ego.istic.org

One night last week I was riding on East Road heading South, and on the bit of cycle path immediately after the part where it is usually obstructed by cars sticking out of the parking bay. I ran over a smooth, triangular bit of metal, like a road sign. It was stormy weather, and it occurred to me pretty much simultaneously that ⒜ in wet weather it was quite dangerous to have a sign in the cycle path, and ⒝ it seemed likely that it had blown there in high wind.

A second or two after I looked up from the sign I saw that I was rapidly approaching an obstruction: the left three or four metres of the carriageway (including the cycle lane) had been dug up and were surrounded by barriers. As I signalled and pulled out by a lane and a half to avoid it, I thought that it would have been a much more relaxed manoeuvre if I'd had a bit of advance warning of the obstruction, and reflected that they should really have put a “road narrows on the left” sign in front of it.

I'd passed the roadworks before I made the connection.

As FlipC said on his blog today, “Signs warning you about non-existent hazards can at times be as dangerous as the hazards themselves.” I would add to this that even signs warning of real hazards can be as dangerous as the hazards themselves. This sign was fine in itself, but as it was insufficiently anchored, it became a slick surface in wet weather that could easily throw a less confident cyclist, and a distraction from the hazard it was warning about. I've often seen “road narrows on the left signs” placed in cycle lanes: once even by the police, and on this same road.

During the recent roadworks in Downing Street (Cambridge, not London), one pavement was closed, and a barricade section moved the contraflow cycle lane further into the main carriageway. Unfortunately, at the end by which cyclists enter the section, a sign indicated that they should use this section; at the other end, a sign instructed pedestrians to use it as a footpath.

But all of these hazard-creating signs pale in comparison to the efforts of our friends across the Atlantic: the city of Dana Point, California, was rewarded for one outstanding hazard sign by having it made Warrington Cycle Campaign's Cycle Facility of the Month for October 2008.