Family says authorities "aren't really bothered" that cyclist died on Cambridge guided busway

Clipping a fence and maybe hitting the tarmac would of course be painful and may cause injuries, but this is preferable to being run over by the wheels of an 8 1/2 tonne bus.

Potentionally yes but that's thing that regrettably they will way up the cost to the economy of 1000 minors verses 1 fatal

I beg to differ. If it was a railway track Network Rail would insist on one.

No one is saying that, only a fence will make it pyscologically different (feel narrower), a network rail path, a bus path or any other path will feel narrower  

They won't crash on to the track though.

Hopefully not if its designed right

A kneejerk retrofit IME turns out to be useless or even dangerous its self.  Its unfortunately too late now but it should have been properly designed from the start, properly segregated and wider which would have allowed for a safe installation of a fence

Except that they are perfectly entitled to walk 2 abreast or even across the entire width of the path in a group. Use a bell, call out, but if they don't move to let you past then unfortunately you have to put up with good grace and wait until it is safe to overtake. It is a shared use path, not a cycle path infested with pesky pedestrians.

To combine this with what SocratiCyclist asks about cycling on the right, we may have had the situation whereby some pedestrians left a gap on their right from the point of view of the rider; they cycled through that gap but made a mis-judgement and fell onto the busway. As Wee Jobbie, Captian Badger (and others while I was writing this) say, dying for making such a mistake is a grievous failure of the design, a failure that, as they say, is easily rectified now, but could equally easily have been implemented before.

I'm gonna sound like a grump. But hey-ho  

In these times of social distancing - certain pedestrians should be thinking more about their positioning ( honestly ).    

As a pedestrian, runner, and cyclist - it does amaze me how a party of two or three pedestrians can willfully spread across the entire width of a say 10ft path. Naturally calling out politely to them will result in them eventually making space to pass. But 1. it shouldn't really be necessary to request permission to pass;  2. they often leave space to pass but not sufficient space to "distance" and 3. they invariably over-spread themselves back out, after the pass is done - like no one else is subsequently expected to want to use the path

I get it that pedestrians are not vehicles. And are entitled to wander without a care, and to enjoy their stroll.   And it is not a great hardship to ask them for space to pass, and potentially to wait at each such encounter whilst they order themselves. And to ask for a bit more space if they still only leave say 3ft out of 10ft

But it would be nice if those ( certain ) pedestrians would not need to be asked, and were more aware of leaving social distancing ( and therefore passing ) space - whether it be for cyclists, runners or other pedestrians 

Hands. Face. Space. ( from memory )

not at all, but I do think its perfectly reasonable to ask people to be more aware of the environments they are walking around in because it helps them as much as anyone else, but precious few seem to be inclined to think they need to be, which is also why youll struggle to find anyone staying 1m away from you in a supermarket at the moment, let alone the recommended 2m.

I have no problem with slowing down and asking people to move over on shared paths, this is what I would expect a motorist to do if I was riding 2 abreast on a shared road. I do sometimes feel guilty that my bell sounds a bit aggressive but almost without exception the pedestrians are grateful for the warning.

I do agree though that few people will leave enough room to give 2m. May be this is one of the reasons we are having a second lockdown.

Even walking in town I see groups 3, 4 abreast and they make no or little effort to move into a narrower space.
Some people have very little consideration of others.

even before Covid that kind of thing peeved me, its doubly so in the current situation, youd even just be walking towards people who were spread across a path and theyd expect you to walk around them, often off the path.

the current biggest annoyance is youll get a group and rather than pick a side for you both to all pass one another safely, like preferably the side you arent on, theyll split both sides and force you to go through the middle of them, making sure you all come within inches of each other rather than making sure you all get the maximum space.

Yes, "shared use". Exactly my point. As in pedestrians are no more entitled to take ownership of the path than cyclists.

imajez wrote:

Imagine if this was a segregated bike path alongside a normal road and this had happened. Would people be demanding that fences be installed there too? 
From the description of the unfortunate incident, the cyclist made a mistake trying to overtake pedestrains when there wasn't room and clipped kerb with tragic consequnces. 
What does seem to be an issue is that if you are riding next to kerb [not wise generally] the chances are that you or your bars will be hit by the guided bus. So that is a big design flaw with the setup. There should be room for safe passing by bus, which cannot move out to overtake safely like on a normal road. This also may have meant this accident may not have been tragic, just embarrasing - depend on how far the cyclist fell. Heck a yellow hash warning srip strip alongside kerb to ecourage folk not to ride there would be a [cheap] start.  A wider kerb that has an anti walking surface would be better.

Design standards for cycle ways recommend a half metre verge at 30mph,  although that can be reduced to zero although that should be justified by the designer. That segregation increases as the speed limit increases. I'm not sure if that design standard existed when they designed this but it's a recognised issue of segregation. A simple mistake shouldn't be fatal if the design is done well.