You DO NOT Have Priority
Here’s a curious thing in British law - at road junctions, pedestrians have right of way over all other road users.
No, really - click on the picture to go to the Highway Code pages about this.
Anyway, over the last few months, I’ve started acting as if this were true. When cars are approaching from behind like shown above, it’s bloody scary, and you really do need eyes in the back of your head / to concede that discretion is the better part of valour.
When cars are approaching from the front, or from the minor road you’re crossing, it’s much better - provided that you give drivers that gimlet-eyed-cyclist-stare. Look them in the eye, look away, and then stare hard at them again. It’s a bit like the Governator’s "don’t f*** with me" look that he used in the original Terminator, Running Man (I will never, ever wear a race suit like that one ) or Predator. Actually, now that I think about it, every film, and pretty much all legislative sessions he’s been in.
OK - so far, so good.
Now you’d think that when riding a bike along a cycle route parallel to the road, that the same would apply. Au contraire - non! Here’s the standard way of dealing with this issue in British road / cycling infrastructure design, where your path is crossed by a minor road joining a major one:
So what you have here is on the left, the pedestrian pavement, which cyclists are not allowed to use (Cycling on footways (a pavement at the side of a carriageway) is prohibited by Section 72 of the Highway Act 1835, amended by Section 85(1) of the Local Government Act 1888 . This is punishable by a fixed penalty notice of £30 under Section 51 and Schedule 3 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 .) A pedestrian walking along this has right of way over all other traffic as soon as they step into the road to cross it.
Then in the centre is the green cycle track - for people riding bikes. But when they get to the junction, they have to give way to traffic on the minor road that it crosses - hence the dotted lines and inverted triangle.
At the right is the main (major) road. People on bikes can use this instead of the cycle track (there’s no compulsion to us the cycle track ), and if they did so, then they’d have right of way over the traffic joining from the minor road. They’d also have right of way over the traffic on the main road that approached them from behind, or wanted to turn across their path to join the minor road:
So. If the way to get more people riding bikes is to make it safe AND convenient, why do you think the UK seems to lag waaaay behind other countries in terms of the percentage of people who choose to ride rather than drive on short trips?
UK doesn’t lag beind USA. Although our pedestrians have right of way, all bikes are to follow the same rules as cars when on the road.
Either:
1: Designers are putting cycle lanes in as a token gesture and are unaware of better practice.
or:
2: Governments are aware that making cycling convenient will result in more cyclists and thus a bigger cyclists lobby, so they make lanes, but add inconvenient sections where they can.
Germany has the same problem in some areas. Funnily enough our home town is one of the worst. I wonder if that’s related to the number of people here who work for a big car company?
The obvious answer is probably to give the bikes right of way on the bike path (as they do on the continent) but as you’re probably discovering as a pedestrian, asserting your right of way on side streets is a tad dangerous, and it’s true that this is also where most accidents happen in continental bike lanes (cue hysterical comment from a ve-hic-ular cyclist about how dangerous separated bike lanes are). The further the bike path is from the main road, the safer it will be (as cars have time to react and stop) and adding in something like a humped crossing would make it even safer. On the whole, though, I have found that drivers treat cyclists on separated paths as though they were pedestrians, either giving way to them (incorrectly but politely) or attempting to mow them down as though they weren’t there, according to temperament…
I think overall whether safe or not people are lazy. We would not have the obesity problems we have world wide if that were untrue. I think now you are supposed to aim for 60 minutes of exercies 5 days a week. Think of those you know, how many hit even close to that?
LOL! I especially like the “gimlet eyed cyclist stare” and I hope to modify that for the early pre-dawn running I do. They want to run me over too!
Hey my 10 year old was hit on a bike by a car. The car driver wanted to leave the scene and was stopped by neighbors. My son had minimal damage to his person but his Trek bike frame was bent. The guy did not replace the bike, did not apologize, no he sent the repair for his car, that at the scene he said had no damage, to our insurance company!
For an example of what such a crossing would look like in NL, see here. And to see a film of the same thing in use, here I am at 40 km/h vs. a truck in a side road. I do that every day.
It’s very obvious who has priority on the Dutch paths because it always looks like the cyclists have priority. And why do I think it doesn’t happen in the UK ? I really don’t know. Partly I can’t help but think it’s due to a desire for “Great” Britain not to be seen to be copying what has been proven to work elsewhere. Instead, a different path has to be taken.