Sajid Javid blames father of five-year-old cyclist for letting child ride on road in viral video

I think AN was wide of the mark again. Yes, he did rightly call out the poor driving, but he also:

- stated nobody had priority, where actually the cyclists did (by arriving there first and due to the hierachy of vulnerability).
- assumed the kid had perceived the danger, when they were probably just confirming who had right of way. If you've ever cycled with a kid on the road, they ask if they should stop in a lot of situations.
- said it was clear the car was not going to stop, when it actually looked like it was going to (it did slow down quite a lot).
- at 2:23 in, put in a clip of him not following his own advice on an e-scooter!

His solution to this seemed to be the cyclists should have stopped. He didn't mention riding two abreast (as rule 66 advises), nor that the driver should be prosecuted. He didn't give any consideration as to how safely communicating a stop could have been acheived (it was wet and there was only a very short timescale to make a decision); telling the kid to stop could have seen them wobble as they slowed and could have made the situation worse.

Bit disappointed, but not surprised, by the analysis. It all seemed to boil down to you cyclists are vulnerable, so should not get in the way of a dodgy driver. Most of my cycling involves getting in the way of dodgy drivers - it's quite hard to avoid doing that if you ride anywhere on the roads!

Just wondering where all of these safe roads are, where drivers are always considerate, safe, and very careful around inexperienced, vulnerable road users, where said inexperienced vulnerable road users can gain vital experience?

ktache wrote:

Just wondering where all of these safe roads are, where drivers are always considerate, safe, and very careful around inexperienced, vulnerable road users, where said inexperienced vulnerable road users can gain vital experience?

Unicorn Avenue - just turn left at Yellowbrick Road and carry straight on over the rainbow.

Rendel Harris wrote:

Unicorn Avenue - just turn left at Yellowbrick Road and carry straight on over the rainbow.

You mean here?  https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2021/06/16/the-worlds-longest-rainbow...

I don't approve of those.

If you want to do a bit of virtue signalling, then don't do it with road surfaces.

We have a zebra crossing gussied-up into a Rainbow at our District Hospital, which constantly has the public and ambulances driving across it against all the patients arriving - and I somehow doubt that a H&S assessment has been done.

...and how many accidents have been caused by that then?

They seem cheerful enough to me and fairly unproblematic - except to those who've got ideological objections.

In general I want good, regular, boring and above all standard infra (including colours and markings) over "we'll just do it our way here" or "hey - I've a cool design!"  I'll certainly accept a few exceptions to e.g. break the monotony of built environments.  (I recall the pleasant effect of of subtle modifications to e.g. light fittings on the York cyclepath from way back).  That shouldn't compromise things though (e.g. "this one's cool but cost as much as 10 normal bridges") e.g. legibility, visibility or other safety-critical aspects.  Same as "hi-vis and lights everywhere" means that nothing stands out.

Luckily someone's already done a bit of research for you on just this:

http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2018/08/building-legal-rainbow-cros...

mattw wrote:

I don't approve of those.

If you want to do a bit of virtue signalling, then don't do it with road surfaces.

We have a zebra crossing gussied-up into a Rainbow at our District Hospital, which constantly has the public and ambulances driving across it against all the patients arriving - and I somehow doubt that a H&S assessment has been done.

You'd have to be a pretty inconsiderate and/or massively pedantic individual to drive up to a rainbow crossing with people waiting, where there used to be a zebra crossing, and say to yourself, "NO - it isn't painted in black and white and therefore I don't think it's a legitimate zebra crossing, so I won't stop".

...however judging by what rears its head here "if I don't think it's in the highway code I'll ignore it, if it wasn't in the highway code when I learned 20 years back I'll ignore it, if it isn't in black and white in the highway code now I'll see you in court as there's a good chance that even if I'm wrong and it is there and is law there's wriggle-room for my lawyer to get me the benefit of the doubt!"

brooksby wrote:

You'd have to be a pretty inconsiderate individual

It's a good thing that drivers are never inconsiderate then...

mattw wrote:

I don't approve of those.

If you want to do a bit of virtue signalling, then don't do it with road surfaces.

We have a zebra crossing gussied-up into a Rainbow at our District Hospital, which constantly has the public and ambulances driving across it against all the patients arriving - and I somehow doubt that a H&S assessment has been done.

