West Sussex Fire and Rescue and Sussex Police were present at the scene of the collision just outside Barclays bank on the Carfax, which occurred just before 10.30am.
Driver Jason Shuker, who is from Hertfordshire and is unfamiliar with the area, was not hurt in the incident but admitted he was ‘shaken up’.
He said: “I feel like crying to be honest. I have just had a new engine fitted and now I have to get another one – because of something that could have been avoided by having the junction marked. There is not much parking here, there is no ‘stop, brake’ sign at the end of the road, the junction is not marked clearly and an accident has occurred.”
The van, which suffered significant damage in the collision, was removed from the bollard at about 12.30pm.
Jason added: “Obviously I am a little gutted because I have come here to do work. I am going to be pursuing the matter because I don’t think I was at fault.”
Here’s the offending object, viewed from the direction the driver crashed into it. You can see the remains of the large oil spill that the fire brigade have had to mop up.
The bollard lies at the mouth of a junction, on the right. You can just about see the No Entry sign to the right of the bollard – you can’t drive into this side road from the Carfax, where this crash occurred, so the driver was presumably attempting to park at the side of the road, like the Range Rover.
I suspect that, in the cold light of day, the driver will know he’s talking absolute rubbish. He drove over a large object because he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going. The fact that there are ‘no clear markings’ in the side road, or ‘stop, brake’ signs (what does a ‘brake’ sign look like, for god’s sake!) is completely irrelevant. He made a mistake and isn’t man enough to admit it.
Instead of fruitlessly ‘pursuing the matter’ further, the most sensible course of action should be an apology to West Sussex Fire and Rescue for wasting their valuable time.
A few weeks ago the The Times covered the thoughts of Richard Allchin –
Bradley Wiggins’s former manager has urged cyclists not to jump red lights and to respect the rules of the roads, adding that motorists will only stop acting “selfishly” if those riding bicycles do the same.
[Mr Allchin] said today that he had carried out research at a junction near his home in Hampstead in north London and explained: “I reckon 90 per cent of cyclists go through the lights. It’s every kind of cyclist: women, men, casual cyclists, racing cyclists. If we want to make the roads safer, then cyclists have to stop acting so selfishly – and then perhaps the drivers might.”
This is the idea that good behaviour towards people on bikes from those driving cars is contingentupon much better behaviour from those bike riders. If we can somehow stop people cycling through red lights, and if we can stop them riding on the pavement, then – and only then – will motorists stop acting selfishly. (It’s never explicitly stated, of course, how many people jumping lights or riding on pavements motorists will tolerate before they start to behave – none at all? Five a day? Who knows.)
There is so much wrong with this kind of thinking it’s hard to know where to start. Law-breaking by people on bicycles is vastly overstated and exaggerated, and pales into insignificance compared to the regular daily infractions committed by people driving, such as speeding, which remain ‘invisible’ offences. In addition, law-breaking by people who ride bikes, when it occurs, is far less likely to cause harm to other people than law-breaking by drivers. And finally, there is no logical reason why the way in which drivers should behave towards me, or any other person who is riding a bike, should be conditional upon the bad behaviour of complete strangers who happen to be riding bikes. It’s nonsensical. If drivers were being killed or seriously injured in large numbers in a particular town by lorry drivers, it would be absurd to argue that car drivers can only expect to be treated well by lorry drivers once the joyriders and boy racers stop speeding – yet this is precisely the same argument being employed by Mr Allchin.
Worryingly, it seems this kind of attitude lies behind the recently-launched ‘Nice Way Code’ – the Scottish government’s facile (and expensive) attempt to make everyone behave merely by asking them to. The very first post on their site links enthusiastically to Mr Allchin’s comments, writing
we were interested to see [Bradley Wiggins’] former manager, Richard Allchin, telling off cyclists and urging them to get better at respecting the rules of the road. Motorists will only stop acting “selfishly”, he says, if cyclists do the same. Strong words from Mr Allchin.
Delighted to see Bradley Wiggins’ former manager wading into the debate about road use etiquette!
‘Delighted’? No, his comments were absolute rubbish, and any reasonable safety campaign that had the interests of people riding bikes at heart would have dismissed them as such.
But this is the problem. The ‘Nice Way Code’ isn’t just a bit of fluffy and expensive nonsense – it actually buys into precisely the same kind of thinking about how people on bikes can expect to be treated. Namely, that good behaviour from drivers towards them is dependent upon the good behaviour of ‘cyclists’ as a group. Behave, or else, is the message.
The voiceover of the publicity video states that the Nice Way Code is
targeting pedestrians, cyclists and motorists, asking them to respect each other on the roads.
That’s right, pedestrians – ‘respect’ motorists, or presumably you won’t get any ‘respect’ in return. Keith Brown MSP then states that
this is an initiative aimed at trying to increase the tolerance that should exist between users of the roads. So whether they’re people in cars, or HGVS, or cyclists, or even pedestrians on pathways as well… Try to encourage people to be more tolerant of each other’s needs.
Yes, this is the Transport Minister calling on pedestrians and cyclists to be more tolerant of HGV drivers.
