News Flesh

They did the towns pretty quietly too. It's only [certain elements in] that there Oxford that's really kicked up a fuss about this stuff. Mind you, most of the time, you'd be doing well to get over 20 going through town anyway.

You're conflating the throttle and the pedal assist. The throttle should only get it up to walking speed; about 6kph. Once it takes it past that, whether or not it's capable of 15mph or 58mph is entirely irrelevant.

@ktache Isn't it "LTNs BAD, cul-de-sacs and a quiet village green good*"? * As long as we can drive into town, of course...

@Robert Hardy As Rendel suggests, I'm not certain that any wheeled mode of transport - even at speeds well below the limit - would have avoided tragedy here. Although the road around the *outside* of the park where IIRC this occurred (Outer Circle) isn't "the main drag" (that would be e.g. Park Road / Marylebone Road) it is wide enough to put a question mark over "casual crossing". And indeed there are signalised crossings... Leaving aside "but racing cyclists!!" for now, looking at how safety might be improved here let's see how others do this. For example: West End of the Vondelpark in Amsterdam is on a "main road" (Amstelveenseweg). (The rest are very much "streets"). What happens there where pedestrians are crossing to and from the park? As it's a main road (and with tramlines) there are cycle paths (in this case unidirectional). That means that everyone knows where everyone else is and what to expect. The cycle path is really obvious, and it's only a couple of paces wide. People expect cyclists in that section, but being narrow compared to the road lanes it's simple to cross - so much so that no lights are used. cross. (Although unusually - presumably due to very high flows of pedestrians and cyclists - there is a *marked* crossing point). Once you've negotiated the cycle lane you can then wait (again in "pedestrian space") and concentrate on "watching for the cars" at a signalised crossing if needed (because it takes longer to cross the road part). I think there is space in the Regents Park case for cycle paths of some kind...

Oxfordshire very quietly made all it's villages 20mph a couple of years back.

My favourite bit was when they passed The Lion & Snake at the top of the hill. I had a nice burger with bang bang cauliflower wings and chips there a few years ago. Maybe an alternative refuelling option for the cyclists.

Those high pressure slick roadie tyres exert more pressure than a landing jumbo jet...

maybe we shouldn't be making cars so big and heavy?

It's worth noting that Fife (where Dunfermline is) started implementing 20's in 2005. By 2015 all residential zones and town centres had them. The additional new ones in Dunfermline reported above are just for a small number of remaining streets to meet the guidance from the SG. Fife Council used traffic calming and compliance is very good as a result. The vast majority of people support them.

@Robert Hardy The lady was standing on a traffic island in the road giving every appearance of waiting for the cyclists to go by. She then, according to independent eye witnesses, for unknown reasons, stepped out in front of the rider when he was two metres away. Even at 15mph two metres takes 0.30 of a second; the baseline reaction time as employed by the guidance in the Highway Code is 0.67 seconds. To have had that amount of time to react (that's to even start pulling the brakes) the rider would have had to be travelling at 7.5mph. The lady's death was, sadly, caused by her own actions in stepping straight in front of a cyclist who had no chance to stop and would not have done even if he had been going at one third of his actual speed. That's why no criminal proceedings were taken against the cyclist. Just for your information, as you seem to think "it was a road in a public park" is somehow damning, the Outer Circle marks the outer perimeter of the park, and it is a very busy standard London road. The Daily Mail and The Evening Standard tried this "cyclists thundering through a public park" line with pictures of locations in the park where cyclists are banned, it has no validity.