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
jackcycles 1 hour ago
Many thanks for posting these statistics and showing the downward trend in fatalities. One thing that stood out for me when clicking through to the government statistics page is the UK's exemplary record on this Vs other European countries, especially the much-vaunted record of The Netherlands, which actually shows twice as many fatalities as the UK per million of the population. The question that arises is therefore: why are the greens and other left-wing parties so keen to adopt an inferior and more dangerous road system when ours is obviously working well? It smacks of a need to regulate people's lives and curtail freedom. We need to stop these idiotic Dutch roundabouts and segregated cycling infrastructure, and get people sharing the road in a fair and equal manner, when the statistics show it's safer to do so. (Chart shows road fatalities per million population)
ChasP 2 hours ago
That's where the convertible aspect comes in. I've got a gravel bike but the canal I sometimes commute on has roots under the tarmac and barriers. The mtb with 'drops' is more comfortable for this and fits through the barriers. If I want to do something more technical I can put the flat bars on.
wtjs 17 hours ago
@FionaJJ These officers deployed next-level stupidity, and it must be difficult for the police to find people this dim. It doesn't even need rolling-roads or whatever, just a reputable bike computer on a quickly changed mount for the difficult cases where a proper EAPC has been modded, although you would need to look hard in Lancashire to find a police officer who knows how to make a pedal cycle go. Most illegal electric motorbikes are immediately obvious, not least because the crim is wearing a face mask. I saw an obvious one tonight coming out of Garstang Sainsbury's, not pedalling but without a face mask because everybody knows that the police only come into the town to hide away in the police station 200 yards away.
bikeman01 18 hours ago
Gustav Gullholm.. that's not a good look mate
mdavidford 20 hours ago
@Chris RideFar I think what you meant to say was "REMOVE this and put it on PODCAST CC".
jaymack 22 hours ago
As Mary Whitehouse never said - one doesn't have to read the article if one doesn't want to read about an off-road bicycle.
Rendel Harris 23 hours ago
@FionaJJ In London they're allowed to stop on single and double yellows to deliver packages or empty pillar boxes; in practice they take this as carte blanche to park wherever and whenever they want, such as this chap on the Brixton Road who pulled into the bus/cycle/motorcycle lane without indicating, as I approached at 20mph, to park on a red route, response to a remonstrance, "I suppose you never get post delivered do ya?"
FionaJJ 23 hours ago
@Rendel Harris We have a pavement parking ban, but around here at least, royal mail vans are already exempt, subject to certain caveats, such as allowing at least 1.5m, and only being stopped to do their work.
FionaJJ 23 hours ago
It was already embarrassing for the police that they made such a mess of their attempt to determine whether a bike was legal or not, but I had assumed it was a group of well intentioned, but under-trained officers acting on their own initiative, having spotted something they thought looked not quite right. I'm now discovering this was a planned activity, something sufficiently organised to have been given a name - Operation FRISLEN, designed specifically to identify and remove illegal e-bikes and scooters. It's apparent that the officers were sent out without adequate training, never mind the kind of equipment that should be used for this sort of work. I'm not saying they always need specialist equipment to spot all illegal bikes, but at least if they'd been given a demonstration with that equipment, they'd have realised why their approach was not going to end well.
Geoff Ingram 1 day ago
Have put drop bars on a 2001 B1 mtb, a 2007 stumpy hardtail and a 2010 stumpy full suss. In all cases fairly basic conversións leaving gearing and wheels broadly the same and concentrating on correct positioning of bars and fit. Oddly, with all 3 I was happy with the result when recently done, but after a few months found that the extra speed on easy trails was more than offset by the lack of ability (probably mine) on tougher routes and finally preferred flat bar with slammed and inverted stem as best overall compromise. Good fun playing around, though.
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…