The equivalence being made here between parties who pose little or no risk to other road users, and those who pose serious danger, is staggering. Yet Cycling Scotland – just one of the large number of cycling organisations that have lent their support and their name to this initiative – appear willing to buy into this logic. Ian Aitkin appears in this very same video asking for drivers to give cyclists space, but also asking cyclists to
beware of pedestrians. And we’re also asking cyclists not to jump red lights, and not to cycle on pavements.
I cannot see what these kinds of messages are going to achieve, beyond actually reinforcing the impression in the general public that jumping red lights, and riding on pavements, is what ‘cyclists’ do. Where was the message asking drivers to ‘beware’ of pedestrians, or not to jump red lights, given that it is motorists – not cyclists – who almost universally kill and seriously injure pedestrians?
Maybe at some point this campaign started out with the intention of trying to demonstrate that we are all people using the roads, and we just happen to be using different modes of transport. Unfortunately it has actually ended up presenting different road users as discrete, monolithic entities who have to ‘respect’ each other, and behave well in order to garner respect – with no attention paid to who is actually posing danger, and who is causing death and serious injury. The result is platitudinous nonsense, like this last passage from the video –
The message is – road users have a shared responsibility to keep each other safe.
So when I’m walking in town, I have a responsibility to keep car drivers safe? Or when I’m riding my bike? Gibberish.
I think Gnomeicide is right when he argues that this kind of campaign can only have been dreamed up from behind a car windscreen –
The idea that there is moral equivalence between cyclists and motorists ignores the fact that the power and therefore hazard posed by each is not equivalent – accident stats back this up. It may seem appropriate to ask cyclists for a bit of give when also asking motorists to stop endangering us, but the reality is we have nothing to give – most of us don’t jump reds, we don’t ride on the pavement, and even if we did that’s irrelevant – all of those factors combined still only amount for a few percent of all cyclist injuries. I suppose from behind the windscreen wipers of your car this could look like a good idea. From anywhere else? Its expensive, counterproductive, victim blaming nonsense.
The CTC seem happy to support the Nice Way Code on the basis that it doesn’t make cycling look dangerous or weird. But a campaign that isn’t quite as abysmally bad as ones that might have come before it shouldn’t automatically merit endorsement. The Nice Way Code employs the same logic as Richard Allchin – that respect and good behaviour is conditional upon cyclists obeying the rules of the road. A campaign that is supposed to be about reducing death and serious injury actually buys into the tired stereotypes about how people on bikes behave. That’s simply not good enough.
Going on a Skyride is a curious experience for someone interested in increasing the use of bicycles as a mode of transport; both uplifting and dispiriting in equal measure.
It’s uplifting, because seeing thousands of ordinary people out on bikes shows you what Britain could be like. Skyrides demonstrate that the British public really quite enjoy riding bikes, and that antipathy to ‘cycling’ comes purely from the conditions they are usually forced to ride them in; namely, on busy roads, in close proximity to motor traffic. Create pleasant conditions for riding, and people will do so. Skyrides are a clear rebuttal of the tired argument that the British public are too lazy to ride bikes; that when they say they want cycle paths, they are actually coming up with excuses that cover their laziness. Thousands of people battled into the centre of Southampton yesterday for no other reason than the desire to ride around on a loop, in safe conditions.
The dispiriting part comes from the knowledge that these events are one-offs, and all that suppressed demand that is so visibly on display will go back to being suppressed once the closed roads ‘go live’ again. Indeed, the whole concept of Skyrides unintentionally serves to demonstrate the abysmal state of cycling in Britain. Children and their families can cycle pretty much anywhere, at any time, in towns and cities in the Netherlands; in Britain, by contrast, they have to make do with a small closed road loop event that occurs once a year.
Southampton yesterday was no exception to the general pattern of these events. Plenty of evidence about how families had arrived at the event – with bikes strapped to cars.
Several families we spoke to at the event had arrived by train. Southampton’s roads did not seem to be a particularly appealing prospect for those with children.
On the closed loop, of course, things are very different, and children – even very young children – were whizzing about enthusiastically.
The classic guiding ‘hand on the shoulder’ on display in these photographs reminds me of how Dutch parents cycle with their children; indeed, strip away the hi-viz and the helmets, and change the bikes being ridden, and these could actually be Dutch scenes. The demographics of the people out riding were similar to the kinds of people you see riding in the Netherlands; the young, the old, males and females in roughly equal measure. A pretty close approximation to the general population, instead of the usual domination by white young and middle-aged males.
It was quite depressing to see the hi-viz vests being enthusiastically touted by a man with microphone in the Guildhall square, urging people to take them home so they would “be safe” and that “cars could see them”. The take-up was high – not as high as I had thought it might be – but enough to turn the square into a sea of dayglo.
Presumably (and understandably, given the amount of promotion) this is how the people attending think ‘cyclists’ should look, and how they should keep themselves safe – by making themselves as visible as possible.
Once the event was over, people started to head home. I briefly stood and watched as people left the closed roads, and headed off along Commercial Road, back to the suburbs.
