Cycling and Pedestrians - a matter of perception?

[major_clanger]

The issue of cyclist conduct has come to the fore again, with proposals for specific offences related to dangerous cycling. But, given that the number of people injured or killed by cyclists is minuscule in comparison to the numbers involved in accidents involving cars, why do people get so worked up about this?

It occurred to me that part of the reason might be the unconscious assumption inherent in that last sentence of mine. Thinking about it, it seems to me that I - and a lot of other people - tend to think of 'cyclists' and 'cars' rather than 'cyclists' and 'drivers', or even 'bikes' and 'cars'. I realise that I'm certainly likely to say "I was nearly hit by a car" but "I was nearly hit by a cyclist"; why is this?

One reason might be one of personal space. OK, if you get hit by either a car or a bike it's pretty clear that your personal space has been impinged on! But what people tend far more to complain about are near misses, and in my experience close encounters with bikes are more likely than ones with cars to take place in what pedestrians think of as 'their' space. I know that two sorts of cycling that annoy and upset me most are cycling on pavements (particularly weaving through pedestrians) and not stopping at zebra crossings. Pavements and crossings are my bit of the highway, and it's (thank heavens) very rare for cars to trespass on them. (Well, some don't stop when you're waiting for a non light-controlled crossing, but it's rare in my experience for a car driver to try to go round you once you're on the crossing itself.)

I think what we're seeing here is a failure by some cyclists to appreciate that what from their point of view feels like a perfectly safe manoeuvre is, for a pedestrian, a sudden and shocking intrusion on personal safe space. Mind you, it works the other way too - as an occasional cyclist I know that one of the most annoying and dangerous things a pedestrian can do is to step out into the gutter, seemingly on the assumption that an oncoming cyclist can just weave around you.

Another factor could be proximity. If I have a near-miss with a car the driver is insulated from me by glass, metal and usually a good metre or two of distance. Moreover, most of the time the reason there's been a near-miss is that the driver hasn't noticed me. With a bike the cyclist is much closer and a lot of the time is very aware of me, having just calculated how much to swerve to miss me by six inches.

And this leads on to another point: cyclists can often seem to pedestrians to be much more personally aggressive than car drivers because of these factors, be it passively (by cutting them up) or actively (I've certainly been told to get the f**k out the way whilst on a zebra crossing). Significantly, cyclists have exactly this issue with drivers, and as far as I can tell it's the same set of reasons - sharing of space.

In short, whilst it's doubtless true that if there is a collision a car is much more deadly to a pedestrian than a cyclist, in the far more common circumstance of a near-miss the cyclist can, perversely, feel like the bigger threat and affront.

Pedestrians should remember that they are vanishingly unlikely to be hurt by a cyclist. Cyclists should remember to treat pedestrians the way they would like to be treated by drivers. And drivers should pay attention to people on or near the highway who aren't in a ton of steel.

Comments

[altariel.livejournal.com]

My frustrations as a pedestrian arise from intrusion into personal space, yes, and incursions into pedestrian spaces such as zebra crossings and the pavement. Also lack of signals, whether not indicating turns, or not ringing a bell to tell me a bike is behind me. What I want is information, predictable behaviour, and a sense that cyclists understand the pedestrian experience. Oh, using lights at night when bombing down the pavement would be a plus too.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

It's a sweat problem with furious[0] cyclists -- there they are pedalling away and expending energy to propel themselves along the road and suddenly you step out into the zebra crossing and they are expected to brake and waste all that effort to come to a stop just because a stupid pedestrian thought they had right of way, and then they would have to put in more effort to get up to speed again. And again. And again... Eventually they stop stopping and just swerve around the pedestrians in their way, ignore red lights at pedestrian crossings and eventually start blowing through traffic junctions at speed. Then they wipe out and it's all the car driver's fault for not looking where they were going.

[0] "Furious cycling" used to be a road traffic offence. Now it's standard procedure.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

My problems with cyclists are mostly limited to a single point of procedure: are they are pedestrian or a vehicle?

Pick one.

Most of the near misses I've had (the hit involved a bike rear ending my car while I was stationary waiting for a vehicle to pass) have occurred when a bike has decided to slip up onto the pavement when at red lights and back onto the road once past the impediment.

