I guess it could be seen as in some way biased in favour of insisting that cyclists get licensed, and so on.
I think it's an attempt to address and quantify some of the mythologies and perceptions about cyclists in Oxford. I have done every kind of transport there is in Oxford, for a couple of decades; I fell off my own bike hard owing to my own failure to check my brake cables (and still have the scars); I have been run into twice, very hard indeed, by cyclists, both of whom were riding at night like bats out of hell with no lights and ran through pedestrian crossings. I have seen bus drivers playing games of 'chicken' with cyclists; recently I saw no fewer than three cyclists without helmets or lights going up the Woodstock Road next to, not on, the perfectly good bike path. They were a danger to themselves and the public and shouldn't have been let out without their mummies, frankly.
I see car drivers behaving like 100% prats, too, believe me; but I think that the annual MOT and licensing forces drivers, at least, to think about the maintenance of their vehicles once a year. If this survey encourages cyclists to fight their own corner and the numbers show that most cyclists actually DO wear helmets, maintain their bikes, use hand signals (ha), use lights, and pay some attention to road markings, then it has to be a good survey.
I have two Utterly Pukka FT cyclist friends and will make sure they answer the survey so as to bias the results in favour of cyclists :-)
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chiming
anti-cyclist bias...?
Date: March 4th, 2005 12:49 pm (UTC)From:I think it's an attempt to address and quantify some of the mythologies and perceptions about cyclists in Oxford. I have done every kind of transport there is in Oxford, for a couple of decades; I fell off my own bike hard owing to my own failure to check my brake cables (and still have the scars); I have been run into twice, very hard indeed, by cyclists, both of whom were riding at night like bats out of hell with no lights and ran through pedestrian crossings. I have seen bus drivers playing games of 'chicken' with cyclists; recently I saw no fewer than three cyclists without helmets or lights going up the Woodstock Road next to, not on, the perfectly good bike path. They were a danger to themselves and the public and shouldn't have been let out without their mummies, frankly.
I see car drivers behaving like 100% prats, too, believe me; but I think that the annual MOT and licensing forces drivers, at least, to think about the maintenance of their vehicles once a year. If this survey encourages cyclists to fight their own corner and the numbers show that most cyclists actually DO wear helmets, maintain their bikes, use hand signals (ha), use lights, and pay some attention to road markings, then it has to be a good survey.
I have two Utterly Pukka FT cyclist friends and will make sure they answer the survey so as to bias the results in favour of cyclists :-)