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

[Antony Moxey]

super7 said:

Oh and whilst were at it..... make every one of them insure themselves and their bikes, and make them all carry an indetifying marker, so they can be scanned and prosecuted if need be.

Just fine them. They'll soon learn!!!!

You mean the same way that motorist learnt when that became compulsory? I'm sure I read it on PH somewhere, but isn't it correct that there are more unisured drivers in the UK than there are cyclists?

[anonymous-user]

yellowjack said:

...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...

Oh dear

[SaggyOstrich]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJAJE0CH4oc

[J4CKO]

Antony Moxey said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

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

How often do you see a cyclist in the middle of the road ?

It just isnt practical to sit in the middle of a lane, who wants a load of angry car drivers behind ?

That said, I was on mine for the first commute in ages, checked behind, nothing coming, put my arm out, moved out and a white hatchback (some Korean type) went barrelling past on the right with his horn held down, he was miles back when I checked but as he decided to do 50/60 in a thirty he got there a lot quicker and rather than back off overtook on the right whilst i indicated.

So, there may be a reason for a cyclist to be in the middle of the road, perhaps the left side is strewn with debris or potholes, maybe they want to go right, might be that they are passing parked cars and need to leave three or four feet to account for a door getting flung open ?

If they are riding two abreast or more in traffic or "taking primary" because they have read it on a cycle forum then they are probably tts,

[Earthdweller]

yellowjack 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...

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,,,

Potty !

That’s the pot calling the kettle

246 cyclists killed or seriously injured in the last two years in a rural county

Population : 604 thousand

The KSI figures for London show 61 for the same period

Population : 8.8 million

And they are looking at restricting cyclists from rural roads not just the A63 and A19!

That is a massive number and proves there is a serious problem that needs to be addressed

Personally for me I’ll be very very glad if the the air ambulance never flies over my house again to go and collect someone on two wheels be it powered by an engine or legs

[yellowjack]

Dabooka said:

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.

I don't know about the A19. It's a long time since I lived in Yorkshire, and then it was only for a couple of years. My cycling was mostly restricted to the area 'over the tops' north of Ripon, where you could pretty much ride all day and see no more than a handful of cars.

There are two sections of "A" road I know of where cycling is banned. One is the Hindhead Tunnel on the A3, and the other is the A120 in Essex. The A120, though, was a new road, and the old, single carriageway two-lane A120 was reclassified as a "B" road, The A120 is a motorway in all but name, and banning cycling (and pedestrians, horse drawn vehicles, mopeds, etc) took away no-one's right to get anywhere, as it didn't exist in any form previously, being an entirely new road constructed north of the previous one.

The ban in the Hindhead Tunnel is similarly sensible. Cyclists (and those other groups banned from it) are directed off the A3 prior to the tunnel, and through the town it now by-passes. Access to destinations and adjoining properties is not affected. But the thing about "scenic routes" in Yorkshire is that normal folk, going about their normal, entirely legal daily business, would be detrimentally affected by banning cyclists from rural routes with farms, houses, businesses and tourist sites along them. The answer, in the case of such routes, is not to ban cyclists, but to take steps to improve the knowledge and skills of ALL road users (including the cyclists) on such routes to reduce the risk to an acceptable level.

I read in one of the articles about the proposed ban on cyclists in N. Yorks. that there had been as many as seven crashes involving cyclists. Seven! One had been the rider's own fault because he crashed into a stationary caravan. I'd love to know what the figures were for crashes NOT involving cyclists on that same stretch of busy "A" road. Because if it were ≥7 then perhaps that, too, represents an unacceptable level of risk, and cars, vans, lorries, etc ought to also be banned from that same stretch of road?

[justleanitupabit]

BobSaunders said:

Welcome to come and borrow my bicycle and see how bad said cycle lanes are from a cyclist perspective, and then realise why the road is used. Usually street cleaning pushes glass, debris etc. onto the cycle path which in turn is never cleaned.

The road is additionally free for all to use. Cycle lanes are optional. Until that changes, legally, then there is no discussion or argument.

I've seen better care given to a pigeon in the road than a cyclist on a bike.

....aaannnddd there it is.

Cheers mate.

[Stridey]

Could wide cars be part of the problem?

My dad on the Watford by-pass late 50s. Plus ça change....

[funkyrobot]

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 .

One of the complaints in that nonsense article was cyclists who apparently speed.

Do you feel the same about speding drivers? Should we ban all drivers because a lot of them speed and there are a lot of idiots behind the wheel?

[bimmerdaddy]

rxe said:

Problem is that cyclists are not a homogeneous group.