Cyclists

[nomadrush.livejournal.com]

For some time, I have said that cyclists should have to be insured to be on the road in the same way as other road-users. Around the area where I live, they have no respect for other road-users and on the country lanes nearby, do not give way to anyone, whereas the car drivers all use the small cut-aways to pull in and allow other cars through. Cars can be scraped or scratched and the only recourse is costly civil action as they have no insurance to claim against.

Cyclists will often ignore traffic lights and rights of way on roundabouts as if it doesn't apply to them. In short, they can be a danger to other road-users and pedestrians alike.

Now don't get me wrong, there are cyclists who do use the road sensibly and act in a responsible manner, but around here, they unfortunately seem to be in the small minority.

Ross

[eleyan.livejournal.com]

I've been hit by a cyclist and had plenty of near misses. The trouble is that you don't hear them coming. And some of them think they're kings of the road. As a motorist, I worry about hitting them because they are hard to see. The really scary ones are recumbent bikes - there are a few round here and they're bloody terrifying: nothing at eye level to alert you except maybe a tiny fluttering pennant a couple of inches long.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

The repeated stop start and the effort implied that you discuss here also leads to another issue - that poor road design, junction design and traffic light cycles become much more obvious to cyclists than to drivers. There are 4 way stops on some junctions I cycle through in London which are utterly pointless, and lead to significant delays for all road users. Many pelican crossings stand empty of pedestrians when the lights are red because the cycle is too long or because the pedestrian, quote reasonably, crossed the road when there was no traffic but the man was red - this is one reason why I think the trend to replace zebras with pelicans should be reversed.

All in all I think road designers and planners need to re-configure our streets so that they encourage the modes of transport we want. In London, at least, motor vehicles always get priority in current road design etc. If, instead, we prioritised non-polluting forms of transport, such as walking and cycling, things would be much better.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised that you find that bikes are the worst offenders on zebra crossings or for not signalling. In London, Cardiff and Birmingham I've found, as a pedestrian, an epidemic of people who ignore flashing orange lights, be they their own indicators or on Belisha beacons. We've had a number of 'discussions' with drivers intent on pointing out that we shouldn't have been using a zebra crossing, and such confrontations often include implicit threat. Fortunately, the nearest zebra crossing to us in Birmingham is very close to a police station, so an invitation to a driver to discuss the problem with the nearby authorities usually persuades them to leave, hurriedly.

If drivers have a problem spotting pedestrians it's no wonder they have problems with cyclists as well, with the same implicit threat behind the confrontation - I've seen that as well. Indeed some drivers seem to think that their personal space extends to the whole of their vehicle. One time I nearby got into a punch up was when I dared to touch a vehicle that was trying to run me down as I crossed the road.

As to the proposed legislation, I'm in two minds. Yes, the risks of a cyclist killing or seriously injuring a pedestrian are very small. I've been hit by a bike at traffic lights (my fault as a pedestrian) and despite the rider going pretty much full tilt, I think they came off worse than I did. So the proposed new law is far more likely to be political pandering than to do anything significant.

However, I also think that the situation where a road user, of any type, can kill someone and get off with a small fine is insane. Punishments for causing death on the roads should be much more severe for anyone responsible. At the very least a driver who kills should not be allowed to drive ever again, with the only viable defence being that their victim was trying to get themselves killed.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Oh, lord yes. This!. As a pedestrian (and I do a lot of walking,one way or another) I have never been hurt by a car, but I have been injured and terrified by cyclists. I loathe them on pavements, particularly in central London.

As a motorist I try very hard indeed to be polite to cyclists (and horse riders - I have been both myself) but cyclists do not always show me the same courtesy. (Horse riders, on the other hand, are almost invariably polite and grateful.) Riding three abreast on a narrow road is quite common on a sunny Sunday around here.

I am all for cycling, but I am all for walking too.

I agree that cyclists should be insured, as motorists, motor cyclists and (most) horse riders are insured but, unless bikes/cyclists were also licenced so they could be identified, this would be very difficult to enforce.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I've been watching cyclists on my way into work (as a passenger in a car) for some weeks now in an effort to analyse where the issues are, and I'd say the issues were predominantly down to the prevalence of running red lights, zebra crossings and cycling on the pavement, all of which seem from the sample size I'm aware of to be behaviours practised by a significant percentage (perhaps a third to a half) of the cyclists I've seen. When I say "running' red lights what I mean is the manoeuvre whereby the cyclist edges past the stop line and then, with the light still on red, makes a judgement that nothing is coming from the other direction and cycles across the junction; something regularly practised across the three lane Trinity way junction with the two-lane Chapel Street, a notorious accident blackspot, and, again, across Deansgate, Manchester's main thoroughfare since it was Mancunium.

