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To any motorist in Japan, regardless of whether that motorist is driving a moped, motorcycle, car, truck, bus, or even train, nothing strikes fear into the heart like the sight of a bicyclist.

Bicyclists in Japan are the absolute epitome of poor “traffic citizens”. When they’re on the sidewalk, they weave in and out of pedestrians; they ride while texting, smoking, and holding umbrellas; and they mount/dismount moving bicycles, much less skillfully than they believe, causing general mayhem.

But actually, it’s cyclists’ behaviour on the road, where they’re supposed to be, that is even more terrifying. They ignore traffic lights without paying the slightest bit of attention to whether a car might be coming; if it’s inconvenient to cross to the other side of the road, they’ll gladly just drive on the wrong side; they’ll unpredictably switch between the street, the sidewalk, and the pedestrian crossings… Really, how there aren’t more bicycle-caused traffic accidents is beyond me.

(At this point, I’ll point out that the real spokeheads aren’t the problem.. Anybody here who has an actual decent bicycle and some riding gear generally are good traffic citizens. It’s the 95% of people, the ones who ride the disposable 3-speed rustmobiles, that are the real problem.)

A couple months ago, I actually witnessed a bicyclist whose immunity had apparently run out. Examining the following intersection (the intersection of Yamate-dori and Shin-Mejiro-dori, for those familiar with Tokyo):

I was at the position of the car marked “D”, waiting to turn right. There was a truck behind me, where “T” on the picture is. Now, when you’re turning right at that intersection (as I was and the truck was), your attention is focused on where the green circles are. Basically you’re looking there for mopeds who are legally coming straight through the intersection (nobody besides mopeds can do this). To a lesser extent, you are also checking for pedestrians on the zebra crossing, though pedestrians are slow and predictable and generally not a problem.

But as I was turning the corner, I happened to notice bicyclist B. You notice that she was going down the street the wrong way, went up the access ramp the wrong way, and then switched over to the pedestrian crossing. I saw her from the corner of my eye, and thought to myself, “If that truck behind me doesn’t see her, then there’s gonna be some trouble”. I checked it out in my rearview mirror, and sure enough, the truck hit the cyclist square-on.

So, I U-turned onto the sidewalk and rode back to the intersection and called 119 for an ambulance (a first for me) while the truck driver tended to the cyclist. There was a lot of blood, and she’d probably broken her leg or something, but it seemed like she was going to be fine.

Sadly, though, although the cyclist was clearly being riding stupidly and illegally, I still do have to give some of the blame to the truck. Anybody who’s driven in Japan even for one day knows to be super-vigilant of cyclists. That said: cyclists, whoever is in the right or the wrong, you will lose in an accident with a truck. So, come on.. get some common sense.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 7:36 pm and is filed under driving, japan, rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.