BS: Bleeping Cyclist

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Tunesmith
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 05:43 PM

Well, let's get real! In the UK, most cyclists ignore the Highway Code which clearly states that cyclists must not cycle on the pavement. Of the police have very worryingly decided to change the law and have - again very worryingly - been allowed to get away with it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: G-Force
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 05:06 PM

Aw shucks guys, I'm not really the angry type at all, but I do like to get a bit sweary when I'm behind the wheel, it helps to get me through the day (I actually dislike driving). I'm also a cyclist, and a pedestrian, and I sometimes tow a caravan, so I'm well aware of the different capabilities of the various users of the bit of road we all have to share. A slow vehicle in front of my car is just one of life's minor passing irritations - you can't do much about it. But two cyclists side by side and not getting out of the way of the queue of cars behind them is an example of the kind of sense of entitlement which just makes the world a less good place. A bit like dog owners, but that's a different thread.

So just pull over into single file, it doesn't hurt.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 04:26 PM

There was a time when a tractor would just be going a short distance before turning in to a neighbouring field. These days, it's all about contractors hired by farms, travelling many a mile at snail's pace. Most of them seem to revel in slowing everyone else down and gleefully missing many an opportunity to pull in to let the convoy pass. B*ast**ards...

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 02:34 PM

... someone who will sit patiently for 20 minutes behind a tractor or a flock of sheep ....

PATIENTLY? I only have to see a tractor in the distance and my hackles start to rise - even before I've worked out if it's ahead of me, on my side of the road, or coming towards me on the other side of the road. We have lots of tractors around here.

Sheep? We don't get many flocks of sheep on the roads around here, so meeting one is something of a novelty. Funnily enough, I actually came upon one on Sunday on the back roads of the Lincolnshire Wolds. I just put on the hand brake, sat in neutral and enjoyed the pleasure of being out in the countryside until they had passed.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 12:55 PM

I will never understand why drivers seem to be bouncing with rage so much of the time. They're sitting their in their comfy chair in a climate-protected room, listening to their favourite music as they glide through the roads - and yet they obviously hate the journey if anything that's going to slow it by even a moment causes them to weep and beep and screech.
Odd, too, that someone who will sit patiently for 20 minutes behind a tractor or a flock of sheep turns into a maniac if it's someone on a bicycle that's on the road in front of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 12:23 PM

Meanwhile, back at the subject:

Wrath at two-abreast slowcoaches: In such situations, the driver's temper was lost the previous N times it happened, and is now pre-lost and ready to go *sproing* with zero notice. (Herself's usually a gentle soul, but I've seen her catch fire from a standing start at two old biddies gossiping as they cycle along a narrow winding country road. Happily, she doesn't use her car as an offensive weapon.) Hearing a phone-answering robot produces similar hair-trigger nonlinearities in most people.

"Otherisation": a good word. I'll see you that, and raise you "particularism" (identifying oneself with a subgroup, rather than all of society) as its flip side. Mayhap it's all due to the shock of finding that other people don't have identical viewpoints to oneself.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: gillymor
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 12:20 PM

To me it's not about drivers vs. cyclists vs pedestrians, it's gets down to the notion that some people are good and some people are no damn good regardless of the mode of transport.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 12:01 PM

Thing is, Doug, the two-abreast ding-dong we've been having started with this:

"But if you are two cyclists side by side on a narrow road ..." That's not quite the same thing as a peloton! Of course I've seen the latter and I've been stuck behind. Two things there: first, it isn't easy, and possibly quite dangerous, for ten or twenty cyclists to be constantly falling into single file. Secondly, look at Thomson's video again. Particularly on narrower roads, it's safer and quicker to overtake a bunch riding two abreast than to squeeze all of them into the gutter to overtake them in single file. On narrow or winding roads round here we have to put up with slow milk tankers, tractors and horse boxes (and 97-year-olds in Honda Jazzes) as well as occasional bunches of cyclists (even a single cyclist can slow you down for hundreds of yards round here). Who's going to say which of those road users, holidaymakers' cars included, have more right to be there...?

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 11:42 AM

> Never heard that theory but it's a good one. Which Heinlein story?

