This statement regarding cyclists and autonomous cars from the chief exec of Renault and Nissan is making the rounds in the cycling media this week:

“One of the biggest problems is people with bicycles,” said Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn [rhymes with “loan”]. “They don’t respect any rules usually. The car is confused by them because from time-to-time they behave like pedestrians and from time-to-time they behave like cars.”

CNBC characterized that last sentence as a “swipe” at cyclists. The CNBC lede says the bicycle is a “roadblock,” but if you watch the video accompanying the story, Ghosn’s quote comes across more as a statement of fact and and an engineering challenge the Nissan engineering group here in Silicon Valley have already worked on.

I’ve heard similar statements from Google’s autonomous car work: they acknowledge the presence of bicycles on public roads. Instead of taking a “blame the victim” stance and pushing for more regulation of bicycles, they accept the reality of how people actually behave in public spaces and engineer to deal with that reality.

I don’t have an “anti-rant” category, so file this under musings.

Last year I kind of introduced a totem pole of danger. It’s the crazy idea that those operating the more dangerous devices should take more care.

I’ve redrawn this as a hazard hierarchy. The wider the triangle, the more careful you should be. Apologies for my lack of graphic design skills, but I hope it helps to illustrate the concept.

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Some of you may have seen this dramatic photo of a group of cyclists who were just riding along when they stopped to assist the occupants of this overturned vehicle at Twin Peaks in San Francisco, CA.

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