I read with some concern in a tiny note in the local paper that another cyclist has been run over at a roundabout. Another one. At a roundabout. Or on a slip road or at a junction. Always in the same places. Always in the same circumstances. The invisibility of the cyclist is multiplied in these places designed only to improve the efficiency of cars and where those who are not cyclists suffer the consequences, which are also usually invariably serious given the defenselessness of the latter.
It is easy to fall into the victimizing temptation of demanding overprotection of cyclists in the face of this type of news. It is easy to generalize and fall into reducing the problem to argue the need for exclusive roads for this type of vehicle without a body, without a license and without insurance. It is easy to make an exhibitionist demonstration to show the vulnerability of people who ride bikes and demand respect and education. What is not so easy is knowing how to discriminate where and why cyclists need to be defended.
When, where and how?
Ring roads, super-boulevards, roundabouts, intersections with traffic lights and amber turns, oversized junctions, the solutions implemented in many cities with the size and characteristics of motorways are those that most condition the transit of "non-motorized" people in the urban environment. These are the mega-infrastructures that most put the coexistence of cyclists with the rest of the traffic at risk. This is where action must be taken and where the rules of the game must be remembered: the respect due, the indisputable right, the safety distance and, why not, segregation.
In the rest of the urban space, cycling is safe if the person riding the bike knows how to behave, knows how to interact and knows how to identify scenarios and situations. So, let's move away from the paradigmatic idea that cyclists, as a protected species, must have a safe and exclusive means to survive and reproduce in captivity because, in the vast majority of cases, that means already exists and is called the street.
Seen this way, the issue is relatively simple and comes down to identifying these mega-infrastructures and seeking the best solutions for each case. Avoiding formulas made with templates and shoehorned in, avoiding possibilist solutions and improvised botched jobs to get by, avoiding nets and meshes that do nothing but generate an expectation of necessary and enforceable protection that can never be completed because there is no public space available and there will never be.
It will be enough to make a map of the city, as has been done in some cities, where the quiet streets are collected and where the black spots and the risky routes are identified and located. And then we will have to get to work (not to confuse work with construction) to resolve them in the most natural and safest way possible from the perspective of the bicycle.
Everything else is an obscene, crazy and self-utopian game that only delays the reconquest of cities for people and the natural and reasonable use of bicycles in them, justifying such outrageous actions as the invasion of sidewalks and discrimination against pedestrians.
The danger of overprotection
Because if we maximize protection we run the risk of overprotection, the consequences of which can be more negative because it can lower the defenses of the protected species, creating an unnatural prophylactic space in which the perception of trust makes its specimens more vulnerable to risk, while making them become predators of weaker species in their reserve.
Originally published in Bicycles, cities, trips…
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