Paint is not Protection

One of the difficult things about cycling in the UK is that, because of the complete lack of safe routes along main roads in most places, it is often obvious to people who want to try cycling that the routes they knwo are completely unsuitable.

People who have been cycling in the area for a long time will have found a variety of routes that work for them, sometimes making use of the poorly thought out snippets of cycling “infrastructure” and tortuous back roads. Although some of the main roads around Lancaster do have pained cycle lanes, this is only because councils insist in wasting money on them s that they can claim to have “done something for cyclists”. People who try using them often subsequently choose other routes because the painted cycle routes often feel less safe than nothing at all.

Indeed, there is evidence to support that they are more likely to result in cyclists being injured than doing nothing at all. Perhaps councils are still wasting the taxpayers money on painting cycle lanes when they have quite clearly been completely ineffective at either increasing levels of cycling or making cycling safer for the last 25 years precisely because they want to deter cycling.

Another possible reason why local politicians like painted cycle lanes so much is because in addition to being able to claim thatt they have “done something for cyclists” (which drivers should most certainly be resentful of), it does absolutely nothing at all to inconvenience drivers (whose views are usually considered to be at least ten times more important than those of anybody else as far as politicians are concerned). It also provides absolutley no benefit whatsoever to people riding bikes, infact it actually makes them more likely to end up in hospital).