Live blog: Bank Junction trial sees huge drop in casualties, #wrongsideoftheroad driver vs cyclist Mexican stand-off and way more
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Tue, May 15, 2018 13:30
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Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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Latest Comments
mdavidford 7 minutes ago
@chrisonabike I think we probably do need a finer grained approach than power-of-ten speed limits, unless you're going to allow for fractional powers, which is going to put an excessive cognitive load on the poor old drivers...
mdavidford 16 minutes ago
Were you always missing the first period?
chrisonabike 55 minutes ago
@Rendel Harris indeed, but giving this a sympathetic reading it *is* a bit harder to see cyclists especially in low light conditions. I think this usually means "I was a bit startled when I noticed cyclists where not expecting them / so late that if I had needed to I wouldn't have had time for evasive action". That might be when unlit non-reflective cyclists appear from a side road - or where people are salmoning against traffic flow / on and off the footway. We all have tons of experience looking for motor vehicles and are familiar with where they'll be and how they will move. Cyclists are significantly smaller, have more complicated shapes and may not be exactly "where we expect the motor vehicles". They may be moving at unexpected velocities. Plus even if cars don't have their lights on they tend to reflect. I put this one in the "follow the opposite philosophy to 'shared space' for better safety" category. That is: safety between road users is enhanced when a) people can clearly see other road users b) and have as much time as possible to deal with them c) and know exactly where to expect them / what to expect from those other road users. Most humans perform very poorly when faced with the unfamiliar and worse when startled...
chrisonabike 1 hour ago
@ajuk.uk@gmail.com "There does seem to be evidence that 20 mph limits work on roads that already lend themselves to such low speeds, and I do think the lack of a 25 mph limit option is an issue for some roads." Again - not disagreeing that numbers alone are not the best way. But I ask: were people already doing 20mph or near that when those roads that "lend themselves" to that speed had a 30mph sign? I would expect in most cases the answer was "no, people saw thirty and that primed them for the 'expected' speed". Or perhaps "they hadn't noticed the signs at all but it seemed like e.g. a residential area and they recalled from all those years back 30mph probably made sense"? Since we've previously gone through the evidence * that merely changing a number on a sign *does* in fact change behaviour and lower average speeds, and AFAICS nobody has proposed a "a set amount" they hope it will constrain people to ... ... is it fair you're disputing the evidence because it doesn't fit with how you feel it *should* work / your local experience? Or do you believe that eventually everyone will revert back to the old speed or higher because 'freedom' or because nobody's actually getting nicked for ignoring the limit? (And if the latter - what's the point of proposing that the speed limits should help with policing, if there aren't the police?) While I can believe that the truly reckless and *some* less circumspect wrong'uns are more likely also to wildly speed, I think this assertion needs more scrutiny **. As for "forcing the police to target them" I think it's been amply illustrated on this site that many of the police don't feel forced into doing much if any enforcement on the roads (see wtjs etc.). Even where they are more active the level of enforcement isn't such to make many drivers worry about "what happens if I break the law *and* get caught?" I don't feel we need 25 or 32 or other intermediate speed limits. In practice where there's enforcement at all there *may* be the discretionary 10% + a few mph in play - so you might even be fine and not fined doing 35mph in a 30mph limit. But you're far more likely simply not to experience any enforcement. And even if you are detected it's still first chance, then maybe any number of 2nd, 3rd etc. with a reasonable lawyer / sympathetic magistrate. Although if you feel the most important thing is to identify indifferent drivers (and assuming we've got enough police / cameras / "spy in the car" black boxes from somewhere) then having lots of non-power-of-ten speed limit signs might be a way to spot who's paying attention or not. Or ... if we changed to km/h (imagine!) you get a finer-grained 10 / 20 / 30 etc. * The last time this topic came up, or the time before! ** I don't know if anyone has studied this, but I'm not sure of the relative amounts of harm caused by a) a small minority of reckless joyriders and "sod getting a licence" types (who *are* very likely to cause serious harm) and b) vastly more "average reasonable drivers" - who are human and thus cut corners and sometimes make unfathomable errors - who cause damage (up to killing people and destroying buildings) at a small but definitely non-zero rate overall. It wouldn't surprise me if the overall determinant of harm turned out to be simply proportional to the number of drivers times time driven for times some measure of speed. (Since speed reduces both time to do something about a situation and increases the harm, absent a lot of engineering to mitigate it - e.g. evidence shows motorways are statistically safe environments).
belugabob 1 hour ago
Now the wands are gone, I look forward to the cycling lanes being cleaned regularly - and not parked in (thereby leaving plenty of room for the buses and emergency vehicles) (all to delivered before Coventry win the FA cup again)
chrisonabike 2 hours ago
@perce everyone should wear lights, full stop. And punctuate properly - that really gets up my colon! Anyway, must dash...
perce 2 hours ago
@Ojisan My old English teacher told me i had to work on my punctuation, so I started going to school half an hour earlier.