So I'd say at least part of the hostility comes from the fact that motorists and pedestrians both daily witness the fact that at the very least a significant minority of cyclists clearly do believe that the law does not apply to them.

The counter argument, of course, is that motorists also believe that some portion of the traffic laws, most noticeably the speed limits, do not fully apply to them, but I suggest that in the hierarchies of whether a particular breach is a "serious" transgression or a "technical" transgression motorists have "running red lights=serious" internalised and are applying that viewpoint ("If I did that I'd be looking at losing my licence pdq") to cyclists who have apparently internalised "running red lights is a technical transgression provided I do it safely".

And then the pavement stuff exacerbates it.

In terms of aggression, incidentally, I find the example of the cyclist wearing a high viz vest with "Fucking Move Over" in large black capitals on the back hard to beat, though on the plus side at least it was a high viz vst.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Actually, I would be much happier if your second sentence had read

"given that the number of people *seriously* injured or killed by cyclists"

I've been injured by cyclists on several occasions but each time it was not bad enough to necessitate a visit to a hospital, or to report (even if I could have done, as the cyclist invariably rode off.) Mostly, these injuries were from being hit on the legs or ankles by pedals, which can be sharp, or falling over in a desperate attempt to get out of the way.

[drplokta]

The problem is that it's not general policy to punish people for being unlucky. And someone who causes death by dangerous driving didn't have any worse intentions than someone who drove dangerously and got away with it; they were just less lucky. So the penalty for dangerous driving should, in principle, be the same regardless of the consequences.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

I'd take someone's licence away for life for dangerous driving as well.

There are crimes where the punishment is worse for just being unlucky or careless. Aggravated burglary is one, where a burglar enters a house where someone is present. That could be deemed to be bad luck, but the punishment is more severe. I have little sympathy.

[drplokta]

The main problem is with having three different kinds of road users on the same roads -- two would be fine.

People are bad at splitting their attention, so everyone on the roads keeps an eye out for the biggest threat. Generally speaking, that means that drivers watch our for pedestrians, pedestrians watch out for cars and cyclists watch out for cars. This makes pedestrians feel that cyclists are out to get them, and makes cyclists feel that everyone is out to get them.

(Central Cambridge is an exception to this, because the number of cycles and pedestrians is sufficiently high that drivers watch out for cycles, pedestrians watch out for cycles, and cyclists watch out for pedestrians, making drivers feel that everyone is out to get them.)

So what we need is roads that allow cycles but ban pedestrians, and footpaths that allow cycles but ban cars.

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

The trouble is that you don't hear them coming

And many pedestrians don't look before crossing the road. Seriously.

I cycle in high vis clothing and I maintain a constant awareness for potential hazards. High on my list is pedestrians who are calmly walking down the pavement one moment and then hurling themselves lemming-like into the road the next. When I'm passing people I slacken my speed so I can break hard if necessary. Often it is necessary - and then they swear at me.

Being a cyclist has made me a better pedestrian though. I always look both ways and am much more alert for stealth cyclists (all in black) and know that even the bright neon ones are still much quieter than a car.

I agree with you about the recumbent bikes though.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

This is a good example of the difference between what lawyers refer to as 'result crimes' and 'conduct crimes'.

Result crimes are ones where the essential illegal element (the actus reus to use the formal term) is some particular state of affairs. Examples include murder (someone is dead) and theft (property is permanently gone).

Conduct crimes are ones where the actus reus is the actual act of doing something, irrespective of the result. Fraud is (post the 2006 changes to the law) a conduct crime; it is defined as making a false representation with the aim of causing gain for oneself or loss to another. Actual loss is not required.

(A corollary of this is that as a general rule there is a separate offence of attempting to commit a result crime*, whereas you can't attempt a conduct crime, because the attempt itself is the crime.)

