That's it, I am no longer defending Cyclists!

[yellowjack]

Earthdweller said:

I appreciate this thread is very London and urban centric

But up here in the wilds of the rural north there has been a massive rise in the number of cyclists killed or injured in recent years and North Yorkshire County Council and Highways England are seriously considering banning cyclists from some of the more scenic and popular routes

A lot of the concern is about riders in “Peletons” and riding double and more abreast and refusing to move over and allow other road users to pass on narrow country roads

So just in balance problem cyclists is not just an urban issue

Will the council and a quango be driving that bill through parliament by themselves? And will this bill banning bicycles from these "dangerous scenic routes" also ban walkers, and livestock, and horses, and farm vehicles.

Seriously? a) I don't believe you, and b) pandering to the "He came out of nowhere" brigade will not end well. Nobody, ever, "appeared out of nowhere". This is largely because Star Trek is a work of fiction, and Scotty never actually beamed anyone to anywhere. If you round a corner and are suddenly presented with a hazard too close to your vehicle for you to stop it in time, then you are, plainly and simply, "driving too fast". So the answer is lower speed limits to pander to idiots who cannot drive correctly at higher limits, and an extensive network of average speed cameras to manage said limits.

Being as how the average cyclist atop his/her bicycle is taller than the average car, then you have a BETTER chance of spotting them above hedgerows and fields than you do something like an MX5, M3, or A5. If you don't see a cyclist, yet you see those cars, then you simply aren't looking properly, nor are you planning your drive as you should. Up until my health intervened I had a "full house" of driving licence categories and have sat literally dozens of driving tests and assessments over the years. I've even assessed others as part of my job. But I'm not so stupid as to think that there's nothing left for me to learn, which I'd suggest is the biggest fault of the majority of UK drivers. Passing your test is where the lifelong learning journey BEGINS, not ends...

[funkyrobot]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

[J4CKO]

Some drivers are dicks and so are some cyclists, you cant change how you treat someone based on someone else being a penis.

I ignore anyone who says "Brigade" outside of a military context and the fixation with DuPonts Trademarked elastic fabric doesnt help either.

[Matthen]

The issue I have with the vast majority of kerbed cycle lanes is the lack of priority over side roads. Having to slow/stop every 50 yards incase a car sticks its nose out is ridiculous, and avoidable by using the road. Adapt the junctions to allow cyclists right of way over joining traffic, and the usage will rise.

The puncture excuse is rubbish. Get kevlar lined tyres.


As for VED - as a cyclist and a car driver I pay a not insignificant amount of VED to the treasurery every year - certainly more than the majority of diesel-owning motorists. I think that should more than cover using my bike on the road should I have the desire to.

[DonkeyApple]

funkyrobot said:

It would help to get more people on bicycles. Public transport around where I live is utter tripe and isn't that cheap anyway.

Getting more people cycling would mean more healthy people and less strain on the NHS. The numbers would probably make cycling safer. Traffic would be less of a problem and people would save money.

I generally don’t think the topography of the U.K. lends itself well to ever see a large adoption of cycling. Even a lot of the recreational cyclists will be driving cars on their day to day commute.

I’m of the view that cycling is not the solution to congestion but rather part of the problem. However, by far the biggest problem is simply the meteoric rise in not just the number of car owners but the number of journeys that we make. The only way to actually tackle the real issue is to fiscally punish car ownership and usage to the point that other means of transport become superior!!! A rather horrific thought but all solutions that don’t dramatically reduce the number of car journeys by specifically targeting the car are all sticky plaster, PR rubbish.

Of course, it’s very likely that in ten years we might get this anyway just due to the demographic shift of the oldest members of society dying off and the youngest not opting for car ownership at anywhere near the rates of previous generations.

And don’t forget, the real problem for the NHS is people living far longer after too short and too low a period of personal taxation. A cyclist is the enemy of the NHS not a friend. The NHS desperately needs people to go back to dying the week after they retire of a massive chip fat coronary, not living another thirty years sucking the life out of it with numerous body part replacements and specialist, vegetable accommodation.

[irocfan]

Sadly, after some valid points by both sides, yet another thread descends into playground insults.

