Archive for the ‘Pedestrians’ tag
Seeing red
To judge by media reports, the big cycling legal issue is cyclists running red lights. Lycra louts are running amok. Well yes, some cyclists do run red lights, but is this really the only narrative worth considering. How about the fact that any cyclist will tell you that they frequently have their rights abused. In the video above, proceeding straight along the bus lane I had right of way over the car turning left. At the last moment I noticed the indicator flashing and stopped. The car driver may have seen me and been prepared to wait while I passed, but it just isn’t worth the risk. Read the rest of this entry »
Why can’t we live together?
Warning Sign in Sutton (Photograph by Adrian Short)
If you listen to some people they seem to think that cyclists are the enemy. Certainly when a pedestrian death is caused by a cyclist it gets disproportionate media coverage. Why is this? The reality is that pedestrians face a massively larger risk of injury from cars.
According to Ryan Russo an engineer with the New York Department of Transportation quoted by Tom Vanderbilt in ‘Traffic‘ it is because bikes are silent and relatively rare: ‘As opposed to cars which make a noise and are prevalent. You don’t see it [the cyclist] because it is smaller, you don’t hear its approach because it silent and you don’t expect it because its not prevalent.’ This he argues makes a near miss or a collision with a cyclist a memorable event.
Could be. But this doesn’t explain the way some cyclists feel about pedestrians on shared pavements. My feeling is that the behaviour which can lead to a near miss is comprehensible – when a pedestrian who is listening to an iPod and texting suddenly changes direction in front of you, you can see why it happened. It is clear that the someone, an individual, is not paying attention. When a car passes too close it is potentially far more serious, but usually it is over before you are able to work out why it happened. It is a car driver, in the abstract, who is the problem, not a specific individual who is immediately in front of you.