Railwaypath Ghost Cyclist

We've been using the term Ghost Rider to describe someone who chooses to die on a bicycle, usually by RLJ-ing. The last video of someone on a bike crashing into a pedestrian causes us to look at the rest of taypet21's video collection. This person is a threat to the rest of the city. really.

Look at this video where he crashes into someone walking down the railway path. It's like he sees the women, and rather than try and slow down, he speeds up and runs into the screaming. If this was us, we'd destroy the evidence rather than put it up on youtube

Broadmead bumping

A video reaches us of an incident at the bike path crossing rupert street to the horsefair where the cyclist crashes into the pedestrian and they both come off.


Nice swearing. If we cycled, we'd swear like that too. One point though: there are no lights controlling pedestrian crossings of the bike path, and so that highway code about giving way to pedestrians probably kicks in. The other: this was predicable. There is no point putting a camera and a horn on your bike if you aren't going to look at where people are walking and whether they are looking at you.

Helmets, hi-viz and tax for pedestrians.

In amongst the various ePetitions for making parking outside someone's house illegal, and for the many cyclist ones, making cyclist pay for the road, we are the only organisation to campaign for pedestrians to be better equipped for our cities. Cutting and pasting from someone else's proposal, we have one of our own.

In our petition., we say

Other road users have to pass tests to prove they are competent to operate a vehicle on the public highway. Pedestrians however are at the most risk and from any age they can walk around without any training, they are often wearing ipods and flout the rules of the roads e.g not stopping at traffic lights and crossing the road. I propose that all pedestrians must undertake training and be insured before riding on the road to protect themselves and others. They should wear hi-viz clothing and have helmets for their own safety

Some people will think we are taking the piss or something but not so: it's for their own safety.

Look at this scene from the Stokes Croft/Ashley Road junction.

A pedestrian crossing the road nearly gets hit by a taxi waiting for the lights to change in the middle of their road -past the ASL and not blocking it, we note. This taxi that manages to turn in front of the oncoming traffic by putting their foot down as soon as the lights go red & orange -and were it not for the pedestrian, would be on their way safely sprinting down the 20mph road to east Bristol.

Look at that pedestrian

1. Dark clothing, hard to spot: no hi-viz anywhere
2. No helmet.
3. No insurance/tax disk.
4. Probably no third party liability for damage caused to the front of cars.
5. Moving really slowly.

The taxi driver narrowly manages to avoid running them over as he accelerates down Ashley Road, and has to sound his horn to make them move faster. The tax-dodger seems a bit upset by this.

Stop this menace to our roads!

Everyone should sign our petition now! We have three signatures already!

Away doing important things

In case people are wondering why the posting rate of this site has dropped, it is that team is off over easter doing Important Things with Important People. Just to make it clear, those readers who walk or cycle around Bristol or other cities: you are not important.

In our trip to the US, we have been with really important people, in a country where pedestrians know there place

Like here, where the crossing lights on the four lane road are taped over to stop people getting the mistaken idea that it is safe to cross. We look forward to this idea being adopted in the UK.

In the meantime, we shall have some photos covering how we, the important people, are important. We shall also consider whether cycling is becoming as much a threat in the US as the press makes out.

Crossing not in use

Classic anti-pedestrian scenes on Gloucester Road on a Saturday morning.

The gas digging has stopped, but the crossing not in use signs have been left up all weekend. Why? These people on foot are not important. Not even to the shops

Important people drive to the shops, even if the only place to park is by another crossing, as the Range Rover 284RAF is doing. But by doing so it ensures that no cyclists sneak up the inside lane and run the red light, so the woman barely visible pushing her child across the road is safer.

On this topic, just think how much parking space is wasted by pedestrian crossings of one kind or another! It probably takes up more space than all the cycling city improvements. This is yet another argument in favour of removing traffic lights in the city: every pedestrian crossing we take away not only saves time, it provides more parking opportunities!

WX02UNH and critical sections

In computing a critical section is defined as something in which only one entity can have exclusive use of at at time, such as, say, a stretch of road or a single-lane railway track. The different bits of the system need to cooperate to gain access to these areas. One way of co-ordinating this access is the semaphore, a concept from the Dutch Computer scientist, Djikstra, based on the old railway notion of flag waving.

Of course, if a French or Italian person had come up with the idea, they'd have used a different name, like "l'indicateur", the car indicator. Because in these countries, to gain exclusive use of an overtaking area, you put your indicator on -way before you are ready to pull out. In the Alps, to put your indicator on before the turn has finished, before you can see if it is safe to pull out, tells everyone else that you intend to, that you have acquired exclusive use of the oncoming traffic lane.

This is why we have one little criticism of the Corsa WX02UNH on Pembroke Road.

We aren't going to criticise it for overtaking the bus on the wrong side of a traffic island. Yes, you aren't meant to do that, but if the anti-car council is going to conspire with Firstbus to put a bus stop in a traffic island, how else are you going to pass it.

Yes, it may be between 8 and 9 am, peak school run hours, but it is also peak commute hours, so the driver may be in a hurry.

No, what we are going to criticise them for is failing to indicate when they pulled out. They just assumed that nobody else was going to be aggressive and take the overtaking opportunity, when in fact any driver in front or behind could have -and because WX02UNH didn't indicate, they would have no warning that the other car was about to pull out. If two cars had collided while trying to drive the wrong side of a traffic island to overtake a bus -now that would be a complex one for the insurance company.

This is why our driving strategy is "Signal then commit". Your signalling is not a hint "I'd like to pull out", but a warning "Here I come", something people should see. But if you don't do such a signal, you don't help others to get out of your way.

Death on Fishponds Road

Bristol lost a teenager on Monday: Junaid Nazir age 16, killed on Fishponds Road -in front of his own house. A taxi driver was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving, then released on bail. We don't know any other details.

One of our contributors went past the site on Tuesday evening -here are their comments:

This was an awful thing to happen, an awful thing to see. Junaid's friends and family were there -all of them utterly devastated. He left to go to school at Filton College, and instead of coming home after another day at school, he never came back. All his dreams are gone, all that is left are memories.

Every time his family leave the house, they are going to pass the place where this child -their son, their brother, their cousin - died.

It was really heartbreaking to be here, I tried really hard to get a photo of the flower and not all the friends and family, -as that wasn't right. They were very welcoming, but it's hard to cover this. No schoolkids should be placing flowers to mourn the needless death of one of their friends.

Afterwards, I went down Fishponds Road -never fun- then turned into Roygate Lane, then onto the railway path. Suddenly I'd gone from the friends and family mourning the death of a sixteen year old to the late summer peace and pleasantness of an almost Dutch walking and cycling route into the city. Yet what point is it in having such a lovely facility if you can't even get across a road 300 metres away alive?

The whole Bristol Traffic team extends our condolences to the family and friends -it will take a long time for everyone to come to terms with this, and -based on personal experience- nobody will ever really get over it. You can never forget.

We'd also like to hint to Evening Post that when they put up articles on tragic events such as Junaid's death, that either they disable comments or they monitor them so all four regular mad commenters don't just repeat their own prejudices -again, and again, and again. This is not the place for them.

Our normal service will be resumed in a few days. In the meantime, there is a growing monument in Fishponds to a failure of the entire "road safety" industry. Consider visiting it.