Roller-skating on public roads is becoming more popular. What category do skaters belong to in “road user” law? Are they cyclists (on wheels) or pedestrians (on foot)? And what are the protocols that guide them and motorists? SK
Whatever the answer, it is a potentially dangerous compromise.Skaters (or bladers, or boarders) should never ply their skills on the traffic lanes of a major highway.
They are at least as wide as a bicycle when “striding” (their legs and feet flick out sideways as well as backwards in a rocking motion), and they are especially prone to any irregularity in the road surface because their wheels are very small and offer virtually no cushion.
A stone the size of a golf ball can knock them out of line. They cannot readily step off the tarmac onto the verge.
There may be skaters with extraordinary stunt skills, but the law caters for the general public, not the circus. In search of a smooth surface skaters should stick to stadium tracks, leisure parks, car parks, or very quiet lanes with low speed limits.
The nearest they should get to a major road is its tarmacked hard shoulder (and for a plentiful supply of those, Kenya is not the most suitable country).
If they use paved sidewalks, they should give way to every pedestrian. People walking down the street are not there to play dodgems.
No completely different forms of traffic mix well, because they are either obstructive or hazardous to each other. In the safest systems, on major highways they do not mix at all. On streets they are segregated (e.g. bus lanes, cycle lanes, sidewalks, lay-bys).
Places with those rules, and the infrastructure designed and marked to enable them, and enforcement to ensure compliance, have safety records more than 10 times better than ours. And still the majority of the accidents they do have happen where traffic is mixed.
Kenya’s road traffic is more than mixed – it is a mega mish-mash of cars, buses, matatus, trucks, motorbikes, bicycles, donkey carts, mkokoteni, pedestrians, roller-skaters and boarders, dogs, cattle, sheep and goats, unaccompanied children (and other wildlife), interlaced by swarms of boda-bodas carrying sofas (laterally) or rolled mabati sheets (diagonally) or towing 40ft reinforcing rods (medially)…and so on.
All in a highly inter-active situation. And the range of competence and speed and control, even of vehicles similar to each other in size and weight, is unusually extreme.
Irrespective of what the law says, or doesn’t say, or what it means, or how it is interpreted or ignored, common sense demands that we all are aware that “this is our world” and adjust our behaviour to stay alive in it.
The law does not specifically forbid roller skating on roads. But common sense does. And there are laws that discourage perilous behaviour, whatever form it takes, and whether you categorise roller-skating as a form of transport or as a leisure pastime.
As a motorist, you are obliged to exercise “care” in every (!) respect, and if there is a cyclist or a pedestrian (or a hybrid of the two) on the traffic lane, you should allow them at least two metres of space when you pass by them.
If that amount of space is not available, wait behind until it is...even though the person you are “caring” about is breaking the law by obstructing traffic flow.
