“Richmond Park is just horribly dangerous”: Drivers stream past child cycling in the park, + calls for more cycling and walking in Lake District; G wins Dauphiné stage…just; Calls for Highway Code change; Snapped Pinarello + more on the live blog

38 thoughts on ““Richmond Park is just horribly dangerous”: Drivers stream past child cycling in the park, + calls for more cycling and walking in Lake District; G wins Dauphiné stage…just; Calls for Highway Code change; Snapped Pinarello + more on the live blog”

1. I didn’t know that there was

   I didn’t know that there was a World Bicycle Day…

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   • Without wishing to belittle

     Without wishing to belittle any of them, there are many World/International Days: https://www.un.org/en/observances/list-days-weeks

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   • There are two main Bicycle

     There are two main Bicycle Days, one of them is on drugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_Day

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   • Just in case I came across

     Just in case I came across any Trolls I thought I’d get my Richard Herring prepared:

     Richard Herring is raising £100,000 for Refuge on Twitter by answering anyone who asks when International Men’s Day is

     I have found reference to a National Car Day in October. tbf, a bit like International Men’s Day, I can’t find any actual events to celebrate it.

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   • brooksby wrote:

     I didn’t know that there was a World Bicycle Day…

     — brooksby

     it’s the day the media only talks about electric cars.

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   • brooksby wrote:

     I didn’t know that there was a World Bicycle Day…

     — brooksby

     Has there been any coverage, any at all, of this in the UK media?  I know the BBC has spent National Bike Week talking about electric cars, but what about the rest.

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     • I was hit by a car in RP in

       I was hit by a car in RP in early Feb – dumped on road by a negigent driver – but perhaps evan worse was the deliberate use of a vehcle as a weapon by an idiot in landrover beeping and pushing cyclists off the road up dark hill forcing me to stop. 

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2. Why wasn’t the Dad acting as

   Why wasn’t the Dad acting as a buffer zone?

   Did the kid sign the code of conduct though?

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   • Tough one has he had two

     Tough one has he had two children with the other one setting off whilst waiting for the first. But yes, probably should be chaperoning the “slower” one with it being a park open to arseholes.

     The merc on 12 seconds is telling though (and the following Ford), close to the first cyclist, fully the other side of the road and indicatiing when he realises there is a child ahead. Just a shame we never saw how the last two punishment passers decided to  approach the child. 

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3. Not exactly a great advert

   Not exactly a great advert for carbon frames is it?

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   • Pretty sure the frame being

     Pretty sure the frame being carbon didn’t cause that crash

      

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     • It was more to do with what’s

       It was more to do with what’s left of it afterwards. Given it’s “just” a broken collarbone I’d imagine it wasn’t a Froome or Evanpoel-level off and yet the bike is in bits.

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   • kil0ran wrote:

     Not exactly a great advert for carbon frames is it?

     — kil0ran

     Curiously little information available – legal reasons? – but according to Velonews his coach said “He was riding at a fairly high speed at the start of a descent. We don’t know what exactly happened, but Tom was hit from the side by a car. Due to the impact, he was catapulted over the car. His bicycle partially absorbed the impact and broke into two pieces.”

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     • Quote:

       Read the full story here…*

        

       * May not actually contain full story.

       

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4. OK, I hate myself for saying

   OK, I hate myself for saying this. OK, have a go at me. But…I’ve been riding in Richmond Park nigh-on forty years and in all that time I’ve been devoutly wishing that it would be made car free (and have written numerous letters/signed petitions to that effect). However, there is an excellent firm and mainly level trail (the Tamsin Trail) that runs round the periphery of the park, about fifty yards to the left of the road shown here. If I had a child with me of that age/size who couldn’t hold a straight line uphill, no way would I expose them to the stupid, selfish drivers using the park as a cutthrough. Yes the kid has a right to use the road, yes the cars shouldn’t be there, but for me it’s just too high risk, especially when there’s a perfectly decent alternative. Sorry.

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   • Rendel Harris wrote:

     OK, I hate myself for saying this. OK, have a go at me. But…I’ve been riding in Richmond Park nigh-on forty years and in all that time I’ve been devoutly wishing that it would be made car free (and have written numerous letters/signed petitions to that effect). However, there is an excellent firm and mainly level trail (the Tamsin Trail) that runs round the periphery of the park, about fifty yards to the left of the road shown here. If I had a child with me of that age/size who couldn’t hold a straight line uphill, no way would I expose them to the stupid, selfish drivers using the park as a cutthrough. Yes the kid has a right to use the road, yes the cars shouldn’t be there, but for me it’s just too high risk, especially when there’s a perfectly decent alternative. Sorry.

     — Rendel Harris

     Understood from a pragmatic perspective. However from a principled perspective, it wouldn’t be you exposing them to the risk, it would be teh drivers..

