that. It's called peddling (or driving) furiously.

Driving furiously is an offence which encompasses injury to a third party, and can only be prosecuted when such injury has occurred. But there are victimless offences which can be prosecuted. Since 1988, iirc, there have been offences of dangerous cycling and careless cycling.

But just like the offences of dangerous driving and careless driving, they are exceedingly rarely prosecuted in situations where there is no damage or injury to third parties. Cars screech around the place, get away with causing no damage, and usually nothing is done about it. There are w.nkers on bicycles just as there are w.nkers in cars. But for some reason a large subset of people get more upset about the w.nkers on bicycles, even though their potential to cause harm is much less.

As you say, we need to enforce against those taking the piss. We already have offences - those above - that are based on taking the piss, and don't require speed to be measured. Whereas tying a speed limit to it would make it less prosecutable, as you'd have to have that hard-to-get speed information. So, what benefit does the public get from giving itself the power to enforce speed limits on bicycles in situations where they aren't taking the piss?

Meanwhile, you are restricting the utility of cycling. Letting yourself run down a hill without excessive braking mostly isn't taking the piss. It's helping you get up the other side at less effort. It's helping you reduce the delay you are causing to the cars coming in the opposite direction to get past the parked cars. It's just letting people do what is natural and enjoyable and not anti-social.

[tenchboy]

If the w.nkers in cars were driving on the pavement, my ire would be equable; trust me.

[Martin Y]

... You do understand that a £10 speedometer is not calibrated or accurate? To get an accurate speedometer on a bike you need to spend hundreds on a GPS system.

Having already spent hundreds on a GPS system (I mean of course already having a phone) I could buy a bike speedo for <Googles> £8.38 and note its reading at what my phone says is 20mph. If I got really carried away I could reposition the needle to read correctly. Or print a new scale for the gauge and stick that on.

This makes me wonder whether police radar guns can see bicycles. <Googles again> Yes it looks like they can if there's not too much clutter like other vehicles around.

[dyqik]

... You do understand that a £10 speedometer is not calibrated or accurate? To get an accurate speedometer on a bike you need to spend hundreds on a GPS system.

Having already spent hundreds on a GPS system (I mean of course already having a phone) I could buy a bike speedo for <Googles> £8.38 and note its reading at what my phone says is 20mph. If I got really carried away I could reposition the needle to read correctly. Or print a new scale for the gauge and stick that on.

This makes me wonder whether police radar guns can see bicycles. <Googles again> Yes it looks like they can if there's not too much clutter like other vehicles around.

Police radar guns may be able to see cyclists on bicycles*. But if they can, then the police officer operating them can also see the cyclist and assess whether they are pedaling furiously. Speed cameras, which are the UK's chosen method for policing speed limits, in lieu of employing police officers, largely can't though (I know, I've tried to trigger them), and even if they were triggered, they wouldn't collect information that would allow the cyclist to be ticketed.

As for calibrating your speedo - that's an additional step that is not trivial to undertake. And most cheap functional ones are digital.

* There is a question of what they can see. A bicycle often has exposed wheels, of which portions of are moving faster than the bicycle. It's not unimaginable that the radar gun triggers on wheel rims (which consist of concave metal) rather than the convex round tubes of the bicycle, and thus gets a dodgy reading. On a related note, ask me about velocity resolved tomography of protoplanetary disks...

[bolo]

IANA protoplanetary tomographer, but surely the radar would trigger on the cyclist rather than either the round tubes or the wheel rims?

[jimbob]

IANA protoplanetary tomographer, but surely the radar would trigger on the cyclist rather than either the round tubes or the wheel rims?

Some certainly do because I sometimes would trigger one at about 17 or 18 not 34 or 36 in my commute into work

[Grumble]

I think the radar signature off the metal wheels will be bigger than off a meat based cyclist.

[dyqik]

IANA protoplanetary tomographer, but surely the radar would trigger on the cyclist rather than either the round tubes or the wheel rims?

The RCS of a wet bag of MAMIL arse is a lot lower than that of shiny metal.

Unless you are Bender.

[Grumble]

IANA protoplanetary tomographer, but surely the radar would trigger on the cyclist rather than either the round tubes or the wheel rims?

The RCS of a wet bag of MAMIL arse is a lot lower than that of shiny metal.

Unless you are Bender.

Both ruder and more technical than my version

[Sciolus]

waah waah waah i wanna go as fast as i can

I'm slightly puzzled that you quoted my post saying that if 20 mph is appropriate for motor vehicles then it's appropriate for cyclists, but that there are practicalities around how it is managed, and somehow turned it into the exact opposite.

[IvanV]

As for calibrating your speedo - that's an additional step that is not trivial to undertake. And most cheap functional ones are digital.

A bicycle speedo typically works by measuring the time interval for a wheel revolution. It has a data entry point for the distance of travel per wheel revolution, typically in cm. So you calibrate it by measuring how far you travel for one rotation of the wheel the speedo detector is attached to. Preferably this should be done at typical tyre pressure and with a person sitting on the bicycle. For a larger wheel bicycle the distance is somewhat over 200cm, so is likely accurate to around 0.5%, provided you measure it carefully. That is probably more accurate than many car speedos, at least for larger wheel bicycles. But the issue is that you are relying on the user to calibrate well in this manner for it to make a sensible reading.

[Martin Y]

Car speedos also use* wheel rotation and aren't especially accurate.

Different brands of tyres vary in size a bit. Cars often have a choice of wheel sizes and corresponding tyre sizes that ought to be approximately the same diameter, but aren't quite. And of course tyres worn to the legal limit might be as much as 2% smaller than brand new ones. The manufacturer will choose a gearing for the speedo drive from a selection varying in perhaps 5% steps, and err on the side of caution to be sure the speedo will never under-read. (The speedo drive on my old MX-5 uses a plastic gearwheel that plugs into the tail of the gearbox. They make versions with between 19 and 23 gear teeth, so that choice limits how close to accurate you can get.)

*Not sure if this is still true as Mrs Y's nearly-new car has a speedo which agrees very closely with phone navigation app, so they may be getting smarter than old mechanical ones.

[science_fox]

If the w.nkers in cars were driving on the pavement, my ire would be equable; trust me.

More pedestrians on pavements are killed by cars driving on the pavement than by cyclists*. Yes cycling accidents are that rare, that they make the national news when it does unfortunately happen.



* I think that the stats were cyclists on pavements but it's possible that it's actually higher that total pedestrians killed by cyclists altogether. KSI likely to scale similarly.

[Fishnut]

If the w.nkers in cars were driving on the pavement, my ire would be equable; trust me.

Plenty of them park on pavements, damaging them and often blocking access for pushchairs, wheelchairs, mobility scooters and the like. The sooner we make pavement parking illegal and properly enforced the better.

[shpalman]

If bicycles are going to have speedometers then we can also enforce minimum speed limits for bikes on roads.

[Trinucleus]

If bicycles are going to have speedometers then we can also enforce minimum speed limits for bikes on roads.

Not if I'm going up a hill