On the pavement.
Like the thousands of others who attended the Skyride yesterday, these are the people who want to ride bikes; the people who want to make short trips around towns and cities. They are being frustrated.
I suspect the most valuable role of Skyride events is to demonstrate that they exist.
A common refrain from British cycling campaigners is that continental drivers respect and understand cyclists – that there is better behaviour towards people cycling, and general courtesy and civility amongst road users. This is either attributed to ‘culture’, or to the influence of policies like strict liability, or both. The implication is that we need to change our ‘culture’ in Britain, or bring in strict liability – perhaps, it is sometimes said, before we even start to think about physically changing the way our roads and streets are laid out.
Now of course better behaviour, and policies that favour that more vulnerable parties in civil claims, are good things in their own right. But the problem is that our perception of how people drive on the continent is far from objective. For a start, British people who are cycling on the continent are almost certainly cycling while on holiday. That means they are going to be cycling in calmer places, and at calmer times of the day.
By contrast, cycling in Britain is very often undertaken in towns and cities, and at peak times. Cycling in Britain (and especially in London) is very much commuter-dominated, with people cycling to work, and not much for any other purpose. British people are often cycling in congested areas at peak times. However, these same British people do not go on holidays on the continent and attempt to make trips through urban areas in the rush hour; if they did, they might form a different impression of how pleasant it is to cycle on the continent.
Indeed, it is probably the fact that Dutch people experience British drivers only when they are in Britain on holiday that has given rise to their impression that the British are more careful and law-abiding than Dutch drivers. These Dutch holiday-makers are driving in Britain at off-peak times, and in calmer areas, that are less congested. They are not commuting in urban areas.
In precisely the same fashion, British people almost certainly get a misleading and distorted impression of the nature of continental drivers due to the places they are cycling in when they are in Europe. A British friend of mine commutes in and out of Geneva by bicycle; he was knocked off and quite badly injured two years ago by a woman who drove into the back of him. I have accompanied him on one of his commuting trips into the city, and it was a far from pleasant experience. There is just the same degree of haste, impatience and lack of care that you might find on a commute in a British city during rush hour.
So, if we were aiming to make an objective comparison between driving standards on the continent and in Britain, we should be sampling the opinions of British people who are cycling to work in continental towns and cities, not just those who have been on holiday there.
Just last weekend I was cycling in the hills above Lake Geneva. There was – naturally enough – very little motor traffic on the roads I was using. As a result it would be quite easy for me to form a misleading impression of the standards of driving here. When roads are empty like this, it is very difficult to drive badly around cyclists. The opportunity for close or risky overtakes rarely presents itself. I wasn’t cut up on these roads, because there was rarely any oncoming traffic to create opportunities for stupidity.
This was brought home to me as I descended back down to the lakefront on a semi-urban road that I use quite frequently when I’m here. It’s normally largely devoid of traffic, but a combination of roadworks elsewhere in the town, and the arrival of one of Switzerland’s largest music festivals, meant that it was suddenly rather busy – more like a typical British suburban road. Instantly, the familiar impatience and risk-taking from drivers who were following behind me appeared, either squeezing past on bends, or without sufficient space. A road on which I usually experience what I perceived to be careful and courteous overtaking from Swiss drivers suddenly became a more hostile and rather more ‘British’ road.
This points towards a final variable that might skew our perception of how continental drivers behave. In general, the density of motor traffic on the continent is much lower compared to Britain, and England in particular. France, for instance, is a very big country compared to Britain, and yet has a similar population. That means if you are cycling in the countryside in France, you simply will not have as many encounters with motor traffic as you might do on an equivalent trip in Britain.
Now of course the Netherlands has a high population density, and rather a lot of cars per capita, but I don’t really believe that Dutch drivers – or the Dutch in general – are really all that better behaved or more considerate than their British counterparts. What creates the impression of courtesy on British people cycling in the Netherlands is design– design that reduces the number of interactions between drivers and cyclists to a bare minimum, and that limits the potential for stupidity when those interactions occur. Cycling in the Netherlands – even in urban areas – is the equivalent experience to riding along a quiet Swiss country lane. You are not going to be encountering many drivers, and when you do, they don’t have the opportunity to behave badly.
In the wake of the latest cycling death in London, the head of Transport for London’s Surface Transport, Leon Daniels, told BBC News
I think it’s very important we don’t have too much of a knee jerk reaction. Of course, as I said, one cycling death is one too many, but the circumstances for these accidents take a while to come through while all the investigations take place. And I’m sure there’s a whole range of measures that, over time, we will be taking in order to try and ensure cycle safety.
The problem here is that this isn’t just ‘one cycling death’. This is just the latest in a long line of deaths and serious injuries involving people riding bikes in London, deaths and injuries that are increasing in frequency.
