Random road stuff

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

“A pedestrian who shouted and waved her arm aggressively at a cyclist on the pavement, causing her to fall into the path of an oncoming car, has been jailed for three years for manslaughter.“


https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/02/pedestrian-jailed-manslaughter-cyclist-fall-car-huntingdon?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I do think that those who set out to demonise cyclists bear responsibility for legitimising attacks and putting us in physical danger.

[diapsaon0]

One can't be sure, but it looks as though the pedestrian 'lashed out' or even shoved the cyclist who swerved to avoid her 'attack' without looking into the road behind her.  Tragic.

[diapsaon0]

It does look from the footage that the pedestrian lashed out at or even shoved the cyclist - who was an elderly lady. 

[rr]

Between 2013 and 2020 an average of 3.8 pedestrians died in collisions with a cyclist every year

always does some heavy lifting in these stories (it's true, but that's any collision, even those where the pedestrian steps out in front of a cyclist).

Presumably she got to London in a large car, which definitely won't ruin anything, other than the world.

Speaking of aggressive pedestrians:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-64824436

The convict looks nice.

To show how stupid pavement psyclepaths are (often no different to pavements apart from a few signs), it took the court rather too long to determine that this was, in fact, a shared-use path.

I've just streetviewed it, I can't see any sign that it is a shared path, no signs, no dropped kerbs, no tactile paving, narrow and covered in signs. Barely adequate as a footpath, no room for a cyclist and pedestrian to pass.
Busy, two lane, one way road, can see why people wouldn't want to ride on it

https://maps.app.goo.gl/LvGQN6uGysGCoAET9
Here I think

Sent from my motorola edge 20 using Tapatalk

[Kim]

Among the many problems with shared use paths is that only cyclists pay attention to the signs and paint.  The usual problem is pedestrians not knowing which side of a line of magic paint is the supposed cycleway, a problem exacerbated by the frequency of signs being far too low for there to be one within sight when a cyclist appears.

Obviously the effort of resolving this would be better spent on making some cycling infrastructure.

[Kim]

I can't help wondering how it would have gone had the victim been an 18 year old boy.

[rafletcher]

I can't help wondering how it would have gone had the victim been an 18 year old boy.

This is what I thought too.

[DaveReading]

I've just streetviewed it, I can't see any sign that it is a shared path, no signs, no dropped kerbs, no tactile paving, narrow and covered in signs. Barely adequate as a footpath, no room for a cyclist and pedestrian to pass.

There is in fact a shared path sign about 400 yards prior to the spot where the event happened, but no further signs that I can see to indicate either the continuation or the end of such.

[chrisbainbridge]

Apparently even the police were not sure after their research.

[DaveReading]

The police are the last people I would expect to be able to give a definitive answer.

[rogerzilla]

I found the shared use sign, but it took some searching.  It's just a normal pavement with a sign, not a widened psyclepath.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Recently I was passed by a pavement cyclist on a very similar pavement that was NOT shared use.  It never occurred to me to push him off into the path of oncoming traffic.  I can't imagine why not. 

[Jurek]

I found the shared use sign, but it took some searching.  It's just a normal pavement with a sign, not a widened psyclepath.

Shared use sign is deffo there. Albeit hard to find.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Bikes are now the most common vehicles on the roads of the City of London.

But still vastly outnumbered by pedestrians.

https://road.cc/content/news/bikes-most-popular-transport-mode-city-roads-299693

[SoreTween]

I don't know whether to suspect poor research from auntie beeb's reporter or that sustrans got involved with the planning and excelled themselves:
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-64825741

Gloucestershire County Council has started to build a 26-mile (41.8km) cycle route that will connect Gloucester to Cheltenham.

Cheltenham & Gloucester are ~10 miles apart

[Adam]

Bad BBC reporting.  The planned full 26 mile route is from Stroud to Bishops Cleeve, with the Cheltenham to Gloucester bit in the middle being one of the sections they've got funding for.

https://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/20142800.multi-million-pound-boost-26-mile-cycle-route-stroud/

[Steph]

I can't help wondering how it would have gone had the victim been an 18 year old boy.

