CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Cycling News
"Tram fall cyclists to sue ‘negligent’ council"
(247 posts)-
Posted 10 years ago #
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Early one at a haymarket -
http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=11324&page=4#post-128497
Posted 10 years ago # -
"
@CyclingSurgeon: I will be on BBC Reporting Scotland News today talking about Edinburgh Tram cycling accidents @BBCScotlandNews
"
"
David Miller (@BBCDavidMiller)
23/01/2015 11:29
@AlexDRobertson @roadshare @CyclingSurgeon @BBCScotlandNews Yes. Worth watching."
Posted 10 years ago # -
Bikes now have 'tram' wheels apparently ;)
He said: “It was a wet day and my tram wheels slipped into the tram track. When that happens, you have no choice, your bike just collapses...
Posted 10 years ago # -
Don't read the comments....
Posted 10 years ago # -
"the council advises anyone cycling near to and around the tram tracks should take care while they get used to them"
That is a bit cheeky. It's not a case of "getting used to them", they don't get less treacherous with familiarity.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@threefromleith
It's the trio of cyclists, trams and compensation culture: the comments are a gold mine of absurdity.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I predicted this a long time ago.
The council can't endanger cyclists and avoid legal responsibility by saying, "This is dangerous, so try to cross at 90 degrees".
I hope these cyclists win. But I wonder if the fallout will be that cycling will be banned in the streets with tram tracks.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"I wonder if the fallout will be that cycling will be banned in the streets with tram tracks."
Be hard to do without providing 'proper alternatives'.
The 'original' plan assumed that bikes would be banned in Princes Street (at least).
It was pointed out that this was
A) undesirable - access to shops etc
B) wouldn't be enforced by police...
Think it was a couple of years before CEC/tie 'saw sense'. Unfortunately they resisted all (well most) of the other advice from Spokes.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Heard a cyclist behind me come off at Haymarket last night, by the time I'd stopped and looked round he was in the process of being helped up by a passer by and I hope he is as it seemed at the time none the worse for the incident. Once again it's pure luck that there wasn't a vehicle just on his outside
Posted 10 years ago # -
The lawyer is a keen triathlete and a friend of a friend of mine. Nice guy too. No ambulance chaser, much of his work is brought on behalf of union members injured at work
Posted 10 years ago # -
Anyone like to estimate what percentage of cyclists manage to cross the tram tracks safely ?
I'll start by estimating it above 99%.
The tram tracks clearly make things less safe but they are only dangerous if you allow them to be.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Spokes came up with a plan for a far safer Haymarket cycle layout years ago now. Why on earth has it not been built yet?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Guy in front of me came off on the tracks at Haymarket on Wednesday evening. A concerned passer-by helped him up and I stopped to make sure he was OK. He said yes, and "I come this way every day, so don't know how that happened". It just goes to show that it could happen to any of us, however often we do it, and however skilled we think we are. That junction is simply not safe. Even if 99% of traversals happen without incident, that still means several falls every day. Is that acceptable?
Posted 10 years ago # -
@dangerous does your raw data from which you have calculated percentages include or exclude the cyclists who have stopped cycling through Haymarket and / or have stopped cycling full stop?
Posted 10 years ago # -
@eddie, you missed the other glaring error:
“Quite astonishingly, they have painted a bicycle between the tram tracks in the West End. That more or less guides cyclists between the tram tracks. They then can’t get to the acute angle they need to safely cross the line.”Posted 10 years ago # -
@Dangerous, The tracks are only dangerous if you allow them to be by...
Cycling over them...
in the direction the road marking send you,
when it is wet,
when there is other traffic nearby,
when something unexpected happens,
etc.Other than choosing to cycle over them there isn't really much you can control 100% of the time.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@dangerous. I accept that in general that comment applies to the tram tracks in toto. However, there are certain places, Haymarket being the most obvious, where the way the road is set up is much more dangerous than it should, or could be. That is where the council has been negligent IMHO.
Posted 10 years ago # -
My logic about the tramlines is: if the holes were wide enough and deep enough so that a car tyre would get stuck in it, would car drivers tolerate them? Of course not,
Posted 10 years ago # -
@SRD
Do you disagree with my estimate ?
My post makes it clear what was included / excluded.Feel free to provide your own estimates and try to make them relevant.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"The tram tracks clearly make things less safe but they are only dangerous if you allow them to be."
@Dangerous I think you meant to add that to the EEN page rather than on here.
"Anyone like to estimate what percentage of cyclists manage to cross the tram tracks safely ?"
This is "safely" in the sense that if someone decided to take some sort of drug which would temporarily disable their semicircular canals and then hop blindfolded across a frayed tightrope between two very high buildings in high winds with no safety equipment but made it across then you might say that they "completed the feat safely" whilst they were in fact not very safe at all throughout the entire operation.
The only cyclists who cross the tracks properly safely safely are those who do so at right angles, on tricycles, in the dry, when there are no motor vehicles anywhere and out of the hours of operation of the trams, otherwise there's definitely some sort of risk present which would render the crossing-action not completely safe, irrespective of its eventual incident-free completion.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@acsimpson
The road with tram tracks is more dangerous than the road without tram tracks.
When I am cycling I control the speed and direction of my bike.
If we agree that the road is more dangerous then should we not take steps to mitigate the increased risk ?
Changing the road layout is a seperate issue to dealing with what is currently there.
Posted 10 years ago # -
removed
Posted 10 years ago # -
My tuppence worth is that it has been 15 months since Haymarket first opened up and we still don't have a solution that stops a number of cyclists from falling there. We can argue about the number but it is happening week in week out.
If you see 'experienced' colleagues/friends turning up with bumps and bruises (or worse) from the tramlines it's going to have a negative impact on people thinking of starting to cycle in Edinburgh.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Crossing the tram tracks safely/correctly/in-line-with-advice causes you to cycle in way that has to look at least erratic and at worse actively encourages car to drive near you in a dangerous manor by giving them an incorrect idea of what you are doing.
Surely that is the problem? There is no situation in which you can cross them safely unless you have some pretty fat tyres on?
Posted 10 years ago # -
I imagine that cyclists passing though Haymarket come from all around Edinburgh. However, there is a huge cluster of falls at Haymarket that is not repeated elsewhere. I would argue this means there is some kind of systemic fault at Haymarket, rather than with the cyclists passing though there. The solution is to fix the problem at Haymarket - not to expect the cyclists to act differently.
Has the Council been negligent? It's for the courts to decide. However, the design is inherently unsafe. Solutions have been proposed, but not acted upon.
This could probably all have been avoided. Haymarket junction was completely remodelled - it wouldn't really have cost any more to put in a segregated bike bypass/toucans at the time all the tram work was carried out.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@Damgerous. The problem is that a large number of cyclists who, it would appear, are otherwise competent and experienced, seem to have misjudged how to mitigate that risk. This implies to me that the road is more dangerous than it appears. Furthermore, it had been made so by the actions of the council in designing a dangerous road layout and then failing to correct it.
EDIT Yes SRD. Indeed I do.
Posted 10 years ago # -
What stiltskin said.
(Ps do you mean @dangerous rather than @darkerside who I don't think has contributed to is debate yet?)
Posted 10 years ago # -
Anyone know who took this?
TV news wants to use
Posted 10 years ago # -
@dangerous
Am I meant to infer that you regard 1 out of a 100 having an accident as safe? I think that is a terrible safety record that would, in any other area, result in immediate remedial action. Make up your own examples of things that would provoke an outcry if one of out 100 was failing, breaking, having an accident. I'll go for trains derailing.Posted 10 years ago #
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