Live blog: Bank Junction trial sees huge drop in casualties, #wrongsideoftheroad driver vs cyclist Mexican stand-off and way more
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Tue, May 15, 2018 13:30
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Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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Latest Comments
AidanR 49 minutes ago
Laudable effort. Will a full review of the bike be following?
TrainWalkWheel 50 minutes ago
By their very nature the dockless bike schemes will result in bikes being parked in stupid places. The user has little incentive to find the correct place to park it. More so if they are tourists with a cruise liner to catch and only 3 hours to explore. So, if the operation can't be made to fit within the councils required operating method, then it should be removed. I'm pretty sure another operator will come in and propose a system acceptable to the council if they believe they can make money. I strongly suspect that the current operators can only make money by tacitly allowing bikes to be left where the tourist money wants to leave them, so time to rethink the financial model me thinks!
tomlew 56 minutes ago
@bikercub "If they are good enough to be supporting the Groupama-FDJ United World TourCycling team, we should be looking at them as a contender." No, that only means that they paid enough to become a sponsor. Let's put the "pros use better stuff" myth to sleep, finally. And by the way, the trickiest part of a GPS computer is not data collection - that can be done by absolutely all of them. The hard part is the general user interface and turn-by-turn navigation, none of which really matters for a pro cyclist - and that brings us back to why any GPS computer could be good enough for just about any pro cyclist.
Rendel Harris 1 hour ago
@mdavidford Absolutely, I am assuming that the OP means those lanes where it's so tight it's actually impossible for a cyclist to get through if there is a large vehicle, obviously if they can squeeze by each other nobody needs to go back.
Mr Blackbird 1 hour ago
You are quite correct about uniform signage. However this seems to be a fairly atypical set up. Having experience and knowledge of it would in theory make mistakes less likely. Part of my job involved writing operating and maintenance procedures for food manufacturing machinery. I quickly learnt that people need to be given direct, simple, non-conflicting, non-ambiguous instructions. If it is possible to make mistakes, then they will be made. The best of of avoiding a mistake is to design flaws out of the system.
CD1997 1 hour ago
I do not in anyway support the Daily Telegraph's continually mad anti-cycling journalism but, it must be said, that this particular section of cycle lane on King Street in Hammersmith has been an absolute disaster ever since it re-opened. It certainly wasn't perfect for cyclists before but ever since they remodelled the cycle lane to run as a two way lane on one side of the road it has become much much more dangerous and confusing for pedestrians, drivers, motorcyclists and cyclists alike. I'm not saying that all cycling infrastructure is badly designed but, on my 12 mile commute from home in South London to work at the West end of King Street, this cycleway is where I feel most unsafe. It's not an inditement on active travel but it should be a lesson in planning because it's been closed on 5 or 6 occasions since to be remodelled to correct issues that should've been obvious before it opened. I have been using this road to get to work since long before the re-modelling and it has definitely, in my opinion, worsened not just the safety of cyclists but also the relationship between drivers and cyclists in this area.
quiff 2 hours ago
In principle, it shouldn't matter if you're familiar with a particular junction - that's precisely why we have (relatively) uniform signage across the country (I had this from a driver recently - Him: sorry, I don't know the area. Me: but a no entry sign is the same everywhere...). But in practice in a busy environment like this, simply adding another sign saying look out for cyclists is limited help. I don't love cycling on contraflows / a two way cyclelane on a one way street for that reason. In fact there's a crossing I don't love as a pedestrian which is look right (bikes) look left (bikes) look right (cars), island, catch breath, look left (cars), look left (bikes). (Yes, you could wait for a green man, but then it's still look everywhere (Deliveroo)).