To say we shouldn’t have a ‘knee jerk reaction’ rests on an assumption that the death on Monday was a one-off – something unique and remarkable – when in fact it was sadly predictable. This is why protest rides are occurring now, and have been occurring for some time (protest rides like those on Blackfriars Bridge, and the Tour du Danger). People have been stating for many years now that riding a bike in London carries an unacceptable level of risk. This is to say nothing of the people who won’t even go near a bike in London because the roads are terrifying; the simple fact is that cycling in London is objectively dangerous, as well as subjectively so.
The implication of Leon Daniels’ comment is that we should wait for all the facts to come in, and once the facts are established, then presumably we’ll find out that the lorry driver or the cyclist did something wrong; that the driver was going too fast, that the cyclist moved unpredictably, or that one or the other failed to spot the other party. And then we can just carry on as before, without changing anything. Maybe there will be another ‘awareness campaign’, or some trixi mirrors, but that will be it.
Well, this isn’t good enough, I’m afraid. We cannot continue to hold the people driving and riding on the streets of London solely responsible for deaths and injuries, when they are travelling on designs that expect bike users to move across multiple lanes of traffic travelling at 30 mph or more; designs that mix people on bikes with vehicles that can kill them if their operators make mistakes. This is so obviously a contributing factor to deaths and serious injury we simply cannot continue to duck it.
Just last weekend a 90-year-old man died on a road near where I live; he was using a footpath that crosses a 70 mph dual carriageway. I took a picture of this footpath last year, remarking in a blogpost about how dangerous it is.
I think it would be callous to blame the man who died, or the driver who hit him, for this tragedy. The issue here is the design of a footpath that expects people to dash across multiple lanes of traffic bearing down on them at high speed. It is entirely unreasonable to expect elderly people – or indeed anyone – to cross this kind of road on foot. The element of risk and danger is unacceptably high.
In precisely the same way, I think it is entirely unreasonable to expect people on bikes to manoeuvre their way across multiple lanes of motor traffic.
The High Holborn crash site – picture by Mark Ames
If drivers or people on bikes make errors of judgement, the person on the bike will be seriously injured or killed. There is no slack at all in roads that are designed like this; the margin for error is minimal. (I won’t even focus here on how these roads are exclusionary, and only suitable for a small subsection of the London population to use by bike). It is completely unacceptable, purely on safety grounds alone.
Leon Daniels cannot pretend this isn’t a problem, but, on past form, he seems extraordinarily unwilling to make changes to London’s roads that will make them safe and comfortable for people riding bikes.
In response to complaints about the abysmal design of the northern junction on Blackfriars Bridge – the design that sparked multiple protests in 2011 – he wrote
Where possible TfL look to widen cycle lanes to two metres, as proposed for the initial section of the northbound cycle lane, however, the constraints of the highway coupled with our duty to maintain a smooth traffic flow in this location have prevented us from widening all cycle lanes throughout the junction.
That is, TfL couldn’t even manage more than 1.3-1.5m wide cycle lanes due to ‘the constraints of the highway’ and the familiar ‘smoothing traffic flow’. This in a location where bikes make up 43% of vehicular traffic at peak times.
Blackfriars Protest, 2011
There are no ‘constraints’ on such an enormously wide stretch of road, beyond a refusal to take cycling seriously as a mode of transport.
Later in 2011 Daniels was asked about minimum design standards for Cycle Superhighways at a GLA Transport Committee – indeed, specifically about minimum widths recommended by that same Committee. He responded
[There are] loads of lessons to learn from the initial cycle superhighway not just in respect of the superhighway schemes themselves but also the way in which the construction is done and the disruption to general traffic and so on. In just about every case we are looking to – this is a big compromise because, at the end of the day, the carriageway space is fixed and therefore we are trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot. [my emphasis]
I agree entirely with you about minimum widths and so on. Just in some places, on the ground, practically, we are faced with what we have to do. In many cases – and Members will know some of these – there is a requirement for a certain footway width, the frontages need some space, there are requirements for loading and unloading, we need to keep ordinary traffic moving as well and, therefore, in many cases, we are shoehorning this into a narrow space. I agree entirely with you that a minimum width for cyclists is desirable but, again in many cases, we are stuck with what we can do practically and cost effectively.
The overriding impression from these comments – and from those regarding Blackfriars – is that cycling has to fit in around the margins; that motor traffic has to keep flowing in exactly the same volume as before, and it is cycling that has to give way. Sure, if we can fit in a cycle lane here or there without reducing motor traffic capacity, we’ll do it, but otherwise – tough luck. ‘The carriageway space is fixed’, and all that.
The site of Monday’s fatality. Four lanes of motor traffic squeezed into a pint pot.
But the ‘physical constraint’ argument is absurd. Space can be created for cycling on any street, of any width. The issue is one of priorities, and it seems that Leon Daniels doesn’t think that cycling is a particularly high priority. His latest comments certainly do not give the impression of movement, even following the publication of the Mayor’s Vision for Cycling.
At the moment we have streets designed for fitting as many motor vehicles as possible through them, like High Holborn, where a man died on Monday. Leon Daniels’ ‘pint pot’ is entirely full of motor traffic; the only reason there can be any struggle fitting in cycling here is a refusal to reallocate some of that pint.
