“You can ride ten abreast if you like”: Are ‘Parkrun for cyclists’ events the future?; Mark Cavendish racing in 2025 “makes no sense”, says Astana boss; Lachlan Morton’s 460km ‘easy’ day; Bike lane manholes; Vingegaard to the Giro? + more on the live blog

I'd guess quite probably insurance requirements and/or fear of litigation, possibly topped up with a dose of prevalent cycle sport culture that Kerry MacPhee will have grown up with.

It is possible to find insurers and organisers who really understand stuff like different contexts within cycling carrying different risks and that helmets are not the significant life-savers they're widely touted as being, but they're the exception rather than the rule. Which is a shame, but much the same thing can be seen in a significant proportion of e.g. Bikeability lessons delivered up and down the country where the course has no need of a helmet but most participants are forced to use them if they want to take part because of fear, culture and insurance.

pjclinch wrote:

I'd guess quite probably insurance requirements and/or fear of litigation, possibly topped up with a dose of prevalent cycle sport culture that Kerry MacPhee will have grown up with.

It is possible to find insurers and organisers who really understand stuff like different contexts within cycling carrying different risks and that helmets are not the significant life-savers they're widely touted as being, but they're the exception rather than the rule. Which is a shame, but much the same thing can be seen in a significant proportion of e.g. Bikeability lessons delivered up and down the country where the course has no need of a helmet but most participants are forced to use them if they want to take part because of fear, culture and insurance.

About twenty years ago, there were a lot of local cycling events that required helmets, and I asked the organisers why they had that rule, and the response from all of them was that the insurers demanded it.  I found out who their insurers were and asked them if they had demanded that rule: none of them had.  So not only were the organisers incompetent, they were liars as well. 

I won't go on a ride that demands helmets, after all, you don't want to go on a ride organised by people who are both incompetent and liars, do you?  Anything could happen.

On a tangent - I still reel at the nerve of a friend who, in his groom's speech, said his now father in law "knows his claret from his beaujolais". 

Yes.  I decided to check The Code (for what that's worth).

Highway Code wrote:

240. You MUST NOT stop or park on [...] a cycle track [...]

242. You MUST NOT leave your vehicle or trailer in a dangerous position or where it causes any unnecessary obstruction of the road.

243. DO NOT stop or park [ a long list of places - but this is not mandatory ]

244. You MUST NOT park partially or wholly on the pavement in London, and should not do so elsewhere unless signs permit it. Parking on the pavement can obstruct and seriously inconvenience pedestrians, people in wheelchairs or with visual impairments and people with prams or pushchairs.

So ... we all know 240 is plain ignored.  I think it's less "bloody cyclists, never use the facilities anyway" and more "it's all pavement to me..."

244 is tricky - good for people in London (in theory) but everywhere else this is not mandatory.  (Scotland has at least set the foundations here and Edinburgh council has said they will enforce).

However I bet that - if pressed - people are going to fish up rule 242 - that's mandatory - over 244.  Of course, they could simply park where they neither obstructing the road nor the footway / cycle facilities...

There is of course also Rule 145 (no driving on pavement) which both makes you wonder why 244 (no parking on pavement) is even necessary, and gives the police an excuse:

145. You MUST NOT drive on or over a pavement, footpath or bridleway except to gain lawful access to property, or in the case of an emergency.

But I have to admit that in most cases I see, pavement parking is unnecessary and irritating rather than actually an obstruction - in this case a buggy / wheelchair etc could still have passed, and (with experience of the former but not the latter) the quality of the Victorian pavements is probably more of an impediment.

quiff wrote:

There is of course also Rule 145 (no driving on pavement) which both makes you wonder why 244 (no parking on pavement) is even necessary, and gives the police an excuse:

The problem with 145 is that the police will only take action (if they ever will anyway) if they see the car in the process of being driven on the footpath. The fact it is stationary on the footpath is not sufficient evidence it was driven into that position - it could have been lower by crane or helicopter in theory! So 244 is necessary for that reason, at least until someone one creates a Highway Code that is not ambiguous or open to wild interpretation by whoever sees fit, including those tasked with upholding or prosecuting the law.

Being pedantic, my understanding is that the "road" in Rule 242 applies to the whole highway (including the carriageway and the footway). 

The RAC say:

RAC wrote:

Outside of London, we advise people to use common sense when faced with no other option but to park on the pavement.

If you are parking along a narrow road, where parking wholly on the road would stop other cars, and particularly emergency vehicles, from getting through, then it is a sensible option to park partially on a pavement, providing there are no parking restrictions and providing you are not blocking a wheelchair user or pram from using the pavement.

If there are restrictions, or your parking would cause wheelchair users or people with prams to have to walk into the road, then you should find somewhere else to park. 

This is reasonable ... except that people's opinion of "I had no other option" and their choice to park on a narrow road is entirely predicated on "can I be bothered to accept extra inconvenience / do more that is 'necessary' " - to which the answer is often going to be "no" because humans.  (All your passengers will be moaning at you also!)

Plus "but but access for ambulances and fire trucks" will be invoked to back up this tragedy of the commons.  People in wheelchairs can go another way (why isn't there support to drive them places...?).  People with pushchairs can "just go round"...