This is what I thought too.

Or the perpetrator been in a car

[Kim]

I can't help wondering how it would have gone had the victim been an 18 year old boy.

This is what I thought too.

Or the perpetrator been in a car

I don't think we have to wonder about that.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Bad BBC reporting.  The planned full 26 mile route is from Stroud to Bishops Cleeve, with the Cheltenham to Gloucester bit in the middle being one of the sections they've got funding for.

https://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/20142800.multi-million-pound-boost-26-mile-cycle-route-stroud/

A map would have been a good inclusion in the article.

[MikeFromLFE]

For those interested in the logic of the sentence for the person who pushed the cyclist into traffic handed down - here's a link to the judge's ruling.

https://rozenberg.substack.com/p/why-grey-got-three-years

[Kim]

Bad BBC reporting.  The planned full 26 mile route is from Stroud to Bishops Cleeve, with the Cheltenham to Gloucester bit in the middle being one of the sections they've got funding for.

https://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/20142800.multi-million-pound-boost-26-mile-cycle-route-stroud/

A map would have been a good inclusion in the article.

First rule of articles about cycle routes is never include a map (links to online shops where people can buy paper maps, having magically decided they're interested in the route without knowing where it goes are permitted).  It's a tradition, or an old charter or something.

Sustrans used to be really good at this, but they've got some new webby SCIENCE that presents helpful overview images, and only redeems itself at the last minute by linking to some OS maps thing that doesn't work in my browser.

[tom_e]

For those interested in the logic of the sentence for the person who pushed the cyclist into traffic handed down - here's a link to the judge's ruling.

https://rozenberg.substack.com/p/why-grey-got-three-years

Interesting.  I had wondered why it was quite so decisive in this case. 

It looks like she didn't appear remorseful and didn't testify in court, which makes it harder to pull off any sense of "I was terrified by the cyclist and didn't mean to hurt them".

Arguably a protracted failure of the attitude test, with the same tricky question of whether this is partially disability-related, or just aggressive unpleasantness.

Hopefully the publicity over the case sends the message that "we all need to look out for each other", rather than "you have to get out of the way of cyclists on the pavement". 

[Kim]

Interesting that the footway being designated shared-use (which appears to have been marked so poorly as to count as a technicality) seems to be secondary to the expectation of encountering cyclists on it.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Killer lorry driver faces trial after prosecution rejects guilty plea

Dr Krawiec, a children’s doctor, was riding to the clinic where she worked in Lavender Hill, Clapham Junction, when she was run over and killed by 68-year-old Kevin Allen at the junction of Southampton Row and Theobalds Road.

..
Allen, from Forest Town, Nottinghamshire, has been handed an interim disqualification order by Judge Sarah Munro KC. The driving ban will be reviewed following the conclusion of the trial, which is due to open on 2 January 2024 and last five days.

Following the death of Dr Krawiec, both Stop Killing Cyclists and the London Cycling Campaign held protests at Holborn Gyratory, where despite several cyclists being killed in crashes involving large vehicles in the past decade or so, there is no physical protection from motor traffic for people on bikes.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've just witnessed a classic Motorican stand-off. Just after 3pm, school run time, and it's raining fairly heavily. There's a primary school on a T junction of narrow residential streets, effectively one car wide owing to parking. The horizontal bar of the T is used as a cut-through on the way in and out of town (there's actually a plan to make it one-way to partially combat that, but nothing's happened on that yet). So one motorist is coming along the horizontal and wants to turn to his right into the vertical (which also happens to be a steep uphill, though not of course actually vertical). But he can't because there's a car stationary in the middle of the junction. The driver of that car can't reverse because he has a tail of half a dozen cars behind him in the effectively singletrack section, almost all the way back to the mini-roundabout (and the ones at the back probably couldn't even see what was happening). The driver who wants to turn has no one behind him. But he probably wants the other driver to go up the hill, which that driver won't do because he thinks the other one should back up. Well I'm sure they both know their rights and will stick to them.

(click to show/hide)

It almost struck me as a metaphor for Brexit: we've all gained sovereignty and thereby become immobilised...