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   • I thought the lad looked a

     I thought the lad looked a bit too young. I wonder if they had parked up nearby and were unaware of the trail?

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     • hirsute wrote:

       I thought the lad looked a bit too young. I wonder if they had parked up nearby and were unaware of the trail?

       — hirsute

       Maybe they thought, “where would be a nice safe environment for Junior to gain confidence cycling on a road?”
       Of course, a nature reserve, that’s got to be quieter than the South Circular?

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5. Quote:

   how can we get less people driving to National Parks or local beauty spots?

   Provide a decent bus service, bike hire scheme, train service (that carries bikes). Ban cars entering without permits. Permits available for short periods and long periods. Permits require you scoring enough points (because we all like a good points system). Points for disability and infirmity. Infirmity can be both temporary or permamnet (i.e. through old age, very young age, pregnancy etc). Points for genuinely having to carry a lot of stuff (e.g. tradespeople working in the area). Maybe limited short term permits for full vehicles (i.e. you can drive as long as there are at least 4 people in your car). Points for people who actually live in the area.

   The system can be rolled out slowly. Maybe in the beginning you get a few points for living nearby but this tapers off over the years. Every year review how many points are allocated for what and try to optimise a bit more. As public transport networks are improved you can make points harder to get.

   Use cameras to catch people who enter without a permit and make them sponsor a bus route or work it off improving the area.

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   • I can see a good bus shuttle

     I can see a good bus shuttle system – whether from train stations or car parks – replacing most of the traffic. But it’d be expensive to have enough capacity for the few busy days a year, given that most days there aren’t many people there at all.

     It isn’t exactly the low-hanging fruit, that I can see.

     It’s worth noting that some proportion of visitors coming by car are there as a stop on a longer journey. That doesn’t make sense when doing the same journey by train, IMO. We’re so far away from leisure travel being mostly non-car that it isn’t funny, but by the same token we’re decades away from people arriving at national parks by shared transport. As much as we might like to suggest alternatives, the trips to places like that are one of the few almost unarguable use-cases for cars, as things stand.

     From where I live, the only sane way to go to the South Downs is by train – it’s quicker and a lot easier than crossing or going round the whole of London. But train to the New Forest instead is 4 hours, where driving is maybe 90 mins with a bit of traffic, or about an hour in clear conditions, driving at normal motorway speeds. 

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     • Your arguement is a good one

       Your arguement is a good one for a shuttle type bus service as one can direct people to park where it can be sensibly accomodated and then buses run to popular destinations within a national park. Public transport may not be possible for every starting destination as they will start from differing points through the country but the destination point is more focussed with the current situation creating a problem that defeats why most people visit a NP, to gain solitude and be with nature. A shuttle bus service needs to run at peak times when demand creates the problem but with some NP’s, Snowdonia, the Lake District and parts of the Peak District this is effectively most of the summer  then it can be continous ie not on and off and should run to a late hour so people do not worry about being caught by being late down from a mountain. In the future autonomous shuttle services may be possible which would reduce costs.

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     • Dave Dave wrote:

       I can see a good bus shuttle system – whether from train stations or car parks – replacing most of the traffic. But it’d be expensive to have enough capacity for the few busy days a year, given that most days there aren’t many people there at all.

       — Dave Dave

       Efficiency can be improved with intelligent routing. i.e. bus stops have a call button that signals the bus system that someone is there (if you are very fancy you can even tell it where you are going) and the bus routes are recalculated dynamically to cope with the flows. You then also have a good estimate for how busy the network is and so have the ability to call in more busses and drivers if you have access to a pool who don’t mind being on standby ala Uber.

       If numbers are small enough it might make sense to use those mini-busses that are easier to drive. Bigger pool of drivers available and fit down those narrow lanes better. Then you can have some nearly direct bus services if your group is large enough to fill one.

       It’s worth noting that some proportion of visitors coming by car are there as a stop on a longer journey. That doesn’t make sense when doing the same journey by train, IMO.

       — Dave Dave

       Only because of the bad train system in the UK and we may as well fix that while we are at it 🙂 There should be no problem with stop overs on longer journeys. There should be no financial penalty for the passenger.

       We’re so far away from leisure travel being mostly non-car that it isn’t funny, but by the same token we’re decades away from people arriving at national parks by shared transport. As much as we might like to suggest alternatives, the trips to places like that are one of the few almost unarguable use-cases for cars, as things stand.

       — Dave Dave

       I think it is arguable and I would argue it. Provide decent public transport links (and cycle and walking routes) then make it less and less convenient to do it by car.

       People can’t still be driving those journeys in 10 years or so if we are to fix the air pollution/climate change/congestion problems so may as well start now so things can be phased in.

       But train to the New Forest instead is 4 hours, where driving is maybe 90 mins with a bit of traffic, or about an hour in clear conditions, driving at normal motorway speeds. 

