Beautiful Wife asked me to get some emergency pizza when I picked Youngest Son up from Kindergarten. No problem, I thought, we can swing past the shop on the way.
Except that Youngest Son likes to cycle home on his bike these days, and the only shop in the village is directly on the main road, which happens to be one of the routes into the Stuttgart/Neckar valley industrial region. There’s no way he can ride there with all the cars and trucks and buses rushing into Germany’s sixth city, and of course, we can’t remove the right to choose your transport mode by say, slowing people down or stopping through traffic: then there would only be three fast roads, and imagine the pain and hardship that would cause.
On top of this a child under seven has to ride on the pavements/sidewalks in Germany. The idea, as I understand it, is to get them used to things like a high curb whenever they have to cross a side road; pedestrians appearing from buildings; and how to jump out-of-the-way* of Very Important Drivers coming out of driveways, opening car doors or just using the pavement as their own private parking space.
In this way children quickly learn that ‘cycling’ is what you do on a Sunday afternoon, and if you want to go more than twenty metres from the front door, get Mummy or Daddy to drive you there.
I’m being cynical: It’s probably just a cheap way to avoid building proper cycle lanes.
Either way, it’s surprisingly difficult to ride down a busy road and keep contact with a small person cycling on the other side of parked cars while Mercedes man leans on his horn because I’m delaying him in his Very Important Journey and distracting him from his Very Important Conversation on his mobile phone.
Now I’m sure some people (probably the people leaning on their car horn) would say I should get off the bike and walk along the pavement, thus getting out-of-the-way** of the Very Important Drivers, which would be fine except that because we are ever-so-special tree huggy types we are usually trying to get somewhere on our bikes.
Which makes it even more annoying that having made an extra trip to get the pizza, and riding all over the village to find quieter traffic calmed streets, we still ended up with an SUV behind us revving his engine and generally expressing his annoyance at our presence on the road.
*WordPress is convinced I need these hyphens. Do I? or is WordPress being nannyish?
** See previous footnote.
3 comments
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July 28, 2012 at 9:24 am
timbobaggins
I like the “probably me being cynical” being followed up by pure unadulterated snark – made me laugh. Thank you.
As for the hyphens – it’s a matter of context. Getting out of the way of angry drivers can be achieved by going to some out-of-the-way village with no people…
July 29, 2012 at 2:17 pm
teigl
Oh dear, that sounds typical …drivers of large 4×4′s that come out of nowhere driving with no regard for other road users. How depressing that your cycling facilities are so badly thought-out…and I agree that the riding on the pavement thing is ludicrous.
One pastime that I have indulged in (in the past…wouldn’t do it now, honestly…) is annoying SUV’s by overtaking a slow moving truck on a dual carriageway with my slightly faster truck…usually worth ten minutes of sport as I can feel the SUV’s lights flashing impotently at the back of the semi trailer. Doesn’t win the trucking fraternity any friends, though…even though I am actually doing sixty mph.
I really thought Germany would be more bike friendly…guess it all comes down to politics in the end.
July 30, 2012 at 10:13 pm
Andy in Germany
Hi Timbo, thanks for the comment. I’m glad it made you laugh as I wasn’t sure if it worked…
Hell Iain: I would have loved to watch you ‘overtaking’ like that. To be fair, much of Germany is far better than this, In the north things are very different, as with Tübingen to the south… and the next big town is working on it… in fact, it’s only Ostfildern that seems to be in the 70′s. Actually since 1975 the town has consistently worked to make it easier to use cars and make it harder or impossible to use anything else, from making ‘New towns’ with nothing but roads and garages, to closing the tramway that ran through the valley and which could now be used to transport people and bicycles up the worst of the hills.
This is nothing to do with a lot of retired car company employees living locally and being involved with politics, of course…