Friday, towards the end of Chapter 23. The section thereof (pp 291--293 in my paperback edition) where Friday and Boss are discussing the symptoms of a sick culture .... chillingly prophetic, given that the book was published in 1983.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 11:20 AM

I'll go along with 'misfire' for the "%#@&/×+" part of G-Force's post.

I've been driving cars and riding bikes for well over half a century and I can't ever remember encountering two-abreast cyclists who wouldn't give way to a car behind once they'd become aware of it.

As DtG pointed out, upthread, there are poor standards in all walks of life and it's the badly behaved ones who get noticed. I am surprised, however, at your claim never to have encountered the problem set out above.

The main road I live on connects the roads coming from the countryside to main roads leading into either side of town. Although we now have a by-pass, it still carries traffic of all sorts and is on a bus route. More than once, I have been in my front garden and seen a group of six or more lycra-clad cyclists go by, two abreast, chatting away, seemingly oblivious to the queue of traffic behind them. I have driven behind such a group as they left the village into the 40mph section of road, still two abreast and ignoring the segregated cycle track.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 10:42 AM

Refer to the Highway Code.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Raggytash
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 09:34 AM

It seems to me that the motorist has been given the ALL responsibilty for the safety of cyclists and pedestrians, that little if any responsibilty lies with them.

You may well agree with that.

However ............ the pedestrian or the cyclist is made flesh (very squishy) and bone (very brittle) I on the other hand am sitting in a steel box that weight 2.4 tons.

Your call.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 06:42 AM

Yes it is, Doug. But the misfire comes with the extremely arrogant attitude of a bloke in his gas-guzzling tin overcoat screaming swearwords at two people who are just flesh and blood in the open air. I've been driving cars and riding bikes for well over half a century and I can't ever remember encountering two-abreast cyclists who wouldn't give way to a car behind once they'd become aware of it. Seems to me that his anger was somewhat confected. By the way, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with two abreast, when you consider that a car driver is "two abreast" whether he has a passenger or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 06:21 AM

Why a misfire, Steve? According to you, moving out of the way is the morally correct thing to do if there is an impatient convoy behind you.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 06:02 AM

Yeah, bit of a misfire there, G-Force...

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 05:44 AM

Reminding me of the Homer Simpson line when a judge asks him "Were you cycling two abreast?" - "I wish! We were cycling to a lake!"
Why cyclists should cycle two abreast.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 05:41 AM

Why, G-Force? How many of you are in the car? And why are you so angry?

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: G-Force
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 04:32 AM

But if you are two cyclists side by side on a narrow road ...

get out of the %#@&/×+ way!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 03:54 AM

If you are a cyclist,

You're quiet

You're non-polluting

You take up very little space on the road

Your machine required far less materials to make

Your machine used far less fossil fuels and water to make

Your machine will last for decades (I have a brilliant bike that I bought in 1989 that I've done tens of thousands of miles on)

Your machine is easy and cheap to maintain, needing only tiny amounts of resources

At the end of its life most of it can be recycled at the local tip, not stacked on top of dozens of others in an ugly scrapyard

The cycling will have kept me fit and saved the NHS a fortune

When I'm not using it, it won't take up space on the street or in vast car parks

I can see over hedges, breathe fresh air, work up a healthy sweat, hear the wind in the trees, get a tan and listen to the birds and bees

I can do 30 miles to the pint of water, two bananas and a Hobnob or two.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 03:34 AM

Of course there are instances of poor cycling standards everyday just as there are instances of poor standards in everything (and possibly getting worse unless that is just perception) But the majority of cyclists, drivers, bikers, pedestrians and even roller skating nuns are perfectly good, law abiding people. The fact that bad ones are noticeable only underlines that statement. All the facts and figures indicate that only a tiny fraction of accidents are caused by poor cycling - Google it and you will find lots of statistics about cycle accidents. None of them that I have found indicate anything to justify the demonisation of cyclists that I am seeing here.

Mind you, I suppose blaming cyclists for all our ills makes a change from blaming Muslims or immigrants. Just don't give Cruella more ideas...

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Sep 23 - 01:43 PM

We have a lot of old codgers here in Bude and the standard of driving is execrable (I won't dwell on this outburst of whataboutery...) I have an electric Brompton which, if I wanted to, I could hammer along on at at least 20mph, which I don't. The electric assist cuts out at 15mph, after which is goes from being a breeze into being a right heavy bugger. My brommie is for tootling only.