And, like Blackfriars, it’s not as if cycling is a marginal mode of transport here either. Just to the east, on Theobalds Road, bicycles make up 64% of vehicular traffic between 7am and 10am, despite the fairly appalling conditions. Doubtless on High Holborn – the continuation of that route into the west end – cycling still forms a significant portion of vehicular traffic. But it is completely ignored as a mode of transport.
Space can and should be reallocated for cycling on these kinds of roads, not just because it is already a significant mode of transport in its own right, but because the current arrangements are objectively and subjectively dangerous. They put users at unnecessary risk, and discourage anyone else from riding.
When private motor traffic is such a minority mode of transport on so many roads in central London, why on earth does it get allocated so much space? Why does it have free rein on nearly every single road?
The Alternative Department for Transport yesterday came up with an apparently bold proposal for closing Westminster Bridge Road to private motor traffic at peak times, so that the road would like something like this, with bus lanes down the centre –
The amazing thing is that these kind of proposals should be regarded as so extraordinary, when in fact – if we really care about prioritising walking, cycling and public transport – they should be precisely the kind of measures a city like London should be taking. Make private motor traffic go the long way round, and create safe and inviting environments for walking and cycling.
Dutch cities are, of course, different from London, but they have been doing things like this for decades. The busy Potterstraat, in the centre of Utrecht, is a bus- and cycle-only road.
One-way streets for motor vehicles in large Dutch cities are also extraordinarily common, with the space being allocated instead to cycling, and to public transport.
These Dutch roads could be filled with lanes for motor traffic, but decisions were taken about the kind of traffic that should be there, and how it should be treated.
With people on bikes forming such a significant proportion of traffic in central London, even under current conditions, it’s high time that safe, protected space was allocated for cycling as a mode of transport. We already know the circumstances that result in deaths and serious injury on London’s streets – it’s poor design that takes no account of the vulnerability of people on bikes, and puts them at serious risk. To fail to respond to these demands for safety, in the wake of a spate of preventable deaths – to trot out the usual platitudes – would be unthinking, rash and heedless. The very definition of a ‘knee jerk reaction’.
A lawyer famous for defending people who wave knives about dangerously in public has called for the the wearing of stab-proof vests and chainmail to be made compulsory.
The lawyer, known as Mr Loophole – who has earned a reputation for getting those who aimlessly waft knives about near other people cleared of all charges – has said that in addition to abiding by all laws, the general public should also have to wear stab-proof vests and chainmail.
“Thanks to developments in technology knives are now much safer for the people who wield them,” Mr Loophole said. “The general public, on the other hand, are incredibly vulnerable and wearing stab-proof vests and sporting chainmail – which will cut down on deaths and injury – should be made mandatory.”
The millionaire lawyer is known as Mr Loophole thanks to his astonishing ability to clear knife-wielders of serious charges with the most extraordinary explanations or technicalities. In 2009 a man slashing with a samurai sword in a crowded shopping centre was cleared by a jury when Mr Loophole explained to the court that the man was simply pointing out directions to a confused group of Japanese tourists. And in 2011 a man waving a meat cleaver outside a school playground was again cleared thanks to Mr Loophole, who suggested that the man was simply hungry and doing ‘preparation slicing’ before cooking his lunch.
The remarkable story of how a driver ‘lost control’, and careered the wrong way up a one-way system, injuring three people, because… someone on a bike shouted at him.
A driver whose car mowed down pedestrians and smashed into a bus during Kingston’s rush hour said he panicked after colliding with a cyclist who shouted at him. A woman, who sustained non-life-threatening leg fractures, was airlifted from Cromwell Road after the crash outside Kingston train station at about 6pm last night.
Two others were injured though not seriously, police said. A man who had fled war-torn Syria and a woman were taken to Kingston Hospital.
Shibob Li, 49, the manager of Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture in Fife Road, was at the wheel of the BMW that careered out of Fife Road the wrong way into Clarence Street. He was also injured and treated in the town centre before spending the next few hours inside his shop.
Mr Li said he lost control of the car after colliding with a cyclist who shouted at him. He said: “It is really regrettable all this happened. I just wish them to get better quickly and wish them the best. I am very, very sorry. I was panicked and lost control of the car. It happened really quickly and I didn’t have any time to think about it. I was shocked and shaking.”
He said: “Of course I regret. But it is not just my fault. He started shouting and caused my panic. I was panicked and lost control of the car. I think people cycling, they need to pay due attention. There are too many bicycle people on the road. They do not really watch the other people. Sometimes they just come quickly. I never expected this would happen to me.”
It’s not clear from this deeply strange account whether the man on the bike’s yelling – which apparently is the root cause of all this carnage – came before or after he was hit by the driver.
Other evidence suggests, however, that the cyclist was hit on a cycle crossing, as the driver turned completely the wrong way up Clarence Street. This from the sister-in-law of the Syrian refugee, Yassar, who was hit –
“He never got injured [in Syria] but managed to get injured in Kingston. They were going to have some Shawarma at Lebanese Valley. He was standing across the street to Cappadocia. The BMW came against the traffic and it hit the cyclist. My husband and Yassar were walking together. When they saw the car aiming for them my husband jumped and managed to step away but Yassar couldn’t. The car hit him from the side and went on and hit a few other people afterwards. He hit his head and the car hit him in both legs and his back.”
