We're going for ... a walk. God help us!!

Today at school, our boy got a gift from the II. District government: a fluorescent lime safety vest meant to wear whenever he's walking or bicycling in the city.

The II. District is looking out for me! But missing the point.

It came with a note, signed by the district mayor, explaining that "the safety of children is the responsibility of adults -- our responsibility." And continued that children get into accidents more easily and, regrettably, more frequently, and they make up the majority of those involved in accidents as cyclists or pedestrians.

And while noting that increased attention is needed on the part of motorists, the letter emphasized that it is necessary to develop proper travel behaviour among children in the interest of avoiding accidents.

The letter concludes by noting that because a parent "can't be next their child every second," this reflective vest can provide a useful, effective service by helping the little ones (a kicsik) to draw attention to themselves from motorists.

I feel bad whinging about this, because I believe this gesture came from a good place and, of course, I'm grateful that the local önkormányzat considers the safety of local children a priority.

At the same time, I feel myself recoiling from this unsolicited advice just as I do when older Hungarian women offer to help with our little daughter whenever we're out in public. If you're a parent, you're familiar with the issue. You're out with your baby on a perfectly pleasant summer day, but a square centimetre of her abdomen is exposed to the air -- the air!! -- and so an endless succession of kind-hearted women accost you to express pity for your child and ask if you don't think your baby's freezing.

It's the same thing with the protective vest. The sentiment is nice, I suppose, but it reflects a quaint, wrongheaded approach that doesn't do anything to help my child. If the mayor's really interested in helping, he needs to know that the main transport hazards that Lance faces on the streets of this district are from fast-moving cars. Of course both my wife and I work to instill safe walking and cycling behaviour in him, as we would anywhere. But this city, including this district, has a problem with traffic speeds. A city is no place for an expressway, but Budapest is full of urban expressways that don't allow for the slimmest margins of error for a rambunctious child on a sidewalk.

I love the small of a traffic jam in the morning!

 The main hazard Lance and I face everyday in District II is the traffic on Margit körút. This street is a typical four-lane, Budapest expressway, and it runs between our flat and the turnoff to Lance's school. Lining the street are dozens of apartment blocks, a park with playgrounds, restaurants and bakeries, a cinema, three grocery stores and the Mammut shopping mall -- places that attract droves of "little ones". The körút is also the route of the city's most heavily used tram line, which ferries hundreds of children and their parents to and from schools, kindergartens and daycare centres located just off the körút. This corridor teems with pedestrians of all ages every rush hour, and yet, the vast majority of space on the körút is devoted to car traffic and the cars rush by at ridiculous speeds.

In my view, the best way to enhance children's safety on the streets of II. District would be to calm the traffic. On the körút, the sidewalks could be widened, bike tracks added on both sides of the street and motor circulation restricted to one lane in each direction. But most importantly, the speeds could be slowed down to 30 kph. Studies have been shown that speed reduction is one of the most effective ways to avoid accidents and reduce the incidence of serious injuries and fatalities. 

Ironically, I occasionally don one of these ugly reflective vests while cycling at night in Budapest. And I see more and more cyclists in Budapest wearing these things -- during the night and day. I think this is profoundly wrong -- you shouldn't have to dress up like a emergency-services worker to ride a bike. And now, the district government is advising parents to put these things on their children whenever they set foot on a district sidewalk. Is this not a sign a problem?

Postscript: Despite my philosophical quibbles with the District II's child-safety scheme, Lance couldn't wait to put his new vest on this morning. Later,  I had cause to puzzle about this apparent enthusiasm. He wore it on our bike ride to school. But when I dropped him off at the front gate, he took off the vest and handed it to me. I didn't understand -- why didn't he just wear it into the school and take it off in the class room, along with his coat and mittens? He said he didn't want to -- he wanted me to take it home. Then I teased him: C'mon Lance, you're teachers will say you're a bright student. I can't resist stupid word plays. And it made Lance cross with me. At any rate, for some reason, he did not want his friends to see him in that vest. At seven years of age, he's more fashion conscious than he once was, and this vest apparently sets him apart in an unpleasing way. Maybe he thinks it makes him look like a momma's boy. I'm not sure, but he's definitely got some reservations about this thing.

Lance dons the safety vest. But will it be a
short flirtation with fluorescent fashion?

Another Year, Another Run-in with a Car

Riding into Szentendre yesterday morning, I got broadsided by a motorist who didn't bother to look before coming out of a grocery store parking lot. It had been just over a year since I was hit by a truck on the same morning commute, that accident also a result of the driver not looking before accelerating out of a parking lot.
I was riding north on Route 11, the main road into town, and, as is my preference, on the carriageway rather than the broken-up sidewalk, which is what passes as the designated bike route here. I was on the right edge of the curb lane going an estimated 28 kph, and was passing by the north entrance to the Lidl market parking lot. A compact car exiting the lot was waiting to turn right into my lane. If the car had waited as expected, I would have passed 2-3 metres by its front bumper. But at the last instant, I could sense in peripheral vision that it was accelerating right into me. It hit the rear of the bike, knocking it out from under me while I tumbled to the pavement. The bike was sent scraping across the pavement about 10 metres away into the middle of the next lane.

I got myself up and turned toward the motorist, who had already pulled to the curb and was out of the car. I was so stunned by what had happened -- there was nothing to explain it. It was broad daylight, and there are no visual obstructions at that entrance, nothing but clear sightlines hundreds of metres in both directions. I held up my hands, as if to say, "WHAT ... THE ... FUCK!!!?"

I wanted to rip someone's head off. However, the driver -- a women in her late 50s -- appeared more shaken than I was. She asked if I was hurt, should she call a doctor? I told her I wasn't hurt -- just scraped up. I said we were both lucky and asked why she didn't look before she came out of the lot. She said she didn't see me ("Nem latom!"). And then she broke down into convulsions of tears. I ended up having to console her -- although I didn't go so far as to tell her it's alright. It's not alright to drive a 2,000 kg vehicle without watching where you're going.

This morning, as some deeper aches and pains are coming to bloom beneath the scrapes, I'm struggling to draw useful lessons from the incident. When I was last hit, I was on a separate bike path next to the road and I drew some lessons from the incident, one being that when motorists are turning onto a road, they pay more attention to traffic on the carriageway proper than they do to the sidewalks and bike paths.

But in this latest collision, I WAS on the road. The driver simply didn't look before she turned.

Not to excuse this driver, but a general problem in Szentendre is that very few bicyclists are on the roads. And when drivers aren't used to looking for cyclists, they tend to miss them.

Just the day before my accident, I was cc'd on a citizen's complaint about the poor cycling facility along Route 11 within Szentendre. What's needed, the writer said, is an allowance for cyclists to ride on the carriageway.

The official response -- from the Magyar Közút Zrt. -- was that Route 11 is being used to its capacity, that cyclists would cause an unacceptable "interruption of traffic flow" and that, anyway, "parallel cycling infrastructure exists".

Well, the "infrastructure" that exists is a sidewalk, nothing that was created specifically for cyclists. Not only is this "bike path" unsuitable in its conception, it's in horrible disrepair: badly broken up on some segments, riven with cracks elsewhere and merely a mud track in others.

The only known way to improve safety conditions for cyclists is to increase the levels of cycling. This happens not by shunting them off onto dirt paths, but by prioritising them on city streets and giving them all due consideration for their safety. On the five-lane-wide Route 11, this is easily achievable. The only obstacle is political will.