I have been meaning to comment on this issue for a while, here goes. Whenever anyone talks to me about cycling on roads in Singapore, one of the standard questions is about safety. And everyone assumes the problems are either taxis or buses or trucks. As I have commented before, the reality cannot be further away (Except the trucks – construction trucks carrying concrete etc are pretty bad vehicles to meet on the roads).

There are 3 groups that personally cause me more trouble than anyone else on the roads:

1. Private cars: Especially the weekend drivers (red license plates in Singapore), and expensive cars (Lexus’s and Mercedes come to mind). Obviously not all are bad but my observation has shown that these drivers are the least predictable in traffic. Thy weave in and out of lanes and squeeze you out of the roads at traffic junctions. They also tend to stick to one corner of the lane (May or may not switch lanes) and inch forward when traffic is stationary. They also tend to speed (along with wannabe rally drivers in their cheaper sedans). My problem with these is that their behavior is not easy to predict. Unpredictable traffic is the least pleasant form and the idea of having complex traffic rules is to bring about some form of predictability to general traffic chaos. I pay close attention to these suckers when I do encounter them and I don’t mind losing a minute of my time by riding slowly and cautiously around them.
   They also tend to jump lanes suddenly to drop / pick people up or witch more than 2 lanes because they just realized they need to turn.
2. Pedestrians: Particularly Jay-walkers, Pre-emptive street crossers at traffic junctions and people hailing cabs.
• Jaywalkers obviously cause trouble as they do not seem to understand that cycles travel fast and assume that cyclists can easily ride around them. It is true that bicycle is easy to maneuver but what they do not understand is that when the cyclist is twitchy he looks very unpredictable to the car behind which is not good for the general traffic harmony.
• Preemptive street crossing at traffic junction is very problematic since these fellers are tuned by habit and understand the timing of the light to a high degree of precision. Whet they lack is the ability to look for traffic in the form of bicycles coming their way. They seem to respond only to large / bight head lights and cyclists get lost in their peripheral vision. Kind of the effect in the awareness test. Once the lights turns amber, they start their walk almost blindly.
• People hailing cabs are a bit more annoying. There is a recent policy which says, cabs can pick up passengers only at the designated taxi stands. However, there are people who do not bother with this and jump on to the street waving their hands like a maniac. This they do to get the cabbie’s attention but in the process they seem to forget to notice poor cyclists in their path.
3. Cyclists: It kind of an irony that one of the prime problems for cyclists is probably other cyclists. These are the fellers who ride without lights and jump from pavement to the roads. I share the same sentiments as other road users regarding these morons. They are annoying and dangerous. The worst kinds are the ones that ride on the wrong side of the road. They are seriously asking for trouble and when I do encounter them (almost everyday), I make it a point to tell them to get out to the correct side of the road.

I guess I can not change the behavior of the entire population but I will give a piece of my mind to whoever jumps in my way.

Related posts:

1. Riding in traffic
2. Inherent slowness of platforms
3. coffee talk on road usage
4. Uninspired leadership
5. taking notice

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 2:59 pm and is filed under bicycle commuting in singapore, musings, Singapore. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.