That is – the driver turned the wrong way, hitting the man on the bike before going on to hit the pedestrians, and the bus. Quite how this cyclist yelling, either before or after he was hit, ’caused’ this driver to panic and speed away straight into a group of people is a complete mystery.
Maybe it’s because ‘there are too many bicycle people on the road’.
I attended the City of London’s Cycling Forum last week, where the main items of discussion were the proposed plans for the Aldgate gyratory, and the City’s plans for cycle routes in the City of London.
As it turned out, most of the time was spent discussing Aldgate. There are some good bits in the plan, most notably the ‘filling in’ of the road between the St Botolph Church and the Sir John Cass Primary School, with the creation of a new public space. This will close off the existing gyratory.
Encouragingly there will be a cycle route running north-south across this area (you can see it just to the right of the ‘F’ on the above illustration). Without this link, anyone coming from the south on a bike would have to travel around three sides of a large, busy rectangle, so it is pleasing that it has been included.
One interesting detail that emerged during the discussion was that this path was quite contentious. The City of London representative told us that the primary school resisted having this route running past their entrance, on the grounds that they didn’t want ‘cyclists’ mixing with the children at school opening and closing time.
I remarked that the attitude exhibited by the school demonstrated that the pupils were not cycling to it – if they were, there wouldn’t be the hostility to a cycle route, that pupils would be using themselves. Evidently the school thinks that ‘cyclists’ are some distinct group, that is quite separate from primary school pupils.
The City of London representative assured me that he has seen children on bikes at the school, but he didn’t really answer my other question about how children under the age of 11 are reasonably expected to cycle to this school from Tower Hamlets, to the east (which is where many of the pupils are coming from). At the moment, they will have to cycle around the existing Aldgate gyratory. The plans put forward by the City will turn this section into a two-way road (about which more later) but in other parts of the discussion it was made quite plain that this new scheme (repeat – new scheme) would not be suitable for less confident cyclists.
The City of London, it seems, is adhering to a two-tier strategy, where children and the elderly (and, frankly, anyone who doesn’t fancy riding on busy roads) will have to stick to ‘Quietways’, while the ‘Superhighways’ remain the preserve of the existing, confident cyclists. Anyone who does not wish to mix with lorries, buses and heavy traffic while on a bike is not going to catered for by the new east-west design, in front of Aldgate tube station – quite explicitly. These roads are not for them.
I can’t think of a clearer illustration of how this approach is flawed than the death of a young woman on Friday evening, hit by a large lorry on precisely one of these ‘Superhighways’, just a few hundred metres east of this school.
She was presumably using Whitechapel Road to get home to Bow, because this is the direct route. There is a Superhighway running along this road which suggests that this is where cyclists should go, but tragically there is nothing more to this Superhighway at this location than a stripe of blue paint, within an existing vehicle lane.
An example, further east on CS2. This is not a cycle lane; only a ‘guide stripe’ within a vehicle lane. The woman died while cycling on a section of Superhighway designed like this.
These designs are totally inadequate, yet I suspect they have convinced some people that they are being catered for on a bike, when in reality nothing has been done for them, at all. The target market for Superhighways designed like this are people who are already cycling in London; for ‘hardened cyclists’ like me, who are used to cycling with lorries and buses just feet away from them. They are not for young women with shopping, or the elderly, or children.
I suspect this attitude about who Superhighways are for lies behind the subtle victim-blaming that has come out in reports of the woman’s death; the attitude that this woman was not ‘a proper cyclist’; that she shouldn’t even have been on this section of road.
The Metropolitan Police told us she was not wearing a helmet. A PCSO has ‘claimed’ that he ‘thought’ that she had some shopping on her bike, which ‘might’ have made her wobble into the lorry’s path. The impression given by these details is that she was not competent. She was French, helmetless, carrying shopping, unskilled, and wobbly – frankly (so the subtext runs) she was out of place, and shouldn’t have been there, doing what she was doing.
But this is a failure of design, not of behaviour. French pedestrians can carry shopping, and wobble, and not be quite sure of where they are going while they walk through Aldgate, and not risk instant death if they make a minor mistake, or a driver fails to spot them.
This is the central point of my post – namely, that the City of London is designing an environment for existing ‘cyclists’, when instead they should be designing an environment for people on bikes. Tourists. People trundling along with lots of shopping. The elderly. Pupils going to school. An inclusive environment, for all types of bicycle users.
This isn’t a specious point – there are already large numbers of people cycling in London who will not go anywhere near Aldgate and roads like it, if they can avoid it, particularly those casual Boris bike users who stick to parks and quiet routes, and their numbers are bound to increase as improvements are made across London.
