de tomKronieken

Ever heard of the term "windshield vision"? It's sometimes also referred to as "dashboard vision". It is most often used to describe the situation where traffic decision makers only look from the perspective behind the steering wheel of a car, when planning new roads, finetuning traffic lights, or deciding where to clear snow first. This, as you can imagine, gives some very fine results. When a bicycler wants to cross a road (just driving straight ahead), more often than not, he has to deviate from his line, so that he gets further away from the road where the cars drive (rationale: this gives cars that have to make a right turn, space to move away from the other cars that come from behind. Oversights: on slippery roads, making 2 consecutive 90° turns is neck-breaking; cars coming from the crossing road have enough excuse to block the bicycle path "otherwise they can't see the cars coming") Another fine example is that cross-road where a bicycle meets 2 red lights (and, as a result, has to wait at least for one of them, and often for both) just to drive straight ahead.

Well, that's just one explanation of the term. The other one is where car drivers use the excuse "I didn't see you coming" after you hit them when you had right-of-way. Even when you've been watching them for 30 seconds before they reached the crossroads. The reasoning? "The cars are only 5 meters further. Here are only bicyclers. I'm sure they'll stop for me. So I don't even need to watch out for them." Except that, well, I don't.

I'm good, thank you. That steam coming from my ears? It will stop soon, I hope.