Vehicle technologies and the rules for their use are becoming more and more complex and more newsworthy almost daily.  We have documented many of them over the past two years[1] and we can see many recent stories

• The case of an automated vehicle crashing into a pedestrian and killing her in the US[2].
• A report from the European Parliament commenting on C-ITS technologies in general[3].
• The Commission’s C-ITS report last year
• A heated discussion in the EU bike industry press about the role of connected cycling

The EU claims that one of the strengths of the European approach to automation is that we will not have a reliance solely on camera or sensing equipment to assess the environment around the vehicle[4]. Vehicles will also be connected. They will be connected to other motor vehicles and infrastructure with low latency connection to assist safety critical systems and braking, but also connected to the infrastructure, to transport services and information, and possibly also to public authorities controlling traffic.

What about cyclists and pedestrians (and motorbikes, scooters, pedelecs, monowheels, skateboards,…)? . If connection is essential for safe automation, how do we deal with unequipped users? Problem solved? We think it is unfortunately much more complicated than that.

We need to distinguish between the technologies. Fact; the technology that will bring bicycles into the ‘connected’ safety critical network does not exist. Motor vehicles can carry large, powered devices that allow them to communicate with very low latency and with high accuracy their position to each other and so to assist instant braking at critical times. This is not available for bicycles or pedestrians. There are many other ‘connection’ possibilities for bicycles regarding information/data to be shared with the user:  the status of the network, the status of the weather, congestion, etc. and even the ability to project a rough estimate of the cyclists’ position on the road to a driver as a warning light or ‘bleep’[5]. But we are not ready to be brought into a connected network to allow vehicles to see round corners, to anticipate minute directional movements, and to initiate a critical braking response. Cycling safety needs to still focus on what we know, good infrastructure, sensible speeds (and their enforcement), good drivers/riders.

There are of course technologies like Automatic Emergency Braking which use sensors to detect cyclists and pedestrians and we very much support their development and think they should be mandatory in all cars, but this is not a connected technology that eliminates all crashes.

Anyone who has visited cycling Mecca cities in the Netherlands has seen how we would like to see cycling in all Europe one day. But as much as I love Dutch cycling they really do ride some veteran bicycles. ! The majority of the bikes are old; really old! The turnover of bicycles is slower than other vehicles, what do we do with non-equipped older bike. What about pedestrians? If we equip bicycles with Connected technologies, are we just passing the risk on down to the line to the final unequipped users, the pedestrian?  Or should we also equip children walking to school? Do we want to live in urban areas where we have to remember keys, wallet, phone and protective C-ITS device to stop cars running into us? The moral obligation for cyclists and pedestrians to have a connected device around with them obviously has some moral problems concerning forcing the victims of crashes with large powerful vehicles to be responsible for the collision rather than shifting the responsibility to those in the vehicle. In urban areas the pyramid of rights priorities pedestrians at the top, then cyclist, public transport, private motor vehicle and finally larger vehicles. Given this should we be forcing those bringing benefits to their cities through sustainable healthy transport choices to wear specific items of clothing?

Talking about the same thing but moving from the moral to the legal sphere there are also questions concerning liability. Will a court find you liable as a cyclist if you do not carry a safety device? The wearing of helmets and hi-vis jackets are bringing huge consternation to those being seriously injured by a motor vehicle and then finding compensation threatened due to the lack of a helmet (yes this happens!)

And of course, this sort of debate brings us back to the fact that we know how to make cyclists and pedestrians safe in urban areas, reduce speed, shifting cars away, and separate infrastructure. We also have motor vehicle technologies that we know work well like Intelligent Speed Assistance that assist the driver to drive under the speed limit, or Automatic Braking sensing technologies.

In conclusion we have red lines that must not be crossed with regards to transport safety technologies in general and connected bicycles in particular;

Firstly a safety device on a bicycle or rider should not be seen as the solution to make cycling safe, cyclists and pedestrians should not be morally (or legally) obliged to carry devices on their person or bike; there should be no mandating device use here.

Secondly the devices carried by motor vehicles can make no assumption about the requirement for a cyclist or pedestrian to be in a mandatory position on the road. In most countries bike lanes don’t exist, or are not mandatory. All codes have exemptions for the far to common situation where infrastructure is blocked or unusable. There are many, many reasons why cyclists and pedestrians may have to leave a pavement, cycle path or the edge of the road, and indeed to cross roads, so the next generation of devices must not rely on some form of conformity in behaviour.

Perhaps devices can help and perhaps a market will evolve where these devices can be used by cyclists, pedestrians and vehicles alike to assist some in some safety use. But to expect every man, woman and child to wear or carry or fit or buy a device that you have to legally carry around with you,  is not a situation we will ever countenance, and it will be a sorry state of affairs if all the good progress that we have made in road safety over the last thirty years or so comes down to a capitulation of the necessity of such a solution to achieve reduce crashes with cyclists and pedestrians.

Likewise; liability is always with the motorised vehicle, either the driver him/her self or, with full autonomy, the vehicle itself. The pedestrian followed by the cyclists should still be at the top of the urban mobility pyramid of rights priorities where the more powerful vehicle should be recognised as at fault unless they can prove otherwise both morally and legally.