The Wrong Side of my Car

The blog that wants to go obsolete

Who Is To Blame for that cyclist’s death?

Sad news arrived from Cambridgeshire, Great Britain. A cyclist lost balance and fell off the footpath. She then got run over by a car and died. Rest in piece.

Let me sketch a picture of what happened. An elderly cyclist was cycling on the footpath *1. She met a pedestrian coming on foot from the other side. That pedestrian got angry, some shouting and gesticulation ensued, and as the cyclist tried to get out of the way, she lost balance, and fell into the road. There, A car driver found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and hit the cyclist.

The pedestrian got sentenced for three years in prison for this. Case closed? Eh, I think we still have to ask questions.

Who in this picture is doing a dangerous thing?

So, there’s three persons in the storey — the cyclist, the pedestrian, and the car driver. Who is it?

Did you guess the pedestrian? Well it is always risky to have a go at people. Especially elderly people can get grievously hurt or even die from falling over. But overall, these altercations usually aren’t deadly.

Did you guess the cyclist? No.

The car driver then? Bingo. Why did the cyclist die? Because she got hit by a car. The dangerous thing happening in this picture is people driving cars (also known as heavy machinery to Health & Safety types) through populated areas.

So, who is to blame?

So, should the car driver have been sentenced then? Well, no. It is not that simple. These two questions are meaningfully different. And whether we like it or not, this is often a messy and complicated answer, and it is almost never neatly one person.

Let’s think about what happened from the different points of view.

The car driver

Not much is mentioned about him. He was, presumably, just driving his car as you’re supposed to do, and someone fell of the footpath right in front of him. There was little he could have done.

Sometimes you can tell some situations are dodgy as. A cyclist crossing someone else on a narrow pavement right next to a fence *2 is definitely one of those, and it is a good idea to slow down, or if possible, avoid passing too closely. Close passing a cyclist or pedestrian is dangerous, whether or not a kerb is in between.

It is impossible to tell from the articles if the car driver was to blame. Yes, cars are dangerous, but you are also overwhelmingly expected and supposed to drive at a certain speed.

The cyclist

Well, you know how riding on the road is. Can you really blame her for staying on the pavement? Or what should she have done otherwise? Drive a car? How often do you hear people rile against those old people who shouldn’t drive anymore?

So no. Not the cyclist.

The pedestrian

Obviously you are not supposed to shout and aggressively gesticulate at someone. So yeah she has some blame here. But really, it is not something that normally gets someone killed. *3

Quite a few more details about her were spilled out in the news. She has cerebral palsy and poor eyesight. Not things that make your life easy — and she would definitely benefit from not having fast moving things on a footpath. For those riding a bicycle on a footpath, don’t be a dick. Who knows, maybe she met someone less than considerate on a bicycle on a footpath before.

So yeah maybe. It is complicated.

I mentioned Health & Safety professionals before. If you’re one of them, did you see anything wrong with this picture?

Do you allow fast moving heavy machinery right next to walkways at your workplace? Without fences or buffer space or anything?

I did not yet mention the fourth participant in the story. A player who sits quietly in the background, almost invisible and almost never mentioned. But who is actually the dominant player in many of these stories.

The Road Controlling Authority

Have you ever driven past road works? Chances are that traffic was either slowed down to a crawl, or heavy barriers were put into place. Once you get squeamish about people occasionally getting killed, a kerb will no longer cut it.

You could ask questions about the razor thin safety margin in this situation. People sometimes lose their balance and trip. You may have a pothole, or debris, or maybe someone bumps into you. It happens. If there is no buffer space between the footpath and fast moving traffic, any small mishap like that will potentially get someone killed.

Imagine you run a workplace, and an incident like this happens. “Ah yes they drive forklifts here so we tell employees to be careful when walking here.” Eh, no. If that happens in your company you are in big trouble. You, and not the forklift driver, or the people walking there. For creating such an unsafe situation in the first place.

But the road controlling authority is just there, in the background. Nobody talks about it. Oh yes we marked out all that space for driving cars. And preferably driving fast. The cyclists and pedestrians can squabble over scraps of left over space. Some mishap happens and now someone is dead.

We should ask serious questions about whether that is a normal way to run a street network.

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