Cycling on the motorway
Discussion
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-he...
Twunt caught cycling on the M1. Anyone on here? Be honest.
Twunt caught cycling on the M1. Anyone on here? Be honest.
I've seen on a few occasions people cycling along the A2. A group of 4 people riding on the hard shoulder and a while later one person cycling along in the rain in slow lane! Although it is technically legal being an A road it is essentially 4 lane motorway in all but name.
Utter madness! Some people must either have a death wish or be seriously thick to ride on a motorway!
Utter madness! Some people must either have a death wish or be seriously thick to ride on a motorway!
TheFungle said:
Rochester TVR said:
Although it is technically legal being an A road..
These is a small, but worryingly vocal minority (on forums at least) that think just because it's legal to ride on the A1, A2, A3 etc. it's the right thing to do.Madness.
I agree, it's bloody stupid though. There's a worrying amount of people who are seemingly unable to think for themselves and blindly assume that anything legal is sensible, anything sensible is legal, anything illegal is stupid and everything stupid is illegal. The Law and Common Sense are a long way appart on a lot of issues.
Last weekend I was driving down to London on the A11 which is generally two lanes but can also be three with no hard shoulder and there was a properly organised time trial taking place on it. I have never in my life seen anything so dangerous on the road. Not only was the difference in speed massive but I saw on more than one occasion a cyclist pull out to overtake another without looking and with no regard for the traffic coming up behind them. How no one got killed is beyond me........
This thread has reminded me of something - before I started driving in 2010, and to be clear, as a passenger rather than a cyclist, there was a 70mph dual carriageway somewhere that had a cycle lane. When a sliproad joined said road, the bike lane would come to a sudden halt and there was a left turn marking on the hatched area between sliproad and main carriageway. Insane planning.
I had in my head that this was the A34, but I drive it occasionally and can't think where it would be.
I had in my head that this was the A34, but I drive it occasionally and can't think where it would be.
trashbat said:
This thread has reminded me of something - before I started driving in 2010, and to be clear, as a passenger rather than a cyclist, there was a 70mph dual carriageway somewhere that had a cycle lane. When a sliproad joined said road, the bike lane would come to a sudden halt and there was a left turn marking on the hatched area between sliproad and main carriageway. Insane planning.
I had in my head that this was the A34, but I drive it occasionally and can't think where it would be.
Here:I had in my head that this was the A34, but I drive it occasionally and can't think where it would be.
http://goo.gl/maps/adRwr
Similar thing in MK. The A5D runs through the middle, and the council website tout the "dedicated cycle lane" on it. There isn't. What you basically have is a approximately a foot of cambered space inside the white line before the verge. Full of gravel and drains.
At each junction it diverts you to sharp left, cross the slip road and re-join the carriage way. it is utter s
te and I wont use it.
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Milton+Keynes&...
At each junction it diverts you to sharp left, cross the slip road and re-join the carriage way. it is utter s
te and I wont use it.https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Milton+Keynes&...
Summer evenings on the M1 motorway from Dublin airport I would see a guy ride an mtb on the hard shoulder. Extremely perilous behaviour particularly considering the number of tractors and combines that also drove the hard shoulder, with various arms, conveyors and booms swinging everywhere!
TheFungle said:
Rochester TVR said:
Although it is technically legal being an A road..
These is a small, but worryingly vocal minority (on forums at least) that think just because it's legal to ride on the A1, A2, A3 etc. it's the right thing to do.Madness.
(The ride like a pro event took us up part of a dual carriageway bit of the A449 - i was glad when that was over).
Our local AJAX cycling club seems to enjoy riding around Coryton Roundabout - Jnc 32 of the M4 and supposedly the largest roundabout in the UK, seems suicidal to me, also whilst it's not a motorway it's a multi-lane mess of a thing, usually teeming with cars wildly switching lanes at 50mph.
