David Hansen wrote:

On Fri, 09 May 2008 10:16:00 GMT someone who may be Chris Tolley
wrote this:-

Some cyclists are, without doubt, reckless, and are a danger not only to
themselves but to others.

That is true of most groups of people.

When I were a lad, such people were the
exception. Perhaps they still are, but it seems to be less of an
exception than it was.

Another possibility is that your perception of danger has changed as
you got older.

I could also simply be in a position to observe more of this than I did
before. It may also be a northern thing. One of the more surprising
aspects of living in Manchester was the casual abandon with which
pedestrians would step off the kerb without checking first that it
wasn't going to be fatal for them.

Over the past year, I can recall one situation I observed where I felt
that a motorist had potentially caused danger to a cyclist. It would be
four or five where the cause of the danger was the cyclist.

How does a cyclist cause danger to a motorist? While most things are
possible it is not easy. Motorists are inside a box, so even of the
cyclist crashes into them at high speed they are likely to walk away
with no injuries. It is not the same the other way round.

In the only one of the incidents I referred to above where *I* was the
motorist, there was a cyclist ahead of me who was on the nearside and
then suddenly, with no signal, and not even a backward glance swerved
across the road in front of me to make a right turn. Because I had
slowed down as I usually do when approaching cyclists, the car which was
behind me was then very close on my bumper, so I couldn't brake hard. My
only option was myself to swerve right and thus cross the centre line.
Fortunately, there was nothing coming the other way. If there had been,
I don't know how I would have come out of it unscathed. As I passed him,
I observed he was wearing an i-Pod, and moreover, the expression on his
face suggested he was oblivious to the incident which almost unfolded
behind him.

Note that some motorists have claimed not to have noticed that they
were killing a cyclist or pedestrian, that is how isolated some are
from the world outside their little box.

Quite. Nowhere have I alleged that motorists are paragons of virtue.

--
http://gallery120232.fotopic.net/p9632854.html
(33 054 with assorted vans at Reading - 17 Jan 1981)