Changes to road design could improve the safety of cyclists

-1 to chuck, because the science trumps anecdote argument is not always correct - it was used to keep us smoking for an extra couple of decades until we were reeeeaaaaaally sure about the harm of smoking. And this cycling study's evidence is actually just anecdote dressed up, and with a tiny tiny sample too, 20 cyclists. Great to see some studies on cycling but don't be dazzled by a post doc per se - it's just a guy who needs a project and enjoys cycling.

+1 to Chuck. Coming into an argument with evidence is always better.

Lots of things that seem obvious turn out to be nonsense, because people think "oh, it's obvious" and then stop thinking about it, and miss things.

And in any case, there's plenty of established opinion that's stacked against this. Franklin's advice, for a start (which is well bought-into by many planners/engineers), centres around educating cyclists to make decisions rather than building infrastructure to reduce their decision-making load.

If evidence breaks down received wisdom and helps steer us to better, safer infrastructure then where's the problem?

It's easy to knock this kind of thing but if it can be part of a body of research with some sort of rigorous approach behind it then it's all to the good. Evidence is always better than anecdote for influencing policy.

Pope a Catholic - wow what news!

Quote:

To address the issue, the team suggested taking decision making opportunities out of the hands of the cyclists.

Simples. No bicycles on the road.

I have an award for these turds too.

I live near a crossroads where the behaviour of cyclists has been "constrained" by engineers who thought they knew where cyclists needed to go. Unfortunately, they seem to have assumed that no cyclists live on the hill where I and quite a few other cyclists live. Three of the four roads that meet at this junction have parallel cycle paths. The fourth road doesn't have one. I need to turn into this fourth road very regularly to get home, but the entire junction has been designed so that cyclists cannot leave the cycle path network and join this road without dismounting and using pedestrian crossings. So I have no legal way to get home on my bike unless I use the roads rather than the cycle paths to approach or leave this junction. So that's what I do. It saves me dismounting, crossing as a pedestrian, remounting and then doing a standing start on a slope. I'm pretty sure my behaviour is predictable for motorists when they see me in front of them before we reach the junction and they start concentrating on multiple traffic streams. I'm in the correct lane, I'm ready to heed the same traffic signals as they are, I'm signalling my intentions and everybody knows what's going to happen. In fact, I think I'm WAY more predictable than a lot of the other cyclists I see at this junction - plenty of cyclists revert to "wheeled pedestrian" mode on the junction arm that has no cycle paths, so it's hard to know what they are going to do: will they mount a footpath, roll across a pedestrian crossing on green and then a second one on red, or will they skip the RLJ at a crossing they aren't supposed to use anyway and stay on the footpath and ride up the hill on the narrow footpath on the wrong side of the road? Hard to tell.

You won't get predictable cycling if you build segregated infrastructure that isn't seamlessly integrated with non-segregated infrastructure where it needs to be. Constraining cyclists behaviour doesn't work when it constrains their ability to make journeys efficently for no good reason. People just find their own hopelessly unpredictable workarounds, some more or less legal and others illegal, and continue to follow their desire lines.

... They don't see the need. Motor transport is what they design for not cycling. They'll only consider cycling if made to. Make friends with councillors. It's the key.

Its true. Most of the roads in cities of this country stem from medieval times. Naturally there was no thought to future uses of the roads.

From a series entitled 'No shit Sherlock'

hey, nice work if you can get it!

Wonder if I can get a research gig at the "university of the sunshine coast" to see if round wheels work better than square ones

Love the name of the University. Sounds like the right place for getting a grant for this kind of research.

Yeah this does seem a bit more like common sense and a lot less like a scientific research study

Is this research from the Australian university of stating the bleeding obvious? I could have told you that without a research program...