Death and injury on the footway: Cyclists and pedestrians: the risks

This extract from the current issue of CTC's Cycle Digest might be helpful if you are confronted with opinion on cyclists and pedestrians / cycling on the pavement. It would seem to follow that the priority here is, as usual, dealing with the death and injury caused by motor vehicles and their drivers.

"cyclists very rarely cause pedestrians harm: just one pedestrian has been killed in collision with a pedal cycle in the past 2 years. In that time, there have been 1,070 pedestrians killed in collisions with motor vehicles. As for cases where the cyclist was found to have been acting illegally, there have been 3 other instances in the whole of the past decade, besides Jason Howard, where cyclists have been convicted following the deaths of pedestrians, two on the pavement, one on a grass verge.

By contrast, in 2005 - 09 there was an average of 45 pedestrians killed in collisions with motor vehicles on pavements or verges each year – that’s almost one a week.

Levels of prosecution

In total (i.e. including on-road as well as pavement collisions), there were 500 pedestrians and 104 cyclists killed on Britain’s road network in 2009 – that’s about 11 non-motorised users killed on average per week. Moreover, less than a quarter of all road fatalities ever lead to a prosecution, let alone a prison sentence – so that’s probably about 8-9 cyclists and pedestrians a week whose bereaved families then find the driver concerned faces no prosecution at all. And even when prosecuted and convicted, it is common for drivers who have killed pedestrians or cyclists to face fines of just a couple of hundred pounds."

Barking (& Dagenham) Skyride Local circuit

The route  of the Barking & Dagenham Local Skyride has been released - perhaps provisionally. See the map here:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms%3Foe%3DUTF8%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26ie%3DUTF8%26hq%3D%26hnear%3D0x48761d9cb8584b29:0x58b96fc939fbb960,London%2BE10%2B5LP%26gl%3Duk%26hl%3Den%26vps%3D1%26jsv%3D346c%26authuser%3D0%26msa%3D0%26msid%3D210546813079394734054.0004a51ea766968508a4f

We should, I suppose, politely call it the Barking & Dagenham Skyride, but as it extends only as far east as Mayesbrook Park, it could rightly be called tha Barking Skyride

Potholes of Barking

Potholes on my regular routes are something like old friends. One gets to know well what they look like over the years, and watches how they increase in size as time goes by. The analogy ends there though.

Pothole one (feat. Coke Can) in this blog is acoss the Road from The Brittania (as was) in Church Road. I thought I had reported this before, but have reported it just now for good measure.

http://www.fixmystreet.com/report/188968#update_165738

Pothole 2 (feat. beer can) is the worst, or second worse, of the series of defects in Salisbury Avenue on a signposted route from Salisbury Avenue.

In both cases I managed to upload the wrong photos at the first attempt. Apologies.

http://www.fixmystreet.com/report/159324#update_165739

Vandome Cycling

I saw an ad in B&D Council's The News for Vandome Cycling, only to find from the website that it is owned by B&D LCC member Russell Coe, of  Dagenham. Vandome is offering repairs and maintenance (including contracts), and maintenance classes, National Standards Training, led rides, bikes and spares for sale and fitness development.

We wish him all the best with that, I'm sure.

RailPlanner

Train fares oracle Barry Doe recommends RailPlanner for planning rail journeys and mining your way through the Byzantine complexity of rail fares in the UK. He says current online journey planners show up journeys starting later at A, with changes at B, C and D, to arrive at E at the same time as you would have done if you'd just turned up a bit earlier at A. I can't say my testing using East Coast bears this out, though.  Barry's example in Rail Magazine (issue 671) involved catching the 1208 from Bradford on Sunday 15 May and arriving in London at 1522, with no changes, rather than catching the 1225 and changing twice to arrive in London at the same time. You might want to save the 17 minutes and pay by changing twice, but Barry's point is that with online planners - I don't know which - the direct and slightly slower train is hard  to find. I tested with Sunday 12 June and the engine found direct trains, and the interface allowed me easily to filter out trains with changes.

Now it's hard to find anyone who thinks that our train ticket system is clear and legible. There are situations where you can save money by buying separate tickets from A to B, B to C and C to D, instead of a ticket from A to D, and end up on the same train(s) youb would have by buying the through ticket. Plainly a nonsensical situation.

Barry says that offline RailPlanner gives some useful options for planning/ticketing that aren't available with online planners, but it is available in a browser accessible version and is presumably essentially the same on either platform. Barry recommends the 'silver' version, which costs £59.40 pa at the offer price he has negotiated. Presumably for some people, this would pay for itself by a combination of cheaper fares, simpler journeys, and reduced journey times.

So, here we have a relatively cheap software solution to the problem of train fare / journey planning complexity. Why not just piut it on the www let everyone use it for free? They could use it direct themselves, or via an agent at a ticket office or travel agent. Software should be able to find the best fares and journeys (not necessarily the quickest and cheapest) and the rail system would have a dataset of actual journeys/tickets to inform its planning. So the software would mine the information and save the trouble and cost/confusion of simplifying fares.

To take up Barry's offer you need to quote RAILoffer when ordering, which you can do by phone or using the pdf downloadable form  - post or fax! See http://www.travelinfosystems.com/

Barry Mason, RIP

With great sadness I am passing on the news that Barry Mason has died in Spain where he was on a cycling holiday. He will be a great loss to cycling and our sympathy is with those who knew and loved him.

http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/5328
http://asitc.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/barry-mason/
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/06/05/british-holiday-maker-dies-after-going-for-a-dip-in-spain-115875-23180076/

There is a tribute to Barry on the LCC website to accompany the growing number on e-mail groups and blogs:

http://lcc.org.uk/articles/barry-mason