Question for Ruth Cadbury MP, chair Parliamentary Cycling Group

I don't know where you got your information from, but it is wrong. At least for the Netherlands. Presumed liability is NOT applied in criminal proceedings ONLY in civil cases - that is, who has to pay for which damages.

For example, in a recent case the driver of a garbage truck, driving out after his colleague picked up a garbage can, did not see that he was being close overtaken by a little girl on a bicycle at the time, and drove over her. He was prosecuted, I think for 'death by guilt' (that is, involuntary manslaughter). The prosecutor argued that his mirrors were not set up according to traffic regulations, and that he would have had enough time (about 4 seconds) to see the girl if he had. The man was acquitted, because the judge was of the opinion that prosecution had failed to prove that this mis-setting of the mirrors was actually there.

According to David Hembrow, strict liability was introduced in the Netherlands in the 1990s. Cycle paths were already widely used in the Netherlands for a long time before this, and presumably functioned fairly well without strict liability. 

Whilst strict liability and harsher penalties for careless driving may well both be good things, I am unconvinced by your argument that strict liability is a necessary prerequisite for cycle paths having safe priority over side roads.

Safe priority for cycle paths accross side roads can be achieved by tight radius corners, putting the cycle path on a hump, setting the cycle path back from the road at the junction, making the cycle path a different colour, clear road markings and signs. The appropriate combination of measures will depend on the speed and volume of motor traffic.

Regarding your point about traffic lights and giving way to pedestrians who have a green man, the exact same thought has occured to me. However, one should also note that many houses have driveways where they park their cars. In order to get in and out of their driveways they have to cross the pavement and give way to pedestrians. We need to extent this principle to the junction of minor roads with major roads. So it's not an entirely foreign idea to british drivers. Have you looked at this?

http://pedestrianiselondon.tumblr.com/post/27284356735/traffic-controlle...

Hello again!

This reply has turned into something of an essay! I hope it rewards the effort of reading. (If you don’t feel like reading all of it, the link to Mark Wagenbuur is perhaps the most interesting bit).

I’m going to start with a number of remarks relating to points brought up at different stages in our discussion. I’m then going to give a summary of the argument I think you are making (and you can correct me if I’ve got it wrong!), follow by a point by point explanation of why I think otherwise.

In your description of overtaking, you note that there are three speeds which a driver needs to judge correctly. In addition, drivers also need to consider the width of the road, and any upcoming junctions, as these may influence the movements of themselves or the cyclist. So in total I would say there are at least five things which a driver needs to consider – three moving and two stationary.

You note that overtaking is something which drivers do anyway. This is true, but I would say that apart from cycles, overtaking moving vehicles in urban areas is rare. (By overtaking I am not talking about where there is more than one lane in the same direction). The place where most overtaking of moving vehicles (other than cycles) occurs is on rural single carriageways, which also happen to be the most dangerous kind of road. So although overtaking is something that drivers do anyway, it does not mean that they are particularly good at it.

Two rules from the highway code which are relevant to what we are discussing are rule 163 and 170 (Give bikes as much room as cars when overtaking, give way to pedestrians who are already crossing side road). These rules are little known and little obeyed. I would suggest that one reason for this is that there are no clues from the physical road environment that this is the behaviour expected. For instance, when there is a central hatched area, it almost seems a bit naughty to drive into it to overtake a bike, although that is the correct thing to do. Similarly, if the pavement stops but the road continues around the corner, then what reason is there to expect that pedestrians should have priority? I mention this because in the case of cycle paths crossing side roads it is possible to make the expected behaviour very clear through the physical road environment, rather than relying purely on knowledge of an obscure little book that someone may have read once.

Your description of strict liability in your first post seems significantly different to how Mark Wagenbuur describes it. Have you read what he says? Do you agree with it? If not, do you have a source (preferably Dutch) to explain why Wagenbuur is wrong?

https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/strict-liability-in-the-netherlands/

Whenever I mention some high quality features on cycle paths, you say “what about these lower quality ones”! Now, I understand what you are saying. You are arguing that because the Netherlands and Germany have strict liability, they can have some inferior designs that still work fine. The important thing is the strict liability, not the quality of the junctions. However, how do we know that these inferior junctions work fine? Or rather, how do we know that these junctions would not be made considerably safer by implementing the features I described? For instance, junctions in Germany could be improved to modern Dutch standards.

