Since the removal of all pavements and pathways to make room for more lanes for motorised vehicles, many people are too frightened now to walk.
The government and some walkers say that walking is just as safe as it ever was. Sharing the same space as fast moving traffic need not be dangerous as long as we follow The Highway Code and take a Walkability course.
We are advised to sign up to a Walkability course to give us confidence to vehicular walk.
Walkability teaches us to how and when to "take the lane", how to join and flow with the traffic to navigate a roundabout and junction safely, how to walk passed the door zone of a parked car, how to give good indication and make eye contact with drivers.
Although not law, we will be required to wear a walking helmet and a high visibility jacket for the Walkability training.
It's said that once anyone from 8 to 80 has learned Walkability and how to vehicular walk it is perfectly safe to walk on our roads with the traffic of today. We can rest assure that our 8 year old child will be perfectly fine walking to school on their own amongst the traffic, assuming their school does allow walking and has the facilities needed. We could even encourage Granny or Granddad to walk to pick the kids up from school.
Although motorists do not read the section on walking in The Highway Code and therefore have no idea how to safely overtake a walker or understand why a walker will on occasions be walking in the middle of the lane or indeed understand why as a walker we are not walking as tight to the left as possible, it is still worth while we, as walkers, know rules of the road.
Walking helmets are not mandatory, and although they have only been proved to protect the head if we trip and fall and hit our head on the crown, and certainly wont save us from serious harm or death if we are run over, there are both pros and cons of wearing one.
The downside of wearing a walking helmet is that they are cumbersome, hot, mess up the hair, and basically pretty useless if one is simply a steady walker.
The upside is, if we happen to be run over when not wearing a walking helmet, we will automatically be considered the guilty party. So wearing a helmet is definitely a plus on that occasion. It could mean the difference between the driver of the vehicle being taken to court or being sent away and told not to do it again.
As walkers I am sure the majority of us would like to see the return of the pavements and pathways. To expect vulnerable flesh and blood to share the same space with vehicles traveling at anything up to 70 mph is absolute madness. It's totally insane.
Instead of pavements and pathways totally separating us from cars, buses, and lorries we have simply been offered Walkability courses to learn how to vehicular walk. In other words, to pretend we are cars.
How many walkers are going to die on our roads before we once again have segregation.
I am retired - I do not drive - I started cycling ready for my retirement and now cycling is my only mode of personal transport.
It took me a few sentences before it clicked :-) Fab post!!!
ReplyDeleteI didn't get it at first . It wasn't until reading BB's comment that it clicked. You are so right
ReplyDeleteBrenda in the Boro
www.cyclinginthesixthdecade.Wordpress.com
On the subject of eye contact: while I guess I probably define myself as a cyclist (or, preferably, bicycle user) I am also a motorist at weekends.
ReplyDeleteIn the saddle, I follow the advice of the manuals, about seeking to establish eye contact with motorists, as this (a) establishes that they have seen you and (b) it is harder for an English motorist to feel good about mowing down a cyclist to whom they have been introduced. Trouble is, I find that the motorists who represent the real threat to me generally try to avoid eye contact, presumably they want to avoid the guilt that comes with that personal engagement.
But you know what? It is exactly the same when I am driving a car. Let’s suppose that I am approaching a point in the road where it has become too narrow, for example due to parked cars, for two vehicles to pass at the same time. Most of the time we can work it out, one yields to the other, generally where the other is closer to the narrowing, and the other gives a friendly wave of thanks. Sometimes however – and down in South West Surrey this is just as likely to be a woman driving a Volvo as a youth driving an old XR3i – someone will aggressively force their way through regardless of any notion of first-come, first-served. That person almost invariably passes you with their gaze, or rather stare, super-glued to the direct-ahead view, with not a flicker of sideways glance.
I suspect that most drivers occasionally succumb to this, and even the nicest people out of a car can become monsters in one – and I have absolutely no doubt that some of those are cyclists at other times. I have no doubt that there are many psychological explanations, such as the aggression also observed in laboratory animals when they are overcrowded, but I don’t think lack of training or “education” is one of them. No, what we need is swiftness and brutality of official response, but more than that we need concrete (literally) protective measures.
Have to say that this is the best comment on bikeability/cycle training that I have read. Quite brilliant.
ReplyDeleteThank you all for taking the time to read and for your comments.
ReplyDeleteThere is no doubt about it but that something seems to happen to the nicest of people as soon as they put their backside on the driving seat of a car.
As our infrastructure is today I do believe it's important for children, and many adults that have never cycled and or driven before, to learn to cycle on our roads. So I am not actually taking the jimmy out of Bikeability but out of the fact that we do have to be taught road survival in the first place.
The absolute insanity of expecting flesh and bone to compete with machine in the same space is mind boggling. And what is even worse is those that have the power to change this honestly don't seem to see what the problem is.