Mr Blackbird 2 hours ago
I'm not familiar with Jeremy Vine's favourite cycle lane. However I do have sympathy with drivers if they have to deal with "Look both ways for cyclists" as well as "One Way" and "No Entry" signs. Especially if the driver is not familiar with the junction.
chrisonabike 2 hours ago
@mitsky Alas for a second there I was awarding the motorist in the window there points for wearing hi-vis in their car, then I realised they were also wearing a motoring helmet...
quiff 2 hours ago
While I understand it in context, I quite liked this to conclude a bike light review: "it’s a reliable set for the price, so long as you aren’t looking to ride in the dark"
20 thoughts on “Live blog: Bank Junction trial sees huge drop in casualties, #wrongsideoftheroad driver vs cyclist Mexican stand-off and way more”
The wrongsideoftheroad video
The #wrongsideoftheroad video just makes me despair of western civilisation on a number of levels.
For the record, it looks to me like the car was most of the way past the parked cars and would have got to the gap for the cyclist to pass without event, had he waited approx 1 sec. Aside from the fact there was plenty of room for the bike and car to pass anyway. Cyclist is a knob.
PRSboy wrote:
Aye – the (possibly apocryphal) quote from Gandhi springs to mind….
Entirely agree.
Cyclist being a dickhead,
Cyclist being a dickhead, whats the point of that?
Save it for the aggresive moron drivers, lifes way too short for that kind of crap.
And the hashtag is just bollocks too!
Driver does well, reversing is what the cyclist wanted so if the bike is damaged in the fall, so be it!
Advice to cyclist.
Advice to cyclist.
Check behind, if clear slow or stop and wave the car through. You maintain control of the situation, usually get an acknowledgement of appreciation and everyone gets to go on their way, one of them with maybe a better attitude towards cyclists.
Love how people blame the
Love how people blame the cyclist who isn’t doing anything wrong while the driver tries to bully their way through a vulnerable road user. If you don’t stand up to the bullies, they will just keep on bullying the vulnerable, is that what anyone wants?
Presumably, if it was an articulated truck, or a chieftan tank, instead of a bloke on a bike, they would be in the wrong too?
How difficult is it to reverse back to where you should have stopped when there was oncoming traffic on the side of the road you’re not usually supposed to use?
ChrisB200SX wrote:
This – replace cyclist in this situation with other car and think about it.
Htc wrote:
Replace the cyclist with a car and the car would wait for the other car to pass. I have this situation on a particular road on the way to work every day, just ease off the pedals for 3 seconds and there’s no problem.
Typical modern driving about
Typical modern driving about who gets there first and not about following the highway code.
Not really enough room for both as that would be a close pass.
OK.
OK.
You are driving a car and you come to a line of parked cars that someone is already overtaking towards you and on ‘your’ side of the road.
Check mirrors, adjust speed or stop to allow oncoming vehicle sufficient room to complete manouvere. Flash lights (note – unofficial signal) to indicate acknowledgement of the presence of the other vehicle.
Exchange nod of thanks, continue on way.
What I find odd is that there
What I find odd is that there are literally thousands of hours of video out there featuring drivers being dickheads and, worse, endangering others’ lives but the only ones that ever seem to go viral (with the exception of dramatic accidents) are those cases where the cyclist is being a bit of a dick.
Htc wrote:
I did – he’s a cock. He’d be a cock in a car, in a van, in a lorry, tank or anything else. The other driver and vehicle have reached the other end of the restricted, due to a long line of parked cars, highway when they are then blocked – a couple of feet short – by the other vehicle and driver who presumably had a clear view of the situation as the other vehicle approached, already committed with nowhere else to go. The cars behind the cyclist don’t seem to have a problem, although it’s difficult to say when they got there.
We have a similar situation to what you’re asking about with a road just up from our house, where there is basically only room for one car at a time. We have almost zero problems and the people approaching know to let anyone already in the restricted part of the road through – everyone is fine and it never takes more than a few seconds or a minute (edit : not even that) at most to get going. What’s so tricky about that ?
fukawitribe wrote:
A “long line” of three cars, parked nose-to-tail… of which the driver has managed to clear one-and-a-bit of them (basically “a couple of feet“).
Indeed, other drivers behind the cock driver seem to have been able to see the other lane isn’t clear, this driver must have had a clear view of the situation when they decided to bully their way through when a cyclist was coming the other way and had nowhere to go because they were nearly along the row of parked cars.