60somethingcyclist 3 hours ago
Arrogant obnoxious Tory.
Rendel Harris 3 hours ago
How do you see them then? Do you regularly drive into black cars?
eburtthebike 3 hours ago
@Blackthorne83 He'd love to, but some bastard's taken out the cycle lanes.
20 thoughts on “Live blog: Bank Junction trial sees huge drop in casualties, #wrongsideoftheroad driver vs cyclist Mexican stand-off and way more”
The wrongsideoftheroad video
The #wrongsideoftheroad video just makes me despair of western civilisation on a number of levels.
For the record, it looks to me like the car was most of the way past the parked cars and would have got to the gap for the cyclist to pass without event, had he waited approx 1 sec. Aside from the fact there was plenty of room for the bike and car to pass anyway. Cyclist is a knob.
PRSboy wrote:
Aye – the (possibly apocryphal) quote from Gandhi springs to mind….
Entirely agree.
Cyclist being a dickhead,
Cyclist being a dickhead, whats the point of that?
Save it for the aggresive moron drivers, lifes way too short for that kind of crap.
And the hashtag is just bollocks too!
Driver does well, reversing is what the cyclist wanted so if the bike is damaged in the fall, so be it!
Advice to cyclist.
Advice to cyclist.
Check behind, if clear slow or stop and wave the car through. You maintain control of the situation, usually get an acknowledgement of appreciation and everyone gets to go on their way, one of them with maybe a better attitude towards cyclists.
Love how people blame the
Love how people blame the cyclist who isn’t doing anything wrong while the driver tries to bully their way through a vulnerable road user. If you don’t stand up to the bullies, they will just keep on bullying the vulnerable, is that what anyone wants?
Presumably, if it was an articulated truck, or a chieftan tank, instead of a bloke on a bike, they would be in the wrong too?
How difficult is it to reverse back to where you should have stopped when there was oncoming traffic on the side of the road you’re not usually supposed to use?
ChrisB200SX wrote:
This – replace cyclist in this situation with other car and think about it.
Htc wrote:
Replace the cyclist with a car and the car would wait for the other car to pass. I have this situation on a particular road on the way to work every day, just ease off the pedals for 3 seconds and there’s no problem.
Typical modern driving about
Typical modern driving about who gets there first and not about following the highway code.
Not really enough room for both as that would be a close pass.
OK.
OK.
You are driving a car and you come to a line of parked cars that someone is already overtaking towards you and on ‘your’ side of the road.
Check mirrors, adjust speed or stop to allow oncoming vehicle sufficient room to complete manouvere. Flash lights (note – unofficial signal) to indicate acknowledgement of the presence of the other vehicle.
Exchange nod of thanks, continue on way.
What I find odd is that there
What I find odd is that there are literally thousands of hours of video out there featuring drivers being dickheads and, worse, endangering others’ lives but the only ones that ever seem to go viral (with the exception of dramatic accidents) are those cases where the cyclist is being a bit of a dick.
Htc wrote:
I did – he’s a cock. He’d be a cock in a car, in a van, in a lorry, tank or anything else. The other driver and vehicle have reached the other end of the restricted, due to a long line of parked cars, highway when they are then blocked – a couple of feet short – by the other vehicle and driver who presumably had a clear view of the situation as the other vehicle approached, already committed with nowhere else to go. The cars behind the cyclist don’t seem to have a problem, although it’s difficult to say when they got there.
We have a similar situation to what you’re asking about with a road just up from our house, where there is basically only room for one car at a time. We have almost zero problems and the people approaching know to let anyone already in the restricted part of the road through – everyone is fine and it never takes more than a few seconds or a minute (edit : not even that) at most to get going. What’s so tricky about that ?
fukawitribe wrote:
A “long line” of three cars, parked nose-to-tail… of which the driver has managed to clear one-and-a-bit of them (basically “a couple of feet“).
