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TT on A50 July 2nd near Stoke.

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  • July 4, 2016 at 3:58 pm #25981
    WolfieSmith

    I was on the A50 heading towards West towards Stoke on Saturday afternoon at 3.30pm. It’s a dual carriageway with roundabouts every few miles. Not the safest road.

    It starts raining. Really pouring down. I’m travelling at 50mph with the windscreen wipers full blast and my lights on on the inside lane when I see a shape ahead sillouetted for an instant against the afternoon sun. It’s a cyclist. In black with no lights.  I take the foot off, check the mirrors, luckily there is no one close up my right handside, so I signal and overtake in the outside lane giving the poor sod plenty of room so I don’t hit him with spray. Within a minute there is another rider and then another. Some have lights but of the eight or nine  I passed in the next 6 minutes maybe half didn’t.

    To be safe I stay in the outside lane and other drivers behind me are doing the same. Of course within two minutes some knob jockey in a black Mondeo decides that he will under take us all at 60mph and only just manages to avoid a rider. Two miles further on and at the turning point a couple of hi vis vest marshalls were sat chewing gum in chairs watching the cyclists sweeping back around on perhaps the worst roundabout on the whole length of the A50. 

     I’m a qualified BC coach in TT and Road racing. I support the right to TT on public roads. I even support the right to TT on A roads. It’s all about timing. In the past I’ve met cyclists on the A1 and the A59 before – but early morning or early evening.  If anyone knows which genius decided that 3pm on a East/West A road with showers forecast was a good idea maybe you could advise them that a Sunday morning 5am start and a dry forecast would have been the safer option?  Whoever organised that race last Saturday avoided a tragedy purely by luck alone.

     

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  • July 7, 2016 at 8:44 am #874489
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    daccordimark

    Thanks Wolfie for coming back

    Thanks Wolfie for coming back on and putting us straight. You only need to spend a couple of minutes on the CTT website to find out who the organiser is – I wouldn’t bother with BC as they do not administer or regulate the vast majority of time trials in the UK.

    FYI it was a Belper RC Open 25 but I can’t remember now who the organiser was. All the contact details are there if you click on Events and narrow the search down to the date in question you’ll soon find the information you need. I hope he/she will be happy to take your free advice.

    If you dig a little deeper you will find that 40 riders did not start, 11 did not finish and 73 finished. Obviously some of those 40 will have decided either beforehand or on the day that it was too dangerous to race.

    I’m still not sure what you think the organiser should have done. Should they have looked at the weather forecast in the days leading up to the event and cancelled it? They’re in a difficult situation as the forecast isn’t always right. When conditions are very dangerous I believe events have been cancelled on the day but it is very rare and the decision to ride is usually left up to the riders. In this case 40 of them took the decision to stay at home.

    I agree that Saturday afternoon is potentially less safe than Sunday morning but that’s no guarantee as TT riders have been killed on Sundays even with light traffic. Traffic counts are taken on TT courses but I don’t know what the regulations are with respect to how busy a road has to be before the course is banned.

    I completely sympathise with you over the ranting thing – SuperPython59 seems to have a real problem as they seem to fire off both barrels very often. To be honest this site isn’t the best place to raise questions like this. The time trial forum and Cycling Time Trials are your best bet.

    http://www.timetriallingforum.co.uk/

    https://www.cyclingtimetrials.org.uk/  (All the details for the event can be found here)

    Mark.

     

     

    July 6, 2016 at 6:27 pm #874487
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    WolfieSmith

    Sigh..

    Sigh..

    As suspected half of you didn’t read my post properly and went off on some self righteous wank. SuperPython – “Fucked up thinking”? Nope. Your fucked up reading is the problem. You really need to read the whole post. I think you read 5 lines in and then couldn’t wait to seize the wrong end of the stick and start waving it about. I wasn’t victimising anyone – especially the riders who must have been pretty frightened to be in that situation. I was making a safety suggestion. Don’t respond to what you want to guess is being said as it gives you a chance to vent your life frustrations on a stranger. READ THE POST. Think… Then respond.

    One or two  actually read and understood the point I was trying to make about not holding TT’s one of the Uk’s most hazardous westbound A roads on a saturday afternoon with rain forecast. It does matter when the event booked in the diary – 4pm on a Saturday afternoon on the biusiest road into Stoke is a stupid time to hold it.

    Thanks for all the advice on TT regulations. When I joined the dual carriageway there were no HI VIs signs posted – hence my surprise at finding a cyclist in front of me.

    Thanks also for the driving advice from Listerine and Dacordimark. I know what an A road is:  It’s a two lane dual carriageway. There is no middle lane and in torrential rain I am (as stated in the post) going to change lanes completely to avoid the cyclist’s lane – as was almost everyone else that day. I passed my test in 1983. I have never had an accident or a penalty point. Braking in the wet in aquaplaning conditions wouldn’t have been safe – hence ‘lifting off”. But thanks for your free advice. As Sir Michael Caine once said ‘It’s good that free advice is free because it’s nearly always shit.”

    I posted originally because I wanted the club concerned to re think their timings in future before someone is killed. If anyone wants to pass on that message to the club concerned be my guest. I will be talking to BC myself, finding out who it was and hoping no body slid out and got run over last Saturday. Not 10 minutes of driving Iwould wish on anyone else.

    Thanks to BBB and Alan M. Nice to see some reason still floating on the surface of the sea of hysteria that is the web… : )

     

     

     

     

     

     

    July 6, 2016 at 12:23 pm #874485
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    alansmurphy

    Lights won’t help if

    Lights won’t help if silhouetted against the sun.

     

    Taking the blame away from this guy:

     

    “Of course within two minutes some knob jockey in a black Mondeo decides that he will under take us all at 60mph and only just manages to avoid a rider”

     

    seems to be the order of the day!