To exclude people like this – indeed, large swathes of society – from using your roads while on a bike is not just unfair, it’s short-sighted. As someone else at the Forum pointed out, the trends in cycle usage in London suggest that the City’s plans for Aldgate will be hopelessly under par for cycling demand within a decade, and that will necessitate yet another redesign. The £12 million being spent now should be spent properly.
The current plans proposed by the City of London will cram those using bikes right next to the buses and HGVs that pose the most danger. There will be no separation where it is most needed; only intermittent (and occasionally very narrow) cycle lanes that disappear at precisely the places real protection (not just paint) is needed. Here’s an example of that lack of continuity, right outside Aldgate tube station.
These cycle lanes are largely useless, because they are interrupted, and are far too narrow. Yet the City have seen fit to trumpet the total length of cycle lane they have introduced!
Likewise, the only useful function of an ASL is to allow you to position yourself ahead of stationary traffic to make a right turn, but the City plans to install three of these ASLs in locations where you can’t even turn right (like those pictured above). The only thing these ASLs will consequently achieve is encouraging people on bikes to place themselves directly in front of a queue of motor traffic, which will then have to overtake these people once again. It’s a recipe for conflict.
On top of that, there are some nasty looking sections where people on bikes will be squeezed into the same space as large vehicles. The area pictured below in particular – right by the aforementioned school – looks especially dangerous, where kerbing pushes motor vehicles and bikes together right on the apex of a (created) corner. The only way to safely ride through this design on a bike is by positioning yourself directly in the middle of the kerbed section, to prevent vehicles trying to squeeze past. I can’t imagine many people being able or willing to do that.
There is no need for this degree of danger, and lack of subjective safety. The building-to-building width here is approximately 22 metres. The street is enormously wide. Four lanes of motor traffic currently race through here.
The pavements – while not expansively wide – are currently wide enough give pedestrians an A-minus level of comfort (by the TfL measurement of pedestrian comfort), according to the City of London representatives. It seems odd – to me at least – that the pavement is being made even wider, while no serious consideration is given to the comfort of anyone choosing to use a bike through here.
What would be the ‘cycling comfort level’ approaching a narrow pinch point with a lorry or a bus bearing down on you? Or having to negotiate out around a stopped bus, with heavy traffic passing you? ‘Cyclists’ like me may be happy to do this, but there is no way primary school children will be cycling like this any time soon.
To be fair, the City of London acknowledge that their new design will not be appropriate for any ordinary person to use on a bike. They are quite clear that the new Aldgate will only be suitable for confident ‘cyclists’.
We can be our own worse enemy. A black man on Kentish Town Road just robbed a shop.
This tweet is then challenged by several followers, who point out that the use of the word ‘we’ is rather ill-advised. The politician responds –
Gosh, interesting how self-righteous blacks can be. I was merely saying we shouldn’t rob shops.
This tweet is again challenged by others, who argue that the behaviour of one man in Kentish Town shouldn’t be used to suggest that blacks are their own worst enemy. To which –
It’s not one black man – there is an issue of black crime which needs to be tackled. This was an example
Here the politician is referring to the impression, in the general public, that blacks are generally quite lawless. Blacks should not commit crime, in his opinion.
To the argument that he is simply buying into the stereotype that blacks commit crime, and that rather than suggesting that ‘blacks get their house in order’, blacks should not have to apologise or be judged by the behaviour of complete strangers who happen to have the same skin colour, the politician instead continues to argue that blacks should not commit crime, because blacks committing crime reinforces the stereotype –
…. other people view us like that. I know its unfair but it is the reality that we have to address
…. Of course, the politician wasn’t referring to blacks, he was referring to cyclists. But framing his tweets like this demonstrates the absurdity of the whole ‘we must get our house in order’ logic that some cycling representatives buy into.
It’s natural, I suppose, to imagine that drivers driving dangerously around you is somehow a consequence of the stereotype that cyclists are themselves badly behaved, and that the way to stop that dangerous driving and lack of respect is to tackle the cyclists who behave badly.
But these drivers are bigots, who choose not to distinguish between you and other people, and will almost certainly continue to treat you badly, even if – by some miracle – every single individual who happens to put their leg over a bike is perfectly behaved while they are riding.
Futile, and misguided.
UPDATE
In the comments Christian Wolmar suggests that the analogy ‘does not work’ because blacks have no choice over their skin colour – it is an immutable characteristic, unlike ‘cyclist’ (we can – as a last resort – choose not to ride bikes).
I think that’s a weak objection, but in any case, we can run the analogy again with a characteristic like ‘Muslim’ – people can choose not to be Muslim, after all. Here’s our aspirant Muslim politician –
We Muslims be our own worse enemy. A Muslim man on Kentish Town Road just stabbed someone.
And
Gosh, interesting how self-righteous Muslims can be. I was merely saying we shouldn’t stab people.
And
It’s not one Muslim man – there is an issue of Muslim violence which needs to be tackled. This was an example
One of the many impressions from my recent trip to the Netherlands is how everybody rides pretty much the same bike.
