Like Mr Clelland, I was also on the scene of Idries Sheriff’s homicide, no more than a minute or two after it happened. I was there to hear someone say excitedly “we still have a pulse”, I was there a few moments later when they covered his body, and I was there when they handed a phone to his riding buddy and told her “It’s his wife on the line”. I’ve driven many, many thousands of kilometers in my life and as a result, have had to witness the aftermath of fatal vehicle accidents a couple of times. This one understandably hit hardest.
Earlier this year my brother and I spent 3 weeks riding our bicycles in Europe, for a total of some 50 hours. Most of this time was spent on tight and twisty mountain passes. In all that time, in spite of being passed by literally hundreds of cars, we did not suffer a single close pass— not ONE. What we got, were motorists waiting patiently behind us, even when to my mind, it was relatively safe to pass.
I was reminded of sitting in a taxi in Amsterdam in 2011 discussing bike culture with the driver. When asked why drivers were so aware of and cautious around cyclists, he said simply that if they hit a cyclist, they were at fault. He explained that in the Netherlands, the law stipulates that if a motorist hits a cyclist, the onus rests on the driver to prove his innocence.
This I believe is largely the intention behind the 1 meter passing law— it is not possible to hit a cyclist if you’re 1 meter from him, hence the onus falls on the motorist to prove that he was not at fault. The crucial missing piece of the puzzle here is accountability and accountability rests with the enforcer. Until motorists are held accountable, the behavioural change we need will never materialise. No amount of stay-wider stickers or shirts or ads will do it.
The fact is, the authorities are either too busy or simply don’t care, which leads me to my favourite quote from the piece— “There is something deeply wrong about a society where people have to pay to avoid being killed on public roads. But there is something far worse about continuing to die while arguing about whose responsibility it is.”
You’d have to be pretty stubborn to not see the benefits a well-managed city improvement district, like the kind mentioned in the article, makes to a suburb. I for one am happy to pay the extra levies. He provides a clear set of ideas of how this model could be transferred to ensure accountability is enforced and cyclists can be made safer. He clearly speaks with some knowledge and experience. It’s beyond me how someone cannot see the value in at least trying and, if his suggestion works, you’d have to be brain-dead to not see the value.
As for the argument of whose responsibility it is? We can continue that discussion once we’ve dealt with the more important issue of stopping people dying needlessly.
