Cori Baynes

On the na­tion's roads, an un­of­fi­cial "bul­ly­ing" sys­tem ex­ists. Trucks and oth­er large ve­hi­cles are the most feared and many times force the lighter cars and vans to "give way" re­gard­less to who has the right of way. Fast cars tra­verse the high­ways at near-fright­en­ing speeds, weav­ing in and out, most of the time not wait­ing for the slow­er movers to scram­ble in­to an­oth­er lane. Now, in­tro­duce the ped­al cy­clist, who al­so us­es the road for a va­ri­ety of rea­sons but un­for­tu­nate­ly falls in­to the cat­e­go­ry of one of the most vul­ner­a­ble of all road users.For years, this group has been fight­ing to gain an equal place on the black car­pet but has so far got lit­tle or no re­spect from their me­chan­i­cal coun­ter­parts.There have been in­creased calls for mo­torists to be more re­spon­si­ble, es­pe­cial­ly in light of nu­mer­ous road traf­fic ac­ci­dents in­volv­ing cy­clists, the lat­est be­ing the death of Clin­ton Grant, who was killed while rid­ing his bike in March.

Grant was the head coach of the Ari­ma based Bike Smith Cy­cling Club, and its mem­bers have since placed spe­cial em­pha­sis on the safe­ty of its rid­ers.In a re­cent in­ter­view, Claire Orr, trea­sur­er of the 37-mem­ber club, said safe­ty is at the fore­front when it meets every Sun­day for its week­ly train­ing rides."Our cy­clists are re­quired to have lights and oth­er safe­ty gear on at all times and the par­ents and oth­er sup­port­ers fol­low them in their ve­hi­cles," she ex­plained, adding that the club of­ten us­es the busy Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way as part of its train­ing route.

Some­times, cy­cling clubs pay the po­lice to pro­vide an es­cort for the rid­ers, but Orr ad­mit­ted that it is cost­ly, and hers as well as many oth­er clubs can­not af­ford the fee which can be as much as $2,000.

Not­ing that the at­ti­tude of many mo­torists to­wards cy­clists is poor, Orr added, "We can­not stress enough on how im­por­tant it is to ride care­ful­ly. When we fol­low our cy­clists in our ve­hi­cles, we put on our head­lights and haz­ard lights and dri­ve as close as we can be­hind the rid­ers to give them ex­tra pro­tec­tion.""In gen­er­al, cy­clists need to be more aware on the road. Keep your eyes and ears open be­cause more of­ten than not if you don't see dan­ger com­ing you may be able to hear it."Mov­ing away from the east, the Rigtech Son­ics Cy­cling Club in the South al­so faces sim­i­lar chal­lenges and echoes its east­ern coun­ter­part's calls for mo­torists to have greater re­spect for cy­clists.In ad­di­tion to the gen­er­al safe­ty equip­ment that all cy­clists must have, Rigtech Son­ics takes a slight­ly dif­fer­ent ap­proach to road safe­ty in that it doesn't use the high­ways for road train­ing un­less ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary."There are a few ar­eas in deep south like Siparia and Erin where cy­clists are re­spect­ed, but gen­er­al­ly, the at­ti­tude is un­ac­cept­able and we have trou­ble shar­ing the road with dri­vers," said Rigtech vice pres­i­dent Roger Fron­tin.

"We avoid the busier roads and our rides are planned us­ing the roads that are not as busy. We try to avoid the high­way and en­cour­age our rid­ers to stay off the high­way as much as pos­si­ble," he said, not­ing that cy­clists were not per­mit­ted to use the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.He en­cour­aged cy­clists to use hand sig­nals, ride sin­gle-file when the road is nar­row and two abreast when it is wider, but nev­er against the flow of traf­fic."Cy­clists have to be es­pe­cial­ly wary of doors, side streets and dri­ve­ways be­cause it is ob­vi­ous that dri­vers don't re­alise that bi­cy­cles can trav­el as fast as 20 miles per hour."Fron­tin, how­ev­er, frowned up­on the use of mu­sic play­ers, head­sets or any­thing that can com­pro­mise a cy­clist's fo­cus. "There has to be a greater aware­ness among mo­torists be­cause we are al­so road users. Dri­vers need to check their mir­rors be­cause bikes don't make a sound. We have to ride as if we are not be­ing seen and ex­er­cise the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions."

