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news
M25 cyclistCyclist found riding on the M25 – against the flow of traffic
Police officers gave a cyclist “words of advice” after escorting him off the M25 on Sunday, where he had been riding on the hard shoulder into the face of oncoming traffic.
A CCTV image tweeted by Highways England showed the rider pedalling towards some cones and a road sign which had been placed on the hard shoulder,
The man was spotted riding between Junction 4 (Badgers Mount) and Junction 5 (Sevenoaks) in Kent.
#TrafficOfficers are on route to a #cyclist around #M25 J4 #BadgersMount to J5 #SevenOaks - Please take care on approach. He is cycling against the flow of traffic. pic.twitter.com/QrXsSjYYtO
— Highways England (@HighwaysSEAST) March 31, 2019
A subsequent tweet confirmed that the cyclist had been “given suitable words of advice” by the police officers who took him to safety.
Rule 253 of the Highway Code bans cyclists from motorways, although we have reported a number of times on riders who have strayed onto them.
Reasons cyclists may end up on motorways include poor signage or ignorance of the law, or because they have followed directions on a sat-nav app on their phone.
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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29 comments
8% seems about right, I would have guessed at 10%. Nice to have proper numbers. Good old Carlton.
I don't think that the cycling city thing is particularly relevant, phone use is selfish, they are thinking of no one but themselves.
Here is a link that readers may find interesting:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2018/10/10/unlucky-for-bicyclists-every-13th-passing-motorist-is-looking-elsewhere/#75b15831169c
Having a look at that picture, it looks like a dual carriageway to me.
Motorways have 3 or more lanes. They seem to be round me, M3 and 4.
Now I know, from my parents driving me and my stuff to and from uni that many of kents motorways used to be only 2 lanes wide, before the channel tunnel the M2 was only 2 lanes.
But how can you not know? Local Knowledge?
To a non driving cyclist a motorway is an irrelevance, at most a barrier that has a massive bridge over it, or with luck a tunnel under. And they do not have signs when passing over or under them "you are crossing the M Whaterver". Like they do over some rivers, and that's the only reason I would know what river it was, I cannot travel on it - irrelevant. When I got my "racer" at 12 or 13 I used to ride around to the local towns around Yateley for something to do, generally taking the routes my mother had a somepoint driven me. There was Camberley, no Motorway to cross, I only knew it was the A30 once I started to commute on it, and it took to litter picking on the M3 before I realised that they run a bit parrallel around there. Fleet you go over a Motorway, and Farnborough it's either over or under, and the under it's just a big road, it took me until my 20s for me to fully realise that it was the M3. Reading, a big hill with a bridge on top over a motorway, again 20s before I figured it was a different motorway, the M4. Could have been the same one, don't care. Irrelevant.
I pass over and under railway lines too, generally doesn't matter to me where they go, most of the time anyway. When I lived in Birmingham I went over a bridge near Moseley village, big line, one end prabably went into town, where the other end went, didn't know, Moseley didn't have a station. Bus routes were more relevant. Finding a nice way to ride into town was more important. Then navigating about using the canal paths, which don't tell you where you are or what road you are passing under. Roads give you a lot of information, tell you what village or town you are passing through, lot of signs to tell you where to go, not on canals or the railways. Of course on the rails you know the stations but that's it, they don't tell you what rivers or roads you are crossing because unless you have to know it doesn't matter.
Theres a lot of roads I ride on almost every day and I don't know their names. I know every drain and manhole cover, the developing potholes, where the junctions are and where I would like to be, where most of the danger will come from and where the road will take me to. No idea what they are called. Generally doesn't matter.
But there are signs telling you it's a motorway, and that he's not allowed on it?
I think that's only on the slip roads, I don't think they warn you about that bit of not being allowed on the roundabouts that get you to the slip roads.
But the signposts point to Motorway?
There are signposts along that bit of A30 around Camberley that say London. I'm not riding the A30 from Camberley to London, I'll take the coach or train. So not significant.
You can't get on the motorway when not on roads?
