Safe Speed Forums

The event was absolutely shocking, watch the video
Regardless of what happened prior to that, there is absolutely no excuse for what he did.

_________________
Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

No matter what happened previously to lead up to this incident (as reported by Sky news) this action is neigh unforgivable and utterly despicable. It is right that he lost his job, his licence and finds himself incarcerated.

_________________
Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Having said that, the cyclist should face the courts too for the part that he played in precipitating the incident!

_________________
"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Should he, do you know what happens before the start of the video?

No, but I have read articles detailing what was happening immediatly prior to the incident! Whilst this does not in any way justify the bus drivers actions, the Cyclist was being a total prat and the law should take its course with him too!

_________________
"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Can you provide links please?
I cartainly heard on Sky TV News that there had been altercations including shouting & the cyclist 'flicked' the bus wiper blade. so tempers have already run high. What led up to that would be good to know.
An appalling affair.

_________________
Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Only on "safespeed".

To clarify your position: if the hospitalised party had initiated hostilities by deliberately winding up the aggressor with: illegal obstruction, wanton damage to property and committing assault (I'm not saying all that happened but i suspect there is some relevance), you wouldn't even consider bringing charges up against them?

Even if so, do you believe all other corners of society would totally agree with you?

_________________
Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Didnt save links, but it was the usual offenders (BTYahoo etc)

The gist of it is that there was an earlier altercation at a roundabout where the Cyclist felt that he had been "Cut up" by the Bus driver.

(My GUESS, and it is only a Guess, is that the Bus driver had likly been following the cyclist for some time and took the opertunity to pass the cyclist while going through the roundabout thus frustrating the cyclists intention to take a "Racing Line" IYSWIM)

After this, the cyclist caught up with the bus driver (Mistake #1) Put his bike across the front of the bus, thus obstructing he while he had a go at the driver (Mistake #2) and then once he got underway did so in a manner as to be as willfulluy obstructive as possible (Mistake #3)

(You can see from the CCTV footage that he is neither "Adopting a Primary position" nor is he preparing to change lane, He is infact weaving across the road inorder to frustrate any reasonable attempt for the Bus driver to pass!)

What the Bus driver did was wrong, (And if/when he gets his license back, he certainly should only be licenced for "Social, domestic and pleasure" since he clearly does not have the temprement for professional driving) However, It is also clearly the case but that for the (Criminal) actions of the cyclist, the incident would not have occured.

One should not be permitted to precipitate serious breaches of the peace and then cry foul because one came off the worse for it, And the Law should not ignore the criminal actions of such a looser just because they did!

So yes, he should face prosecution also!

_________________
"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

It certainly looks (to me) as if the cyclist is going out of his way to be obstructive to the driver of the coach. It certainly seems (to me anyway) to be a "driving without due care", case, had the cyclist been in a car.

_________________
My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

On the video clip on the Yahoo front page, it showed it from a bit earlier, with the bike leaned up against the front of the bus, while the cyclist has a go at the bus driver. You can also see the cyclist edge out towards the bus almost a full lane width before he gets clobbered. He is, quite obviously, taking the proverbial at that point. Clearly, the bus driver shouldn't have done what he did, and got punished for it. I suspect the relatively short imprisonment might have been because the judge felt he wasn't entirely to blame, but that's just speculation on my part. It was interested to read the comments on the Yahoo story, as a general "vox pop" and I was quite suprised at how many of them reckoned the cyclist had "got what was coming to him". Not passing any comment one way or ther other, just observing....

I must say that thought crossed my mind also....

_________________
"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

x3
My take though is there’s no way the driver would have known how to exact any amount of force in order to just to ‘teach him a lesson’, if that was his intention. Therefore, he may well have killed the cyclist! It certainly didn’t look to me like the driver was just trying to s**t him up, which I could have understood if the cyclist had been completely out of order. (What ever that may be?).

