Publicly unacceptable opinions

PlaneSpeeking wrote: »

Cyclists who thinks the world revolves around them and the shines out of their a**e and will accept zero responsibility for ANY bad cyclists behaviour.

Yet can happily parrot anti car statistics that came from the same place as they thought the sun did in response.

It's purely Pavlovian at this point.

Muggers with guns have TECHNICALLY killed more Americans than Islamic terrorists. Does that mean we excuse ISIS and let them do whatever they want while we demonise muggers ??? Idiotic point of view at best.

Why do you think cyclists as a group, or individual cyclists should be taking responsibility for the behaviour of some cyclists?


Do you, as a motorist, take responsibility for the motorists who killed 3 or 4 people on the road this week?

PlaneSpeeking wrote: »

Hear hear!

So you got around to jumping on this bandwagon, but you didn't have time to answer my question about why you apply collective responsibility to cyclists?

weldoninhio wrote: »

Until stats come out to let us know how the cyclists die in RTAs we could just as easily assume it was the cyclists fault as the drivers.

They're not RTAs. They are RTCs. Collisions, not accidents. Gardai call them collisions. RSA call them collisions. Let's not let people off the hook with this accident nonsense.

But on the substantive question, your assumption would not be a sound assumption. Here's why:

First of all, cyclist deaths are a very small part of the overall road deaths - about 5%. About 75% of road deaths are motorists killing other motorists or passengers. So you're not really going to find a credible way to blame cyclists or pedestrians for those. Another 20% are pedestrians killed by motorists and about 5% are cyclists.

So even if you were to assume that ALL cyclist deaths were the fault of the cyclists (which they're not) that still leaves 95% of road deaths at the hands of motorists. The cyclist numbers aren't significant in the overall picture.

And then let's look at the cyclist deaths themselves. These cases are generally very well reported, though possibly 2-3 years in arrears. They show up in court cases and coroner's inquests. They are also included in the RSA analyses of road deaths. So the causes are well known, and by and large, it is motorists at fault.

There were a handful of cases where cyclists were at fault. I'm thinking of the drunk guy who cycled onto the M1, the club cyclist who came off into a ditch during a steep descent in Wicklow, and the guy who cycled into the back of the car that parked to ask him directions in Cork. There's probably a couple more that I've missed, but the numbers are tiny. The remaining cases show cyclists killed by motorists.

This matches the international trend where research into cyclist/motorist collisions are generally the cause of the motorist. Research in London showed up about 70% motorist fault, Adelaide was about 80% motorist fault, Vancouver was 92% motorist fault.

But isn't it strange how some people are so desperate to blame victims?