pedestrian should just use common sense. why install a bell on a
bike when it is not to be rang?
to pedestrians out there, so would you rather a bike to approach
you from behind or from front without ringing and alerting you? and
do you go around down the entire streets going "excuse
me"? imgaine that you are on orchard road, jam-pack with
people. all i see is that people are either busy cutting each other
or bumping into each other. i don't even see people with the so
called "basic courtesy" as mentioned in the posts above, saying
"excuse me" when they are overtaking somebody.
most of the time, people just overtake or cut other
people's path silently. since a street full of pesdestrians don't
say "excuse me", why should you expect a cyclist to do the same?
after all, he is essentially still a fellow human being. he is not
god or animal. why expect higher standards from the cyclist, when
you are not doing the same thing yourself?
a bicycle, essentially, still occupies the same width as a
pesdestrians walking on the streets. they do not take up additional
width, so, why shouldn't they be entitled to their share of the
road?
more often than not, we see pesdestrians walking down the middle
of the walkway, as if they own the path. they refuse to bulge even
when you ring repeatedly at them. so do you expect cyclist to do? i
have met this sort of case before, even when i had
courteously ask the person the give way. the person just
ignore me, and continue and insist on walking on the middle of the
road. so i no choice but to go really really close to him, (to the
verge of running him down), before he would bulge.
sometimes, it is not really the cyclist fault, but rather, the
egotist pesdestrians, who think that by virtue of their so called
"vulnerablitity" that they can walk anyway they want.
same case with pesdestrians jaywalking on the streets. just
because they are the "weaker party", they do not have any rights to
expect drivers, motorcyclists to brake and give way to them.
just because the road is labelled as "footpath", it doesn't mean
that it belongs to anyone travelling on foot. likewise, this
applies to "bicycle paths". we see people walking on bike pathways
in the parks, and on park connectors, and we din give any nuts
about it. so why should we have double standards, and criticise
cyclists for doing exactly the same thing.
cyclists, too, do not wish to know into people. they are not
psychomaniacs who not only wishes to inflict harm on others, and
also at the same time harming themselves.
when a cyclists run into someone on the streets, most likely,
they would also fall from the bike, and also risk injury. no sane
cyclist would have like to crash into anybody, may it be other
cyclists or pesdestrians.
so, here, i urge those anti-cyclist to be more pragmatic, and
have a more neutral stance.