       — Dave Dave

       That is terrible but its not beyond our power to fix it with some shift of priorities from private transport to public. We could even give people more holidays if they don’t use a car so any extra time taken is allowed for 😉

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   • What a superb european style

     What a superb european style string of ideas. Ah…

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6. Not sure about giving
   Not sure about giving cyclists priority on roundabouts, but I would like to see a blanket 10mph speed limit around roundabouts.

   Even as a car driver I find larger roundabouts intimidating, since the performance of some cars is way beyond what was envisaged when the roundabouts were designed. Startling 0-60 acceleration times (which will become commonplace with electric cars) coupled with cornering performance make it very difficult to judge entering a roundabout. And it seems some of their drivers delight it using the performance to put ‘lesser’ drivers in their place.

   There is really no advantage in tearing round a roundabout, beyond giving one the excuse to blast their horn at people they catch out.

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   • Sriracha wrote:

     And it seems some of their drivers delight it using the performance to put ‘lesser’ drivers in their place. There is really no advantage in tearing round a roundabout, beyond giving one the excuse to blast their horn at people they catch out.

     — Sriracha

     A little unfair. Occasionally roundabouts are places it’s legal to enjoy driving, nothing to do with ‘putting lesser drivers in their place’.

     And there is an advantage to carrying speed through roundabouts on fast roads, especially in a car without lots of power to accelerate again. It must be worth, ooh, at least 30 seconds or a minute per 100 miles… 🙂 More to the point, it has a noticeable impact on fuel economy. What’s the expression? Look to go but be prepared to stop? Come in fairly slowly, so you have time to check nothing’s coming, or even pick your gap, and you can carry a relatively large amount of speed through the roundabout. Much more fuel efficient than coming in hard and having to stop.

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     • It’s the “pick your gap” part
       It’s the “pick your gap” part where it goes wrong with these 0-60 merchants. You pick a suitable gap, but as you go someone from the approach road to your right accelerates into it from a standing start, because they can do 0-60 in <8 seconds, which used to be "supercar" performance:
       https://www.zeroto60times.com/8-second-cars-0-60-mph-times/

       This is only going to get worse:
       https://uk.motor1.com/reviews/348411/electric-car-acceleration-times-compared/

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7. “John Cornfoth suffered a

   “John Cornfoth suffered a traumatic brain injury and pelvic fractures when he was hit by a driver at a roundabout near Chipping Sodbury in Gloucestershire.”

   Best wishes for a full and rapid recovery John, but that’s South Gloucestershire, the area where I was a CUK rep for what felt like a lifetime.  SGlos is obsessed with roundabouts, and almost totally ignore active travel when designing roads, frequently making them more dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists, not safer e.g. the A38/M5 junction, which is now a nightmare.  The re-engineering of this junction went against every policy they’ve got, but pointing that out was futile, just like every other time I’d done the same.

   At a cycle forum, the subject was mini-roundabouts, a traffic feature with a higher collision rate for cyclists than a T-junction or crossroads, but the SGlos road planner said that didn’t apply as there had only been twenty or so collisions involving cyclists in SGlos, but hundreds at other types of junction, and therefore they were safer.  Of course, at the time they had maybe a ten mini-roundabouts and tens of thousands of other junctions, but the councillors swallowed the lie hook, line and sinker.

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   • absolutely I hope he recovers

     absolutely I hope he recovers as quickly as possible, but we dont need new rules in the highway code to protect cyclists here, theres nothing that happened in his collision, or the countless similar collisions that cyclists literally bear the brunt of on roundabouts that motorists simply following the first basic rule on roundabouts wouldnt solve…”give way”.

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8. “Crews struggle to reach an

   “Crews struggle to reach an overturned boat in the Lake District due to an influx of congestion.”  BBC report.

   Quite the most weasily description possible, at the same time managing to avoid the use of “emergency” crews and neatly deflecting the responsibility from drivers.  Compare this to how it would have been described if it was a cycle lane being used by an ambulance to get past the congestion.  https://road.cc/content/news/cycling-live-blog-10-july-2020-275343

   I’ve said it before and I’ll doubtless say it again; the BBC is institutionally biased against cyclists and for drivers.

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   • eburtthebike wrote:

     “Crews struggle to reach an overturned boat in the Lake District due to an influx of congestion.”  BBC report.

     Quite the most weasily description possible, at the same time managing to avoid the use of “emergency” crews and neatly deflecting the responsibility from drivers.  Compare this to how it would have been described if it was a cycle lane being used by an ambulance to get past the congestion.  https://road.cc/content/news/cycling-live-blog-10-july-2020-275343

     I’ve said it before and I’ll doubtless say it again; the BBC is institutionally biased against cyclists and for drivers.