I don't see it as being virtue signalling, but more of a welcoming/non-discrimination signal. If you're a member of a minority and you see various indications (such as rainbow zebras) that you're welcome in that area, then surely that's a positive thing. After all the Brexit toxicity, we could do with some positive messages about tolerance of others.

Unfortuately it currently involves a flight / boat trip / train journey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yzZLVsTCE

Have a look at Chris' link earlier in the thread.

You can't eliminate bad driving entirely but you can design a lot of conflict out, making streets far safer for cyclists new and old.

I thought it was clear the car was not going to stop, but not for the reasons Ashely thinks, its because experience has taught me 9 out of 10 drivers prioritise arriving at their destination a few seconds sooner than bothering to give any space to a cyclist.

also lets say they did stop when the kid asks the question, theyll have stop by the white van because bike brakes arent instaneous especially in the wet, and theyd be left in the same position on the road, so would the car magically give more space by manouevering quickly back across to the kerb, or carry on the line theyd already adopted...yep theres that experience kicking in again.

again though we're back to debating how a 5year old child and their parent should ride on a road,whilst completely ignoring the main point that it could have been Ashley himself on that bike, and the driver would have done the exact same wrong thing.

Yep, the age of the kid is irrelevant, they actually rode really well. The only criticism I could place on the Dad is not riding two abreast - but it's a minor point; resorting to such defensive riding should not be the norm.

To be fair to AN, he did call for the Highway Code to be made clearer in terms of the required room to give when passing an oncoming cyclist, appropriate speed and when to stop. I do think the HC is deficient in this area.

if we could just come up with a catchy phrase to use like Googles dont be evil, but we shouldnt have to prescribe this stuff to that level of detail IMO just to get people to drive considerately around vulnerable road users.

I had one today, single track country road, close passed by an impatient BMW driver, literally a couple of bike lengths away from a passing place I could and would have pulled into.

the mistake I made that let them go for a gap that wasnt there, I wasnt riding prime, because I didnt think I needed to do it, because I thought it was obvious there wasnt the room to pass safely. I doubt even if the HC was clearer about this stuff it would have changed my close encounter, one iota.

We got buzzed like that as Peds. Only 20 m from a safe passing area when on a single track road in the middle of no where in Suffolk.
As you say, pure impatient.

If only they lived somewhere else.

You don't have to cycle the road just because it's near your house.

I live on a road that I consider unsafe for my 5 year old to cycle so we walk the last 250 yards.

Not ideal and if driving standards were higher it wouldn't be necessary but that is unfortunately the world we live in.

what is unsafe about it?

The motorists.

It's always the motorists.

Drives with poor visibility for cars leaving. Potential for cars to hit cyclists when leaving drives. Magnified for children.

Lots of cars parked either side limiting the road space and creating potential for conflict as demonstrated in the video.

Traffic 'calming' chicanes with same potential problem.

Lots of potential for people to emerge unseen from behind/between parked cars/vans/trucks potentially spooking an inexperienced cyclist.

Indeed - although note that the designers did try to make the traffic calming chicane safer for cycling with bypasses but this effectively failed.  That was partly through not considering the whole of the street in the design e.g. it's legally OK for vehicles to park in between these points so cyclists are forced out into the middle anyway - but it's worse because it's actually OK for vehicles to park really close to the entry / exit from these bypasses.  It's also probably moot because even if the designers had specified double-yellows we know that these have variable effectiveness and at any rate require parking enforcement also.  Without that in some cases they may be ignored by many.

Good point on the "reversing out".  Wouldn't help here with driveways but there is a mitigation for this for on-street parking which I discovered recently which in the UK is termed reverse echelon parking.  One of the main objections to implementing this is actually the whole reason for suggesting it in the first place e.g. drivers find reversing difficult and tend to hit things!  As you might imagine the other objection is our favourite "but slows other drivers / congestion".  That shouldn't be an issue on a residential street but again the UK's multi-functional streets make that a problem (see video here on how other places avoid this).

Again if people didn't already I'd encourage a read of the article I linked last time - it's a deep dive into why what looks similar on the surface (a residential street with cars parked on one or both sides) is actually a very different proposition here vs. e.g. NL.  (For our resident contrarians, no, it's not mostly "the culture" although of course driver expectations are important).

That reverse echelon parking would definitely improve things in a lot of residential streets.

The article about Dutch street design is interesting.

A street in Cardiff that links segregated cycling paths has been given a very Dutch looking makeover. It's now very safe for cycling on and is one of the streets I cycle on with my children.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/xxqTK3tRDbB7S7CF6

Compare and contrast to the street in the article!

