Pavement perils

moneyistooshorttomention

I obviously hit a raw nerve and/or a personal campaigning issue (in view of the fact that every single post you have made back to the beginning of this year at least has been one re cycling).

I do sympathise with cyclists who feel at risk of reckless cardrivers - but that is no excuse for trying to pass the risk of injury onto pedestrians using pedestrian-only pavements. I really do not want pedestrians to be forced into feeling we need to campaign to be safe on our own pavements - just because of campaigning cyclists apparently putting their safety ahead of ours.

We don't choose to use pavements - we have to. There is no other way for pedestrians to get around and we are entitled to feel safe on them. Pavements were put there in the first place for us and not for cyclists. Please take up any safety issues you have with motorists (and not us). Motorists are the cause of your problems and not us and it is simply not fair to try and pass your problems onto our shoulders.

Cyclists do choose to use bikes and do choose to use OUR pavements. Don't make this into a fight between us - we are likely to support your wish for safety IF you respect OUR need for safety in our OWN environment. It is short-sighted to put our backs up against you - because of seeing it as the only way to protect OUR environment.

I'm perfectly willing to support any cyclist campaign against reckless cardrivers. What I am NOT prepared to do is see people deciding unilaterally that their safety counts higher on the scale than our safety.

modsandmockers

As a serving police officer (so he says…), Brat should be the first to know that there are no mitigating circumstances for a cyclist who runs down a child on the pavement of a residential street.

armyknife

Not sure of the wisdom in starting this thread, as all it seems to have done is wake our trolls from their summer slumber.

brat

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I obviously hit a raw nerve and/or a personal campaigning issue (in view of the fact that every single post you have made back to the beginning of this year at least has been one re cycling).

I do sympathise with cyclists who feel at risk of reckless cardrivers - but that is no excuse for trying to pass the risk of injury onto pedestrians using pedestrian-only pavements. I really do not want pedestrians to be forced into feeling we need to campaign to be safe on our own pavements - just because of campaigning cyclists apparently putting their safety ahead of ours.

We don't choose to use pavements - we have to. There is no other way for pedestrians to get around and we are entitled to feel safe on them. Pavements were put there in the first place for us and not for cyclists. Please take up any safety issues you have with motorists (and not us). Motorists are the cause of your problems and not us and it is simply not fair to try and pass your problems onto our shoulders.

Cyclists do choose to use bikes and do choose to use OUR pavements. Don't make this into a fight between us - we are likely to support your wish for safety IF you respect OUR need for safety in our OWN environment. It is short-sighted to put our backs up against you - because of seeing it as the only way to protect OUR environment.

I'm perfectly willing to support any cyclist campaign against reckless cardrivers. What I am NOT prepared to do is see people deciding unilaterally that their safety counts higher on the scale than our safety.

Many pedestrians benefit from paths built for cyclists. We have a cycle path, recently built as a cycle path, that is now used by pedestrians to such a degree that it is now safer for cyclists to use the road rather than the cycle path.

I cycle through our pedestrian zone on a daily basis. Each day I and other cyclists manoeuvre around pedestrians who often seem to have forgotten that we are allowed to use the zone. It works well. Cyclists take care through the zone. I'm not aware of a single accident involving a cyclist since the zone was introduced about seven years ago.

Many pavements are so underused these days that you are more likely to see a bike riding on them or car parked on them than a pedestrian walking on them. Many wider pavements have been converted into shared use, and I see no reason why that shouldn't be extended.

You are perfectly within your rights to disagree, but I'd like to think that suitable sharing of underused footpaths might me a way to improve cycle safety and increase cycle usage (to everyone's advantage) without any added risk to pedestrians.

brat

armyknife wrote: »

Not sure of the wisdom in starting this thread, as all it seems to have done is wake our trolls from their summer slumber.

I know. For some reason they want to assume that every bicycle is an anti-pedestrian exocet.

Cars parked/parking on the pavement will kill many more pedestrians either directly or indirectly than cyclists, but the issue hardly raises an eyebrow when compared to the cyclist, who, after all, is the spawn of the devil.

pendragon_arther

Marco_Panettone wrote: »

So your answer to everything that is made to feel unsafe by other people's actions is "stop doing it then"? Great. Well done. I really hope you don't ever get attacked in a public place, or hit by a car crossing a road or when cycling. If anything ever does happen to you, can I assume you'll follow your own advice and just stop going out at all?


Will you advise people to stop using pavements because of this incident?

I'll have what you're smoking. After you get the munchies and come down to earth you'll see how foolish your post was.

pendragon_arther

Norman_Castle wrote: »

Bit emotive isn't it?.

Pavement cycling as described above isn't tolerated.

Do yourself a favour and come to Kingston on Thames one day and have fun dodging all the speeding pavement cyclists. You may well survive.

Norman_Castle

pendragon_arther wrote: »

Do yourself a favour and come to Kingston on Thames one day and have fun dodging all the speeding pavement cyclists. You may well survive.

Cycling too fast and without care is the problem. Not simply pavement cycling. If the video cyclist had been cycling on the pavement but at a sensible speed and been aware of the risk he posed to pedestrians and prepared to react this wouldn't have happened.

I agree that some pavement cyclists are extremely annoying and totally ignorant of the danger they pose to others but if done appropriately it doesn't cause problems.

brat

modsandmockers wrote: »

As a serving police officer (so he says…), Brat should be the first to know that there are no mitigating circumstances for a cyclist who runs down a child on the pavement of a residential street.

One of the most irritating aspects of the anti-cyclist commentary we're subjected to is this constant assumption that cyclists are a homogeneous group will who always defend other cyclists, no matter what.
It would be nice if they actually read what we write, rather than what they think we've written. It might stop them looking like ignorant fools.

Most criminals will be able to offer some mitigation for their offending behaviour. Whether it's socially accepted mitigation is for society to decide, but mitigation of some description exists for almost every offence.

In this particular example it seems like the offender is offering several points to mitigate the impact of the initial story.

He went to the police the following day to report the matter which would predate the media frenzy
He apparently did not make off, instead was collected by his father.
He strongly disputes the post incident version of events.
He believed it wasn't illegal to cycle on this footpath, (the signage ahead of the scene may assist with that argument).

These points will be very unlikely to exonerate him, but they will allow the magistrates to address wider aspects of causation and mitigate the aggravating circumstances as initially reported.

Norman_Castle

He apparently did not make off, instead was collected by his father.
He strongly disputes the post incident version of events.

I suspect the hit and run description is from the media. The photo taken of him (by the mother?) didn't happen during the video so he was there past what is shown. The picture of him also shows someone in a black coat who isn't shown in the video.

There is a discussion prompted by this on radio 4 today at 12.15..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05vy4kk