Drivers' Union

What have we learned from the entirely seperate road cycling accidents of Burry Stander, Bradley Wiggins, Junior Heffernan, Laurent Jalerbert, Sharon Laws, Clinton Grant, Chris Horner and Team GB Coach Shane Sutton? Well judging by the predictable responses from the shrill cycling lobby,The Times and Sky News, very little at all it seems. We have already addressed cycling reality  

 

 

Of course that great luminary of the vested interest AA's Edmund King, who happens to sell biking gear and has other vested interests in road safety policy, says: 'We must rid ourselves of the Two Tribes weakness'. He fails to understand that, whereas 30 million or so drivers keep us all alive, cyclists simply don't. I sometimes wonder if AA's president is genuinely stupid or a mischevous and dangerous profiteer? Of course it's 'them and us' One is entirely necessary to Society and the other really isn't Edmund.

 

Sky TV,              not normally given to being daft, have promoted the idea of people, including kids, to mix, mingle, compete with, and with their own bodies, obstruct large pieces of heavy, fast moving essential machinery, operated by complete strangers of widely varying ability, in a way that would be described as total lunacy if it wasn't cycling.

                                         

 

 

How can the media refer to these seven accidents as 'coincidence'? Do see our previous pages that prove it isn't; Stander, Wiggins Heffernan, Grant and Sutton are just further evidence.

 

What about that top British Cyclist Simon Richardson MBE? Struck from the rear in 2001 and turned into a paraplegic, he bravely fought back to.............................get on a bike again and again, while training for the 2012 Paralympics, is hit again and is now bedridden? Didn't he learn anything the first time? Would Simon stillseriously recommend cycling on roads to his kids, or our kids?

 

 

 

While these enthusiasts cite Europe as ideal cycling examples,                            they forget that the vision of the sedate upright rider, as we know in Europe,   isn't the same as                                   the heads down, sports bike, narrow wheels, Lycra & Spandex clad variety in the image of Wiggins, Sutton and Richardson is it?                     The simple truth is that , just as with sports cars, sports motorbikes and sports pushbikes, the driver/riders have to use them as such. Not much point in riding slowly and sedately in Spandex is there? And therein lays the problem. The faster one goes on a bike, the less one can control it or react to hazards and the injury rate rises exponentially for the rider.  See this example with no drivers involved.

 

This is why five top UK sports cyclists all managed to crash into the same van badly injuring themselves in, of all places, 'cycling safe' Belgium. Clearly heads down, too fast and bunched together. Only one of them should've crashed in that case; there is no excuse for the others. So this type of riding isn't even safe in Belgium it seems.

 

 

So what have we learned here:

 

That like driving and motorcycling, cyclists must ride at a speed in which they can stop safely and which cannot result in their severe injury.

 

That we have to accept that cycling, especially the heads down spandex style isn't ever going to be safe even if there were no drivers and this sort of cycling, especially racing, really isn't for the roads.

 

Why don't we investigate and assess the speed of a cyclist after an accident and how it contributed to the accident and injury? Although generally slower, cycling too fast and out of control, as we see daily as cyclists speed between lines of traffic, will be a contributer.

 

That cyclists, just like Richardson & Heffernan didn't, must understand the risks involved to them; especially the harder they ride.

 

 

That while the UK driver is generally very safe, as the accident rate proves, it is asking too much of them to allow people to use the same space by choice and then blame the drivers when it goes wrong.

 

As for 'them and us'. Those pro cyclists who mention they also drive have it the wrong way around. They are drivers who also cycle; as indeed I am too. It's drivers we can't live without; not cyclists. It's my driving keeps my home running not my cycling.