Please be careful out there!

Please be careful out there!

While this is mainly a blog about the joys of travelling by bike something recently happened that struck me with the need to say something about the risks.

Yesterday as I rode to work I passed an accident. It looked like a mini cab, people carrier, had turned from the outside lane on a dual lane across the inside lane towards an exit on the other side of the road, an action that would have required him to cross two lanes of traffic. He had been hit,centre on by a motorcycle. The bike was badly damaged, the rider lying motionless in the road with a people around him. The emergency services had not yet arrived.

There two reasons I am writing about this. The first is the driver and mini cab looked very similar to a gentleman who had executed the exact same maneuver in front of me and my partner a month ago, forcing and emergency stop that brought us with in 2 feet of his vehicle, in the exact same location, clapham south side on the A24  a few yards past the traffic lights.

The second is that I cannot find a single news reference to this and it makes me angry. 36 motorcyclists were killed on London’s roads last year. At the moment London is plagued by people driving out into, and turning across, moving traffic. It happened three times in the 45 minutes it took me to get home from work last night, and Transport for London, the governing body, seem to feel that, profit turning, speed cameras are more important than get traffic police out on the streets.

In the report by the London Assembly to TFL "Easy rider Improving motorcycle safety on London’s roads, March 2016, it states "motorcyclists themselves are endangered, for instance, by motorists who fail to look properly when turning at a junction. Awareness campaigns need to be continued and intensified to address this." I have yet to see any evidence of this happening.
Coupled to this is use of mobile phones, something that has made the news, but without enforcement will persist.

So it's down to us, not just those of us on two wheels, but everyone of the road. Please look out for each other.