When to ride on the pavement
City police have recently started targeting cyclists who jump lights or cycle on pavements. Their enthusiastic clampdown follows BBC1’s ‘Road Rage’ programme about reckless cyclists. For the most part, I try not to cycle on pavements, not least because it’s illegal. I also get annoyed when I see idiot pedallers scattering pedestrians like skittles with a two-wheeled swagger.
However, there is an exception: right at the end of Theobalds Road. In rush hour, I’m faced with Hobson’s choice: either join a busy and treacherous one-way system down to Holborn or take a hop, skip and a jump across the pavement in front of Central St Martins, over the lights and down Bloomsbury Way and rejoin the road at New Oxford Street. It’s generally quiet: if it were heavily peopled I’d walk my bike. Most pertinently, if there were adequate cycle lanes – proper sectioned-off areas that cars can’t drift into – in the busiest, most dangerous areas of town, I wouldn’t contemplate it.
In the meantime, I go slowly and don’t overtake pedestrians unless I can do so without them having to move to one side. By and large, this arrangement works well. I respect pedestrians’ superior claim to the pavement and they, barring the pinstriped cross-patch and his steel-tipped briefcase I once met, respect the fact I’m being considerate.
Feature continues
The stock response from cycle organisations to sticky legal issues like these is to blame the law breakers (ie people like me) for giving others a bad name. But why adhere to a law that endangers you? Fifty-three per cent of cycle collisions happened during rush hour last year according to Met figures. Until London recognises that, despite ads encouraging us to saddle up, facilities for cyclists are still substandard, those who bend the rules will remain a fact of life.
Route rating
Miles 1 (Theobalds Rd-New Oxford St).
Calories burned 36, but it all counts.
Pedestrians mown down 0.
Bendy buses avoided 4.
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6 comments
'Why adhere to a law that endangers me?' (re illegal pavement cycling) The same stupid selfish comment could possibly be made about knife-carrying. Get off the pavement, you selfish git - even if people say nothing to you don't take it as tacit acceptance, it's probably because they're frightened. Read letters in the local press and reports of local community and police meetings - it's you and others like you who are making the pavements in London a no-go area for old, disabled and vulnerable people. What a stupid and irresponsible article for Time Out to endorse - I will not be purchasing it again.
I was with a cyclist who was catapulted off her bike in an accident last week. She landed on her head and shoulder. Result: Helmet severely dented, concussion, face had a nasty case of road rash, broken collar bone. Without a helmet I think it could have been much worse.
Re: amazing statistics - the trouble with accident statistics is it is impossible to measure all the accidents that don't happen...
Did the writer really mean;
'Anarchic behaviour under the guise of protest is selfish and self-defeating.'
Or perhaps;
Selfish behaviour under the guise of protest is self-defeating.
Or maybe;
Selfish behaviour under the guise of anarchy is self-defeating.
Clean up on the stereotypes mate.
I ride through that road system most days and, as I've found generally with cycling in London at all times of day and night, if you ride with your wits about you, it isn't a problem. A cycle lane past Central St. Martin's would be safer and there's loads of pavement but in the mean time the author should grow a pair and use the road.
LB 's Southwark and Lewisham provide free Adult Cycle Training for all those who live, work or study in the borough. Available via www.cyclinginstructor.com. Online Booking!
Statistics show that amazingly cyclists who wear helmets have more accidents than cyclists who don't. This is because, the study says, drivers of cars and other vehicles tend to take it "slightly easy" when they see a cyclist wearing a helmet as opposed to when a cyclist is unprotected. A model Catch-22 situation innit?