Monday, November 30, 2009

Blame the victim, as usual

Far too many cyclists are killed injured oin the roads every year. Some cyclists listen to music whilst riding. Therefore the Daily Mail has confused correlation with causation and decided that it's all the cyclists' faults for listening to their iPods. Just another piece of shoddy, prejudice enhancing non-journalism designed to let car drivers believe they have no responsibility for the safety of others.

Originally published at On Two Wheels

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posted by Ian Pattinson at 10:35 AM
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Monday, November 17, 2008

Austerity Cycling

As credit has been crunched, so sales of bikes have risen, as more and more people catch up with those of us who realised years ago how much could be saved by switching to two wheels.

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posted by Ian Pattinson at 1:26 PM
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Monday, April 07, 2008

Sex and the single Olympian

Victoria Pendleton is one of Britain's many potential medal winners in the Beijing games. She talked to The Mail on Sunday about her prospects and dropped the headline friendly tidbit that sex helps the performance of female athletes but hinders that of males. For this and other reasons she has a casual relationship with someone outside the sport.

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posted by Ian Pattinson at 10:44 AM
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Friday, April 04, 2008

MP hits cyclist

Undoing all his party leader's positive work on two wheels Tory MP Simon Burns hit a cyclist outside Parliament whilst driving his Range Rover. This sounds like the sort of accident that happens every day- driver pulls into traffic without looking and hits a cyclist, it's happened to me though thankfully less painfully- and only made the news because of where it happened and who the driver was.

Let's see "Dave" Cameron come out and make a statement about always looking out for two wheelers at junctions.

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posted by Ian Pattinson at 10:50 AM
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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Mad old biddy assaults cyclist

A dotty old baroness took a swipe at a cyclist who came too close to her on a pedestrian crossing and is now using her attack as an excuse to put licence plates on bikes. Then she also has the gall to call on cycling organisations to promote safer cycling, as if that's not what they already exist to do. As the Daily Mail has a habit of censoring my comments, I've copied them below-

Cycling organisations do promote safer cycling, and membership of the Cyclists' Touring Club comes with automatic third party insurance.

All of this moaning is hypocritical because deaths caused by cyclists are incredibly rare- one a year at most and usually the result of a pedestrian stepping into the road without looking. If the good baroness and all the reactionary commenters on this story want to improve safety on the roads they should call on the AA and RAC to run campaigns reminding drivers that the amber light means SLOW DOWN not 'I might get through just as it turns red if I accelerate now'.

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posted by Ian Pattinson at 12:56 PM
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Unsurprising news- Daily Mail readers are reactionary idiots

If only Daily Mail readers could get their priorities straight and rail against the major killer on the roads. A city banker was hit by a cyclist and died three days later from his injuries. A tragedy, but the Police investigated and found the cyclist wasn't at fault. Let's face it, the victim probably stepped off the pavement without looking or paying enough attention, just like he did every day. But this being the Mail they have to quote statistics on the number of people killed in collisions between pedestrians and bikes, context free and without the equivalent numbers for other forms of transport. And then the readership had to weigh in about how threatening young men in lycra keep trying to kill them and they should all be banned, or made to take tests and get licenced etc. There's even a call for some form of petition to do something, though obviously no real concensus on just what.

These people annoy me, so I commented back. Go and add your opinion.

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posted by Ian Pattinson at 3:37 PM
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