Originally Posted by
hamster
Motorists have steel cages around them, motorcyclists are typically well-insulated too (typically in thick pants and a long-sleeve jacket), but cyclists have a lot of exposed skin.
Motorists can also get stuck in traffic (and it sounds like they were supposed to re-time the lights to reduce the risk of that). And there are certainly motorcyclists and scooter drivers who aren't covered in leather.
I wouldn't underestimate this. 2 kW/m2 will cause severe pain in any exposed skin after a couple of minutes. In the EU, there's a recommended exposure limit of 100 seconds at 2 kW/m2.
It would certainly be unpleasant, but a cyclist will likely only be exposed for a few seconds, and that's the predicted worst case. The radiated load could also be mitigated pretty effectively with reflectors mounted between the flare and the road. For a road cyclist in the road at 15-18 mph, it's a pretty brief exposure.
And as mentioned already-- the EIR only recommended limiting access on one side of the street and not limiting it on the other (because the radiated load drops rapidly with distance).