And I've just typed a sentence there, perfectly grammatical, that has "at" twice in a row! In tandem, eh? (see what I did there?)

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Raggytash
Date: 12 Sep 23 - 12:40 PM

I witness the incidence of poor standards of cycling almost every day.

Ignoring the rules of the road, putting themselves and others in jeopody.

There is a cycle hire company in the town I live in, it is on a one way street.

The number of people who cycle the wrong way down the street despite having just been told by the owners it is a one way system is astonishing. I find myself hoping they get a nudge from a car ..... or bus!

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 12 Sep 23 - 09:33 AM

They are not, SPB. The vast majority of cyclists, like me, ride sensibly and with all due care and consideration for others. Playing the passive/agressive victim and tarring all cyclists with the same brush will not win you any arguments.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 12 Sep 23 - 08:51 AM

Just because e-bikes can travel at 17mh that doesn't means that they should be ridden at that speed all the time without due care and attention, even on the pavement. Maybe I am wrong, and it is the legal duty of us pedestrians to make sure that we do not get in the way of our betters, and if we are not able to do so, then we should just sty at home 24 hours/day and wait for our lives to end. I am sure e-bikes and scooters are not cheap, so we are clearly an inferior race.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 11 Sep 23 - 02:47 AM

Electric bikes in the UK are limited to 17mph by motor power. You cannot limit the speed of pedal or free wheel power.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Thompson
Date: 10 Sep 23 - 02:57 AM

Never heard that theory but it's a good one. Which Heinlein story?

The "otherisation" of cyclists is being fomented by right-wing publications. (By "otherisation" I mean the way that a group is identified with its members. So, my sister's little car was damaged by a big bruiser of a cyclist who scraped along it and didn't stop to apologise or offer compensation. If this had been a driver, she'd have been furious with *that driver*, but, a victim of propaganda, she now sees *all cyclists* as inherently evil. This is, of course, stupid, but it's being really pushed by right-wing newspapers, shock jocks and TV.)

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 07:03 PM

> Where did this nasty enmity come from?

Heinlein's Theory of Personal Rudeness: people being aggressive to one another is a symptom of a dying culture. All the more worrying, as the person being aggressive sees it, not as a sign of weakness, but of strength.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Thompson
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 05:15 PM

The speed limiter I'd be talking about, on ebikes, would be absolute: maximum 25km/h.
As far as I know, speed limiters for cars are mostly linked to electronics at locations with particular speed limits.
However, I understand that Brooklyn is considering speed-limiting the cars of repeat scofflaws to force them to keep it in their pants.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 04:49 PM

Many laws don't work well at first. Change is not welcome by many but will eventually happen

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 03:47 PM

”The latest road rules put pedestrians at the top of the tree”

That was the intention for sure, Dave, but it doesn’t seem to work very well - I don’t recall the last time a road-user gave way for me, a pedestrian, to cross at a road junction. I’d venture to suggest that examples of road-users following the new rules regarding pedestrians are, as me owd mother used to say, “as rare as rocking-hoss shit”! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 03:19 PM

The latest road rules put pedestrians at the top of the tree. Buses and lorries are at the bottom.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 09:41 AM

If e-bike riders insist on riding at speed at night with no light, the least car car drivers could do is turn their headlights OFF so that pedestrians have a better chance of seeing the cyclists undertaking them. But then, us pedestrians are inferior to cyclists, and our safety doesn't matter.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Thompson
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 04:12 AM

I wear a Sam Browne hi-viz belt, relying on this to trigger memories in older people and nostalgia-fake-memories in the young from watching old shows, and make people go "Eeeek! Cop!" But a friend was puzzled some months ago when on a trip to his son's or daughter's sports field he was close-passed dangerously several times; on the way back, holding the hurley that had been left behind (for Americans, hurling is a traditional Irish game that combines hockey and psychopathy), drivers were meekly mannerly.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: BobL
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 02:55 AM

If I were still cycling, I think I'd wear a black leather motorcycling jacket. One with metal studs down the outside of each arm.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Thompson
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 02:33 AM

Could be. People are indignant about all kinds of surprising things, and they're buying (*where* do they get the money?) giant tank-like cars that can scarcely be possible to drive safely, but must make them feel safe inside in the dark there with only their phone.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 08 Sep 23 - 05:47 PM

And 99...

