You evil, victim blaming scum.

UPDATE: Ride-smart campaign has been removed. See Update 2, at bottom of post.

Seen this?

http://ride-smart.org/

Okay, there are some stupid cyclists out there. I know that. You know that. We all know that. Its not under discussion. Name anything humans do and, likely as not, there are some people do do it badly. Get over it already.

Here we've got a website devoted to telling cyclists what they're doing wrong, linking those errors to 3,000 KSI (killed or seriously injured) on our roads every year, and to 19,000 accidents. Now whoever wrote this site (and when I work it out I'll update this blog entry) sounds, on first analysis, like they have a point. On further analysis however... lets think, what phrase does this guy keep using... 'Stupid Twat'. Well, lets consider.

First things first, the site uses video footage from youtube, without linking to those who uploaded those films or asking permission. Says at the bottom 'we never saved their usernames and couldn't track them back'. Really? There's always the comments box; its not hard to track down the owner of any of those videos. And you've got the audacity to call other people stupid twats? Wow. I mean, just, wow. Great start there.

We'll let that go for now though. I'm sure the owners of those videos will be in touch if they care. And I should think they might.

Lets lump the specific claims together. Lets start with the whole concept that cyclists are causing accidents in which they get hurt. Well, turns out that cyclists are not to blame for 93% of their own injuries. So we've got a cyclist safety campaign concentrating on a rather small proportion of accidents. Literally, add up all of the things this childish website focuses on and you're still ignoring more than 9 out of 10 of cyclist injuries.

In fact most of the claims there are, individually, such small contributors to cyclist injury as to barely show up in stats. Listen to music at a reasonable volume while riding? The evidence is that isn't not a big deal at all.

Jump red lights? Well you're in a minority. And depending on conditions you might be safer doing so. Turns out doing so doesn't much show up in accident stats anyway.

On to claims about cycle helmets... Sheesh, lets not go there. Lets just say a half inch of polystyrene foam must be amazingly comforting when an articulated lorry is crushing your ribcage.

So this is a campaign erroneously blaming cyclists for accidents primarily caused by motorists, sickeningly mis-portraying the real state of play on our roads?

We could do without this kind of victim blaming nonsense.

So, dear readers, if you were to apportion the title of 'stupid twat' to anyone, can you think of any website owners who may deserve it?

Update: Superb bit of work at Wheels, Pedals, Person hilighting who seems responsible for this crap.

Update 2: Oh look, having seen that he's in the wrong. Chris Michael, Director of Technology at Karmarama, the company responsible for this vile campaign, has tweeted lots of apologetic tweets to folk. All 18 at time of posting look like this but to various twitterers.

Well I'm glad that sickening site has gone, but lets be clear; I do not accept your apology Mr. Michael. I will do so when you put the same effort in to combatting the actual, quantifiable, major risks to cyclists as you did with your pathetic victim blaming slur of a site. You, Mr. Michael, have some making up to do. Do it.