(no subject)

[tinyjo]

If you are a cyclist in Oxford or Cambridge, take the Oxford & Cambridge cycling survay. The aim is apparently to provide info/signage which will help bus drivers and cyclists better get along - they'll be putting it up in Oxford first and using Cambridge as a control.

Comments

Re: I read through this survey yesterday

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

? Amplify, please? What's not to like? The questions aren't biased in one way or another, AFAICT, and I would imagine that they aren't aiming for a complex form of number-crunching - but I'm interested.

Do tell!

anti-cyclist bias...?

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

I guess it could be seen as in some way biased in favour of insisting that cyclists get licensed, and so on.

I think it's an attempt to address and quantify some of the mythologies and perceptions about cyclists in Oxford. I have done every kind of transport there is in Oxford, for a couple of decades; I fell off my own bike hard owing to my own failure to check my brake cables (and still have the scars); I have been run into twice, very hard indeed, by cyclists, both of whom were riding at night like bats out of hell with no lights and ran through pedestrian crossings. I have seen bus drivers playing games of 'chicken' with cyclists; recently I saw no fewer than three cyclists without helmets or lights going up the Woodstock Road next to, not on, the perfectly good bike path. They were a danger to themselves and the public and shouldn't have been let out without their mummies, frankly.

I see car drivers behaving like 100% prats, too, believe me; but I think that the annual MOT and licensing forces drivers, at least, to think about the maintenance of their vehicles once a year. If this survey encourages cyclists to fight their own corner and the numbers show that most cyclists actually DO wear helmets, maintain their bikes, use hand signals (ha), use lights, and pay some attention to road markings, then it has to be a good survey.

I have two Utterly Pukka FT cyclist friends and will make sure they answer the survey so as to bias the results in favour of cyclists :-)

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

I cycle next to the bus station on the way to work every day, and several times I have been nearly forced into the gutters by impatient bus drivers who think there is room to pass me without knocking me off when there isn't. I've also had them pull out from stationary at a stop when I've been overtaking without indicating. I presume this is due to bad visibility and not because they actually want to knock me off.

So I like the idea of better signage to try and help bus drivers and cyclists get along, although since I'll be in the control city it's not going to help me for a while.

2 suggestions

[applez.livejournal.com]

1. What you can do in the immediate is cycle in the centre of the path ... as if you were a car. Claim the space. It is aggressive, will piss off some, but is a viable tactic...and is actually safer than one might otherwise think.

2. See about getting the city council to paint in lanes with realistic turning areas, and marked areas of shared danger.