It instead looked to me like a deliberate attempt to run him off the road with all the possible consequences that could so easily have lead to a charge of manslaughter instead. If he’d considered this during the ‘red mist’ he may have reacted differently, so he was very lucky with the sentence I think. The idiot could have left a family without a dad, a husband, a vital income...

It would be remiss of me not to say so should the cyclist, as the more vulnerable one, think twice before deciding to get into a p*ssing contest. Two wrongs don’t make a right, as they say.

_________________
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

If and this is a very big IF this is what segregation of road use is doing i.e. encouraging intolerance by suggesting that one piece of tarmac somehow 'belongs' to a person, or group, then perhaps it is time to remove all cycle lanes and bus lanes, etc to help remind and teach people that we are all people merely trying to progress our journey. Tolerance, courtesy and responsibility must all be considered at all times.
If we don't travel with an appreciation and allowance for other road users then aggression and frustration is going to abound, with these types of results.

_________________
Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Of course, in the interest of balance, it had to be said that the bus driver (ex-bus driver!) has also lost his livelihood. Not sure if he had dependents...

Still not an excuse for what the bus driver did. I'm sure he probably didn't INTEND to kill him, in fact, he probably didn't INTEND to seriously injure him, come to that, but as you say, it's impossible to predict the outcom of this kind of thing - even stunt men sometimes get it wrong and they've both agreed what the other is going to do! IF he'd wanted to teach the cyclist a lesson, then maybe driving over his bike when it was leaned up against the front of the bus might have been a safer option...

Interesting though. Having recently been in Holland, I was amazed at the number of pushbikes, and most roads DO have seem to have segregated cycle lanes (at least in the cities). It made being a pedestrian quite a bit worse. Just when yu've negotiated the cars and trams, you think you've reached the safety of the opposite pavement and you've got a carriageway of bikes to contend with!

Actually, having rewatched the video, I am not certain that he even intended to hit him! He may have intended to pass and cut in a bit sharpish, but it seems clear that as the bus driver pulled out to pass, the cyclist pulled out further to prevent him from doing so resulting in a collision rather than a (possibly intended) near miss!

_________________
"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Actually it is not "only on Safespeed", it is the law.

Chris Huhne is currently in court as a result of his dodging speeding points by having his then wife take them.
Then after they split, she thought it would be a good idea to reveal this fact publicly - and now they are BOTH in court, as they have BOTH committed an offence.

The cyclist is not immune from prosecution simply because he was injured - although I would think that has been taken into account, given the amount of video evidence of his standard of cycling, and behaviour!

When I am cycling to work on the road, I try and do as much as I can to reduce inconvenience to other road users - pedestrians, horse riders and motorists, AND to preserve my safety and well being.

In this incident, the bus drivers appalling actions have overshadowed the actions of the cyclist, who firstly takes a position well into the centre of the lane - then as the bus moves out to pass, goes further out to thwart a possible attempt to pass - quite aside from his riding before the incident in question (video available elsewhere)!

It is no wonder that drivers get so wound up as to make such a dangerous reaction, when other users actions are so provocative!
Provocation SHOULD be addressed through the courts if necessary.
EVERYBODY should behave responsibly towards other users for things to run safely and smoothly on our roads, and as soon as ANY party thinks they have more rights than others, incidents such as this become more likely.

IMPATIENCE must rank highly as a major contributing factor to accidents, and IMHO anything which aggravates the situation should be dealt with whenever possible until drivers AND riders learn to reign in their impatient or obstructive behaviours.

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Yeah, it seems 'we' were comparitively kinder to the cyclist than many others!!

_________________
Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

I've had the same experience in Amsterdam. As I'm not used to it (and they are all coming from the wrong way!) it was very easy to go to step out in front of a cyclist on a cycle path. The difference was, however, that almost all the cyclists were not head down, clad in Lycra and on racing bikes. They were going reasonably slowly on standard bikes in an upright posture which must aid seeing where you are going.

_________________
Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.