and the difference is....?
- Thread starter dellzeqq
- Start date
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GrumpyGregry
Here for rides.
Presumed liability perhaps?
I have no idea, and neither has anybody else.
I have spent some years living there and still have family connections...
1/ Dutch drivers are likely to be cyclists
2/ It is drilled into you when you learn to drive to respect cycle lanes & cyclists. Noticeable when I lived there that Dutch drivers were usually great with cyclists and almost invariably ignored pedestrian crossings ( it has got a bit better now).
3/ The hilly bit of the Netherlands had much less cycling and the attitude of drivers is generally more UK like.
4/ Hit a cyclist with a car in Amsterdam and you'll have your head kicked in (I have seen it)
5/ Roundabouts did not exist there until around 20 years ago, so there is less ingrained behaviour to change hence easier to introduce crop circles (which I hate using). The problem they seem to be addressing is inability to mix with traffic when necessary, induced by cycle lanes (which I am in favour of in some situations).
Incidentally overall road accident fatality rates are almost identical between the UK and Netherlands, though NL is significantly safer for cyclists.
snorri
Legendary Member
- Location
- East coast, up a bit.
The milliseconds lost in taking the slightly less direct route is more than made up by not having to give way to any motor traffic.
Flying Dodo
It'll soon be summer
Notwithstanding all the derogatory comments we wrote on the TRL questionnaire about their road layouts (or possibly because of them), Rebecca and I have been invited back to TRL next Monday, to test the magic roundabout! Except they want us to drive their cars, so we get to try and not run down any cyclists!!!
summerdays
Cycling in the sun
- Location
- Bristol
So they are going to use cyclists, who are more aware of cyclists in the first place, to drive the cars? I do hope they are going to use non-cycling car drivers to ride the bikes
velovoice
Veteran
- Location
- Between the City and the Sea
Just to clarify - our chief criticism is that they wanted us to give feedback on whether low level cycle lights at junctions help cyclists 'get the jump' on motorists, but there were no motorists in the trial - we cyclists had the roads to ourselves!
Our being asked to participate in the Dutch RA trial came about because we were now already on their database. The woman handling this trial did not know which trials we had done previously and indeed had no idea we were cyclists. In fact, I've got a terrible suspicion that our sessions will involve motorists only -- no cyclists -- and so will be just as fundamentally flawed as the cyclists-only one we did last time. Hmmmmm.
looks no sillier than the magic roundabout in swindon. - I think I would like to see one in westbury, admittedly you would probably have to demolish 3/4 of westbury to get it in - but that would be no bad thing.
I still don't see how it would stop cars/lorries just stopping on the bike lane or ignoring you and driving straight across in front of you.
I still don't see how it would stop cars/lorries just stopping on the bike lane or ignoring you and driving straight across in front of you.
that's not difficult.....
Flying Dodo
It'll soon be summer
Well, we went back to TRL yesterday, to have a go at driving round their Dutch style roundabout.
The actual roundabout itself seemed smaller than it appeared on TV. Each of the approach arms has a different style of segregating the cyclists off the road onto a cycle lane which in all cases is separated from the road by a raised tarmac section (so in that respect it's exactly like the example that we already have in Luton), with different styles of paint and markers for the crossing part. In some cases it's just a zebra crossing, in others a zebra crossing for pedestrians with a different style for cyclists.
We all had multiple journeys to do, testing going in all directions from each arm. The cyclists they were using to go around the roundabout the same time as the cars were TRL staff and contractors (as they said they felt it would be too dangerous to use the public). On each run, they asked us to provide a score out of 10 for both the ease of using the roundabout, and how safe it felt.
On a couple of occasions, I almost ran into the cyclist as they went around.
At the end of the afternoon, we had to fill in a long questionnaire explaining our feelings about each of the options; if we'd noticed the different styles of crossing; and any other comments.
In a test environment, with cars going no more than 10-15 mph and only 1 cyclist at a time crossing in front of you, some of the time, it works fine, but other times it felt very dangerous. With larger vehicles, you'd get roundabouts blocked up and bearing in mind the speeds used in real life, the design just doesn't work. And I told them that. The only way it can possibly work is if speeds are severely limited. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just I can't see that's achievable here.
Segregation (in this example) doesn't work.
The actual roundabout itself seemed smaller than it appeared on TV. Each of the approach arms has a different style of segregating the cyclists off the road onto a cycle lane which in all cases is separated from the road by a raised tarmac section (so in that respect it's exactly like the example that we already have in Luton), with different styles of paint and markers for the crossing part. In some cases it's just a zebra crossing, in others a zebra crossing for pedestrians with a different style for cyclists.
We all had multiple journeys to do, testing going in all directions from each arm. The cyclists they were using to go around the roundabout the same time as the cars were TRL staff and contractors (as they said they felt it would be too dangerous to use the public). On each run, they asked us to provide a score out of 10 for both the ease of using the roundabout, and how safe it felt.
On a couple of occasions, I almost ran into the cyclist as they went around.
At the end of the afternoon, we had to fill in a long questionnaire explaining our feelings about each of the options; if we'd noticed the different styles of crossing; and any other comments.
In a test environment, with cars going no more than 10-15 mph and only 1 cyclist at a time crossing in front of you, some of the time, it works fine, but other times it felt very dangerous. With larger vehicles, you'd get roundabouts blocked up and bearing in mind the speeds used in real life, the design just doesn't work. And I told them that. The only way it can possibly work is if speeds are severely limited. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just I can't see that's achievable here.
Segregation (in this example) doesn't work.
Where is that going then? Interested in the idea but think it's more dangerous than useful myself.
thom
____
- Location
- The Borough
Greenfield thinking pertains to both ;-)
The former is about preventing people being mown down while the latter just involved people mowing stuff down...
Why?
