Death toll

Lots of chat in the news about the number of deaths on the road - pedestrians, cyclists and motorists.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/road-deaths-fall-record-low.  Makes interesting reading, particularly if you check out the table which shows how well it's comparing to 20 years ago for cyclists.  Nothing giving an idea of why this is so though.

The comments below the guardian article were interesting reading though (at least until I got bored and stopped).  Someone tongue in cheek flagging up about cyclists who ride on pavements and go through red lights.  It reminded me of an Alison in car versus cyclist incident yesterday.  I have to turn right out of my street onto a more major thoroughfare.  The more major route is often pretty busy with traffic and I do sit for sometime waiting for a suitable gap.  In recent years, however, just to the right of my street on the main road is a pedestrian crossing, one of those where you press the button and wait.  On busy traffic days this can be a godsend if someone on foot wishes to cross the road and makes the lights go red.  Suddenly traffic is stopped and I can actually pull out across one empty lane and poke my nose into the now stationary lane of traffic I'm looking to join.  It was an impossibly busy day yesterday but to my joy the lights were pressed by someone and went red. 

Call me naive but I expect traffic to stop at red lights, so I edge my nose out, and we're talking slow here because I got maybe a foot out into the road and there he is, the cyclist, who has just gone through the red lights.  And I've put him in danger by pulling out.  But, on the other hand, he wouldn't be in that position if he'd just bloody obeyed the rules of the road and stopped at the sodding red light.  I always stop on the bike if the light's red.  Even if nobody's crossing.  It's the law godamit, the law, and by disobeying it, the cyclist was the one placing himself in danger, not really me.  Having said that, nobody died, nobody swerved, I was moving so slowly I simply stopped.  Bloody idiot though.  Definitely old enough to know better, reckon he was a 50 year old man and not a testosterone driven youth.