When the politicians were in town, they blocked off the pavements to bicycles, and early on in the evening, Prince Street Bridge. We got complaints from some of the Southville folk, for which we say: if you had a car, rather than walked, it would have been less of an inconvenience. Therefore, no sympathy, not even a little bit. And don't say there's nowhere for you to park, we all know about the Coronation Road pretend bike lane, you have no excuses.
What the police did do, and for which we are grateful, is close off the pavements to bicycles. We would have hoped this would have been sufficient to stop them cycling, but no, one chose to use the bike crossing of Prince St Bridge. Only now, no pavement option afterwards. What does he do? He runs the red light, a few seconds before it actually changes.
Unfortunately for him, an Airport bus coming from The Grove is executing a turn, and also ignoring the red light which they must have seen, unless the lorry in front blocked their view.
The tax-dodging cyclist almost got clipped by the bus, and you can be sure the green party or some other bunch of troublemakers would have been blaming the real politicians for the death that would have resulted. And we drivers would have been held up.
In which we explore the options for getting round Bristol (*), and the consequences of those decisions. (*) Excluding Fishponds.
Wednesday 5 May 2010
5 comments:
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twice I have been nearly totalled by an Airport Link bus cutting in on me on Whiteladies Road (though I'm afraid I was letting the side down rather by cycling sensibly and in accordance with the Highway Code). I wonder if it's the same chap?
ReplyDeleteCould be. To be fair to the bus here they are just running a light that has just changed, rather than ignoring it completely the way the cyclist is. It's just a bad combination.
ReplyDeleteAre people really still calling cyclists tax-dodgers? Maybe I move in the wrong circles but I don't know any cyclists who don't pay hefty taxes on at least one car...
ReplyDeleteI think the 'tax-dodgeer' sentiment is regularly expressed over in the comments sections at the Evening Post website, where hope and reason go to die...
ReplyDeleteIt's actually a style requirement of all web sites within the Daily Mail portfolio, of which Bristol Traffic is one.
ReplyDeleteWhen we write "tax-" in the word processor, autocomplete pops up to give us the choice of: tax-dodging lycra-lout, tax-dodging illegal immigrant and tax-efficient member of the house of lords and chairman of the conservative party.