Dominic Sayers

Pedestrians and velocity

John Whiteside made a perceptive comment about my post "Cycling to work - why people hate cyclists, part 3". I completely agree with him - what he said in his comment is what I intended to say in my post. Sorry it wasn't clear. The post talked about collisions between cyclists and pedestrians. I said

The cyclist will see a pedestrian many metres ahead and will calculate his own trajectory and the pedestrian’s to ensure there is no collision.

John correctly commented that pedestrians don't have a "trajectory". What they have is a "radius of occupation" - a theoretical circle around them that they could be anywhere in when the cyclist reaches them. The radius of the circle is a function of the pedestrian's maximum velocity and the distance the cyclist has to travel before impinging on the pedestrian. Here's what I meant to say: the cyclist unconsciously calculates this "radius of occupation" and avoids it. Of course, there are some parts of the circle that the pedestrian is unlikely to occupy. The sophisticated cyclist might try to calculate the probability distribution across the entire "radius of occupation" and choose to clip a part of the circle where the pedestrian is unlikely to end up. This sort of calcuation will be correct most of the time, but ultimately will result in a few collisions. I think such collisions are the fault of the cyclist. My diatribe against pedestrians was intended to include only those collisions that the cyclist could not possibly avoid.

Walking to work - the victimless crime

I believe that pedestrians should be held more accountable for their actions, as I said a few days ago. This morning I saw a large man knocked off a large motorbike by quite a small pedestrian. It all happened in slightly comical slow motion. The motorcyclist was approaching a red light at walking pace when the pedestrian stepped out from between two stationary vehicles and walked into the motorbike's handlebars. Being such a large bike, it toppled over veeery veeery slowly and the large man fell off and rolled very slowly across the road until he and his bike were blocking both carriageways of Bishopsgate just outside Liverpool Street station. OK, nobody was hurt. But I bet some damage was caused to the bike, at least to its paintwork. In an ideal world the pedestrian would have volunteered to pay for any such damage since she was clearly the cause of the damage. I don't know whether she did or not. I have never seen a pedestrian do so. If I'm making a point, it's this - I'm not sure the law even allows for the pedestrian to be at fault in this sort of situation. The pavements of central London are overflowing with pedestrians on a weekday morning. They encroach onto the road and do all the other anti-social things I mentioned before. It is literally impossible to avoid them sometimes however careful a cyclist, motorcyclist or driver you are. And yet avoid them you must, apparently. If you don't you end up with an annoying bill at best. Or as dead as this gentleman would have been if a bus had been coming up the other carriageway.

Cycling to work - why people hate cyclists, part 4

The final post examining the four most common reasons for people hating cyclists. The usual reasons being given as:

1. Ignoring red lights
2. Riding on pavements
3. Assaulting innocent pedestrians
4. Wearing lycra 

Wearing lycra And so we come to the most contentious allegation of all, that of wearing Lycra. People in other countries don't wear Lycra to cycle to work. Dutch people just put on a pair of cycle clips and wobble off to their jobs with no fuss. Chinese and Indian workers cycle in their millions without a scrap of Lycra between them. We in the UK (and North Americans too, I believe) seem to think that cycling to work is an aggressive sporting activity that demands a superhero costume and comprehensive decontamination facilities afterwards. This is cock, actually. Lycra seems to be a big issue for the cyclist-hater. Is there a correlation between unpopular behaviour and the wearing of cycling shorts? The rise in the numbers of people cycling has led many novices onto the roads, and as with everything the novice will tend to over-prepare. The n00b is also likely to unwittingly commit offences against both common sense and the rule of the road. So perhaps the all-the-gear-and-no-idea factor leads to a slight correlation between Lycra and accidental loutishness. But the worst-behaved cyclists are cycle couriers (IMHO, and sorry to any couriers reading) and they wouldn't be seen dead in Lycra (not nearly grungy enough). Most cyclists are men and the Lycra-wearers seem to be an even more male-dominated sub-group. Buns of steel or not, I personally don't want a display of masculine gluteal achievement in my face of a morning. Far fewer women cyclists wear overt Lycra, perhaps (and I generalise wildly) due to greater self-awareness and more emphasis on the control of their body image. I think it would be wrong to restrict the wearing of Lycra to women below a certain Body Mass Index, so let's not wear it at all, people. I believe, without much solid evidence, that the euphonious epithet Lycra Lout is really to blame. Some Associated Press journalist came up with a pejorative tag to brand all their pro-motorist, pro-old-lady stories and it has stuck because it is catchy. Lycra is a perfectly innocent DuPont brand name*. Wearing it to cycle to work is dumb but not really a Bad Thing. People who disparage Lycra: escape from the bondage of alliteration!  * Yes, I know that division was sold to Koch in 2004. "Lycra has gone to Koch" would be a good slogan in my book.

Cycling to work - why people hate cyclists, part 3

The third in a series of posts examining the four most common reasons for people hating cyclists. The usual reasons being given as:

1. Ignoring red lights
2. Riding on pavements
3. Assaulting innocent pedestrians
4. Wearing lycra  

Assaulting innocent pedestrians We frequently read about how a poor pedestrian was mown down by a cyclist committing one of the offences described in parts 1 and 2. Or possibly he or she was just crossing the road minding their own business when a cyclist slammed into them at high speed. I have had five collisions in five years of regular cycling and three of them have been with pedestrians. From my personal experience I can say that cyclist-pedestrian collisions are not uncommon. Here are a couple of points that are self-evident to a cyclist but perhaps less obvious to a non-cyclist, especially one predisposed to think badly of cyclists (more on that later):

1. A cyclist is just a person too. It's all too easy to equate bikes with other vehicles in this situation, but mowing down a pedestrian with a car is much, much easier than doing it on a bike. If you don't believe me, try it. You are one person colliding with another, and you have the disadvantage of being perched on top of an unstable support, so the collision is inevitably followed by a fall. My point is this: a cyclist will usually come off worst in a collision with a pedestrian. Cyclists know this and therefore try very hard not to let it happen. My evidence is two broken laptops, a damaged bike and several joints that hurt in cold, damp weather.
2. Pedestrians are blithly unaware of what is going on round them. They cross the road using their ears instead of their eyes. They cross the road using a sort of herd instinct: if somebody else starts to cross then everybody follows without themselves checking that it is safe to do so. Unless you are a cyclist you will doubt this. I can only say once again: try it yourself.

And this, I think, is the crux of it. Cyclists' attention is fixed on a zone about 20-30 metres ahead of where they are. The cyclist will see a pedestrian many metres ahead and will calculate his own trajectory and the pedestrian's to ensure there is no collision. Pedestrians' attention is fixed on their iPod or their mobile phone. Thus when a bike passes near a pedestrian it is a complete surprise to the pedestrian. He or she will not have noticed the bike until it is very close. Thus startled, the pedestrian looks for the cause of his fear. I did not notice the bicycle therefore it was out of control, he reasons. That stupid cyclist nearly hit me! Stupid cyclists. Then he opens his Daily Mail and there is a story about hooligan cyclists ramming pedestrians and his reasoning is confirmed. How true! he writes to the Letters Editor. And so the newspaper prints more such stories. It never prints stories about pedestrians stepping out in front of cyclists without looking - why would it? That isn't news. I conclude that the charge of assaulting innocent pedestrians is largely false. I'm sure it happens sometimes - I once saw a YouTube video of some cycle couriers in a race across London. Several innocent pedestrians were harmed in the making of that film, which was completely deplorable. Such cases are a tiny minority of cyclist-pedestrian collisions. I read a newspaper article (I think it was the Daily Mail in fact) where cyclist-pedestrian incident statistics were quoted in support of the hooligan cyclist viewpoint. In other words, the journalist simply assumed that all such collisions were the cyclists' fault (or hoped his readers would be stupid enough to do so). There seems to be a school of thought that says pedestrians are automatically the injured party in any road incident. I think this needs to be challenged. Pedestrians are often the cause of incidents and should be made to take responsibility for their actions. Including me when I am one of course.

Cycling to work - why people hate cyclists, part 2

The second in a series of posts examining the four most common reasons for people hating cyclists. The usual reasons being given as:

1. Ignoring red lights
2. Riding on pavements
3. Assaulting innocent pedestrians
4. Wearing lycra

Riding on pavements This is a complete no-no in my book. I would ride on a pavement about as often as I would drive a car on one, i.e. never. However, it is not unknown for cyclists to do this. There is an article in this week's Time Out by a cyclist attempting to justify doing this regularly on her particular commute. Silly woman. Cyclists who do this invade a space that is reserved for another class of road user. And by doing so they undermine all cycling campaigns aimed at getting such a space for cyclists themselves. Drivers who park (sometimes legally) in cycle lanes, road work contractors who block cycle lanes unnecessarily, planners who think 10 yards of cycle lane is worth installing so they can add to their cycle lane mileage for PR purposes: all these idiots are given succour by cyclists who ride on pavements. Fortunately there aren't many of them. No, really. It's just that the ones who do are very, very noticeable. But the verdict is guilty anyway. So we cyclists are 0 for 2. Guilty on the first two charges. Can we recover? See parts 3 and 4.

Cycling to work - why people hate cyclists, part 1

Today: why do people hate cyclists, part 1? This post is dedicated to Malcolm, who told me the other day that he hated cyclists. The Evening Standard, the Daily Mail,  Jeremy Clarkson and Malcolm all hate cyclists. Their complaints are identical - cyclists are generally accused of

1. Ignoring red lights
2. Riding on pavements
3. Assaulting innocent pedestrians
4. Wearing lycra

Lets look at these charges one by one over the next few days. Ignoring red lights Guilty, although I don't do this myself these days. If you want to understand why cyclists do this, get a bike yourself; it will become obvious quite quickly. Here are the reasons why some cyclists do this:

1. It's really annoying having to brake. You lose all your momentum and you have to push off from a standing start, which is where most of the effort in cycling goes. This comes under the heading of a Really Bad Reason to go through red lights, but it is the real reason why many cyclists do it.
2. It's actually dangerous to be part of a cavalry charge of vehicles when the lights go green. Your first few yards as you push off can be quite wobbly and most drivers won't give you an inch. This is the reason why ASLs are painted on the road at traffic lights. I recommend cycling in the safest way possible, and therefore if it's safer on a particular occasion to ignore the red light then I would do so.

Cars, vans, motorbikes and scooters often stop in the ASLs although it is a Fixed Penalty offence. I don't know of any driver who has ever been given a ticket for this offence. Most motorbike and scooter riders actually think they are entitled to use the ASL legally. They are not. It was when I realised that I was using all sorts of rationalisation to justify going through red lights, but the real reason was Reason 1 above, that I stopped doing it. Tomorrow - riding on pavements.