[sustran] Bicycles - Improving the image

Obwon ob110ob at IDT.NET
Mon Apr 20 13:45:46 JST 1998


J.H. Crawford wrote:
> 
 Well, I'm particularly careful because I've been in hospitals many
times  before and  I have no illusions about what modern medicine can
do. 

 I'll usually 'get back' at pedestrians who do stupid things like step
into the street without looking directly at oncoming traffic by simply
pulling up to them and stopping and pointedly waiting for them to clear
my path.  

  I find this infinitely more preferable to challenging on coming
traffic over taking me, since I can't rely on drivers to even see me (as
they often say they didn't after they've hit a biker or anything else
and that includes not only trucks and busses but trees and buildings as
well <g> any biker who relies on motorists vision or attention is
playing a very high risk game. 

  Owing to my patience and caution, I don't have accidents because I
avoid dangerous and complex traffic situations whenever and where ever I
sight them. It costs only a few seconds to do so, but the alternative is
to face odds where 'win' is much to small and the 'loss' can be much too
big.  You can 'win' one hundred times, beating the odds by going into
dangerous situations simply to save a little time or momentum and still
gain nothing of useful value.  Lose once and it may all be gone.

  So using that view, I don't trust good and/or courteous drivers
sharing the road with me, their mistakes, slips etc, could be very
horrible affairs.  That doesn't mean I ride like a total 'wimp' either,
but I just don't take unreasonable risks or at least as much as I'm
reasonable able to avoid them. 

 That accident p**d me off, simply because it need never have happened,
and of all the people who should have caused it, it seems likel she
would be the very type to join in complaining about bike riders had the
right occassion arose. 

 Most of the people who envision problems with bikes and auto traffic,
it's easy to see that they've never ridden a bike in traffic. They
attempt to set the standards, for the purposes of rulemaking, at the
extreme limits defined by the most radical fringe group of riders as if
we were all some kind of daredevils on bikes.  

  I know that I'm capable of determining when it is and/or is not safe
to proceed through a light. I've done it thousands and thousands of
times over several decades and so have many other bike riders. Done
properly it's not a problem at all, certainly anyone who has experience
riding in the city will see that it's not a problem even worthy of the
time spent addressing it.  

  In fact, one of the major reasons for traffic lights has nothing to do
with getting people across the street safetly from any point of view
that they wouldn't be able to cross if cars didn't stop moving.  If all
the traffic lights in a city were turned off, people would still be able
to successfully cross the streets safely.  Probably even more safely
than they do because they have lights to rely upon and trust them to
stop vehicles when they shouldn't.  

  It's the brakes that stop the car not the light, but people will still
walk out into the street in front of still moving traffic bearing down
on them, expecting the vehicle to be able to stop simply because the
light is red.  Without lights I think they'd take more care and be more
certain that cars couldn't hit them when they attempted to cross.

  The main trouble is, without traffic lights the periods spent waiting
to cross safely would be highly variable and indeed very long on heavily
trafficed streets.  Now I'm not saying that this is only the absolute
benefit of traffic lights, I'm just saying that it's a major part of the
consideration for having them.  There was a time when they simply
weren't available in the earlier days of auto use.  

  I wonder how the pedestrian to car accident statistics looked way back
then as compared to say a decade or so after they became widely
available and used?  I'm of a mind to suspect that if those statistic
were examined and adjusted properly they might very well reflect that
without traffic lights people exercised greater caution.

  If so, then the best set of rules would be those that inspired caution
rather than reliance on symbolic or routine ceremonies or conventions
which can unexpectedly fail for various phyical reasons.  Regardless of
what the parties intended. They tell people, for instance, not to point
guns at people if they don't intend to shoot.  The reasoning behind this
is not that it threatens a person unintentionally as it does.  But for
the more important reason that the gun isn't totally under the control
of the person handling it.  They can and do discharge without operator
assistance and quite against the holders intentions.  

 But people continue to warn young people who don't know this fact, to
not point the gun.  The younger/inexperienced person continues the
dangerous behaviour because they still think they are in control,
therefore what they believe that what they don't intend can't happen! 
By time experience gets a chance to teach them differently it's probably
too late.  See the difference I'm trying to convey? 

  If people believe that cars will stop when the light turns red, they
rely too heavily on that convention and move even while vehicles are
beaaring down on them.  And of course drivers come to expect that the
car will stop whenever they apply the brakes.  Unfortunately neither
condition is always true nor can a red light stop a car if the driver
doesn't respond to it.

  I believe too that many cabs hit pedestrians because they are
suscuptable to making many unpredictable manuevers as they attempt to
pick up and drop off fares. Their accident rate should be assisted by
people feeling that they can stand in certain areas of the street
without caution.  This would be true if you could assume that all driver
watch to see where they are aiming their vehicles, but alas that's not
the case either.  

  Often drivers will look at an area, but fail to see people heading
towards it or otherwise about to enter it.  They then turn their
attention somewhere else and proceed to move the vehicle or allow it to
move, without realizing that the space they are about to enter has
become occupied since they last looked. 

 Oh well, I hope (even where I might be wrong) that there's something in
this that you might find useful inspite of what errors I might have made
 Obwon




More information about the Sustran-discuss mailing list