Well it's not impossible, a bit like the railways. Around town, big fences, but already a trespassing problem. Out in the sticks it's not as rigid. The railway fence can often be in a poor state of repair and there's often only a small wooden fence around the motorway, which is easily climable. And those fences don't have signs on them saying "TURN BACK MOTORWAY".
So what if he's out in the sticks, long way from home, bit lost, bridleways and footpaths don't have lots of signs telling you where you are or where you are going, with distances. Some but again not lots like the roads. Hears a road, nips off the track he's on and climbs over a small wooden fence and finds himself on what looks to him like a dual carriageway.
But he's going the wrong way?
Well, so he's found a road and he's lost but he thinks right would be better than left. He's pootling along on the far side of the hard shoulder, close to the right as possible, I know the picture (of what appears to be a dual carriageway) he's moved out a bit, but that's just to get through the gap in the cones. He could see if something is coming right towards him, bit like walkers are advised to on small country roads. To me it has some advantages to having stuff speeding up your arse. He wants to cross the road, but he's just waiting for a gap in the traffic or the barriers in the middle. There are crossings across dual carriageways. The roads are a lot newer than some of those footpaths or bridleways.
Of course I'm just speculating, in what appears to be bit long winded, kind of got carried away. No one died, he was safely escorted off the motorway, given advice and it would seem, at the polices discretion allowed to go on his way.
And what I'm saying, don't always think like a motorist. Non motorists can really think about the world in a different way and that still looks like a dual carriageway.
And just to confuse matters there's one of those dual carriageways near me that I'm not allowed on, I don't know what it's called, I kind of know where it is, wouldn't want to be on it it doesn't go where I want to get.
All motorways are dual carriageways; not all dual carriageways are motorways. The defining characteristic of a motorway is not the number of lanes.
And the signs are a different colour from non-motorways, which is an indication that different rules apply. Of course, if the cyclist in question has never read the Highway Code (or associated legislation...) they may not know this. But ignorance of the law is no defence.
That's not quite true. A dual carriageway is a road in which the lanes for traffic moving in opposite directions are separate by a divider. You can indeed have a dual carriageway with just a single lane in either direction (or two lanes in one direction and one in the other), as long as those lanes have a divider in between them. I've only seen one such stretch in the UK with a single lane in either direction and a central divider. It's on the west side of Edinburgh, tho I expect there are a few more dotted here and there.
Motorways are built to different standards than dual carriageways. Motorway lanes are wider to account for the 70mph speed limits, which is probably the most obvious difference. Some dual carriageways may be built to motorway standard with the wider lanes and may allow 70mph speed limits rather than the 60mph National Speed Limit. There are other differences such as signage and lighting and markings and so on. Motorways used to all have emergency lanes too, but that's all changing now with Smart Motorways.
As regards cycling on a motorway, it's really stupid. I've seen comments by some people claiming that cycling in the hard shoulder is fine. I see people doing this on the A2 before it gets to the motorway stretch outside of London and becomes the M2.
It isn't safe. You might want to check up and see how many crashes there are on the UK network involving vehicles smashing into stopped vehicles in the hard shoulder. This is a frighteningly common occurrence and can be cause by blowouts that result in driverts losing control, or by drivers falling asleep at the wheel for example. The numbers involving HGVs are particularly alarming. The hard shoulder is not a safe place to be. If ever you are in a car and break down and stop in the hard shoulder, get out of the vehicle and over the crash barrier ASAP. Bear in mind too that a steel guard rail is designed to deflect when impacted by a vehicle, so you need to be a few metres away from it to be safe.
Motorways have very differnt design Specs from Dual Carrriagways, the No of lanes is not relavent, in Scotland with (at a guess) 300 miles of motorway network, I reckon 250 are only 2 lanes (including the busiest M8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow) with only a stretch of the M74 between Carlisle and half way to Glasgow being 3 lanes for any distance.
I seem to remember the Dual Carriageways where bikes are banned are called "special roads" they are normally newer roads that have been built over greenfield sites and the previous cyclist permitted road network has been left complete and should hopefully have less traffic. A recent expample of this is the Aberdeen Western Peripheral road which is a new city bypass rather than a road upgrade.
Please enlighten me...
Highways England announce traffic information via Twitter.
Do they provide this service so drivers can monitor their Tweets while they are driving?
