A couple of things.

A bit of a rambling blog today. A few different things to cover.

Firstly, ASADA has a new website, you can find a link in the toolbar on the left of the page. Looks nice and slick I have to say. Seems a bit more user friendly than the old one too. Lots of useful information in there, I particularly liked the section on supplements which I think a lot of people view as a grey area, but in reality isn't. As Essendon players found out the hard way, it is always our responsibility what we put in our bodies. Ignorance is not an excuse, so it is always worth having a visit to the ASADA site, particularly if you are getting a new medication or supplement. It is even worth checking periodically as I found out once when a previously legal out of competition asthma medication I was taking become illegal. Good to see ASADA get a good, shiny website, given the important part they play in sport.

Moving on to a completely unrelated topic. Responsibility while riding. A couple of things have occurred recently that have reminded me just how much duty of care we have as cyclists to make sure we are not putting others in harms way. You hear a lot about the cyclist and cars debate, a relationship in which we are very much the vulnerable party, but you don't always hear much about bikes and pedestrians. The issue tends to get spikes of attention when somebody gets injured and then it quiets down again.

For cyclist it is unusual territory, since we are often the ones causing the harm, rather than being the victims. Lots of cyclists don't like the allegations, since sometimes it feels like everyone is picking on us. Cars hate us and try and kill us so we ride on cycle ways. Pedestrians consider us dangerous and complain. We can't win. And I have to say, sometimes pedestrians are their own worst enemy. Walking along three abreast, or head down looking at the phone with the earphones in, or running along a completely dark path with no lights. But, just as with the car and bike issue, allocating blame entirely on one side over simplifies the issue completely. Sometimes pedestrians make riding safely hard, but that is not what I am writing about. What I am writing about here is those times where we, as cyclists, are to blame. And lets be honest here, in the majority of pedestrian/cyclist altercations, we are the ones at fault. Given what we deal with with cars you think we would be a bit more sympathetic, but I guess not.

There have been a couple of instances recently that bring this issue to my mind. The first one came last weekend, when talking to my mother in law she was saying that she got such a fright when she was passed by a cyclist on a shared path near her house. No bell, no warning, just a bike swooshing past. Now this is one of those cases that would be easy to dismiss as a grumpy older person having a go at those whipper snappers on bikes, and I was tempted to at first. But then I thought about it some more. Her question was 'shouldn't they have a bell?'. Yes, I had to admit, legally they should. Even if they don't have a bell (many of us don't), is it too much to ask for a 'bike back' type heads up. If we are going to ride on a path that is shared with pedestrians, surely the onus is on us to give warning, as the faster, overtaking party, Or, dare I say, if the path has lots of pedestrians, should we simply avoid that bit and use the road or choose another route. I do that when I ride and I have to choose a road to share with cars. I don't ride on roads with lots of cars. I am sure pedestrians do it when they choose where to walk, avoiding paths with lots of bikes. Surely it goes both ways. If there is a shared path with lots of walkers will it kill you to ride somewhere else. Yes it is a shared path, but that doesn't mean we have to enforce our right to use it. Being a bit more understanding and willing to compromise will make life a little bit more pleasant for both sides.

The second incident that bought this issue to my mind was on my ride this morning. I was waiting at a set of lights when two bikes popped onto the footpath to get around the lights. What they did is reasonably common at this particular intersection. They were turning left and so by heading onto the path and then off again they could fairly safely (if not entirely legally) skip the lights. However, they did this maneuver at a fair speed, in the dark (it was still early). After they had gone past a girl who had been standing on the corner said to me, 'did you see that, they nearly hit me'. She was right, they had. She was doing nothing wrong standing where she was. Yes it was dark, and yes she had no lights, but it was a footpath and she was entirely entitled to be standing there getting ready to go running (she was sorting out her music before getting going).  She has no requirement to have lights and nor should she, being on a footpath as she was.

The incident sort of struck home this issue for me. The sort of sense of entitlement that we have as cyclists sometimes (these two guys didn't even acknowledge the pedestrian). It makes us so mad when drivers do it, but then we go and do exactly the same thing to others. Recently there were calls in the local paper for a speed limit of 10km/h to be put on shared paths. Anyone who rides knows how ridiculous that would be (most people run faster than that), but it is cyclists behaving poorly that make these conversations happen. The more incidents and near misses there are, the more reasonable ideas like 10km/h speed limits will sound.

Like we ask of drivers, all it takes is a bit of patience, a bit of courtesy, a bit of common sense and a bit of compromise and we can all get along and share our roads and paths in peace. Doesn't sound like all that much to ask does it?