     — eburtthebike

     I think you’re being in unfair, the truth is staring us in the face. In London congestion has only influxed since the introduction of cycle lanes as we all know. In the Lake District there are countless miles of bridleways, which are often despicably used by cyclists. Coincidence? I should Coco!

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   • Love it – An “influx of
     Love it – “An influx of congestion”! Some kind of miasma which visits traffic upon car drivers. Where did it come from?

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9. Modal shift is achievable for

   Modal shift is achievable for somewhere like Richmond Park, and we should try to encourage modal shift wherever we can, but Wasdale Head is a much tougher nut to crack. It’s pretty much a canonical example of a destination where cars are the best option.

   By car: From my house in a generic Northern town, it’s a 3 hour drive to the foot of Scafell Pike. Schedules are flexible.

   By public transport: Set off at 05:30 to walk to the train station, first train of the day leaves 05:40, arrives Seascale station 11:14, then there’s no bus from Seascale to Wasdale Head. Maybe a £30 taxi ride or a 4 hour walk from Seascale, in that case. When there was a bus service, rider numbers were tiny.

   Alas, adding a bike to the mix is not practical for the vast majority of people heading to Wasdale.

   Maybe buses & trains could be improved a little, but not dramatically – there’s still a mountain range in the way, and outside of tourist season there’s minimal demand for public transport in Wasdale, and planning constraints would make it very difficult to get permission to build any significant new infra. Better to spend that money somewhere like Windermere instead, where there’s at least a chance of modal shift.

   So we’re stuck with lots of cars in Wasdale, and some % of drivers will park badly.

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10. roadsied parking is banned in

    roadside parking is banned in the New Forest, but it doesn’t stop them. BBQs and fires are also banned in the New Foreset, but it doesn’t stop them. Shitting in public is banned, but it doesn’t stop them. Rules, if we are going to have them, need to be enforced, and properly. Tow the cars away, and make it eyewateringly expensive, linked to means. I know some wealthy people that don’t care if they get a ticket, because they can afford it, so park where they like.

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    • Pyro Tim wrote:

      Tow the cars away, and make it eyewateringly expensive, linked to means. I know some wealthy people that don’t care if they get a ticket, because they can afford it, so park where they like.

      — Pyro TimThe government tried this about twenty years ago for some offences, but because rich people paid more, it was dropped.  One law for the rich…..

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      • That’s why towing is a great
        That’s why towing is a great idea. One law for all. Equal buggeration for all regardless of income (although I suppose some could send Jeeves, whilst they use another car from the stable). Plus it tackles the problem.

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      • eburtthebike wrote:

        Tow the cars away, and make it eyewateringly expensive, linked to means. I know some wealthy people that don’t care if they get a ticket, because they can afford it, so park where they like.

        — eburtthebike

        The government tried this about twenty years ago for some offences, but because rich people paid more, it was dropped.  One law for the rich…..

        — Pyro Tim

        the trouble of having an uninterupted Tory government for 42 years (I know red tied Tories were in power for 10 of those)

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        • Pyro Tim wrote:

          Tow the cars away, and make it eyewateringly expensive, linked to means. I know some wealthy people that don’t care if they get a ticket, because they can afford it, so park where they like.

          — Pyro Tim

          The government tried this about twenty years ago for some offences, but because rich people paid more, it was dropped.  One law for the rich…..

          — eburtthebike

          the trouble of having an uninterupted Tory government for 42 years (I know red tied Tories were in power for 10 of those)

          — Pyro Tim

          Thats the atitude that will keep this current bunch in power for longer, the idea that appealing to the centre ground in the british political landscape makes the party tory results in the labout pary being steered away from an electible position.

          I guarantee there is no one in this country who voted conservative at the last election because the labour party wasn’t socialist enough. If they are steered further left by zealots calling the modertes in the party tories then the current shambolic government will be handed a larger majority. 

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11. Quote:

    the proposed addition to Rule 186 would state that drivers should give priority to cyclists on roundabouts as they will be travelling more slowly. Drivers should give them plenty of room and should not attempt to overtake them within their lane. Drivers should allow cyclists to move across their path as they travel around the roundabout. Drivers should take extra care when entering a roundabout to ensure that they do not cut across cyclists who are continuing around the roundabout

    I don’t understand this, as a cylist ride centrally in your lane on the roundabout, then they can’t attempt to pass you wthin the lane. If it is a small roundabout the delay will be minimal, if it is a large roundabout there will be another lane they can use. Riding to the side of the lane, offers the option of trying to pass wthin the lane.

    as to the second half surely this is already the rule – anyone entering the roundabout should yield priority to anyone already on the roundabout. It seems incredibly likely to me that the driver did not see the cyclict (because of not looking properly) so the proposed rule change should be about taking extra care (look twice) while looking as cyclists may be hard to see or obscured by car pillars, rather than about giving priority to them which is already the case.

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