Dangerous driving is a conduct crime. It's the poor driving itself that is being punished. Causing death by dangerous driving, by contrast, is a result crime. Conduct crimes are, broadly speaking, punished according to the severity of the misconduct, whereas result crimes are punished according to the extent of harm caused. As such, if a driver is prosecuted for dangerous driving, he or she will be punished mainly for the lapse in driving, although the damage or injury caused can be an aggravating factor.

There is in fact now an intermediate offence of causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving, which was brought into effect in 2008, I suspect so as to address the perceived gap between the two main existing offences.

General sentencing guidance for road traffic offences is from p118 onwards in here:

http://sentencingcouncil.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/web_sgc_magistrates_guidelines_including_update_1__2__3_web.pdf


*Although you can't attempt crimes of recklessness, so there's no such thing as attempting to cause death by dangerous driving. That would be attempted murder.

Re: Cyclists

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

I have said that cyclists should have to be insured to be on the road in the same way as other road-users.

This is not a good idea for the following reasons:

* Cyclists have very low need for 3rd party insurance because they cause next to no damage. Where I currently live, in Switzerland, there is a requirement for compulsory insurance for cyclists. It's being removed this year, because the amount paid out is a fraction of the administrative costs of the scheme.

* Many cyclists already do have 3rd party insurance, as it's given away when you join a cyclists' organisation. Typically, home insurance will also cover 3rd party liability, too.

* Having insurance doesn't increase the amount of 'respect' for other road users, as shown by the huge amount of death and destruction caused by insured motorists.

* A requirement to have insurance doesn't mean that people will buy it. There are far more uninsured motorists than there are uninsured cyclists. So many that there is a body specifically to handle 3rd party claims against uninsured motorists. I would expect that uninsured motoring does more damage in a year than uninsured cycling does in a decade.

I'll totally agree with you that the police should be stopping people who don't use the road responsibly, no matter what mode of transport they're using. But putting up an administrative overheard will only reduce the numbers of cyclists and thereby increase the level of danger they face.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

My problems with cyclists are mostly limited to a single point of procedure: are they are pedestrian or a vehicle?

Pick one.

Yeah, I think that's exactly the problem. It's so obvious when you're cycling that British road culture demands that you be a pedestrian or a motorised vehicle, and obviously as a cyclist you're neither. So there is literally nowhere on the road that is your space, and people will assume you're in the wrong wherever you are.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too (and made me a better driver!). This is the thing where more cycling = cycling less scary. When pedestrians and drivers EXPECT there to be bike on the road, they don't act without checking whether there's one there. But most other road users look out for pedestrians and cars, get surprised when there's a bike they weren't expecting, and assume the bike must be in the wrong!

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Hm. I've cycled a lot in Germany and the UK, and am always trying to work out what the differences are and why there is so much less aggro in Germany than in the UK. I think your personal space one is pretty accurate: in Germany, bikes are filtered with pedestrians much more frequently, and share space much more. So pedestrians don't have the same expectation that pedestian space is inviolable and don't find it a positive affront to see a bike on a pavement or in a pedestrianised space, or using a pedestrian crossing without getting off their bike.

(I do cycle through pedestrianised spaces like the city centre at quiet times after the shops have shut - I'm sure this is proof of what a terrible irresponsible person I am to some people, but I think it's perfectly acceptable and doesn't involve any risk.)

There's also, of course, lots about how the more cyclists you have, the less inconvenient they are perceived as. Pedestrians feel hard done by when they step into the edge of the road before they look and find they've just stepped in front of a bike. In some cases, if I'm going along where the cycle path dictates I ought to - within three feet of the edge of the kerb - and not far off the speed of the motorised traffic, pedestrians don't even have to step off the edge of the pavement to get the, "Whew! What kind of speed was that? Bloody bikes!" reaction. Similarly cars who attempt to turn left without checking their inside mirror and are shocked when I have to suddenly swerve around them. In both cases, the assumption is that I'm in the wrong - but if both sets of people were actually expecting to be sharing the road for me and looked out before acting, there wouldn't be a problem.

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

Having cyclists ride straight at me on zebras is so common that I don't even bother mentioning it at my journey's end.

I can get out of the way because I'm a fully mobile adult who wears frump shoes most of the time. Whether I should have to is another matter but I'd rather be healthy than cling to the moral high ground.

My arthritic parents, people with kids, heavy shopping, injured feet or wearing heels might not be so lucky.

