"POSTERS urging people not to cycle on the pavements are to be put up in shops in Prestonpans after a local resident raised concerns about the safety of pedestrians.
Resident Ian Cunningham told the town’s community council that the number of adults using their bikes on pavements on High Street, and housing estates, was creating a problem, saying that some even balanced their shopping in bags on the handlebars."
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Cycling News
Cracking down on pavement cycling - Prestonpans
(21 posts)-
Posted 10 years ago #
-
"adults using their bikes on pavements"
Presume 'real' adults rather than 'student age'.
IF there is a 'problem' - ie lots of people - might be better looking at education/training/infrastucture/driver behaviour.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Maybe the same shops could also put up POP posters...
Posted 10 years ago # -
"saying that some even balanced their shopping in bags on the handlebars."
Blimey! Times haven't been this dark for the pedestrians of Prestonpans since the blitz, you know.
That said, who wouldn't prefer an unexploded bomb to someone unwilling to put themselves at the tender mercies of Prestonpans' driving community?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Surprisingly sensible article. Nice change to see people actually asking why and considering solutions, even if that does mean housing estates don't get any cycle lanes(Why not?)
Posted 10 years ago # -
Dave, your hyperbole never fails to amuse.
Lots of new housing in that neck of the woods, basically all the wee towns out there. As Min says, why don't housing estates get lanes? It's even more baffling in these new estates. A few weeks back I was riding with my father-in-law on the south side of the Pans, big new estate, wide pavements, 40mph roads, no shared use paths etc. There's no incentive for people to ride, and even my f-i-l, who doesn't cycle much, and is far from a campaigner, remarked on how daft it was before I'd made any comment.
What I find strange as well is that there are to be posters etc. when ONE resident complained (if indeed that isn't a mis-reporting). Given how often we complain about roads and drivers and bike parking and so on, it does genuinely give you a certain sense of paranoia (it's not paranoia, they really are all out to get me etc etc.).
Posted 10 years ago # -
Speaking of hyperbole:
'Mr Cunningham said: “Something needs to be done, it is getting dangerous.
“They are coming along with shopping bags making them unstable.
“It is a menace and downright dangerous.” 'Has anyone been hit? Knocked over? Injured? Killed?
If not, then I suggest the level of danger is exaggerated. The level of annoyance for Mr. Cunningham is clearly very high.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Oh here's a map of road casualties from 2000 to 2010. Search for 'Prestonpans' and you can see that the only folk killed have been pedestrians (one 4 year old, one octogenarian); seriously injured is mostly pedestrians and motorists, one cyclist.
It must have been the pavement cyclists causing all this death and injury, surely? What? It was actually motor vehicles as these all occurred on the roads? So pavement cycling isn't actually that dangerous then? Who knew?
Posted 10 years ago # -
EDIT: Ignore me, it's for the best.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Presumably there's no real incentive to put cycle lanes into new estates because the lanes can't connect to anything.
What are you going to do when you've travelled the 200 yards from your house to the main road on a continental-grade facility? Either give up and go home (or I suppose, continue to the corner shop on the pavement).
If I was responsible for designing these estates, unless there was no budget constraint at all, I wouldn't be putting cycle lanes into them either. That's not to say that the road design of these places is OK, but there's only so much you can do.
When we were on our hunt for a nice detached with
double garagebike store we didn't bother to look in East Lothian because I wasn't willing to commute on those roads, and certainly not let my other half ride them. How nice the estate itself is to get you onto those roads... meh.Fix the high streets and the main distributor roads and people won't feel so much pressure to ride on the pavements based on their understandable desire not to get killed.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"Has anyone been hit? Knocked over? Injured? Killed? If not, then I suggest the level of danger is exaggerated."
As covered elsewhere, including on this forum, something can still be dangerous without anyone yet having been injured (or exploded) because of it.
The quotes attributed to Mr Cunningham do not precisely state the level of danger being generated by the people with shopping bags on their handlebars, "downright" not being an internationally-recognised measurement, but it is unlikely that he would consider someone with shopping bags on their handlebars to be as dangerous as even a small anti-personnel incendiary device, never mind one designed to destroy buildings and roads. However, it is probably safe to assume that his daily business does not place him in immediate danger of being subject to explosions (and if it does, perhaps as part of his employment, it's likely that appropriate controls are in place to minimise the risks), whereas he has apparently witnessed people with shopping bags on their handlebars in his vicinity, meaning that they pose a more immediate danger to him.
Installing infrastructure in estates off a main road (preferably as they're built, to minimise cost and disruption) would add pressure for there to be some infrastructure along the main road.
Posted 10 years ago # -
It is fair to say that cycling on the pavement while balancing shopping bags on the bars is a hazardous activity, in that any number of things could go wrong, due to the inherent instability of this arrangement. It could also be called risky behaviour, but not dangerous unless it poses a real imminent danger to other footway users or the cyclist.