This is the basic – and pretty indestructible – classic Dutch bike. It’s either single speed, or has hub gears; it has a chain guard and an integral lock; it has lighting built onto it; the brakes are either drum brakes, or back-pedal only; it has mudguards and a rear rack, heavy duty tyres, and is generally built like a tank.
The durability of these bikes is part of the reason why so many of them that you see in Amsterdam and Utrecht are pretty ancient; they’ve just kept going, and going, and going, despite punishing daily treatment. (The other reason is that these bikes are no great loss if they get stolen).
I can vouch for this durability. I’ve had a Dutch bike of my own now for about 18 months, and in that time, I haven’t done any maintenance on it all, apart from occasionally pumping up the tyres, and a simple adjustment of the gear cable.
It strikes me that Dutch bikes – and they way they get used – are analogous to the cars, and the way we use them. Modern cars don’t require much (or indeed any) maintenance from their users. They are designed to be stress-free to operate; if something does go wrong, you take it to a garage. Similarly Dutch bikes do not required maintenance – if and when something does go wrong, the Dutch generally take their bike to their nearest shop.
And, in precisely the same way that you can operate a car in your ordinary everyday clothes, so you can just hop on and hop off these bikes in whatever you happen to be wearing. They are designed to fit around you, rather than requiring you to adapt to the bike.
This isn’t true of the bikes we ride in Britain, which I think fall almost entirely into three categories
the standard mountain bike;
the racing bike;
the hybrid.
The first two do not have any of the features that would make them practical. They have exposed chains and transmission; they have derailleur gears, which are tricky to maintain; their cabling is also often exposed to the elements; the tyres are prone to puncturing; and they do not come with essential features like mudguards, racks, built-on lighting, or integral locks.
Much the same is also true for hybrids, which quite often look like this –
Indeed, I was prompted to write this post by a handout given to me during a lecture by Rachel Aldred last week, discussing barriers and impediments to cycling in Britain.The subject of this particular handout was, as you can see, ‘Stuff’ – about how riding a bike in Britain requires a huge array of extra equipment that either has to be taken on or off the bike, or worn, which makes riding a bike unnecessarily inconvenient and complicated. In addition, these bikes require maintenance; they go wrong, and people generally do not have the skills to fix them.
I suppose the bigger question is why the vast majority of bikes ridden in Britain are so impractical. I can think – off the top of my head – of three possible reasons, although there may be others.
The first is that cycling in Britain is still very much a sporting activity. People ride bikes to get fit, or to exercise, or for leisure. Our cyclesport culture is actually pretty healthy – by stark contrast to our transport cycling culture – and that is undoubtedly reflected in the bikes people buy. Fast bikes are also a help when it comes to just making simple trips about town. British bicycle users are still perversely expected to behave like motor vehicles, so any bicycle that can make you travel more like a motor vehicle will obviously be relatively more attractive.
The second reason accounts for why the mountain bike is still the most popular bike in Britain. Namely – if you want to ride away from motor vehicles – as the vast majority of people do – then you pretty much have to have a mountain bike. Trails and bridleways are not at all easy to ride on any other kind of bike. Likewise bumping up and down off pavements (using pavements when you just don’t fancy the road is very common indeed) is much easier on a bicycle with chunky tyres and suspension.
The third reason potentially lies with the bike industry itself. Now of course bicycle companies and shops have to make money, and to sell the bicycles that people want. There probably isn’t the demand right now for Dutch bikes to be sold in huge numbers, because they’re not that much fun to ride on fast busy roads, and they’re not the best for off-road routes. That said, I am struck by how – if I went into a Dutch bicycle shop – I would just buy a bike, and that would pretty much be it. The only other ‘accessory’ I might need would be a chain lock, to accompany my integral lock. I wouldn’t need anything else.
By contrast, if a typical consumer goes to a large bicycle shop, from scratch, wanting a ‘commuting’ bike off the shelf, they would need a large amount of extra ‘stuff’. Two locks. Lights. Clips to keep their clothing away from the chain. A rucksack. Waterproof clothing (or some clip-on mudguards). They’d probably end up with a good amount of ‘cycle specific’ clothing too, because commuting is fast, and requires exertion. They might get a helmet, or a hi-viz vest. Their bike will also require maintenance, and tools to look after it, if the owner is so inclined.
These are all the ‘optional extras’ that the bike industry can – and does – sell. I don’t really blame them for doing so; we’ve ended up in this position because cycling has been shaped by the environment people have to cycle in. Nevertheless there undoubtedly exists an incentive for the industry to carry on as before, selling large amounts of cycle-specific ‘stuff’ to accompany bikes that require maintenance and add-ons. But it is precisely all this extra faff – maintenance, clothing and bits – that represents a significant barrier to cycling for the general population.
RT @OxonCyclingNet: No consultation and against national standard LTN 1/20, Oxford's only central traffic-free cycle lane (Parks Rd) has be… 3 days ago
The amazing thing is that these kind of proposals should be regarded as so extraordinary, when in fact – if we really care about prioritising walking, cycling and public transport – they should be precisely the kind of measures a city like London should be taking. Make private motor traffic go the long way round, and create safe and inviting environments for walking and cycling.
