Cycle Superhighway 7 Collision

Over the next few posts I plan on taking a look at the CSH7 junctions that are first up for review by TfL. You can see the priority list for all CSH junctions here; the junctions I'll be looking at are:

Balham Station
Clapham South
Clapham Common/The Pavement
Stockwell Gyratory
Oval Triangle

Because I actually ride through them, I know all these junctions pretty well . Unless I miss my guess, TfL don't, except through a car windscreen. They will either do a paper-based exercise, or they'll turn up in the middle of the day when traffic is quiet and there's few cyclists around. Their analysis will therefore be impoverished and compromised. But hey, some good may come of it, and some public money will get spent.

What they won't be looking at yet, and probably not ever, are the minor junctions, like, let's pick one at random, College Road. I was riding past this morning and what did I see? The aftermath of a minor crash, in which the cyclist was fortunately not seriously hurt as far as I could make out.

The problem with these minor road junctions is there are a lot of them, and at each one there is a chance that a vehicle will encroach over the give-way line into the cycle lane. This can cause you to T-bone into the side of the vehicle, or in trying to avoid doing so to swerve or brake, either of which could cause a crash. Alternatively, you may get left-hooked by a vehicle trying to turn left across the cycle lane from the major road into the side-road. A third possibility is a vehicle turning right across your path, either not knowing that the cycle lane is there, or not seeing a cyclist in it. There are a lot of large vehicles on the A24, so there is a good chance a vehicle on the other side of the road won't see cyclists until it's too late. Typically, a right-turning vehicle will have to wait a long time for a gap in oncoming traffic. They see a narrow gap and accelerate hard to make the turn. By the time they see there's a cyclist in the gap, it's too late to avoid a crash.

The solution is quite simple of course: ban turns into and out of these side-roads, and where that's not possible, minimise the traffic and eliminate the hazards of turning traffic: ensure that sightlines are good and there are safeguards to avoid the types of crash I've described. They've actually done this on most of the side-roads between South Wimbledon and Colliers Wood although this is not yet part of CSH#7.