Interesting!  This is certainly an improvement by UK standards - although like many "new infra" things I bet there are some places in the UK this kind of thing has been in existence decades!

Couple of thoughts on that particular design (I am not a civil engineer or even a huge kerb-nerd).  The mostly good:
20's plenty (good) but the Taff embankment carriageway is a bit wide.  It's still a two-way, two lane street.  Yes, the "median" treatment is a reasonable effort at dealing with this - presumably a) to avoid having to make this one-way (note - Dutch examples often are) and probably the "how will the bin lorries / fire trucks get through" objection was raised.  However because cars and probably lorries (see later) will be running over it hope it stands up to the treatment!  If it were narrower it would be better for the river side because ATM the trees are a bit in the way of pedestrians.  Of course in the UK there are often extremely noisy objections to removing mature trees - even where that stops the streetscape being made "nicer" - because we've hacked too many down in the past.  Rarely for cycle infra...

The side-street junctions?  Hmm could do better - this is "UK alpha version" I'd say.  We have this in Edinburgh dating from some decades back I think - actually makes it a bit of a PITA to ride as a) bumpy b) the brick surface gets uneven where motor vehicles squash the surface.  See "Continuous footway" - so we're still signalling that even in a "quiet residential street" the main purpose of the space is "motor vehicle movements", not people walking.

Also good - Aber Street - but again look how *wide* the street space is (once you're woke, you can't not see...).  Even after installing effectively 3 parking lanes there are still two good-size lanes for drivers!  Also in the Dutch version they might have used that space to make those lanes move from side to side instead of being straight because that "naturally" helps keep speed down (if they had two; they'd have likely reduced to one).

Also good to see some signed restrictions on heavy vehicles.  Although I'm immediately questioning why this was needed.  Why would you put a sign up if not necessary - but then what are 7.5 ton trucks doing being in a quiet residential area *except* for very occasional access anyway?

Not so good: because it's still 2 way, we have 2 lane entrance to side streets (that at some of the streets is narrowed a bit but still is 2 lane).  We have an obsession in the UK with "access in all directions" for motor vehicles.  This place looks like a great candidate for "modal filters" /  all or part one-way access.  Then kids could really play in the streets...

There's not much of it.  Even this street is not all done this way at e.g. the west end.  And at the East as it goes round the corner, all of this goodness just stops!  Streetview has the usual e.g. cars half-on the pavement etc.  It looks like there is new tarmac there so presumably it's not that they haven't finished, you get 300 metres of this treatment and that's it!

Finally - streetview had several cyclists at the east end who'd chosen to ride on the shared space on the river side rather than in the carriageway.  There are some reasons why they might be there but it's another sign that it's still very early days in the Heroic Resistance to the Invasion of the Motorist (formerly "War on the Motorist").

Interestingly the next area that got the Dutch style upgrade did get continuous footways despite being a far busier road.

This was, AFAIK, the first area in Cardiff to get this treatment so maybe they didn't want to rock the boat too much hence the 2 way. The rumble strip in the middle is a nice touch though.

Thankfully this street doesn't go anywhere really so doesn't get too many vehicles. It's a few years old and, so far, has stood up well.

Fair comment about the trees on the pavement but the pavement was significantly widened as part of the upgrade, before the trees took up the entire width! Personally I think keeping the trees is worthwhile, without them the street would lose a lot of character and it's not a busy walking route.

I think with the trees that's certainly a sensible move here, there's a footway the other side and looks like some "park" further down.  In the fullness of time reclaiming more "waterfront" with walk/cycleway for people could be great (and likely increase house prices!).  Also even just adding a rumble strip for a couple of hundred yards and rearranging parking is a major deal in the UK.  Lots of people are very suspicious of the local authorities!

Good to see this happening even if not perfect.  How long has it been in?  What do local residents think of it now?

Again I suspect that the "full Dutch" treatment would see this as a one-way / small traffic cells ("LTN") exactly because there is no logical "through route" here.  Plus redo the carriageway with bends in to "naturally" slow driving.

I think it's been about three years now. It seems to be very popular.

I haven't heard anyone complain about it and the area is now gentrifying hard!

Cardiff is building quite a lot of new cycling infra and there are a few schemes like this being put in place so hopefully we'll get the 'Full Dutch' somewhere soon.