Hopefully it's for passengers / teen-phone symbiotes in the back
Sadly not. 62% of all cars and vans are single occupancy i.e. driver only in the vehicle.
Perhaps Road.cc could interview Highways England about thier Twitter site?
How do HE imagine this information is used by drivers?
One example I have attached appears to me that they are directing this information at drivers presently driving on the affected roads.
HE even provide pictures for the drivers to look at!!
HighwaysEnglandTwitter.jpg
As a counterpoint, I think it's a good thing that they're using more methods of communication and just because they're using Twitter doesn't mean that they're inciting drivers to use mobile phones.
It'd be quite easy to set up a notification based on Twitter so that it reads out any tweets by Highways England - especially useful for any drivers with limited vision.
OT, but: why do bus companies, HE, etc all think that its acceptable to send notices/updates out by twitter but not bother to put it on their websites? Is this the same principle that is gradually closing text-based blogs in favour of video-based vlogs and YT channels??
I'd consider it a lot easier to interface with Twitter than muck around with scraping data from different websites - to my mind Twitter is pretty close to text and a lot of websites are getting harder to interface with (e.g. clicking on GDPR agreements, cookie handling etc).
Going back to your question - it's a lot easier for big companies to just shove updates onto Twitter than to deal with their Marketing/Web Design departments and going through a re-design of their websites just for an update. Obviously, a re-design isn't typically needed, but that's how corporate websites work (more so if they use a 3rd party to design/host it).
Um....
I'd like to direct your attention to this: https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2019/02/toyota-blind-driver/
As an aside I was utterly amazed at a documentary I watched recently about Richard Turner (a card mechanic who also happens to be blind): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F__DQ1ruYck
Edit: Whilst on YouTube, I found an older Penn & Teller (& Willow) Fool Us featuring Richard Turner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwFIJyWKs1k
It's not Birdbox !
What kind of suicidal Nobber* rides their bike on any part of a motorway?!! The closing speeds are terrifying; puts everyone at risk. Bad signage or not, surely common sense would make you back off?
The Darwin Awards spring to mind...
*it's a new word - ™ Prof' Brian Cox.
Well no indeed, the Highway Code in and of itself doesn't ban anything, it cites the legislation that does and the situations to which it may apply. Bravo.
Well, quite. If I say to you,' it's illegal to steal,' have I 'banned' you from stealing?
That sounds like it has a slightly different slant which seems to conflate the meaning of 'ban' as an action against an individual, and 'ban' as a general legislative artifact, such as an order, statute, edict and so on... In the latter case the legisation is the 'ban', and has 'banned' you in the sense of detailing a prohibition. The information about the existence of that 'ban' is not the ban itself but that is almost certainly, as you say, pedantry. That aside - and I realise that it might well not have been your intended meaning - in answer to your question, I now know that i'm banned from stealing.
Hey baldyman, only 3 posts, and 2 of them are on this thread, and both of those make the same excellent point. Well done sir.
It's not the Highway Code that bans cyclists from motorways it's the legislation cited at the bottom of rule 253, eg Highways Act, Road Traffic Act etc. The Highway Code is advice and guidance for road users it does not provide the legislation.
It's not the Highway Code that bans cyclists from motorways it's the legislation cited at the bottom of rule 253, eg Highways Act, Road Traffic Act etc. The Highway Code is advice and guidance for road users it does not provide the legislation.
'Rule 253 of the Highway Code bans cyclists from motorways...'
No it doesn't.
Is this some pedantic point about legislation?
Clever boy.
It would seem to come quite close to the casual observer...
The UK probably looks like 'a democracy' to 'the casual observer'.
But yes, I'm probably being pedantic. The Highway Code does not 'ban' anything.
Looks like the m25 section between junction 4 entry /exit roundabout and the A224 hewitts Farm roundabout. He's had to work hard to get to that point without becoming road kill.
As it happens I pass right under that section of the m25 on my usual route to work. And no, it wasn't me.
Ironically it's probably safer facing oncoming traffic, at least you can see someone using the hard shoulder. And those signs and cones probably mean the shoulder's closed anyway. Nah, he's fine.