All that said, it is much more hazardous and risky to cycle on the roads of East Lothian while balancing shopping bags on the bars. So the cyclists weigh the relative risks and hazards and sensibly decide to use the pavement!
Posted 10 years ago # -
"...unless it poses a real imminent danger to other footway users or the cyclist"
This came up a couple of weeks ago - usually I'd search for the topic and find the post, but it was along these lines: Imagine, for a moment, that you are unsteady on your feet for some reason - you can walk, but cannot lightly skip out of the way if something comes at you and cannot easily recover from a loss of balance, increasing your risk of falling over. A cycle (or dog, or the back end of a truck doing a three-point-turn and protruding over the footway (q.v. another thread recently about driving near schools)) does not need to be really definitely about to really imminently hit you to make you want to try and move out of its perceived way; if it looks like it might possibly be coming towards you (however briefly), until control is restored, you'd perhaps want to try and move out of its way. A normal shopping bag is perhaps about 45cm long, so perhaps 5cm shorter from the point of attachment to its centre of gravity, depending on the contents? In local earth surface gravity, this makes the period of oscillation of the bag 1.27 seconds, or less than a second for half the swing, which is enough to reverse the direction in which the bag is pulling the handlebar, possibly causing a wobble, if not controlled by the cyclist. Does "potentially within half a second" count as "imminent" in this sort of situation? Besides the wobble-danger there's also the bag-caught-in-spokes thing, which could either cause bag-rupture and content-spillage, wheel-lock or both, depending on the contents and the bag strength.
Without any records of the number, speeds, wobblinesses or general fellow-path-user-consideration-attitudes of the cyclists which resulted in the complaint, you can't make any judgements about the reality of the danger as it appears to someone else.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Well there's appearance and then there's reality. In fact the injuries and deaths are not being caused by shopping bag balancing pavement cyclists. Ergo this practice is not dangerous, especially relative to driving a motor vehicle.
I can and will judge people's perceptions if not supported by the reality of the situation. The comparison with the "near misses" project aims at moral equivalence, but is disingenuous, as the level of threat and intimidation posed by HGVs, aggressive drivers, etc. is massive compared to a shopping bag on the handlebars.
That said, I wouldn't advise folk to pavement cycle with shopping dangling from handlebars: panniers are more practical. However if the alternative is facing intimidation or potential injury on a busy, fast road...
Posted 10 years ago # -
Whose and which comparison to the Near Miss project?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Since we're talking about a pure mental state, it's not impossible that someone could be equally intimidated by a shopping bag on the handlebars as an average cyclist would be of being ground to mince by an HGV.
However, this seems like an unproductive line of reasoning. There are many things which some people are afraid of and this rarely leads to censure of the objects of their fear. (Fear of clowns has not led to the banning of red noses or floppy shoes).
This just brings us back again to social norms. Norms constantly shift (as witnessed by the designation of half the pavements as cycleways wherever the council finds it convenient).
Posted 10 years ago # -
Love it. Next festival, if there's a sniff of a monocycling clown, I'm going to write to the festival organisers demanding chicanes all the way down the High Street.
There's genuine fear of a genuine problem, and then there are some folk who just don't like people on bikes. Problem is, people listen to them.
PS I don't think cycling with the messages on the bars is a good idea either, but any real danger is to the person with said messages.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Who's trying to compare being minced by an HGV with being handlebarred by a bicycle?
Posted 10 years ago # -
The important detail here is that one person complained and posters are to go up. See also Harrison park cyclists slow down. We are an Out Group as cyclists and in these whipped up times a complaint that could be dealt with by a sorry this has happend is suddenly a poster campaign.
This imbalance Is far worse than a bag of shopping on your handlebars, though that can be tricksy.
I strive to be polite when I cycle more now than ever. Occasionally, this can puncture stereotypes. Having said this I narrowly avoided a Ped walking one way and looking the other, I think at a rather protuberant camera on helmet of cyclist in front. I rang my bell but ped was distracted and not attending to the path.mthis would have been my defence in a strict liability world. Hopefully ped has forgotten already as seemed quite oblivious and not scarred for life. Was younger. I get the feeling older folk scare more easily when being borne down upon by cyclists. Just trying to cram in a few more stereotypes in the one post.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I did actually laugh when I read in the OP that it was because one guy had written in.
It fills me with hope that in my dotage I am going to cause absolute havoc finding things to moan about. There will be correx signs on every surface like leaves on a tree :)
Carrying shopping on your bars isn't as good as carrying it somewhere else, but it's all relative. There are those steel rims where your brakes don't work in the wet for a start. How can anyone criticise people who ride carefully on the pavement but condone those who wilfully ride with terrible brakes?
(Is that a letter coming on?)
Posted 10 years ago # -
@wingpig, I may have inadvertently grabbed the inappropriate extremity of a modestly sized naturally occurring wooden object. Blame it on Scotrail wifi and a distractingly beautiful seascape off the coast of Fife.
Posted 10 years ago #
Reply
You must log in to post.
posts
