Serious about Safety
Every bike commuter knows is that safety is a complicated issue. They face it every day. However, some safety campaigns focus entirely on helmets. But that means there’s been a crash. What if it could have been prevented? Wouldn’t that be safer?
There’s many points along the way where an individual, a community, and a city, can prevent more tragedies from happening. Helmet or not, when you put a car against a vulnerable road user, you know who the victim will be. Cities need to get real about safety. No excuses.
The way they build bike paths in Chicago prove Ian’s point. They paint stripes in the street to delineate the path, then end the lane markings before the intersection (making it a shared ‘whole street’ near and at the intersection).
They know the striped bike path doesn’t increase safety. It’s all about perception and PR, of convincing casual and non-bike users it’s safe to ride a bike on the street. They eliminate the markings at intersections because they can’t refute all of the data that says it’s unsafe (and therefore worried about being sued for unsafe infrastructure).
But I think this ‘take the lane’ approach has more to do geography, as I believe European and Northeast US cities had historically narrower roads. So if you grew up around that, that’s how you see things. But most of the United States builds wide roads, so it’s not a problem to stay on the right. I’ve had more problems with other bikers passing me too close than cars.
We a agree on the education part and a lot of other stuff too.
Putting ‘Follow the rules’ at the heart of safety strategy may be a treacherous advice esp to women cycling.
“Women cyclists at greater risk from lorry deaths’..“Women may be over-represented bc they are less likely than men to disobey red lights.”(Guardian)
Me: Women tend to rely on obeying the law bc it’s their precondition to participate in public space.
Fatal error in men’s transport.
https://radverkehrhamburg.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/lkws-und-radlerinnen-eine-unheimliche-singularitat/