Over the years, the road safe­ty or­gan­i­sa­tion Ar­rive Alive has kept a close eye on the num­ber and fre­quen­cy of ac­ci­dents on the na­tion's roads. On its web site at www.ar­rivealivett.com, it states that from the year 2006 to De­cem­ber 31, 2013, 37 ped­al cy­clists have been killed in road traf­fic ac­ci­dents.Ar­rive Alive act­ing pres­i­dent Sharon In­gle­field has called for the traf­fic laws to be re­vamped and er­rant dri­vers to be pe­nalised via mail. She said cy­clists rid­ing too close to car doors and mo­torists in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly swerv­ing to avoid pot­holes are two com­mon caus­es of cy­clist ac­ci­dents. "There are many caus­es of road fa­tal­i­ty and we as mo­torists need to make eye con­tact (with the cy­clist) be­cause we do not make enough eye con­tact," she said.The T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion is of the opin­ion that both cy­clists and mo­torists need to un­der­stand their roles on the road."We have found that mo­torists have been very hos­tile to­wards cy­clists on the road," Fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent Rowe­na Williams said. "They are not see­ing them as im­por­tant and it's very dis­cour­te­ous treat­ment be­ing met­ed out by mo­torists."

She con­tin­ued how­ev­er that cy­clists al­so have to shoul­der some of the blame for not ad­her­ing all the time to the traf­fic reg­u­la­tions."I think that it is im­por­tant that both cy­clists and mo­torists un­der­stand their roles on the road, and even though cy­clists have the right to use the road, they have cer­tain guide­lines to fol­low," she ex­plained."They should make sure that they don't get in the path­way of the cars to cause dan­ger to them­selves or the mo­torist."She con­tin­ued, "I think they should al­so be aware of the side of the road on which they are rid­ing, make sure that they have the rel­e­vant re­flec­tors on, things that would be eas­i­ly seen and no­ticed and they stay on the side of the road that they should be and not just ride and for­get that there are cars on the road."

"For the mo­torists I would ask them to use due dili­gence, use their mir­rors and be aware of their sur­round­ings, be aware of who's on the road and pay at­ten­tion and of course slow it on the roads."

Weigh­ing in on the top­ic, Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Ruben Cato said that while there are no spe­cif­ic set of rules gov­ern­ing ped­al cy­clists in the Road Traf­fic Act, they, as well as mo­tor ve­hi­cles (mo­tor cy­cles, cars, trucks, an­i­mals, pedes­tri­ans etc) are con­sid­ered to be traf­fic on the road and must ad­here to the laws of the land.

Cato stat­ed how­ev­er that ex­cept in cas­es where writ­ten per­mis­sion is grant­ed from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, re­sult­ing in po­lice es­corts for the rid­ers, no ped­al cy­clist is to use the na­tion's high­ways.He said in the past, signs had been erect­ed along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way pro­hibit­ing bi­cy­cles, an­i­mals and pedes­tri­ans from us­ing the high­way, but ad­mit­ted that he could not re­mem­ber when last he saw any such sign in re­cent times."Cy­clists are not sup­posed to use the Solomon Ho­choy, the Churchill Roo­sevelt, the Uri­ah But­ler or any of the na­tion's high­ways un­less they get per­mis­sion from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice."Even though they are al­lowed to ride two abreast on the roads, Cato ad­vised that it is safer to ride in sin­gle file and urged cy­clists to fa­mil­iarise them­selves with the traf­fic laws and wear bright colours if they are rid­ing ear­ly in the morn­ing or late at night. The bi­cy­cles, he said, should be out­fit­ted with a red light to the rear and a white light to the front."Da­ta shows that pedes­tri­ans and cy­clists are the most vul­ner­a­ble group of road users so take all the nec­es­sary and ex­tra pre­cau­tions on the road."Cato al­so is­sued the same ad­vice to mo­torists to obey the traf­fic laws. "Look out for all the road users in­clud­ing cy­clists and ex­er­cise cau­tion gen­er­al­ly and more so when ap­proach­ing cy­clist traf­fic," he end­ed.