Safer roads for Cumbria

Tucked inside this months issue of DiRE[1] was a little leaflet from the
"Safer roads for Cumbria" campaign telling me "Don't crunch after lunch".

I must say I've never seen a more sloppy bit of work (well, if you don't
count the stuff that I produce). It obviously hadn't even gone through a
cursory proof read and the opening paragraph tells us that, "Although 2008
saw a drop in motorcycle fatalities from 11 in 2007 to four last year" -
while a highlighted box says that, "During 2008 there were three fatalities
involving the riders of powered two wheelers - three of which were in the
500cc and above class".

It goes on to list the top 10 causation factors for bike accidents in the
region, noting that, "Examination of causation factors revealed that
excessive or inappropriate speed were in the top of four of the ten most
common causes" (yes, that really is how the sentence reads - they may have
stopped speaking English in Cumbria).

Anyway, it helpfully highlights the excessive/inappropriate speed causes in
their top 10 ...

*Rider - loss of control*
*Rider - careless reckless or in a hurry*
Rider - poor turn or manoeuvre
*Rider - travelling too fast for the conditions*
*Rider - exceeding the speed limit*
Deposit in road (eg oil, mud, chippings)
Rider - sudden breaking (sic)
Road layout (eg bend, winding road, hill, crest)
Road layout (eg bend, hill, narrow carriageway)
Rider - failed to judge other persons path or speed

I'm a little puzzled as to how they've differentiated numbers 8 and 9, but
it all seems a little arbitrary really and it's quite amazing to see that
none of the top 10 factors seem to involve another road user, especially as
national statistics suggest that only 30% of bike accidents don't involve
another vehicle.

Anyway the point of it all is that ... "During 2009 Safer Roads for Cumbria
and Cumbria Constabulary remain committed to keeping deaths and serious
injuries among motorcyclists as low as possible. To this end both agencies
will be monitoring key routes in the county including the A686, A683, A6,
A590, A591, A596 and A65."

So, be warned.

[1] Which I mainly bought because the front cover promised an article about
kids bike gear - both pages of it were great.
--
AndrewR, D.Bot (Celeritas)
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The speccy Geordie twat.

 

No, you probably dreamt it ... or you weren't in Cumbria at the time.

One of the two, certainly.

--
AndrewR, D.Bot (Celeritas)
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The speccy Geordie twat.

 

Half arsed job, there's nothing on stopping to complete statistics.

 

Because the overall number of KSIs rose from 72 to 74.

"The majority of KSI casualties occur in riders and pillion passengers of
500cc+ engines"

Leaving aside the fact that I don't believe anybody rides a 500cc+ engine
(and you certainly couldn't fit a pillion on one) it's annoying that no
effort is made to relate that to the proportion of 500cc+ bikes using the
roads and, overall, there's also no effort to equate the number of KSIs to
the number of bikes on the road.

So, basically, it's just a bunch of context-less statistics to justify what
they were going to do anyway - stick camera vehicles on popular roads at the
weekends.

--
AndrewR, D.Bot (Celeritas)
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The speccy Geordie twat.

 

someone's been watching too much terminator ii.

 

AndrewR posted:

Did we ever start?

I tend to avoid most of those anyway, apart from the A686 (Hartside
Pass) which is well known to be heavily watched during the warmer
months. The Forces of Conformity are fairly lazy anyway, and tend to
stick to a few places that shouldn't surprise anyone - Melmerby is a
favourite on the A686; proximity to a nice little bakery/tea room may
or may not be a coincidence.

 

Hasn't Performance Bikes been shite for well over 10 years now? I haven't
read it for a while, admittedly, but the last few times I did they seemed to
be testing the same bloody bikes every week and all of the sparkle had gone
out of it.

While RiDE isn't perfect they at least don't assume that their entire
audience is made up of 23 year old track day heroes who have 2 month old R1s
that they're planning to trade in for 1198s before it needs something
serious, like the chain lubing.

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AndrewR, D.Bot (Celeritas)
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The speccy Geordie twat.

 

AndrewR wibbled...

4 deaths?

Why are they bothering? FFS.

2006, 154162 people died of cancer.
(http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/mortality/)

Sack all the police traffic officers and give their salaries to cancer
research.

 

PB was relaunched a year or two back and seemed quite a reasonable read.

Fast Bike, otoh, is drivel written by teenagers for ten year olds.
Awful. I've done the same as Nige in the past and bought the latter
mistaking it for the former.

 

No, Performance Bikes used to be fantastic, back in the late 80s/early 90s,
but then went downhill very badly indeed.

Fast Bikes has always been shit.

--
AndrewR, D.Bot (Celeritas)
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The speccy Geordie twat.