[plaid-dragon.livejournal.com]

I agree. I am a pedestrian, driver and cyclist. I have had near misses as a driver with other drivers and cyclists and pedestrians, and as a pedestrian with cylists but never drivers.

I have lost count of the number of times in cambridge where I have been pulling out on a green light, to have a near collision one way or another with a cyclist running ared light with no indication of braking.

Or the time I pulled onto a roundabout at night to find out that what looked like a gap in traffic was a dark clothed cyclist on an unlit bike with no reflectors.

Or when I have been waiting at a pedestrian crossing and had to move out of the way of a cyclist swerving onto the pavement so they could cross the road.

Also, if a car driver runs into the back of you, you expect them to stop and exchange details. When a cyclist ran into the back of me (swerving between stationary traffic) and did several hundred pounds of damage, he just picked his bike out of my boot and cycled off. For incidents like that, I would like cyclists to have obvious identification. If a car driver hit me and drove off, I could use his licence plate to make a complaint, with a cyclist I just have to suck up the cost myself.

[chilperic.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I may leave a comment later. At the moment I am still rather shaken from a close encounter with a cyclist, who rode at me at speed through a red light as I was walking in to work this morning.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I don't agree with this myself. Cyclists should stick to the roads and this is hardly limited to the UK.

I've lost count of the number of times I've almost hit a cyclist mounting the pavement while I'm turning right here (right turns being allowed here) is huge and I've only lived here a couple of years.

Add in the number of times a cyclist has almost clipped one of my dogs by hammering along the pavement oblivious to everything and I start to lose sympathy completely.

I'm not saying all cyclists are this bad, but when some of the offenders in Seattle are wearing police uniforms my sympathy quotient vanishes.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... turning left and nearly hitting a cyclist is a tricky point to control (see comments above about turning right on right lights in the US)

As a vehicle you can't/shouldn't/don't as a rule overtake another on the inside of the vehicle. There are pretty sound reasons for this, not least of which the speed of a cyclist, the time a turn takes and the size of the blind spot in most vehicles.

We almost hit somebody last week who ran a red light as we were turning on green, simply put they were somewhere they should have been as another road user, vehicle or pedestrian and then, to really impress me, they proceeded to cross 4 lanes of traffic and run the red light ahead.

I'm sorry but I don't care what their excuse was, that's stupid behavior.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Sorry I might be hammering on about this.

But the problem I have here is that a) most of the cases people here reference are bikes being in places where they shouldn't, which makes checking hard. Crossings/Red Lights/Turns all seem to be much worse here in Seattle than they were in the UK btw and b) the nature of blind spots and the speed a bike moves at increases the probably that a driver can't seem - especially if they're in a place you don't expect there to be anything.

Driving in dark clothes, without lights at night being another favourite around here too.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem with spotting bikes is the standard monkey brain is lousy at plotting the speeds of thing moving fast and slow at the same time and taking a course of action. I suspect there's some evolutionary stuff in play here.

Being aware of slow moving things nearby (walking pedestrians) is easier than noticing something come into your field of vision quickly like a bike, or another problem around here, joggers.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

especially if they're in a place you don't expect there to be anything

Exactly - but the problem is that there is nearly nowhere on the road that the average driver expects a cyclist to be! Bikes are most likely to be on the lefthand side of the road near the pavement (where it's left-hand drive), although they are also entitled to be further out in the road using up a whole lane (this is where proper road cycling courses run by the police advise you to be). But you will be perceived as "in the wrong" in both places if drivers don't expect to find you there.

I've had drivers overtake me, then slow down and turn left in front of me, and look surprised when I'm pissed off. There's really not much I can do about that!

[biascut.livejournal.com]

this is hardly limited to the UK

I never said it was - everything I've heard says that North America is even worse for cycling than the UK, although I've never cycled there myself. My experience is limited to the UK and Germany, and as I said, in Germany there's way less aggro, more people cycling, and sometimes bikes are filtered with pedestrians, and sometimes with cars.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I've had drivers overtake me, then slow down and turn left in front of me, and look surprised when I'm pissed off. There's really not much I can do about that!

I'm curious, what would you prefer they have done?

