Thursday 23 September 2010

Helmetless

It's 16:15 on a weekday and there are bicycles here on Gloucester Road. Look you can see one waiting to walk over the pedestrian crossing, and another going to the bike lane. Two pedestrians are stopping to talk just past the car parked over the dropped kerb. Nobody, walking or cycling, is wearing a helmet.

Further in towards town, again, two more cyclists, helmetless. They may be entering a bus/bike lane which is valid from 16:00 onwards, but that is no excuse. All the cars heading in to town are forced to use that bus lane to get past the turning Porsche blocking their lane.
Even further in, you can see a number of vehicles parked here, fifteen minutes into the operating hours of this, a showcase bus lane.
These cyclists using it do not have helmets and do not have insurance. If any of them were to hit a car parked in the bus lane, who would pay for the damage?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

WHY WOULD YOU EVEN LEAVE THE HOUSE WITHOUT A HELMET?!

between-the-lines said...

Very sensible, Ms Foster. Indeed, all pedestrians and cyclists should have to wear helmets at all times, and pay compulsory comprehensive insurance to cover such eventualities as when important people choose to park in their house.

Unknown said...

How do you know they don't have insurance?

Many cyclists do actually have third party liability insurance even though it is not a legal requirement.

Bristol Traffic said...

Good question. We differentiate ourselves from the daily mail group by having scientific evidence for our claims. For this experiment we doored all passing cyclists then demanded their insurance details. None of them had any.