CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
The IPSGA roadcraft principles require that on a segregated carriageway you need to be able to stop within the space you can see to be clear and within half this distance on a shared carriageway.
Going downhill in the dark and wet this can mean riding very slowly indeed on a bicycle. Fogged up glasses? Front light pulling a Tinkerbell? Brakes not quite as sharp as when they left the workshop?
Slow down.
Exactly, driving in fog or rain/snow/ice better comparison. Yes, your tyre condition and brakes need to be legal minimum or better, but you also need to be aware of stopping distance and your control of your machine.
An 'accident' surely is when your brake cable snaps or tyre bursts or similar unpredictable / unpreventable events makes you unable to steer/control/stop.
@SRD
I like it. We should have reports of traffic accidents and traffic deliberates.
"Fogged up glasses?"
Ooh. That hits home. Just like all those drivers in juries thinking 'there but for the grace of god..."
Yes, my 'social experiment theory' is sounding more and more plausible.
@IWRATS - I'd never considered the concept of being able to stop in half the distance you can see to be safe. That's particularly relevant when going under a bridge on the towpath.
The concept of 'stop' needs some detail, though. What we presumably mean is not 'gently coast to a halt' but 'full anchors and deployment of ABS, ESP and parachutes if available'.
This is at the root of the 'reflectives on pedestrians' thing for me. A pedestrian can choose to wear reflectives. If they do, the oncoming car/bike can see them in good time and plan their decelaration. If an unlit pedestrian suddenly appears out of the darkness, it is entirely incumbent on the cyclist to come to a halt without hitting them: no blame can be attached to the pedestrian if they are struck. However, it could be that there will be some harsh braking and raised heartrates during an emergency stop.
In my book, therefore, it's courteous for a pedestrian to wear reflectives, but in no way required.
@Greenroofer
'Courteous' is a gentle and all too rare word.
"
The program encourages pedestrians to:
• wear light-coloured clothes;
• place reflective tape on outerwear;
• cross at lit intersections;
• and make eye contact with drivers so they see you.
"
I have nothing to add that hasn't been said by others already and with more elegance. But I'll do so anyway.
Any highway user should be able to stop within the distance they can see to be clear. Skill is required to work out that distance based on the conditions and your speed.
Part of that skill is realising when people are likely to appear with little notice. I wouldn't differentiate between someone on a bike choosing to travel fast in the dark with ineffective lights, and someone driving fast next to parked cars that would obscure a child stepping out.
If a lack of skill/care results in you crashing into someone else because you couldn't stop in time, you're at fault.
In my book, therefore, it's courteous for a pedestrian to wear reflectives, but in no way required.
It's true that there's no law making them mandatory, but in practice you seem to get short shift if you play in traffic dressed all in black. For instance (police statement here):
"Whilst the driver of the Skoda recognised the hazard, she had insufficient time to react in order to avoid the collision.
"There is no evidence to suggest that either of the vehicles were being driven in anything other than the correct manner. The cause was the pedestrian walking along an unlit road, dressed in dark clothing, into the path of oncoming vehicles."
That was just the first hit that Google threw up, it's pointlessly depressing dredging for more.
On the principal that they didn't leave clear stopping space in front of their cars, should motorists who hit deer (or sheep) be prosecuted on the grounds that it could have been a pedestrian? Same mens rea in both cases, just lucky the deer wasn't actually a man in dark clothing I guess.
Corollary:
Ambulances with full lights/sirens going to dying children still generally travel under 30mph in dense urban areas so they can stop in the area they can see to be clear.
If they haven't got an excuse, people on bikes going home for their tea certainly haven't.
@IWRATS - I'd never considered the concept of being able to stop in half the distance you can see to be safe. That's particularly relevant when going under a bridge on the towpath.
When my old man taught me to drive on country roads this was one lesson that stuck with me vividly - to always imagine that I might meet myself coming the other way.
I love people-watching on the canal. I don't bother with a bell but I go under the bridges at a speed less than walking speed on the grounds that not everyone coming the other way can just leap aside because they hear a bell.
Many people ping ping ping along but are going under the bridges at least 10mph faster than me. I don't know why on earth they think that is safe.
At least we've moved on from conspiracy theories to just it being the pedestrian's own fault.