I don’t see why unidirectional paths are so much more demanding. The total width required may be slightly more, but where necessary I would rather have a safe unidirectional path that had some sections too narrow for overtaking than a dangerous bidirectional path. I’m not the only person who thinks bidirectional paths need very careful consideration in urban areas (see below)! In Berlin I rode on plenty of unidirectional paths but I don’t recall seeing any bidirectional ones.

http://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/photos/good-cycling-facility-of-the-we...

Something that has not yet been mentioned is that some side roads can be accessed from the other end. Blocking off one end might be desirable anyway, to get rid of rat-running. If a cycle path is being built then it might be possible to kill two birds with one stone – removing a conflict point with the cycle path and eliminating rat-running.

Where space permits, a car-length gap between the carriageway and cycle path is a good thing to have. Whether it is necessary depends on the volume and speed of traffic. Here are some nice diagrams of the different options:

http://pedestrianiselondon.tumblr.com/post/22275958913/right-of-way-junctions

If a car turning into a side road genuinely does not see a cyclist on the cycle path, the speed of impact will be relatively low, due to having to negotiate a tight turn followed by a speed hump. If a car on the carriageway does not see a cyclist or misjudges an overtake their speed could be 30 mph or more. Of course any kind of collision is very bad, but I would suggest in the situation with cycle paths the consequences are likely to be less severe, thus it can be considered more forgiving of mistakes.

I’m not anti-CTC! I know that the CTC does lots of interesting and worthwhile things. There are many points in the ‘Cycle friendly design and planning’ document with which I can heartily agree. There are, nonetheless, some parts I find disappointing, such as the bit about bus lanes.

I agree with everything you said about rural cycle paths!

I don’t know London well at all, but last time I was there I walked along Tavistock Place and saw a great many cyclists on the cycle path. I didn’t ask them about their eco-political motivations, but they seemed like fairly normal people to me!

Here is the argument being made, as I understand it:

1.    Cycle paths with priority at side roads require better behaviour from drivers towards cyclists than we currently have.

2.    Driver behaviour towards cyclists is better on the continent.

3.    This better behaviour is mostly caused by strict liability, therefore we need strict liability before we build cycle paths.

Is that a fair summary of the argument? I will now explain, point by point, why I think otherwise.

Firstly, any road layout will have some kind of interaction between different road users. (Unless we build a separate cycle path to every door and grade separation at every single junction. This would be a ludicrous idea and no one is proposing it!) The question is: what is the nature of the interactions between the different modes of transport? Is it clear what road users are expected to do? Is it relatively easy to do the right thing or does it require lots of observations and concentration? Is the setup forgiving of mistakes? In all these regards I believe cycle paths offer advantages. Of course, if drivers have no regard for the lives of cyclists then this is a problem. However, I do not think we make the problem any less bad by not having cycle paths.

Secondly, I am not sure that driver behaviour on the continent is necessarily that much better. I think it can appear that way due to infrastructure. By infrastructure, I do not only mean cycle lanes and paths, but also the extent and quality of the motorway network. The difference in speed limit between motorways and other roads is also important. If the speed limit on the motorway is significantly higher then it makes sense for drivers to take a longer route using the motorway, rather than razzing along country lanes. From looking at Wikipedia, it seems that Britain has the smallest difference of any country in Europe. 30 or 40 km/h would seem to be normal. I found only one other country with a difference of less than 30 km/h, which was….. Ireland!

Thirdly, if driver behaviour towards cyclists is better, I am not sure that strict liability is a particularly big contributing factor. I would concede that driver behaviour in Germany is indeed somewhat better than the UK, although not by an enormous amount. I believe this has a lot to do with drivers frequently also being cyclists. To put it another way, I think empathy with other road users (or lack thereof) is a more important driver of behaviour than fear (of financial consequences in the event of a collision).

What I am saying is that if cycle paths were ubiquitous and well-designed, they would be sufficiently well-respected to provide significant benefits to cyclists, under current liability rules. You are saying that they would not. Ultimately, both of these positions are conjecture, since cycle paths are not ubiquitous, and the few that do exist are not necessarily well designed! The only way to find out, as far as I can see, is to build them and see what happens. Rome may not have been built in a day, but surely it would not have been built at all if they hadn’t started somewhere?!