[J4CKO]

Sometimes cyclists are annoying when I am driving, but its generally a small percentage that do anything stupid, I just give them a wide berth and pass slowly, pretty low down my list of stuff that gets on my nerves when driving.

The loudest moaners are generally always overweight middle aged or older males who drive diesels, I got accosted at work about one of "Your Lot" being in the way on the way in one day, apparently I was on first name terms with the chap causing the hold-up as he also owns a bicycle !

The same chap was an avid reader of the Daily Mail website, there were a couple of others and they all fit a profile.

Younger folk and ladies dont seem to be all that bothered, my wife has a minor moan about the odd hold up on country lanes but not like the campaigns some blokes seem to launch, I read some stuff on the Daily Mail about that old chap who ran some cyclists down in his MX5 and some were praising him for knocking them off ffs.

Cyclists, stop doing daft st that annoys car drivers, car drivers, just being on the road is not a reason for a cyclist to get your bottom lip going then spend longer ranting on here than you got actually held up in the first place,

Dont treat a delay behind a cyclist as any different to one behind other cars, 0 to ranty in 5 seconds behind a bike, sits in a queue of cars happy as a pig in st for hours chomping on a vape pipe, have some perspective.

The VED/Road tax argument is so 2010, nobody really cares, its never going to happen so stop rattling on about it, the government would tax it if they could, if they havent by now, they never will, its a bicycle ffs, it doesnt have an engine, it weighs 25 pounds not 3000, it cant use motorways.

[SaggyOstrich]

The thing is, in life there are LOTS of absolute retards. Some of them drive cars and others cycle, so you're going to encounter them on both fronts but it does infuriate me how a vast majority of cyclists are so self entitled and seem to think they have priority on the road.

Also if they're riding on the roads they should have to be insured.

[Earthdweller]

yellowjack said:

Earthdweller said:

I appreciate this thread is very London and urban centric

But up here in the wilds of the rural north there has been a massive rise in the number of cyclists killed or injured in recent years and North Yorkshire County Council and Highways England are seriously considering banning cyclists from some of the more scenic and popular routes

A lot of the concern is about riders in “Peletons” and riding double and more abreast and refusing to move over and allow other road users to pass on narrow country roads

So just in balance problem cyclists is not just an urban issue

Will the council and a quango be driving that bill through parliament by themselves? And will this bill banning bicycles from these "dangerous scenic routes" also ban walkers, and livestock, and horses, and farm vehicles.

Seriously? a) I don't believe you, and b) pandering to the "He came out of nowhere" brigade will not end well. Nobody, ever, "appeared out of nowhere". This is largely because Star Trek is a work of fiction, and Scotty never actually beamed anyone to anywhere. If you round a corner and are suddenly presented with a hazard too close to your vehicle for you to stop it in time, then you are, plainly and simply, "driving too fast". So the answer is lower speed limits to pander to idiots who cannot drive correctly at higher limits, and an extensive network of average speed cameras to manage said limits.

Being as how the average cyclist atop his/her bicycle is taller than the average car, then you have a BETTER chance of spotting them above hedgerows and fields than you do something like an MX5, M3, or A5. If you don't see a cyclist, yet you see those cars, then you simply aren't looking properly, nor are you planning your drive as you should. Up until my health intervened I had a "full house" of driving licence categories and have sat literally dozens of driving tests and assessments over the years. I've even assessed others as part of my job. But I'm not so stupid as to think that there's nothing left for me to learn, which I'd suggest is the biggest fault of the majority of UK drivers. Passing your test is where the lifelong learning journey BEGINS, not ends...

Don’t believe me .. believe them

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/17/tour-d...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-42965217

https://road.cc/content/news/245278-live-blog-pete...

And a Wail link

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5962837/Ag...

[anonymous-user]

Earthdweller said:

Don’t believe me .. believe them

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/17/tour-d...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-42965217

https://road.cc/content/news/245278-live-blog-pete...

And a Wail link

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5962837/Ag...

Christ alive that's the best news I've heard in ages. The feckwits also need to learn to always keep left single file and pull in to let cars past.

