Stop focusing on the unlocked door

This was originally posted on my old blog on 23 February 2017.

Would it make sense to be alarmed about a house’s door being unlocked, preaching to the occupant of the house about how they’ll be burgled or murdered if they don’t lock the door, if the house is on fire? I feel that’s what we’re doing with the cycle helmet and high visibility clothing issue connected to cycle safety.

This video is a vivid illustration of what I mean. The cyclist is clothed in high visibility gear, and wearing a helmet, riding a bicycle that’s in good condition, obeying every single traffic law, but still things go wrong. Why? The equivalent of the house fire is driver behaviour. Without any motorised vehicle on the road,  cyclist and pedestrian fatalities would drop to zero or near it. Driver behaviour is blatantly and clearly the primary issue in almost all vulnerable road users’ serious injuries and fatalities. We simply must stop demanding that vulnerable road users be perfect before we turn our attention away from them and towards the core of the problem: driver behaviour.