LIFE CYCLE PLAYING TAG

York is rolling out a new cyclist safety system. That should be good news, so why isn’t Rob Ainsley entirely convinced?

York, the city where I live and cycle every day, is not typically associated with many world-firsts – not since the invention of the After Eight mint here in 1962, anyway.

It’s a gentle sort of place – at least, once the stag and hen parties have finally got taxis back to their Travelodge. And it has its own timeless quality; certainly drivers stuck at the lights on Bootham know how eternity feels.

But now we have a new invention to share with the world. Cycle Alert is an in-cab alarm system that beeps to show drivers when a bike is nearby. It’s been trialled in various settings, including on York Uni buses with student cyclists, and now a local taxi firm is fitting them as standard on its vehicles. As the builders at Fukushima no doubt once said: what could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, I think, though none of it would be the fault of the sincere and expert team who have developed the system as a tool aimed at reducing the high number of cycling deaths and injuries in Britain caused by blind spots in large, abruptly left-turning vehicles (such as minibustaxis full of revellers who’ve spotted their rendezvous pub, for example).

No. The problem is more one of public perception. You see, in order for drivers to be able to detect you, your bike must have a tag fitted (they’re eight quid from the Cycle Alert website – or, if you’re able to get there in person, free from the Uni shop).

Which creates the risk, in all too many press and public minds, that if you’re not tagged and have an accident, it’ll be seen as your fault. Anyone who survives or narrowly escapes a collision will have their ‘good fortune’ credited to the device. Anyone injured who didn’t have one fitted will have that fact noted in the press reports.

Safety tags will be like helmets and hi-viz clothing in that papers will

Statistically, cycling is safer than gardening – so go for a ride instead of mowing the lawn

invariably point out when victims weren’t wearing them, however irrelevant that fact is to what actually happened to them. No matter that you were struck by lightning, swallowed by a sinkhole, or gored by an escaping rhino: you were bare-headed in a grey t-shirt so, really, what did you expect?

Just as the reports of drunken stabbings at chucking-out time faithfully record whether victims were in a stabproof jacket. Or not.

Now this isn’t about helmets, so please don’t write in. Especially if your caps-lock key is stuck down, as often seems the case with compulsionists. This is about how we apportion responsibility in huge imbalances of damage-potential.

I’d have nothing but support for a cyclist-alert system that requires no input from the cyclist (apart from following the Highway Code – or, to put it another way, not riding like a plonker, but that should be a requirement anyway). I’d love to see a system that involved, say, a camera to cover HGV blind spots. Or the requirement for drivers to use other ‘intelligent’ sensors, such as eyeballs or a brain.

But responsibility must go with power and its capacity to cause harm. To expect cyclists to tag their bikes is as wrong as expecting stags and hens to wear stabproof jackets – though when you see what they do wear, that’s probably not a bad idea if only on the grounds of taste.

Cycle Alert’s developers often talk about how they realised that, in those all too common HGV-cyclist incidents, the result affects two sets of families, not just one. Yes, of course, I have sympathy with a driver responsible for injuries or worse that weren’t their fault. But they’ll survive to tell the tale, mainly since they’ve opted to drive something the size of Brimham Rocks that can crush other road users, so the responsibility for safety lies overwhelmingly with them.

Anyway, that’s enough of the serious stuff. It’s sunny and the evenings are longer and warmer, so it’s time to get out. My mountain bike and best road bike are out of hibernation and beckoning me. Per hour, cycling is a safer activity than gardening. Which is a great reason to go for a ride instead of mowing the lawn. (Has anyone got safety stats on washing up, grocery shopping, or doing tax returns, so I have an excuse to avoid those too?)

So here’s to happy – and incident-free – spring riding for us all. With or without magic safety devices.