That yellowjack guy sounds like a .

[Earthdweller]

Schmed said:

Earthdweller said:

Don’t believe me .. believe them

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/17/tour-d...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-42965217

https://road.cc/content/news/245278-live-blog-pete...

And a Wail link

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5962837/Ag...

Christ alive that's the best news I've heard in ages. The feckwits also need to learn to always keep left single file and pull in to let cars past.

That yellowjack guy sounds like a .

But I bet he doesn’t apologise for calling me a liar

I have no problem with cyclists .. but some of the Lycra clad loons are causing more problems up here and killing themselves more frequently than motorcyclists .. which is saying something !

[captain_cynic]

DonkeyApple said:

Let’s be honest. The real problem is the number of cars on the road. Double the price of fuel, quadruple VED and halve the number of cars that are clogging up the roads. Get bus wkers back on their buses and the problem goes away.

If we're being honest, all that would do is decrease the amount of money people have for other things. In turn it will also lead to more people driving illegally (sans VED/Insurance), black market petrol, so on and so forth. It wont affect the number of people diving one iota. Most people don't drive because they want to, they drive because they have to.

[yellowjack]

Earthdweller said:

Don’t believe me .. believe them

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/17/tour-d...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-42965217

https://road.cc/content/news/245278-live-blog-pete...

And a Wail link

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5962837/Ag...

One potty Councillor bumping her gums, and some suggestion of banning bicycles on a 15 mile stretch of of dual carriageway that's more akin to a motorway? It's hardly "banning cyclists from scenic routes", and is just sensationalist tosh from a couple of lazy journos who seem to have cribbed heavily from one-another.

Banning is going to be difficult, because between 1878 and 1888 a legal decision led to bicycles being legally defined as "carriages". Which is what motor cars were legally defined as in 1903. If you ban one, because of the way our legal system works, you'd end up banning all. To do otherwise will require extensive re-writes or repealing/replacement of whole acts of parliament.

No government will ever have the stomach, or the spine, for a blanket ban on bicycles. Therefore the only way to ban bicycles from what are pretty much "ordinary, everyday roads" would be to remove their legal definition as "carriages". But then if a bicycle isn't a "carriage", surely it isn't subject to the 1835 Act that prohibits bikes from footways? So congratulations. A handful of moaning fktards in Yorkshire cause a butterfly effect whereby cyclists in towns and cities across the land are now free to ride as they please on footways among pedestrians.

Frankly, Councillor Pattemore is as potty as most of the anti-cyclist mob posting in here. So potty, in fact that she says there are lots of HGVs and large farm vehicles using her local roads, but there's no room for bicycles to use the roads alongside them. Well, if there isn't space for a bicycle, there most certainly isn't space for a motorcycle, a car, or a van. Stop ranting for five minutes, and think it through logically,,,

[ComoEstas]

I’ve not before posted on a cycling thread but I will try to be balanced.

As much as I would like to say “all”, that would of course not be true, so I’ll say “some” cyclists don’t to the rest any favours. Only this morning I saw (when on the bus – yes, I know, very unhealthy of me!) two cyclists cycle on the pavement for 15 or so metres so they could get to the front of the lights as the traffic build up meant they would have had to have held back if they remained on the road. One morning last week (again, on the bus!) one cyclist decided to remain on the inside of the bus as it was turning left. He. Did. Not. Give. Up. This is where I have compassion for London bus drivers. To me, cyclists like those mentioned would appear to have a mentality that it’s only them, one little cyclist, “if I just squeeze through here I’ll be on my way, sod the bus, he’ll put the brakes on if I’m too close”. I also get very annoyed when some cyclists cannot even stop at the red lights on their own cycle-way, as an example I’m referring to the bit when crossing outside Embankment Station. All that money spent on the rather nice cycle-way and they cannot even stop at the red lights specifically for them – the whole “get out of my way I’m on a time trial to work” mentality. The anger coming towards you if you question them is like they’re waiting for you to say something.

I don’t agree with everything my old man says but, as per a mention on the previous page, he says cyclists should have some sort of personal identifier and third-party insurance. Quite how this will get policed, perhaps we are not there, technology-wise, yet. A visible QR code in the same place on every bike?

