A cyclist who broke six ribs after a crash on London’s Cycle Superhighway 6 (CS6) says it is not obvious that the lane dividers on a recently opened stretch are actually raised.
The London Evening Standard reports that Max Hotopf fell after hitting the painted 10cm high ridge that separates cyclists from vehicles in Farringdon Road, just north of the Clerkenwell Road junction.
Transport for London (TfL) said the accident was the first involving the raised white line to be reported to them.
Hotopf said: “I have been cycling on London’s roads for 40 years so I am very experienced. It looked like a normal white line. There was nothing to suggest it was raised. I hit it and went flying and now I have these injuries.
“This is badly thought out and TfL need to come up with some answers. They need to put up warning signs. It’s so easy not to spot the danger.”
This stretch of the cycle superhighway opened last month and campaigners had suggested the vertical-sided kerbs could prove dangerous.
Farringdon Road. Not sure these upstands are a good idea traffic side. No floating bus stop sadly pic.twitter.com/zUIOkZnJQH
— The Euro Highwayman (@RantyHighwayman) May 11, 2018
Hotopf added: “It’s only a matter of time before someone else is seriously hurt. They need to sort it out — the cycle lane is supposed to keep riders safe, not injure them.”
TfL has launched an investigation and said: “Safety is our top priority and we always closely monitor new cycle lanes.”
35 thoughts on “Cyclist who broke six ribs on CS6 says it is not obvious white line is a raised kerb”
What is it with councils that the simplest thing invariably turns into a fiasco? Had they bothered to ask even the dumbest cyclist they would have been told that this idea was a non-runner. Are they too arrogant to seek advice or too stupid to know they need it?
It reminds me of our local authority who top-dressed a 3-mile shared-use track with billions of tiny arrowhead flints and were deluged with complaints from cyclists, dog walkers and horse riders. In response all they could do was parrot the same old tired line about it being good enough for Kew Gardens, where incidentally, cycles and horses are banned. It took over two years to sweep the track of this menace and restore sanity.
mike the bike wrote:
This is such a common scenario.
Same with organisations that “think” they’ve installed cycling facities like racks where you can only lock a front wheel. nothing to lock the frame. All they have to do is ask employees……
Looks to me like they really
Looks to me like they really didn’t think about it. The protection from the motorised traffic seems little better than paint, but for the cyclist much more dangerous.
TheRantyHighwayman has written about kerbs a great deal, I doubt if the Dutch would have done it.
Make it taller.
Make it taller.
So not raised enough to keep
So not raised enough to keep motorised traffic from transgressing, but raised just enough to trip a cycle? I’m sure that this would not be very obvious in low light or in the reflected glare on a rain slicked evening under street lights.
TfL should change their motto to “We haven’t really thought this through”.
it’s clearly there to keep
it’s clearly there to keep the cyclists in rather than keep motor vehicles out. It needs to be wider to keep motor vehicles at a safe overtaking distance.
ChrisB200SX wrote:
^
And there you have it.
Who did the safety audit?
Who did the safety audit? and why didn’t it prevent this glaringly obvious hazard?
If only there were countries
If only there were countries that had decades of experience in building protected bike lanes and infrastructure and were only happy of being copied.
If only there were countries
duplicate
I’m a bit confused as to how
I’m a bit confused as to how you could miss a standard height kerb let alone mistake it for a painted line
spen wrote:
Perhaps it has something to do with a history of kerbs being on the left, and the expectation that that is where the hazard lies.
Grahamd wrote:
But shouldn’t you be aware of the immediate environment and should you be looking for the unusual?
spen wrote:
Shouldn’t dedicated cycle infrastructure be designed so as to reduce the level of stress involved in cylcing? Instead of adding to the amount of mental work required?
I don’t get why you are trying to defend this. When roads have hazards for motorists, they usually get removed or ameliorated. Why else do we have all those centre-line barriers and crash barriers on bends, etc? Here they seem to have specifically put an extra one in, simply due to the usual local authority inability to listen to anyone or take advice.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
So, put simply, you want everyone else to take responsibility for your safety while you ride along smelling the flowers.
Just to be extra specially clear, I’m not defending this, just saying look where you’re going, but btw it isn’t dangerous
spen wrote:
a cyclist was killed on London Bridge about 4 years ago after coming to grief on the kerb-height central reservation. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/cyclist-killed-in-london-bridge-collision-after-clipping-central-reservation-in-tragic-accident-9644761.html.
While it’s true that people are responsible for their own safety, it’s also true that civil engineers and the organisations that hire them have a professional responsibility and an ethical duty to design foreseeable and avoidable hazards out of their constructions. Part of being responsible for our own safety is acting to make them live up to their responsibilities. They are our servants.
spen wrote:
What a mad comment. Not really thought-through, was it?
