Highway Code changes criticised in bizarre "I'm a cyclist, but..." Spectator article; Chris Froome channels his inner Steve Irwin; Atlético Madrid could host Vuelta stage...during a La Liga match; Count the cyclists + more on the live blog

eburtthebike wrote:

Wow!

Yeah, retail is great.

.

Must have been bloody good pork loin ribs!

.

hawkinspeter wrote:

That just shows how bizarrely people can behave when in a car and presumably stressed by the driving conditions. Imagine someone behaving like that at a supermarket if a new cashier was being trained.

I really think we need to be able to temporarily revoke someone's ability to drive if they behave like a spoilt child - something like a yellow card/timeout to give the driver a chance to reflect on why they let their emotions control their behaviour.

Maybe give everyone a supply of yellow card stickers that they can use if they think a driver is acting up or if a car is badly parked. Once someone picks up two or three yellow cards, then they're banned from driving for 24 hours or so. It'd be great to see someone park in a cycle lane, then return to see a flurry of yellow tickets over their vehicle. Maybe have a limit of 10 yellow cards in an hour which would lead to the vehicle getting immediately towed and confiscated for a week.

I'm pretty sure Harlan Ellison wrote a short story set in a near-future where you could challenge other road users to trial by combat, if you felt that they had been driving badly...

Quote from another driver

"Anyone driving slower than me is a ****ing idiot. Anyone driving faster than me is suicidal"

One argument I had went

"You need to get out of my way! If I hit you it will hurt you more then me."

I responded" Not half as much as my fist connecting with your face after going through your window" Apparently I was rude!

A simple wave of the hand can be enough to provoke road rage - somehow a gesture to indicate they have passed too close is several orders of magnitude worse than forcing a bike rider off the road and worthy of a threat of a beating, which clearly is not rude and entirely justified. I do not exaggerate, I have been assaulted simply for saying "You were too close" through an open window as I passed a right turning van I had been stuck behind in traffic after a MGIF close pass.

This idiot tried to run me off the road for waving my hand to show he was tailgating me! Luckily I'd already hit the brakes.

I worked in W H Smiths in Forest Hill in the 70s and we did book orders. To order a book could take a month, and customers would dutifully walk in every Saturday from about week 3 onwards to see if it had arrived. It wasn't considered late until about 6 weeks had passed.

When Amazon started and delivered a book in a few days, it was amazing - a paltry 20 years ago.

This is pretty much how I’ve always thought of it/explained it too. I view drivers as belonging to two groups: “inept drivers” and “psychopaths”. The inept drivers make up around 95% of drivers in the UK and they aren’t out to get you, they’re just useless. They’ll happily try and squeeze their 1.8m wide car through the 1.5m gap between you and the traffic island to your right and they don’t understand why that makes you angry. They’re not trying to hurt you, but if you let them control the situation and they screw up, they will. Taking the lane stops the inept drivers from trying anything stupid and keeps you safe.

The rest are psychopaths, and you can’t do anything about them. They hate you just for being there and they’re happy to take massive risks to teach you a lesson.

When people say that cyclists shouldn’t take the lane because it winds up the psychopaths and they’re likely to lose their patience and hurt you, they’re probably right to an extent – but if you don’t assert yourself and take a controlling road position when required, you’ll be killed by an inept driver long before you meet a psychopath.

Quote:

I would suggest cyclists read the road better because we worry more about junctions and driveways and doors on cars - hazards that many drivers don't consider because they "have right of way" and imagine the other party will observe and concede to them.

I had a perfect example of this on my cycle home the other day. Approaching this junction I noticed a couple of 'youth' cyclists approaching the tight bend with also a pedestrian on it. As can be seen it get very tight there on the pavement, especially when the foliage is not cut back. I was ready for the rear one to come in into the road to avoid the ped so slowed slightly. He looked behind, came into the road and then took a full 90 turn across it to go the other side. His friend, who had stopped to wait so had no momentum then went to follow him and then stopped perpendicular to me as a car approached. As I had anticpated an issue (maybe not that exact sceanrio but something), I could stop without colliding. I imagine most drivers would have been looking at the lights instead of the pavement. 

I would bet that if you did a fake Twitter post about two incidents: a pedestrian stepping into the road to avoid something and getting run over by a car, the Twitterati would blame the pedestrian (how stupid not checking for a car, it's their own fault), but if they were hit by a cyclist, they would blame the cyclist, not the pedestrian (the cyclist should have known they were going to step out and swerved to avoid them (in front of the car, no doubt). Oddly, if you consider the outcomes, this would still be true (one being life changing injuries for one person, the other being a robust argument and bruises for both parties).

Very well put 

IanMSpencer wrote:

My unscientific take is that 80% of motorists are essentially incompetent.

I think you are being generous!

Going by all the times I've been a passenger in vehicles I've only known 3 drivers who were not. One was an ex professional rally driver, one cycles and motorbikes and the last one drives gritter lorries, construction equipment and motorbikes and is trained in case they attend a serious motorway incident before the emergency services get there so he's seen his fair share of carnage.

I assume all drivers either haven't seen me or are actively trying to kill me except when I occasionally take the lane which confuses them or they think I'm a car.

I was thinking about this as I was put at risk by a dangerously close pass for the third time on my 10 minute commute last night.

Why should I care at all about the feelings, convenience or attitude of a group of people who think 5 seconds of their time is more important than a human life? Of course I don't respect them enough to make my journey less convenient to benefit them. They don't even respect me enough to spend 5 seconds to avoid risking my life.