And of course often "two wheels up" is an outward show of consideration for your fellow motorists (or just protection of your own wing mirror) while not actually being effective to change the dynamic - it at least irritates if not obstructs pavement users, while not actually creating enough space for two vehicles to pass. Ok, rant over.

chrisonabike wrote:

Plus "but but access for ambulances and fire trucks" will be invoked to back up this tragedy of the commons.

Hmmmm. Access for emergency vehicles is an optional rule according to a significant minority of drivers. I think their hierarchy of rules goes something like :

1 Park in a free (in both senses of the word) spot that causes no obstruction right outside the takeaway / newsagent.

2 Park in the cycle lane right outside the takeaway / newsagent. Sod the cyclists.

3 Park on the pavement right outside the takeaway / newsagent. Sod the pedestrians.

4 Park in such a way as to make it difficult or impossible for a fire engine to get by, right outside the takeaway / newsagent. Sod everyone else.

5 Pay for a parking spot right outside the takeaway / newsagent. Sod it, I ain't paying to park!

6 Park 50m down the road in a perfectly good parking spot and walk back to the takeaway / newsagent. Sod that, I shouldn't have to walk!

Very rarely do they make it beyond option 4 before they park up.

chrisonabike wrote:

The RAC say:

RAC wrote:

Outside of London, we advise people to use common sense when faced with no other option but to park on the pavement.

If you are parking along a narrow road, where parking wholly on the road would stop other cars, and particularly emergency vehicles, from getting through, then it is a sensible option to park partially on a pavement, providing there are no parking restrictions and providing you are not blocking a wheelchair user or pram from using the pavement.

If there are restrictions, or your parking would cause wheelchair users or people with prams to have to walk into the road, then you should find somewhere else to park. 

This is reasonable ... except that people's opinion of "I had no other option" and their choice to park on a narrow road is entirely predicated on "can I be bothered to accept extra inconvenience / do more that is 'necessary' " - to which the answer is often going to be "no" because humans.  (All your passengers will be moaning at you also!)

Plus "but but access for ambulances and fire trucks" will be invoked to back up this tragedy of the commons.  People in wheelchairs can go another way (why isn't there support to drive them places...?).  People with pushchairs can "just go round"...

I'm in two minds about completely banning pavement parking. On the one hand, as a non-driver, I'd enjoy the better pavement access without having to deal with the parking issues. On the other hand, I can see that it's going to cause issues on narrow roads. e.g. where I live, residential roads are narrow enough that cars parked on both sides reduce the available road space to just a single car width, so that means either restricting parking on one side (not popular with the residents) or making the roads one-way (not popular with drivers).

On balance, it makes sense to disallow cars on pavements as I see plenty of inconsiderate pavement parking and it's not safe to force pedestrians onto the road.

Mounting the kerb can damage your wheels and/or tyres - or in the case of a police car, our wheels and/or tyres, as they are not theirs to damage. It will also damage the kerb and pavement - is not part of the regular wear and tear usage of the road, which is why designmated pavement crossings have dropped kerbs. Yet nearly every time I see a police car stopped, they are stopped this way, even though it rarely does anything to reduce any obstruction of the carriageway and often obstructs the footway.

Picture below from this very morning on Denmark Hill in Camberwell outside King's College Hospital (it could be any morning of the week, to be honest), police car clearly not on emergency call*, either a follow-up interview at the hospital or more likely availing themselves of the Costa Coffee...they've obviously been told not to park in the bus lane (at least I have been promised numerous times by commanding officers that they have been told), so what do they do? Park in the nearest sidestreet (about 25 m away)? No, let's park on the zigzags of the pelican crossing, that's not technically in the bus lane...

*There is one or more police vehicle parked there virtually every morning around 7 o'clock, unless an emergency is happening there every single day at exactly the same time…

It boils my p***. Is it doing any actual harm? Ninety nine times out of a hundred, no. But lead by example for goodness sake. There is a worrying number of such photos on my phone. I should quit caring, for my own health.  

I've had several recently whilst I've been walking on the pavement and the driver is driving at me on the pavement expecting me to move out of their way, I don't.

But the one that really boiled my pee was I'm walking past some really big expensive houses with garages and driveways, they even had a two car width service road layby arrangement off the main road, plenty of room and space to park and people were still parking on the flipping pavement blocking the footways outside their homes.

About ten years ago, when I was riding my bakfiets, I needed to access a dropped kerb on a cycle route, which was blocked by a police vehicle, and it blocked the pavement, on double yellow lines, and white lines.  It wasn't an emergency vehicle, so I tried ringing 101, but gave up after ten minutes, but I did take a picture which I sent to the local rag with a letter, pointing out that it was not acceptable to block both the dropped kerb and the pavement and to park on double yellows and white lines, and all the responses were critical: of me, not the police.

eburtthebike wrote:

all the responses were critical: of me, not the police.

Entirely unsurprising; in the days before I quit the cesspit of Twitter I would post pictures/videos like the one above in order to tag the relevant forces, 90% of the responses were along the lines of "You ever had to face down a man with a knife? [Yes, as it happens, but that's another story] Wind your neck in and let the police do their job then." In vain would I explain that I was all for the police doing their job, and part of their job is that when they're not on emergency call they have to obey exactly the same traffic laws as everybody else.

The  people who stick up for the police in posts like these will be the same ones knocking them down, saying they don't do  their jobs in the next post.