JohnW wrote:fullupandslowingdown wrote:It is curious how any obstruction on the main carriageway is totally verboten but the most heinous of obstructions are routinely planted on footpaths and cycleways as if cyclists and pedestrians don't have the same rights of free passage that car drivers expect.....................
That's because the officers/engineers who specify/design/fit them are motorists, and they neither care, nor understand nor know what they're doing.
More charitably, it's because a motorist hitting such an obstruction costs the highways authority thousands or more in damages:
1. to the obstruction which is probably demolished by the collision; and
2. probably to the vehicle, because the obstruction is probably sited against best practice, which is written mostly by motorists;
whereas I think a cyclist hitting an obstruction costs them very little because:
1. the obstruction is unlikely to have been damaged by a bike; and
2. few courts will award the cyclist injury damages because the obstruction would probably be considered reasonable by the courts. I'd expect a judge to make a comment like "where else could they put it? The highways authority cannot be expected to buy more land or dig a hole in the ground just to avoid obstructing a cycleway with a signals cabinet, the verge was tarmacked over long ago for carriageway widening/modernisation and it obviously cannot be put in the carriageway."
If the government wanted to fix this quickly, they could just pass a law making highways authority liable for punitive damages from people colliding with obstructions of cycleways not specified explicitly in the design manuals (to allow for bollards and so on), then not specify signals cabinets and all the other crap we suffer.