Think about the likely difference in speeds, and then stopping distances, work backwards from there…. is the cyclist likely to have just teleported to the middle of the lane where he has stopped?
Round the corner from where I used to work, I used to always get people driving at me on my side of the road when they had a long line of cars blocking their lane. Every time, I was already passing said vehicles before the driver even arrived. Three guesses who always had to dive into the gutter to avoid the bullies in motor vehicles.
ChrisB200SX wrote:
OK, fair enough – “line of cars” however it looked like two more cars behind that – with spaces, one for the end marked bay – and then the third (white Peugeot) that was angled to move pass. Could be wrong – but no, not a ‘couple of feet ‘. The first of those cars has a window open, can’t see anyone in, that’s about 6-7 car lengths to the back of him and then the second of those, looks like someone is walking back to that, is another couple of lengths further back. So in total between 3 and 9 lengths of obstruction, plus room for manouve at each end. Edit : I was wondering if the fact that anything car sized or wider is going to be ‘on the wrong side of the road’ going past any of them had occured to the cyclist – it was unavoidable, and people can and do cope with it elsewhere IME.
I was considering that, and the distance the cars are behind the cyclist, and to me it seemed far more likely that the cyclist was there second. I don’t think he teleported, I don’t think the car teleported where it did either, I just don’t think he was prepared to spend any time letting the car through. We’ll never know I guess, without any more footage – still behaving like a cock in my opinion. Perhaps I let his delivery bug the crap out of me and I owe the guy an apology – after all the other person was driving a car so, guilty – or perhaps he wasn’t he angel some of portraying.
Looks like a couple of parked
Looks like a couple of parked cars to me and the driver just went for it in the face of the oncoming cyclist. Happens loads as ‘Its only a bike’. But the guy was a dick. A tut and an arm wave would have been sufficient.
cyclist being a dick to make
cyclist being a dick to make his point. There’s actually room for both of them if going carefully, he just chooses to be obstructive.
Too easy to blame the
Too easy to blame the vulnerable road user when there was obviously not enough time to get past the parked vehicles before an oncoming road user approached. That’s a failure of judging speed of others, something you would get a black mark on your driving test as you forced others whom had priority to brake/stop.
Without the full info of how this came about it’s difficult in any case.
I’ve been in similar lots of times, you take primary and are just starting to go past the parked traffic when an oncoming motorist guns it despite having seen your approach, you slow/come to a stop to avoid collision and then it seems like you are in the wrong (as per the video) because they are further up the line than you when that is not the case at all and in fact they should still have given way beforehand. This particularly happens if you are not going at a decent speed (and why should you)
The chances of a motorist stopping when you’re already approaching first to the parked cars on your side is simply never going to happen, if you allow drivers to bully their way through ceding way they’ll simply take the piss all the time. Yes in some circumstances you can hang back when they are clearly already in mid maneouvre but as I said it’s not always apparent as to the full situation because of the speed disparity.
Not acting like a cock,
Not acting like a cock, making a point that trying to bully your way through is not acceptable, again you made assumptions and failed to grasp that the increased speed of the motor will take them further up the ‘line’ of parked vehicles and importantly the motorist failed to judge speed of an oncoming road user who has priority forcing them to brake/stop.
If there were a line of motorised traffic behind say another car and the motorist in the wrong here tried that do you think they would be in the right or wrong for attempting to overtake parked vehicles when there was clearly not enough space/time to do so without forcing (because that’s what it is) to cede priority and for them to brake possibly very sharply, which can cause a collision from behind?
If you knew anything about driving to a safe standard you would know that that is at the very least inconsiderate driving and contrary to the rules of the highway.
I made assumptions and listed
I made assumptions and listed them – and did grasp the potential speed differences and the place that the vehicles met – I just came to a different conclusion to you. As you said, without more information or video coverage we’re in the dark, and your last conclusion is irrelevent.
I hope he spends all eternity
I hope he spends all eternity waiting to get out of a side road with an endless stream of slowish moving traffic that could stop and let him out, but its their right of way…