Lookout

The more I see of the Nice Way Code, the more I despair. Motorists (of which I'm one at times) get touchy-feely "it would be awfully nice if you didn't run over and kill people" ads like this (and one with pedestrians as egg shells); while cyclists are given definitive "don't" messages that actually contradict a lot of what's going on out there (don't cycle on the pavement is right in most instances, but what about shared use paths, put in in many instances because that particular road is deemed too dangerous, but the NWC infantilises the issue by basically saying you're a baby if you don't want to ride on the road - whereas the majority of reasons I hear for people not wanting to cycle at all is that the roads are 'dangerous'. The "don't pass buses on the left" signs on the back of buses is another example - erm, the left is usually where cycle lanes are put, while the NWC suggests that what I'm to do when passing a queue of traffic in a cycle lane is then leave that lane to go round the right hand side of the bus (they stated they meant "if it's safe" when their poster says "if you must", but I do wonder in that case why you don't just say "if it's safe") thereby making my way last traffic by swerving in and out of it, while if I stick to what is in many instances safer, and what the installed lanes suggest I do, there will then be motorists who see me going past the sign and think "there's another cyclist, breaking the law").

The whole campaign plays into perceptions. More people a year die from falling off ladders, bee stings, and drowning in their own bath, than are killed by cyclists a year (roughly 2 - two too many of course, but where's the campaign against baths that kill about 29 people a year????). Hundreds of pedestrians die after 'interactions' with motorised vehicles a year (there's some worldwide stat that more people die on the roads every year than were killed in WW1 and WW2 combined). Over 40,000 people a year die from obesity related illness, and the same sort of number from swing related illness. Every single year.

I'm rambling, at some point I need to put all of the thoughts and worries of the NWC into coherent words. There's a photo I'm after to illustrate this perfectly. Either a pic of the "don't ride on the pavement" billboard, with a shared use path in the foreground; or a taxi, which in Edinburgh are apparently carrying NWC ads asking drivers not to stop in ASLs, stopped in an ASL (that's got to be an almost guaranteed shot...).