Indeed, other drivers behind the cock driver seem to have been able to see the other lane isn’t clear, this driver must have had a clear view of the situation when they decided to bully their way through when a cyclist was coming the other way and had nowhere to go because they were nearly along the row of parked cars.
Think about the likely difference in speeds, and then stopping distances, work backwards from there…. is the cyclist likely to have just teleported to the middle of the lane where he has stopped?
Round the corner from where I used to work, I used to always get people driving at me on my side of the road when they had a long line of cars blocking their lane. Every time, I was already passing said vehicles before the driver even arrived. Three guesses who always had to dive into the gutter to avoid the bullies in motor vehicles.
ChrisB200SX wrote:
OK, fair enough – “line of cars” however it looked like two more cars behind that – with spaces, one for the end marked bay – and then the third (white Peugeot) that was angled to move pass. Could be wrong – but no, not a ‘couple of feet ‘. The first of those cars has a window open, can’t see anyone in, that’s about 6-7 car lengths to the back of him and then the second of those, looks like someone is walking back to that, is another couple of lengths further back. So in total between 3 and 9 lengths of obstruction, plus room for manouve at each end. Edit : I was wondering if the fact that anything car sized or wider is going to be ‘on the wrong side of the road’ going past any of them had occured to the cyclist – it was unavoidable, and people can and do cope with it elsewhere IME.
I was considering that, and the distance the cars are behind the cyclist, and to me it seemed far more likely that the cyclist was there second. I don’t think he teleported, I don’t think the car teleported where it did either, I just don’t think he was prepared to spend any time letting the car through. We’ll never know I guess, without any more footage – still behaving like a cock in my opinion. Perhaps I let his delivery bug the crap out of me and I owe the guy an apology – after all the other person was driving a car so, guilty – or perhaps he wasn’t he angel some of portraying.
Looks like a couple of parked
Looks like a couple of parked cars to me and the driver just went for it in the face of the oncoming cyclist. Happens loads as ‘Its only a bike’. But the guy was a dick. A tut and an arm wave would have been sufficient.
cyclist being a dick to make
cyclist being a dick to make his point. There’s actually room for both of them if going carefully, he just chooses to be obstructive.
Too easy to blame the
Too easy to blame the vulnerable road user when there was obviously not enough time to get past the parked vehicles before an oncoming road user approached. That’s a failure of judging speed of others, something you would get a black mark on your driving test as you forced others whom had priority to brake/stop.
Without the full info of how this came about it’s difficult in any case.
I’ve been in similar lots of times, you take primary and are just starting to go past the parked traffic when an oncoming motorist guns it despite having seen your approach, you slow/come to a stop to avoid collision and then it seems like you are in the wrong (as per the video) because they are further up the line than you when that is not the case at all and in fact they should still have given way beforehand. This particularly happens if you are not going at a decent speed (and why should you)
The chances of a motorist stopping when you’re already approaching first to the parked cars on your side is simply never going to happen, if you allow drivers to bully their way through ceding way they’ll simply take the piss all the time. Yes in some circumstances you can hang back when they are clearly already in mid maneouvre but as I said it’s not always apparent as to the full situation because of the speed disparity.
Not acting like a cock,
Not acting like a cock, making a point that trying to bully your way through is not acceptable, again you made assumptions and failed to grasp that the increased speed of the motor will take them further up the ‘line’ of parked vehicles and importantly the motorist failed to judge speed of an oncoming road user who has priority forcing them to brake/stop.
If there were a line of motorised traffic behind say another car and the motorist in the wrong here tried that do you think they would be in the right or wrong for attempting to overtake parked vehicles when there was clearly not enough space/time to do so without forcing (because that’s what it is) to cede priority and for them to brake possibly very sharply, which can cause a collision from behind?
If you knew anything about driving to a safe standard you would know that that is at the very least inconsiderate driving and contrary to the rules of the highway.
I made assumptions and listed
I made assumptions and listed them – and did grasp the potential speed differences and the place that the vehicles met – I just came to a different conclusion to you. As you said, without more information or video coverage we’re in the dark, and your last conclusion is irrelevent.
I hope he spends all eternity
I hope he spends all eternity waiting to get out of a side road with an endless stream of slowish moving traffic that could stop and let him out, but its their right of way…