EUC riding, EUC safety

[Jerome]

The start of this discussion was on the wrong thread. I have pasted the key inputs below

Riding among pedestrians has different nuances at different times. If you are on a sidewalk, board walk, or other densely populated situation your EUC riding strategy might be different than when on an sparsely occupied bike path/trail. In all cases, however, it is the EUC/Bike/Scooter rider who should be inconvenienced, not the pedestrians.

What rider's consider "erratic" behavior is "normal" pedestrian behavior. There is no line for them to maintain. They can and should be able to change their line at any time. Its fine when rider's bet their safety on their particular riding decisions, but passing people without warning when there is a possibility of a change in their "line" will lead to a collision, is arrogance at the very least. The rider has taken upon himself with no input from the party he may injure that he knows best and has calculated he can pass silently without a problem. The only time passing silently is justified is when you can pass at such a distance from the pedestrians that a sudden change in their line/actions will not lead to a collision.

I don't scream/shout at pedestrians. I slow to about 6-8 mph and call out in a tone barely louder than conversational volume my intention, and I have also moved as far away from them as possible on the side I plan on passing them. If I get no indication they hear me after repeat notifications, it depends on the environment as to what I do next. There are too many permutations to cover every situation, but in general : I slow to 3-4 mph and pass them like I was another pedestrian, move off the path into the grass-dirt and make a wide gap when passing, get off the wheel and trolley pass, etc. 

I used the above etiquette for well over 30,000 miles of e-scooter riding (over a 5 year period), tens of thousands more on bikes and e-bikes and I shall continue with the EUC. I have never hit or hurt anyone but myself, which i hope will be true for those take another path.  

 

 

 

  11 hours ago, LanghamP said:

I used to do that. I do not do that anymore, because our safety (theirs and mine) is more important than the pedestrian being momentarily surprised.

I have the utmost respect for pedestrians, and that means they can behave however they want so long as it meets the constraints of not hitting you.

If you call out to a pedestrian then they jump around, or not jump around, in whatever direction they want to. If they jump into your path then there's some time "renegotiating" who owns what part of the path.

Don't be this guy.

Pass the pedestrian in a way that makes it extraordinarily difficult for them to jump into you.

In practice, that means two things.

--Passing the pedestrian before he knows you are there, thereby mitigating his semi-erratic movement.

And

--Timing the passing so that his foot as you pass him is closest to you is on the ground. For example, if you are passing a pedestrian on his left and his left foot is on the ground, then he cannot easily jump to his left because he would either need to cross his feet or do a quick ball-change.

While most of use riders complain about pedestrians being erratic and random when you surprise them from their rear, this isn't strictly true; pedestrians jump in predictable direction depending on which way they are already falling. 

If a pedestrian has their weight already on their left foot, they will jump to their right.

If a pedestrian has their weight already on their right foot, they will jump to their left.

If a pedestrian has their weight on both feet, then they can jump in any direction, but they will almost always turn left because most people in the US are used to doing a sight check over their left shoulder. Presumably our fellow Brits and new Zealanders would shoulder check over their right.

Next time you have a group photo, make a loud noise directly behind them, and count who has their head turned left. I'd bet it'd be above 90%.

 

What? There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about passing pedestrians. First of all you call out to them far enough away that jumping into your path is not an issue. You should not just call out but tell them which side you are going to pass them. Most importantly you don't pass pedestrians at speeds much faster than a jogger, The pedestrian has the right away in all situations when on the sidewalk versus someone on a vehicle, powered by human or electrical/gas energy.

Passing pedestrians without warning is the worse type of behavior. Many cyclist are the worse offenders, but they won't be banned if they hit someone. When the rental scooters were left all over the place people complained but city officials did nothing. When a couple of people died on rental scooters, city officials started posturing but did nothing. When "pedestrians complained about being hit by scooter rider's city officials went into action.

There is a certain arrogance among some cyclist (I hope not EUC riders) that pedestrians should put their fate in the rider's hands who is highly skilled and will safely pass at speed as long as the pedestrians don't do something stupid. 

The burden of passing pedestrians is on us. You slow down when approaching. You call out in a conversational and pleasant tone that you are going to pass them on the ... If they don't acknowledge by turning to see who/what's coming or don't physically move further away from the side you pronounced or perhaps slow their pace, then you slow to their speed and announce your attentions again. As you make your pass you thank them for the courtesy.  

Sorry but I have to respectfully disagree with you and side with @LanghamP

There are two kinds of people. Those that follow the rules and those that don’t because experience tells them it doesn’t work.

Similar to people who cross intersections in the middle of the road and wait on the concrete barriers between traffic vs having to deal with getting hit going along the crosswalk on a 4 way intersection with turning vehicles. 

Just because it’s the rules doesn’t make it the safest option or best option. Experience tells me that most of the time calling out won’t even register in a distracted pedestrians mind and they’ll do something completely unpredictable trying to figure out what they just heard. 

Have you ever tried to tell someone something who wasn’t paying attention? How many times have they said “what?” and struggled to understand what you just said. Screaming at them from a distance that you’re coming on the left doesn’t work much of the time. You have those people that can’t even tell their left from right and actually go IN to the path you tell them you’re coming in.  

Of course you should slow while passing them, but experience once again tells me that most people will not act erratically right before you pass and dive into your path. Once again you should only call out if they are blocking the path by straddling the middle. Oren times people on one extreme side are already giving faster moving people space and don’t want to hear a biker screaming at them something they’re already doing 

Edited 4 hours ago by Darrell Wesh

 

 

[Biped Phil]

Just ring a little bell periodically, so everyone will know where you are and how fast you're approaching.  And leave room for any change of direction they might make:  not only because you can't rely on people hearing the bell, but unbeknownst to you, someone else coming up behind you will suddenly shout ON YOUR LEFT to the both of you and cause a panic response on all sides while everyone's brain stem comes to a different conclusion about which way is left.