Motor crashes
I’ve been tracking the local news lately, and one of the things I notice is that most days there is news of at least one traffic accident, and sometimes more. Often these are collisions involving cars and lorries on the motorways. Sometimes they involve motorbikes on the Botley Road. Occasionally—one recently—they involve cyclists.
Of course, the motorways carry huge volumes of traffic, while cyclists are relatively few. Cyclists travel in town, where speeds are low and cars can stop quickly if something unexpected happens. It’s no wonder really that by the day, more serious accidents happen involving motor vehicles on the motorway than involving cyclists in the town, although I imagine that not all accidents are reported by the Daily Echo.
Cyclists typically feel very vulnerable, I think, and it’s one of the offputting things about cycling for many people, especially cycling out of town. New York City’s “streetsblog” used to run weekly carnage articles, rounding up deaths and injuries in the area each week—with the purpose of (among other things) emphasizing the relative accident rates in and out of cars, I believe.
At the cycle forum, John Waugh picks up on the use of the word “accident”. The correct term nowadays is “collision”. “Accident” explicitly doesn’t impute blame. Hey, it was an accident. “Collision” is agnostic on the subject. It’s a fine point.
Point? I didn’t have a point. The People’s Millions is airing information about the four projects on TV this week, with a recap on Friday, when voting opens. Voting closes on Monday, which is coincidentally when the lights go out on Lovers’ Walk. I cycled down there about 7pm last night and it didn’t feel especially dark or spooky (I have noticed Southampton often feels light at night when it’s cloudy) and there were several other cyclists and pedestrians along the path. I wonder if just turning them off after, say, 10pm would have been a better option? (Although you really wouldn’t want to be walking along there at 10pm and suddenly have the lights go out on you).
Here’s a cartoon illustrating the future when cars run on biofuels, because I liked it:
