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Bristol Traffic has its review up.
Judging by the way the reporter was whining about doing park street, it may be that he was using a single speed -or had not been fully briefed in how to use low gears. We are lucky he didn't go on Nine Tree Hill by mistake, or his commentary would be even more negative.
Does anyone know who the woman whining about bicycles on Gloucester Road was? Given that an bus lane runs down most of it, and from 1-sept the cameras in the buses are being used to generate parking tickets (First month: warnings, from next week, bills), there is a perfectly wide route to cycle along. The only place they would have conflict would be if there were cars parked on the pavement, bus lane or bike lane
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And now there are pictures of people who have been in an accident? Is this a bit too far? Why would you take a photo of someone who's just been run over? I think this person died too.
The photos are there as I always carry a camera on my commute, normally they end up on Bristol Traffic as some of its satire. However, on this day, having just negotiated what is about the only hazardous junction on my 6 mile commute, I hear this awful screaming and turn back to find this woman has had one of her legs go under a lorry turning left.
The paramedics and ambulances were there in 3 minutes; the central hospital is just nearby, the local PCSOs comforting her until then. There was nothing else to do but document this, with photos that ended up on the local paper (evening post) and local TV news, in an article which worried about the whole problem of bike safety in the city. Because if Bristol is to become a "Cycling City", and the percentage of people cycling doubles, then without a 50% reduction in the risk of death/injury per journey, more people are going to get killed and injured.
Those photographs -awful that the incident was- have brought home what a terrible week it was in Bristol for left-turning Lorry/Cyclist collisions. I think it's a shame it took the photographs to for this to make the local TV, I think it is even more awful that one of our university lecturers died on his commute. Something needs to be done to stop this. We need to look at the root cause, and a key one is that lorries are driving round cities that weren't designed for them, with underpaid and half-asleep lorry drivers being directed by satnav systems with central monitoring making sure that they are on schedule. Better cyclist training -which I support, my seven year old got his level one proficiency last week- is not enough. The Bristol Cycling Campaign and Living Streets would both like 20mph speed limits, then there might be less pressure for bikes to get out the way of fast moving cars, and we stopped being pushed into bike lanes that are a fast route to A&E.
SteveL, Bristol Traffic
-for the list of ways lorries can get you, I've experienced "Lorry comes up at roundabout and forgets you are there". That's why the FTA "dont get into a lorries blind spot" comment sucks, because what if its the lorry that chooses to put you there.
-Regarding near misses, they are something you need to not only get data on, but get the polis enforcing. Anyone who works in HSE/risk management loves near-misses, as they give you more data on where the problems lie. Every non-fatal bike/lorry collision is data, but any incident where you, on a bike, think that a lorry nearly hit you, is data too.
-One interesting topic that's being discussed in the Bristol cycling groups is can we expect better treatment from "professional" drivers -bus, taxi, lorry- and if so, how do we go about it. Complaining to bus, taxi and lorry companies/council seems like a good tactic, but also some leafletting to the professionals "this is a bike lane, this is an ASL, please stay out of them" may be in order. Good test for sprinting skills.