Having biked, walked and driven, I'll admit I tend to get annoyed in equal measure at the others when doing another thing, but I still find a subset of cyclists do more dangerous/selfish and downright daft things (especially around Seattle) than drivers or pedestrians (although in Seattle, it's a close run thing with incompetent drivers) - but the left (or right turn) problem is one I don't have a good answer for.

If I pass a cyclist and need to turn right, I'm juggling the line of cars behind me with trying to judge the speed of a cyclist coming up on my blind side...

I'll also say that cycle lanes don't always help either. There's a classic cycle line near the University here where you can be turning left with a green light but the cycle path, which is behind a hedge, also has a green light for bikes. So you can be halfway through a turn when a cyclist suddenly appears which is brown trousers time for everybody involved.

I don't have a good fix, but bad driving and bad cyclists make for a deadly combination.

[mair_in_grenderich]

I'm curious, what would you prefer they have done?

Er, stay behind me till they reach the turn, if it's so near that they're going to slow down for immediately they've passed me.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

In Japan it's the same as in Germany - lots of cyclists and they legitimately share the road and pavement with cars/pedestrians. The vast majority of the cyclists here are quite slow and so they don't seem to be much threat. I do find their habits of cycling on the roads terrifying though - wrong way not just up one way streets (some streets are officially marked as not one way for cyclists) but on the wrong side of a major road - four lane major road, cycling in the middle of the right hand lane (in Japan one drives on the left).
Perhaps in the UK cyucling became so dangerous because of poor road design and bad driving that it's mostly nutters now who cycle and they cycle at high speed and dangerously).

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Well, what would you do if it was another car? Slow down and stay behind,presumably! You don't overtake another vehicle and then turn left in front of them and force them to break.

You can't say that bikes are vehicles when you want us to do something inconvenient to us but just rescind that status when it's convenient for you. That's exactly what's so frustrating as a cyclist!

edited to de-exclamation mark.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I don't think the vast majority of cyclists are nutters, although cycling in the UK definitely falls into narrower demographics than it does elsewhere. I think it's partly the small group - most visible members thing: I mean, whenever there is a discussion about cycling I feel obliged to be a representative of All Cyclists, in a way I never feel about cars!

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

And you have to remember that cycling on the pavement, unless indicated by designated cycle lanes is not legal in the UK.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

This. In the few days I've nearly been cycled into when walking across a pedestrian crossing, and had cyclists dropping down off the pavement in front of my car.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Depends on how you define nutter. Perhaps it's not the vast majority, but it's certainly a much more visible minority in the UK (visible to me, anyway) than it is in Japan, as you say. I should point out I used to be a cyclist in Leeds in the early 90s and one of the reasons as both a driver and pedestrian in Reading in the last decade that I was so annoyed with cyclists was that I was very careful to follow the rules of the road when a cyuclist (one of the benfits of being a cyclist is the ability to become a pedestrian by getting off - which I would do if it was safer/quicker/easier to get through a junction that way). I would never cycle the wrong way up a one way street, had lights and reflectors and wore Hi-Vis. I found that if I rode sensibly there were a few really stupid car drivers but many of the complaints of other cyclists at the time were already to my mind because the cyclists were doing silly things and expecting the car drivers to cope with it.
The style of bike I see is also interesting. The UK at some point, maybe back when I was a kid, went through a fashion revolution in bikes. No kid of my generation would have been seen dead on the kinds of bikes most young and old ride here. The high tech racer (older style) or mountain bike (newer style) in the UK is maybe 1/100 of the bikes here but they seem to be the vast majority of the bikes in the UK. Certainly there's no "boys bike"/"girls bike" thing here with crossbars which I remember from when I was a kid - ghu help you if you were a boy and didn't have a horizontal crossbar from just below the seat to jut below the handlebars. Here only the high tech oddities have them. Every other bike is a "girl's bike" and you see businessmen riding them in suits.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

If you want to take personal responsibility for all the drivers who stop in yellow box junctions, drive over the speed limit, turn without checking their mirrors, overtake within single lanes, park in bikelanes, overtake and cut in front, overtake a vehicle which has signalled and started a right turn, etc - I'll take responsibility for all the cyclists who go on the pavements!

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Granted, if you do those things you have no right to complain.

I don't.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Yes, but why are you complaining to me? This is what I mean about extended responsibility: you don't break the law as a driver, so don't feel responsible for drivers who do. But you think I am somehow responsible for cyclists who ride on the pavement?

