{"id":13201,"date":"2013-07-06T14:39:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-06T13:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=13201"},"modified":"2013-07-06T14:39:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-06T13:39:00","slug":"cyclist-on-boris-bike-killed-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=13201","title":{"rendered":"Cyclist On “Boris Bike” Killed In London"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just saw this on the BBC news website. It reports that a 17-year old female cyclist<\/a> (later reports, and the BBC\u2019s updated one, say that she was 20) riding one of those hired \u201cBoris bikes\u201d<\/a> has been knocked off by a lorry and killed.<\/p>\n

\"ALondon is one of the busiest cities in the world, and has some of the most congested roads in the world. Something like this is always highly likely when you add bikes to the mix. To make matters worse, if you consider what it says on that Wikipedia page, 49% of those hiring Boris Bikes only took up riding in London because of the facility. Since the company has 8,000 bicycles, that means an extra 4,000 bike riders are out on London\u2019s streets who wouldn\u2019t have been otherwise.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the Boris Bikes are ridden on \u201cBoris Routes\u201d \u2013 dedicated lanes, often painted blue. Just take a look at the picture on the left to imagine the potential risks (you\u2019ll have to imagine the tens of thousands of cars and lorries that would otherwise be on the road at peak times on weekdays \u2013 the picture is strangely devoid of them, though the length of the cyclists\u2019 shadows and the greenery suggests this was taken very late or very early in the day, and I would guess at a weekend).<\/p>\n

The circumstances of the accident are not known. Later reports say it happened on Friday evening at around 6.30pm, which is right in the middle of London\u2019s Friday night rush hour, and one with a forecast super-hot summer weekend ahead of it. Obviously, it is a huge tragedy.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again: roads are primarily intended for motor vehicles, not bicycles. Creating a false belief that it is otherwise \u2013 either through reckless bike hire or the continual green\/political pro-bike lobbying \u2013 just increases the chances of something like this happening.<\/p>\n

Everyone is eager to point out that this is the first fatality involving a hire bike<\/strong> since the scheme began in 2010. However, the BBC article clearly states that Transport for London is anxious to \u201cfurther reduce\u201d collisions involving cyclists all over London. Or in other words, cyclists having accidents (or very near misses) is not at all uncommon. Other reports mention two cyclists being killed on the same route in 2011 \u2013 though they weren\u2019t on Boris Bikes, hence the TfL comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just saw this on the BBC news website. It reports that a 17-year old female cyclist (later reports, and the BBC\u2019s updated one, say that she was 20) riding one of those hired \u201cBoris bikes\u201d has been knocked off by a lorry and killed. London is one of the busiest cities in the world, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,87,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-news","category-transport"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}