It's also got no cycling signs on every junction and a really good network of cycle lanes underneath it.
Go figure.
It's also got no cycling signs on every junction and a really good network of cycle lanes underneath it.
Go figure.
This is nothing new of course....
Some years back an entire cycling team (I recollect from Kenya), around six riders, were pulled over with a police rolling road block on the M60 motorway near Eccles during a "warm up" prior to racing at the Manchester velodrome. Whilst they were clearly travelling at some speed, don t think any of them were hogging the middle lane though....
Some years back an entire cycling team (I recollect from Kenya), around six riders, were pulled over with a police rolling road block on the M60 motorway near Eccles during a "warm up" prior to racing at the Manchester velodrome. Whilst they were clearly travelling at some speed, don t think any of them were hogging the middle lane though....
944fan said:
Similar thing in MK. The A5D runs through the middle, and the council website tout the "dedicated cycle lane" on it. There isn't. What you basically have is a approximately a foot of cambered space inside the white line before the verge. Full of gravel and drains.
At each junction it diverts you to sharp left, cross the slip road and re-join the carriage way. it is utter ste and I wont use it.
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Milton+Keynes&...
There is a cycle path along a large chunk of the a5 where its single carriageway towards Leighton, (with a barrier seperating it from the road) however its not suitable for road bikes and veers off into a village before you hit Bletchley.At each junction it diverts you to sharp left, cross the slip road and re-join the carriage way. it is utter s
te and I wont use it.https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Milton+Keynes&...
Annoyingly mk is the shining beacon of decent cyclepath layout round here, but there is no chance you will ever get me cycling up the a5 further up. Repeated slip road crossing strikes me as a suicidally bad idea..
There was a guy riding slowly up the slow lane of the A3 heading in to London from Tolworth on Saturday morning causing one hell of a mess! What made it even more insane was the fact that there's a residential road running parallel to the main carriageway at this point which he could easily have been on instead.
I was reminded of an episode of Motorway Cops or something similar where they received a report of a dead body at the side of a road. They resolved the case when a girl went in to a police station to say she'd hit an animal on the dual-carriageway the night before, and wasn't sure if she had to report it or not.
It turned out that the "animal" was a bellend on a bike wearing black with no lights on, riding on a dual-carriageway after dark. No charges bought against the girl, and lots and lots of reassurance from the coppers that there was absolutely nothing she could've done about it, and was in no way to blame at all.
Some people are just born stupid, I suppose.
I was reminded of an episode of Motorway Cops or something similar where they received a report of a dead body at the side of a road. They resolved the case when a girl went in to a police station to say she'd hit an animal on the dual-carriageway the night before, and wasn't sure if she had to report it or not.
It turned out that the "animal" was a bellend on a bike wearing black with no lights on, riding on a dual-carriageway after dark. No charges bought against the girl, and lots and lots of reassurance from the coppers that there was absolutely nothing she could've done about it, and was in no way to blame at all.
Some people are just born stupid, I suppose.
trashbat said:
mrmr96 said:
Haha, not dreaming after all. Thanks.Of course a lot of the problem stems from the hoops that have to be jumped through, and the boxes to be ticked to get cyclists banned from existing roads even when they are altered to the point where they are totally unsuitable for cycling. The new A12 in Essex and the tunnel at Hindhead on the A3 are "Cyclists Prohibited" because they are entirely new sections, and obviously whenever an 'A' becomes an 'M' the motorway regulations ban cycling. Otherwise Parliament needs to get involved, and often it's not worth the money because most sensible riders stay off the fast, busy DC's anyway.
I used to ride on bits of the A505, A14 and A10 when I was based in Essex, often because there were few options to cross straight over, so to get from one side to the other necessitated riding a short stretch whether you liked it or not. I seriously wonder how the hell people 'accidentally' find their way onto motorways though. The whole feel of the road is different well before motorway regulations actually begin. You'd need to be seriously stupid not to notice.
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