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Pardon if I misunderstood you, but you seemed to be recommending riding on the pavement or at least excusing people who did so.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

No, I'm saying that there is no good reason for pedestrians and cyclists not to share spaces. I would support allowing cyclists to go on the pavement where they are wide enough for both to use them, and more pedestrian and cycle access areas in city centres. Very different!

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

My experience is that, as a pedestrian, I don't wish to share spaces with cyclists, thank you very much.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, but lots of UK city centres are non-motorised vehicle, rather than non-vehicle, so if you see people cycling in what you consider to be a pedestrian area, they aren't necessarily in the wrong (you may know this already, of course - I just find that a lot of people don't!)

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Last I heard, the Highway Code says that there has to be signage if cycles can be used in pedestrian areas. While a lot of city centres do, indeed, have signage, many of them don't, which doesn't stop cyclists.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Are you sure about that? I've just checked the highway code and can't find anything to that effect, though I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong. As far as I understand it, if a pedestrian zone me shows a sign prohibiting motor vehicles, bikes are still allowed.

Also, of course, there's a big difference between against the highway code and illegal. Sorry for harping on about this, but this is one of the things I always find about being a cyclist: things which are not actually illegal are treated as if they are far worse than many things that drivers do regularly which are actually illegal.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

It depends. Cycling on the pavement beside a road of any kind is illegal. Mind you, the fine, £30, is derisory.

Cycling in a 'pedestrianised' area depends on the rules of the local authority.

Cycling 'furiously' or 'dangerously' is illegal on any sort of pavement or highway.

Some local authorities ban off-road cycling to protect ancient monuments or wildlife or walkers. (For instance, in parts of Epping forest.)

Any landowner can ban cycles from a pathway - even a right of way - that runs over land that they own.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

OK, yes, that's what I thought. I thought you were saying that cycling in pedestrianised areas wasn't allowed unless there were explicitly permitted.

I know I sound like I'm being really arsey about this, but the reality is that the Highway Code is appalling on cyclists - it's very obviously written with drivers and pedestrians in mind, with cycling stuck in as if we were as rare as horse-riders - and what's in the HC doesn't always coincide with what considerate or what's safe (for us or for pedestrians). I can give you lots of examples of this (literally nobody knows what a bike is actually supposed to do at a junction with multiple lanes, traffic lights and a green box at the front, for example). I can give you lots of examples if you want, but this comment is already too long.

I'm a safe and considerate cyclist, and in twelve years of cycling regularly in several cities in two different countries, I've never put a pedestrian at risk or had a near miss (except where a pedestrian has stepped into the road without looking for cyclists, and in those situations I've been able to anticipate it and take avoiding action.) I value cycling safely and considerately over strict adherence to the law or the highway code, because I don't think either actually keep the more vulnerable road users safe.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Local authorities decide if cyclists can enter pedestrianised areas and should - most do - put up signs that say whether or not cyclists are allowed, or have designated cycle lanes. It may not be clear if cyclists are allowed, and it ought to be, every time.

As I understand it, those parts of the Highway Code that apply to cars also apply to cyclists, just as they apply to motorcyclists and horse riders. I presume that, in the circumstances you describe, a cyclist should, according to the code, be on the right hand side of the road when turning right, and the left when turning left, just like cars.

Cyclist boxes generally stretch right across the road, and cars should keep out of them...

[biascut.livejournal.com]

You are technically only supposed to enter them from the left, though, where the white line is broken. Crossing the white line where it's unbroken is illegal, even for bikes (source)

Which would mean that if you're trying to turn right, you either need to move across from the left hand side of the road into the righthand lane, travelling at the same speed as motorised traffic whilst it's still moving, hoping everyone sees you and lets you in and not using the ASZ at all, or travel down the lefthand side of the road past stationary traffic to get to the ASZ at the front, which means passing on the lefthand side of large vehicles in their blind spot (which is very, VERY dangerous, and the first thing that police tell you not to do!)

Cars should slow down to let a bike signalling to cross lanes do so, and then slow down to our pace. Technically, cars shouldn't pass cyclists at all where there would be insufficient room to pass a car, or pass a bike which has looked over their shoulder and signalled to start a manoeuvre. These things are rarely respected!