Friday 13 November 2009

Students: they think they own the road

One interesting aspect of our secret-instrumentation of unsuspecting cyclists is that we see how differently people behave in situations we would not normally encounter. Normally, when heading up Cotham Hill as a last minute Redland-Mum sprint we'd sound the horn and expect people to get out the way. But here, as the cyclist crawls up, you can see the students out and about uninterrupted.

And very interesting it is too.

You can see that they are quite happy to step out without looking round, without turning their head to see if there is any risk. Yet Cotham Hill is your first option to sprint on the school run after the crawl down Whiteladies Road; your first chance to put your foot down. These pedestrians think that shared-space means they get some of our taxpayer space, when really it means we get to park on the pavement we pay for.

As for the other roads -plenty of room for double parking. Yet not with all these students just wandering around. There should be a law against them.

Drive round here, run one of them over -you get the blame. They should not be allowed to walk round without passing some "walking in the city" test and getting third-party insurance. And as winter comes in, they need to get with the hi-viz clothing.

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