Let’s dig a 10 foot hole directly outside your front door. To do otherwise would mean everyone else taking repsonsibiltity for your safety., right?
spen wrote:
No we just want infrastructure not to be designed as an obstacle course when you are cycling in the lane it will be very hard to see the line has any height as you will be looking down onto it.
Let’s compare with speed humps which are painted with arrows to make them as easy to see as possible despite the intention for drivers to drive slowly along the entire road and the fact they are less likely to cause a crash.
spen wrote:
Busy with other cyclists, glare from the sun or from wet roads or car headlights, darkness/poorly lit, the angle you look at it (or don’t look at it!), the expectation of what would be there (seeing as most “bike lanes” are just paint it’s not unreasonable to assume that this would be as well).
If it wasn’t for the political minefield, London wouldn’t be difficult to convert to truly world class cycling infrastructure. Problem is it’s being done piecemeal with weak-willed leaders who bow to the slightest bit of vocal nimbyism and backlash, water down the scheme until it’s a fraction what it could or should have been and then build it to the lowest possible cost.
Square-edged kerbs are much cheaper than kerbs with a chamfered edge.
crazy-legs wrote:
“… the expectation of what would be there …” Rather than actually looking and seeing what is there
This stretch of the cycle
This stretch of the cycle superhighway opened last month and campaigners had suggested the vertical-sided kerbs could prove dangerous.
If this is the case and the council were warned then I think a trip to the no fault injury lawyers would be profitable.
If the recommended safe
If the recommended safe cyclist overtaking clearance is being touted as 1.5m, perhaps the raised kerbs should be 1.5m wide so that the segregated cycle lane is safe for those who use it? Assuming this is “purpose-built” infrastructure, why the need for a sharp edge on the cyclist side?
The short cycle track TfL
The short cycle track TfL installed at the junction of Old Street and Great Eastern Street has 45 degree kerbs, why are they going back on that as a standard?
Brighton had this same issue
Brighton had this same issue with the Vogue Gyratory cycle lane 3-4 years ago.
http://www.theargus.co.uk/NEWS/11747105.Further_tests_for___600_000_Vogue_Gyratory_cycle_lane_where_a_series_of_crashed_injured_cyclists/
OK it isn’t perfect, but it’s
OK it isn’t perfect, but it’s much better than the pot holes mess that most of us have to deal with. At least TFL are doing something to try and make the cyclist’s lot a safer one.
Good feature badly
Good feature badly implemented.
They use these in Copenhagen with great success. They were already built like that, when I started cycling there for a while in the 90ties, well before the big hype of Copenhagenizing etc. Since they are so common, nobody really seems to have a problem with it – given that the bike paths are so wide, that you never need to come close to that line (which is not painted at all in Cph. The kerb to your left (the car lane) looks like the kerb to your right (pedestrian path). So you know what to expect on both sides.
Problem seems to be, you have to know about this.
seiklmeikl wrote:
exactly – a major problem with much cycling infrastructure is that its not obvious or consistent – infrastructure for motorised vehicles is generally uniform and as said above is readily changed when it doesn’t work but cyclists are expected to just deal with it
antigee wrote:
In programming this is known as the “Law of least surprise”.
In general engineering design contexts, the principle means that a component of a system should behave in a way that users expect it to behave; that is, users should not be astonished by its behavior.
Road engineers are generally completely oblivious to this principle.
Who are these fckukwits who
Who are these fckukwits who design and implement “cycling infrastructure”?! Presumably they are at least reasonably intelligent to be in such positions of responsibility, so how can they be such….. fcukwits?
It’ll all be better when I’m king
A rumble strip next to this
A rumble strip next to this kerb would solve the problem
henryb wrote:
No it wouldn’t. The solution is to remove the needless hazard.
In the Netherlands they
In the Netherlands they apparently have sloped kerbs to prevent this:
http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2008/12/danger-of-parallel-kerbs.html
I would personally vote for
I would personally vote for more curbs like this. Far too many incidents of being nearly run off the road when cycling in the cycle lane because of drivers trying to squeeze past other drivers waiting to turn off the road. The major problem with segregated bike lanes is that they don’t get cleaned like the road does meaning that they are often obsticle course of general rubbish along with broken glass bottles etc.
It is depressing that some
It is depressing that some idiot thought this was OK, and it even passed a safety audit. It is easy to see how the accident occurred. I once hit a full sized kerb and came off. It was night and my bike lamp made it look flat. It is fortunate that Max Hotopf didn’t fall right into the carriageway and get run over by a passing motor vehicle.
The use of battered kerbs (ones with 45 degree angle) should be an obvious choice. Sadly this stretch of CS6 now needs to be reconstructed at huge expense to the taxpayer when a more appropriate kerb profile would have been cost neutral at the time of construction. And all because cyclists were ignored when they pointed out the hazard.
Why is it that the Dutch have
Why is it that the Dutch have already solved this problem?