Stoo wrote:A large portion of Coro drive is now peds / cycle path separated which is a great improvement as it now clearly defines where every one should be like a highway. Where the path becomes shared or at the least bottle necks, ie near the "Oxley's on the river" Restaurant and where the construction work is taking place, its always best to slow down (i do) but many still don't. In between thease areas where the lanes clearly defined who should be where i cant see why i should not at a comfortable speed.......after all isn't that why they have separated people from bikes in the first place.
Um, yes. I tend to go as fast as my feeble little legs will permit whenever it's safe to do so. My comment about speeding cyclists was in reference to Southbank, which is an entirely different kettle of fish in a barrel.
Just wanted to avoid any confusion.
Stoo wrote:Its often advertised on TV commercials to educate drivers to be mindful of bikes however nothing to remind people that a footpath is for feet and a cycle path is for wheels. i think painting the cycle path green will be more effective then a symbol painted every hundred meters or so and if possible have a physical separation between the two but nothing will work if it is not drummed into peds to not be where they shouldn't.......after all i can only assume that they do not walk down the middle of a road?
They do , you know. I've seen 'em. The Gov probably has too, and has likely given up on pedestrian education as a completely lost cause. Take a walk around your local shopping precinct and even as a fellow pedestrian you'll have trouble passing some of them if you don't adopt similarly erratic behaviour.
Just about anywhere you go there are going to be some people getting around with their brains switched to power saving mode [that's the kind version]. Some will be on foot, and some on two wheels or more. The catch 22 is that those of us with even the most basic sense of awareness and self preservation will avoid them if at all possible, but by doing so we allow them to continue happily along with their utter disregard for anyone but themselves and therefore enable them to continue impeding others, or much, much worse.
As someone who now sports a subluxated ac joint in no small part due to the actions of a boozey boofhead on a shared path, I've become an even more keen observer of pedestrian behaviour. So many do not react in a predictable [or even logical] manner, so it takes something particularly unusual to amaze me these days, but some old codger managed it this week...
I was lapping one of the local parks on road & nicely forested shared path to try and avoid the wind. I did about 30k around a 1.6k circuit so was well aware of who/what was on the path. One particular group consisted of three older folk with a couple of dogs off leash walking along a wind protected section. I'd already employed the bell twice with no result. Ended up passing them whenever an off path escape became available about a dozen times, having patiently dawdled along behind them till safe to do so each time. Once already the old bloke had actually noticed me track standing [just something to do to pass the time] at a safe distance while they checked one of the dogs in the middle of the path. He graciously stepped to one side only to have his Mrs fill the recently created void as soon as I started moving forward.
The kicker came a few laps later when they'd about faced and were coming towards me. I'd already passed them safely a couple of times in this direction once they'd scrambled to control their dogs [there are 2 off leash areas at the entrance to the park btw], but this time they were having a bit more trouble and were all over the path and to my right. I'd already slowed to almost stalling speed 10m before and got off to the left to pass, still very slowly. Just as I was almost level with the old bloke he finally manage to grab the collar of his full sized poodle....and dragged it off the path right in front of my wheel! I think he might even have waved his hand towards the newly vacated space on the path and said "Ta-Da" [er, perhaps I dreamt that bit]. I still managed a completely unsarcastic "Thanks" [No really. I did. I think I might have been having difficulty processing the stupidity.] as I just managed to manoeuvre into it with inches to spare.
I took it as a sign and headed for home despite having shared nothing but mutual respect and cheery pleasantries with the twentysomething other folk using the path in the hour or so I was there.