    July 6, 2016 at 12:17 pm #874483
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    daccordimark
    BBB wrote:
    The OP isn’t blaming anyone.

    It seems to me they’re putting a lot of blame onto the organiser.

    “If anyone knows which genius decided that 3pm on a East/West A road with showers forecast was a good idea maybe you could advise them that a Sunday morning 5am start and a dry forecast would have been the safer option?”

    They also seem to be taking a pop at the marshals – although what they think the marshals should have been doing instead is left hanging.

    July 5, 2016 at 9:21 pm #874481
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    rggfddne
    BBB wrote:
    The OP isn’t blaming anyone.

    He merely implies that having a bright flashing light and racing in the early morning in fair weather conditions reduces the probability of being struck by a distracted, careless idiot behind the wheel. You can’t argue with that.

    Some people here need to come down a little. You can quote HC all day if you want but being in the right doesn’t make much difference when you’re dead.

    What’s the point in [i]having[/i] “right” if not to set out the conditions in which you can reasonably expect to not be harmed at the hand of others?

    May as well go American.  FFS defend me or let me defend myself.

    July 5, 2016 at 8:47 pm #874479
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    BBB

    The OP isn’t blaming anyone.

    The OP isn’t blaming anyone.

    He merely implies that having a bright flashing light and racing in the early morning in fair weather conditions reduces the probability of being struck by a distracted, careless idiot behind the wheel. You can’t argue with that.

    Some people here need to come down a little. You can quote HC all day if you want but being in the right doesn’t make much difference when you’re dead.

    July 5, 2016 at 8:00 pm #874477
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    fenix

    Pretty sure you have to have
    Pretty sure you have to have fluo signs on the road side to alert drivers to the bike race.
    That should alert you.

    I have taken to riding even in summer with a flashing rear light. And still bad drivers do close passes.

    July 5, 2016 at 1:50 pm #874475
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    alansmurphy

    DrJ,

    DrJ,

     

    “I’m inclined to agree with OP in this case. It’s not about who has the right to be there in this case, it’s about whether in the current circumstances this is going to be a safe event.”

     

    In which case I need to stop swimming at the local pool in case a wanker decides to put a shark in  there!

     

    Wolfie, 

     

    I have a rear light on my bike constantly and if weather dictates it will be used, but I’m not aero or a TT rider. 3pm in July you wouldn’t anticipate having to use one, but just to check the card drivers on the road, did you all have snow chains for the tyres, you know… just in case?

     

    Nob jockey Mondeo will be a nob jockey all his life and probably comes close to killing someone most days. If he is willing to undertake at such speed and in such conditions do you really feel a few lights would have changed his mind?

     

    July 5, 2016 at 12:31 pm #874473
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    daccordimark

    As a qualified coach I’m

    As a qualified coach I’m surprised you don’t know that the dates for time trials are set months in advance. Even the Met Office super-computers can’t forecast that far ahead.

    As for your tactic of “staying safe” by moving completely into the outside lane that’s not the best option. As you found out it opens up the inside lane to people who don’t understand why you’re in the outside lane and probably just think you’re asleep like those motorway middle-laners.

     

     

    July 5, 2016 at 10:42 am #874471
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    listerine

    Since this was an A road, and

    Since this was an A road, and not a motorway, you should have been aware of the possibility of encountering pedestrians, cyclists and horses, none of whom are obliged, by law, to wear any particular clothing or to display any lights during daylight hours.

     

    In driving in conditions of poor visibility at 50mph, you surely avoided a tragedy purely by luck alone. If you want to drive fast, why not drive at 5AM on a Sunday with a dry forecast next time?

     

    Also, by way of a driving tip – if you see a danger ahead and aren’t sure whether you have space to take evasive action, use your brakes – don’t just ‘take your foot off’.

     

    I agree that cycling in such conditions is risky – but that’s a matter for those riders and their families. Your job, as another road user, is surely to drive in a way which doesn’t endanger them, rather than to tell them, after the event, that they should have gotten off the road.

    July 5, 2016 at 8:22 am #874469
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    WiznaeMe

    I don’t lane change to

    I don’t lane change to overtake a single cyclist, so that cars can’t get between me and the cyclist.  I do change lane if there are two cyclists riding beside one another.  The diagram in the Highway Code shows the car with its nearside tyres inside lane one.   I know people disagree with not making a full lane change; we will need to agree to disagree. 

    July 5, 2016 at 7:27 am #874467
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    Grahamd

    Various cycle events

    Various cycle events including TT are regularly done near me, which include use of the dual carriageway. The use of polite signs on these occasions to let everybody know has to be applauded as it is both courteous and gives some advance warning to other road users. Not too difficult but makes things a little safer for all concerned. 

    P.s. I am not a TT or any other competitive rider.

    July 4, 2016 at 8:24 pm #874465
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    Anonymous

    If it rains and darkens I

    If it rains and darkens I choose to light myself up like a christmas tree because I feel it’s a responsibility I have to my family to make it as easy as possible to be seen. If the light is dodgy then no ninja gear, and the yellow or orange goes on. 

    In an ideal world the driver should be aware of everything but the world is full of people on phones, people playing with radios, having conversations whilst looking at passengers and so on. People can’t even see big one tonne pieces of metal travelling down the road sometimes never mind cyclists. 

    It’s not about victim blaming sometimes it’s about not being a victim. Maybe I should be able to walk through some dodgy area at night but I don’t because I’m minimising risk. I drive as much as I ride and IMO it’s a lot easier to see riders at distance with a rear light or fluoro so you can modulate you speed earlier to get past without hassle and giving plenty of space. 

     

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