@Instography
I await the pedestrian's fault conspiracy theory with interest :-)
"make eye contact with drivers so they see you."
I don't know where this idea comes from --- some kind of converse to the head-in-the-sand principle of hiding or something --- but I wish it would die a death soon enough. Making eye contact with a driver requires going up to the side window, knocking on the glass, hooding your hands over your eyes and peering inside. Somewhat impractical when you're pedalling past at 20mph and hoping that SMIDSY isn't about to make a call.
"...to always imagine that I might meet myself coming the other way."
Meeting myself coming the other way would be easy. Meeting a racing-turnip coming the other way is more likely to be a problem.
Temperature higher today with all this hot air. Please close this thread before we make ourselves look even dafter :-)
make eye contact with drivers so they see you
Except it isn't just about 'seeing'
Eye contact is a powerful way of saying, "I am another human being, made of flesh & blood. I may even have children. Please don't run into me"
"Please close this thread before we make ourselves look even dafter"
Personal choices...
I am writing this from the scene of the crime.
It's actually pretty interesting just staking out in the inky blackness. I'm hiding behind one of the big trees to avoid any accusations of influencing behaviour.
From experience the camera will show little of interest but just being here is interesting. I hope nobody who posted above has ridden past me because not a blessed one would avoid me if I stepped out. Not one.
So far the case for a dozen chicanes seems hard to refute.
Also there is a guy walking up and down in the darkness with an evident death wish. My eyes are excellent and fully adjusted and I cannot see him except by the occlusion of the studs. He's just a few meters away as well!
So far I daresay he is just as suspicious of me.
A jogger with reflective straps has just passed and was extremely easy to see from perhaps 100m distance using the lights of a passing rider.
It isn't really about people jumping out from behind trees.It's more about riding within the limits of what you can see.
PS I would move on if I were you Dave, I have just reported you to the police as a Suspicious Lurker.
CCE.
Encouraging odd behaviour in the name of science since 2009.
The chicane at Balgreen tram stop was erected after the complaints/whims of a few 'concerned locals'. See http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=13275
Sorry, can you point to which post in that thread contains the proof? reading this on the phone may be my downfall.
make eye contact with drivers so they see you
PSI POWER !
I don't see how that is proof that 'it seems to be the case that all it needs is one complaint and cycle friendly infrastructure gets changed'. Indeed, that FOI seems to me to suggest that significant efforts from many different people were put in to ensure that the change was the best way forward, and it makes no reference to being done due to a single complaint from one person?
It was the closest I could see that might have been the proof being referred to.
Back to the Dutch and their Sustainable Safety.
Does asking people nicely to drive more slowly work?
No.
Do we really think that asking people nicely to cycle more slowly will work any better?
If I've understood Sustainable Safety correctly, the idea is that you assume that even the most well-intentioned road user will make mistakes (let alone those who are careless or thoughtless) and you design the consequences of those mistakes out of the infrastructure as far as you possibly can.
Hence the separation of different modes of transport.
So, if I'm right (which I might not be), the problem with this stretch of path is the infrastructure - which encouraged the cyclist to go faster than they should, and which led the pedestrian to believe that they (and their child) were safe and visible when they were not.
I feel like I am making the case for chicanes. I don't want to make the case for chicanes. But if separating cyclists and pedestrians is impossible then I guess that (really good) chicanes might be the answer. Just like we would like everyone to drive at 20 because that is the right thing to do, but because people seem to like going fast we have to put stuff on the road to slow them down.
Oh, and I'm also intrigued by the fact that the original email was sent to Spokes. If the council made a change to a road that you thought was likely to cause danger, and then you started to see incidents at that place, you would write to the council, wouldn't you? Yet the pedestrian went to Spokes...
Ah, I've remembered what the Dutch do. Their main problem isn't bike/pedestrian interactions but motor scooters on cycle paths which are often doctored to go above their supposed speed limit, and buzz past bikes in an unpleasant way. So in places where this is a problem they put speedbumps on their cycle paths which are designed (I think they're sinusoidal) so that they don't really bother a pedal cyclist but are uncomfortable at higher speeds - we encountered one of these in Groeningen on a Hembrow study tour. A slightly fiercer speed bump might slow down a reckless cyclist without blocking access to trikes, cargo bikes or tandems. Of course a really reckless cyclist might just treat it as a jump
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