• Just like motorists, cyclists should be accountable for their actions.

Not as balanced as I’d hoped, sorry, but at least they keep a few more people off the tube and seem to be very, very supportive of local independent coffee shops. I do also understand why more cycle lanes aren’t used because they often just tail off and chuck bikes back onto the main road as if the local authority just ran out of money or they only had a short bit of wider pavement they didn’t know what else to do with.

[yellowjack]

Schmed said:

Christ alive that's the best news I've heard in ages. The feckwits also need to learn to always keep left single file and pull in to let cars past.

That yellowjack guy sounds like a .

I'd call you a right back, but then I realised that a has at least one useful reason for existing...

[anonymous-user]

At least the anti-cycling mob "out there" can fully express themselves without some snowflake running off crying and reporting their posts to censor-mammy!

Watch what you post on here people , the censors are very busy.

[anonymous-user]

ComoEstas said:

Quite how this will get policed, perhaps we are not there, technology-wise, yet. A visible QR code in the same place on every bike?

Embed a chip in their heads, there's plenty of space in there I reckon

[yellowjack]

cb1965 said:

ComoEstas said:

Quite how this will get policed, perhaps we are not there, technology-wise, yet. A visible QR code in the same place on every bike?

Embed a chip in their heads, there's plenty of space in there I reckon

...and we're back, live, with the "hard of thinking".

The "chip in the head" thing isn't a bad idea. Perhaps not in the head, but embedded somewhere at birth, so that Big brother can track all of the people all of the time. It'd cut crime at a stroke, make sure no-one could deny working when the tax man came knocking, and it'd save the Safety Camera Partnerships the trouble of putting cameras up at all (or they could adapt it to explode when it strayed above the speed limit on a busy urban road)...


...or maybe it's just another stupid, frothy-mouthed, half witted, half-baked idea from some moron who's too stupid to accept that there isn't a homogeneous group of Homo Sapiens easily identified "as that mob of Lycra Louts" through a cheap, simple DNA test...

[Dabooka]

yellowjack said:

One potty Councillor bumping her gums, and some suggestion of banning bicycles on a 15 mile stretch of of dual carriageway that's more akin to a motorway? It's hardly "banning cyclists from scenic routes", and is just sensationalist tosh from a couple of lazy journos who seem to have cribbed heavily from one-another.

Banning is going to be difficult, because between 1878 and 1888 a legal decision led to bicycles being legally defined as "carriages". Which is what motor cars were legally defined as in 1903. If you ban one, because of the way our legal system works, you'd end up banning all. To do otherwise will require extensive re-writes or repealing/replacement of whole acts of parliament.

No government will ever have the stomach, or the spine, for a blanket ban on bicycles. Therefore the only way to ban bicycles from what are pretty much "ordinary, everyday roads" would be to remove their legal definition as "carriages". But then if a bicycle isn't a "carriage", surely it isn't subject to the 1835 Act that prohibits bikes from footways? So congratulations. A handful of moaning fktards in Yorkshire cause a butterfly effect whereby cyclists in towns and cities across the land are now free to ride as they please on footways among pedestrians.

Frankly, Councillor Pattemore is as potty as most of the anti-cyclist mob posting in here. So potty, in fact that she says there are lots of HGVs and large farm vehicles using her local roads, but there's no room for bicycles to use the roads alongside them. Well, if there isn't space for a bicycle, there most certainly isn't space for a motorcycle, a car, or a van. Stop ranting for five minutes, and think it through logically,,,

I'm not 100% certain, but hasn't stretches of the A19 got a cycle ban on it somewhere? I'm not suggesting the NY 'ban' is anyway similar though as I'd imagine the A19 being more akin to a motorway is the real reason for the ban (assuming I'm right) as opposed to three a breast cyclists etc.

I do know I've seen some organised cycle events on it before, north of Thirsk, and honestly couldn't believe anyone would want to partake in such an event, bloody horrible to road to drive on let alone cycle along.

[Antony Moxey]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

They do though, don't they. I think it applies to all cyclists too, not just the ones in lycra.