Changes to cycle policy - 3/4 Aug 13

[whole diary]

[ellendune]

Bus drivers are meant to be trained to a somewhat higher standard than SUV drivers and, as mjones says, plenty of bull bars are in use. As ever, the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) allows the near-useless, but bans things that would help cycling.

It doesn't matter how good a driver is if a pedestrian hits bull bars or any other similar feature on the front of a vehicle they will be much more seriously injured than if the hit a front end that is properly engineered for pedestrian safety.

[mjray]

It doesn't matter how good a driver is if a pedestrian hits bull bars or any other similar feature on the front of a vehicle they will be much more seriously injured than if the hit a front end that is properly engineered for pedestrian safety.

If a bike rack is really like bull bars (and I think that's unproven) then either ban both or neither. The current situation is absurd.

Secondly, the reduced risk of collision with a vehicle driven by a higher-qualification driver should be factored in, no matter how much some try to pretend it's irrelevant.

And finally, once a vehicle hits a pedestrian (and that's the way round it usually is to cause injury, not what ellendune wrote!) then the pedestrian has basically lost anyway.

[ellendune]

It doesn't matter how good a driver is if a pedestrian hits bull bars or any other similar feature on the front of a vehicle they will be much more seriously injured than if the hit a front end that is properly engineered for pedestrian safety.

If a bike rack is really like bull bars (and I think that's unproven) then either ban both or neither. The current situation is absurd.

Secondly, the reduced risk of collision with a vehicle driven by a higher-qualification driver should be factored in, no matter how much some try to pretend it's irrelevant.

And finally, once a vehicle hits a pedestrian (and that's the way round it usually is to cause injury, not what ellendune wrote!) then the pedestrian has basically lost anyway.

There is research that demonstrates that solid bars and harder more concentrated edges like bars (such as are found on bikes when stowed sideways) considerably increase the injuries to pedestrians when there is an impact as they concentrate the loads on smaller areas of the body.  Ordinarily a pedestrian has a reasonable chance of survival with impact at 20mph, but with these sorts of things that reduces the chance of survival significantly so the vehicle would have to be going much slower. 

Here is an old article by Christian Woolmar from the independent  in 1994

[mjray]

If a bike rack is really like bull bars (and I think that's unproven) then either ban both or neither. The current situation is absurd.

Secondly, the reduced risk of collision with a vehicle driven by a higher-qualification driver should be factored in, no matter how much some try to pretend it's irrelevant.

And finally, once a vehicle hits a pedestrian (and that's the way round it usually is to cause injury, not what ellendune wrote!) then the pedestrian has basically lost anyway.

There is research that demonstrates that solid bars and harder more concentrated edges like bars (such as are found on bikes when stowed sideways) considerably increase the injuries to pedestrians when there is an impact as they concentrate the loads on smaller areas of the body.  Ordinarily a pedestrian has a reasonable chance of survival with impact at 20mph, but with these sorts of things that reduces the chance of survival significantly so the vehicle would have to be going much slower. 

Here is an old article by Christian Woolmar from the independent  in 1994

Nothing in that article about bike racks being like bull bars and on second look, there doesn't seem to be anything in your whole message replying to any point I made!

Also, if (and I say it's still unproven) current bike racks are like bull bars, it's surely not beyond the wit of man to invent a bike rack with a pedestrian protection panel on its front. Airbags, even. Short-haul buses are hardly as streamlined as trains to begin with.

[ellendune]

Nothing in that article about bike racks being like bull bars and on second look, there doesn't seem to be anything in your whole message replying to any point I made!

Also, if (and I say it's still unproven) current bike racks are like bull bars, it's surely not beyond the wit of man to invent a bike rack with a pedestrian protection panel on its front. Airbags, even. Short-haul buses are hardly as streamlined as trains to begin with.

I didn't think I claimed it mentioned bikes.  I was using engineering judgement (I am an engineer after all) to make then connection. I am well disposed towards cyclists and as you say if you added a pedestrian protection panel with crumple zones that that could overcome the problem, but I somehow doubt that bus companies will make the effort.