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 08 Sep 23 - 05:47 PM

I think it's covid!

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Thompson
Date: 08 Sep 23 - 03:17 PM

Incidentally… 
I've been cycling around or about 70 years now. But it's only in the last couple of years that people in cars, and to an extent people walking, have become really horrible to me.
Now, as I cycle along, people in cars jab their fingers to the side of the road, incorrectly telling me that this is where I should be cycling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phNMzsRrbNU
People drive too close to me if I'm wearing a helmet (unless, oddly, I'm carrying visible greenery or flowers on the back). If I *don't wear a helmet, my grey locks are no impediment to their impertinence in lecturing me about why I should.
Where did this nasty enmity come from?

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Thompson
Date: 08 Sep 23 - 02:56 PM

More or less universally, studies of road law breaking show cyclists break far fewer laws, and break the law fewer times, than motorists.
Virtually all bicycles sold today (apart from folding bikes) have disc brakes, which make it possible to stop not just on a dime but on a nickel.
Most road deaths, by a spectacular level of difference, are caused by four-wheeled motorised vehicles. The same with most life-changing injuries.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Charmion
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 09:21 AM

When I lived in Germany, back in the Cold War, my favourite menace to navigation was a middle-aged woman on a moped, heading home from work with her basket brimming with briefcase, office shoes and supper ingredients, steering with one hand and using the other to secure the load. Typically, this person would find her place in the heavy Hauptstrasse traffic right spung in my blind spot, from which she would erupt without warning (Signal? Never!) to rocket through the tiniest imaginable gap between Landkreuzwagons and disappear in the general direction of suburbia.

I wondered where they trained -- the Wall of Death?

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 09:06 AM

My second eldest and his pal decided to hire electric scooters on their way home from the pub once night. They were returned to the hire point in 2 minutes and he still has the bruises!

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Charmion
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 08:59 AM

Another problematic electric scooter!

Proof positive that, in the wrong hands, the most beneficial gadget can be a source of chaos.

Whenever I see one, I think how handy it could be for doing my messages ... But no. I'd end up dead on Ontario Street, half-way home from the supermarket.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 08:30 AM

Another idiot Doug! Maybe the guitar case could have nudged him :-D

Cyclists can also be charged with dangerous cycling. From "The Independant"

They can however be charged with dangerous cycling under the 1988 Road and Traffic Act Section 28, which sets out that an offence has been committed if “the way they ride falls far below what could be expected of a competent and careful cyclist”.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 06:21 AM

I arrived home by bus yesterday afternoon and was about to get off on the pedestrian only side of the road. The bus had stopped at the bus stop, the doors were open and I was making my towards the exit, with a guitar case in one hand and a bag in the other, when an electric scooter went wizzing by on the footpath from behind the bus. A few seconds difference and there would have been a serious accident as he couldn't see if passengers were getting off and there was no way he could have stopped in time. He was not wearing a helmet or any other form of protection that I could see.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 05:54 AM

Most bikes aren’t fitted with speedometers, so cyclists can’t be charged with speeding offences. They could, however, be charged with ‘wanton or furious cycling’ if they are considered to be going too fast for the conditions.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 04:45 AM

I have just read that speed limits do not apply to cyclists. That is crazy!

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 04:41 AM

He was an idiot but he is more likely to kill himself than kill someone else.

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Raggytash
Date: 05 Sep 23 - 02:33 PM

This morning waiting at a T junction with traffic lights waiting to turn left a cyclist going my way came passed me on the opposite carriage way (double white lines) went the wrong way round a traffic island just before the lights, got to the front of the queue cut across the car there and then turned left through a red light.

Had I done that in my car I would have broken at least 3 traffic rules and ended up with at least 9 points on my licence.

It is little wonder that car drivers get p****d off with them

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 04 Sep 23 - 05:24 AM

There might have been some penguins on skateboards but I was too busy avoiding the middle-aged men to notice.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Bleeping Cyclist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 04 Sep 23 - 05:19 AM

Were there any nuns on roller skates?