Compulsory bike bell law could return (bikebiz)

Question is, where’s the best

Question is, where’s the best place to stick your bell?

Right or left side of the bars?

Stem mount?

Steerer mount?

Somewhere else?

RHS of the bars for me, so I can slow the bike with the rear brake (theory being that if you need to haul the front brake to avoid them, it’s probably too late anyway)

“The 1999 requirement that

“The 1999 requirement that all new cycles have to be sold with bells – but with no compulsion to fit them – came after a partially-sighted woman’s guide dog was hit by a cyclist, and she organised a petition for the restoration of bells on all cycles. ”

This is why I have bells fitted to both bikes, one  Brompton with P bars (bell is a little feeble) and and Alexander Grahame Bell fitted to the drop-bar bike.

The latter is particularly clear and useful on towpaths, shared paths through parks etc – I’ve seen people 50 yards away turn when they hear a single “ping” from this one! Supplemented by voice  when a bit closer (“Good Morning”).

Wlaking down the same paths – its pretty obvious tht a “Ding Ding” is an approaching bike, whereas a “Good Morning” could just be someone walking  behind you saying hello, or even just chatting on his/her phone – ie the bike sounds like you expect a bike to sound. Something that those who think a white noise generator fitted to electric cars would make them sound like cars should consider – they won’t, they’ll probably sound more like wind in the trees or somesuch, they won’t sound like cars at all. They should.

Road cycling I see NO use for

Road cycling I see NO use for a bell whatsoever.  Shared use paths, I find my voice to be more useful than a bell “I’m on your left/right” as it imparts more info than a bell could.  It either works perfectly or (in the case of those wearing headphones) not at all.  Bells have NO effect on dogs – although they are more predictable in their behaviour than headphone wearers.

If someone wants to design something that interrupts someones music stream with “pay attention cyclist behind you” then that might be a workable solution.

As has been mentioned, nobody should ever be travelling faster than their stopping distance allows for… the best way of achieving this is to have your fingers on the brakes – NOT a bell.

Lastly before the police are given MORE vaguely unenforceable laws to police we should work out how to combat some real killers like mobile phone use in cars.

If you have a bell on your

If you have a bell on your bike it does not stop you using your voice as well/instead of your bell. If you do not have a bell on your bike it does stop you being able to use the bell as well as/instead of your voice.

As a few posters have pointed out, there are going to be some grumpy pedestrians who are going to complain regardless of what method you use to alert them. There is not much you can do about that type of person.

As far as aesthetics and positioning go, I have found (as have other posters) that a stem mounted bell is pretty good on both counts and well worth a try.

There are several occasions when I am glad I have a bell which include:

If the person in question is too far away to alert with my voice without shouting (especially if they have dogs off the lead as it’s best to give as much notice as possible here)

When cycling through the park during the busy summer as your voice can get lost in the background buzz of conversations.

If I have been riding hard and do not have the puff in me to verbalise anything.

If I am fighting off a cold and have lost my voice.

I tend to follow my ping on the bell with a “thank you” or “cheers” as I go past to ensure that the ping was not taken as aggression.

If I do need to ping with aggression though I use a rapid fire of pings which seems rather effective.

Cyclisto, the point you made about having to move your hands around the bars to ring a bell on a drop handlebar bike – Do you ride the entire time without moving your hands? I rather doubt that. If you are moving your hands around during the course of your ride, then moving it on occasion to ring your bell is not really any more dangerous than the rest of your ride.

This is not about a bell, or

This is not about a bell, or about ‘safety’ or about anything else positive, in fact.  This is about another legal constraint applied to cyclists to make cycling less attractive.  The compulsory helmet law will be in place within a year or two.   Hi-viz will be made obligatory around the same time.  I suppose we should be grateful that all of the moped crime isn’t taking place on bicycles, because Paul Dacre would already be working towards having cycling banned if they were. 

I bet this bloke didn’t ring

Perhaps someone can come up with a funky ‘ring bell’ app for smartphones (with virtually infinite adjustments for pitch, decay and overtones, of course) and raise $25,000 on kickstarter or some such nonsense.

antigee wrote:

and as to the house of lords debate – just pointless noise – the issue is why are are cyclists on the pavement not what pointless controls to add 

Meanwhile, in nearby Telford, I bet this bloke didn’t have a bell while on the cyclepath!

https://twitter.com/TelfordPatrol/status/1008845583627554820

From experience…

From experience…

Conversation 1:

Cyclist: ‘Scuse me!

Pedestrian: Don’t you have a bell? In the old days, every bike had one! <grumble, grumble>

Conversation 2:

Cyclist: <rings bell>

Pedestrian: Don’t you go ringing that F*&king bell at me, pal!

KendalRed wrote:

KendalRed wrote:

Yorkshire wallet wrote:

Canyon48 wrote:

I use my voice instead of a bell.

I can simply say “hello, excuse me” and “thank-you”.

Works really well.

I don’t know why a bell would need to be law.

Yeah, I’ve given up on bells, especially with horses. I just shout something like ‘hi, there’ or whatever. People tend to take bells as ‘GET OUT OF MY WAY’, a bit like when they get a dose of car horn and look greatly offended and slightly angry (even when they’re wandering into the road looking at a phone). 

I tend to find whatever I do isn’t right. Use the bell, they jump out of the way and look at you like you’re telling them to shift, use my voice and they say ‘you should have a bell’. I don’t use shared paths that much these days, my commute used to go on one, but since moving home I don’t need them – I do have plenty of country roads though, and this being the Lake District, there are always plenty of pedestrians on them due to the lack of pavements.

On a side note, my Knog Oi bell was criticised for not being loud enough the other day, and tbh I agree, it’s really quite poor. Great design though! Just wish I had tried it a few times before I bought another for my other bike.