The people campaigning for cycle lanes largely represent the interests of people toddling around on bikes, generally very slow, short journeys. Most of the people you see riding fast on roads don't fit that stereotype. I commuted 300 miles a week by bike a few years ago - up the A4 into London, and I'd beat a car on that journey by about 45 minutes. On the flat, a steady cruise was about 28 mph, max (without drafting a lorry) was about 35 mph. For a good chunk of the journey, there was a cycle lane - loads of glass (unswept), parked cars on it, give way to every side road, people pulling out of driveways, not expecting someone to be doing 30 mph.... I'd get occasional verbal from some prong in a car - but in all cases the appropriate response was to vanish in the distance as they sat in traffic.

So I hate bloody cycle lanes, they're awful things, and I wish they didn't exist. But I'm out of step with the goons that do planning these days.

This ^^^

Anyone insisting on forcing all cyclists to "always use cycle lanes" has never ridden a bike to any decent standard and used it as a serious means of transport as opposed to just pottering about like Miss Marple.

[tannhauser]

greenarrow said:

I have huge sympathy for cyclists. For the first 10 years of my life I cycled to work and lost count of the number of times I was nearly wiped out by idiotic driving.

Really?!

[anonymous-user]

The A19 has a stretch for a couple of miles through Teesside that cyclists are prohibited from using. Why any cyclist would want to use this section of road is beyond me though. Its up to 4 lanes wide in parts and includes the Tees Flyover which apparently has 50% more traffic than the Forth Road Bridge.

Regarding cycle lanes. I use them where possible, i've been knocked off by a car and it wasnt much fun. There are a lot of issues with cycle lanes and paths though. The lanes tend to be a white line painted in the gutter, so full of drain covers and rubbish from the road. The paths can be better but are often twinned with a footpath. These tend to be a bit of a free for all between, pedestrians, dog walkers, runners and cyclist. Look next time at how many people walk on the red path.

[DonkeyApple]

captain_cynic said:

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.

You can’t really create black market petrol in viable amounts. It’s why it can be taxed so heavily. Increasing costs does affect the number of journeys as seen during the oil price spike a few years back. And very many journeys are non essential. Add to that that we humans adapt very easily and rapidly to cost changes, long term hiking of costs would see a total structural change.

The uncomfortable reality is that we are all making lots of journeys that we have no real need to make with cars because it is so phenomenally cheap and easy to do so. We are also commuting more and further by car because employers don’t have to consider their talent pool due to the employee taking on the responsibility to travel. Again, that is a relatively modern phenomenon as is building shops where no one lives and everyone driving miles to them etc.

Our society has evolved incredibly rapidly to take commercial advantage of how cheap motoring is. It would adapt equally rapidly if motoring were to become very expensive.

Maybe, just as home ownership may transpire to have been a short term blip in the history books for the non affluent so will private car ownership. Afterall, for many they only have access to a car because finance has broken the cost down to monthly payments and as it doesn’t take much of a rise in the cost of petrol to create fewer car journeys maybe we are already at a point where car ownership will decline not just through social changes but economic?

[yellowjack]

funkyrobot said:

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 .

One of the complaints in that nonsense article was cyclists who apparently speed.

Do you feel the same about speeding drivers? Should we ban all drivers because a lot of them speed and there are a lot of idiots behind the wheel?

That's kind of the problem with articles (and Councillors) like that. They fail to do any homework on the subject before shooting off at the mouth. The offence of "riding at excessive speed" (or similar) does not exist for a bicycle rider, because bicycles are not subject to speed limits on public roads within the UK (aside from one or two Royal Parks and similar, where bye-laws include cyclists in speed limits). You'd think that on a forum where speed used to matter, more people would be falling over themselves to get onto a form of transport which had no speed limit...

[Antony Moxey]

J4CKO said:

Antony Moxey said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

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

How often do you see a cyclist in the middle of the road ?

It just isnt practical to sit in the middle of a lane, who wants a load of angry car drivers behind ?

Hardly ever and don't disagree, however I was replying to a post that suggested cyclists think they have a right to act in such a manner and that I do think they have such a right. I wasn't commenting on the practicality of such an activity.

[anonymous-user]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

You ought to be more careful what you eat.

[J4CKO]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Cyclists are individual humans, not a collective consciousness or single entity, so only that specific cyclist can explain his or her positioning relative to your obstructed passage, that is quite a narrow road, I would pull over and let you pass as I dont want drivers getting irate behind me.

I can only answer for myself, based on the facts as I see them and I would ensure if I was in that situation I would keep left and not impede you passing, I have a small bar mounted rear view mirror to help with monitoring behind me, I dont like being held up for no reason so I endeavour not to hold anyone else up, unless I need to turn or for a safety related reason (Doors mainly).

A lot of people arent aware, coming home on the bypass, cars in the outside lane doing fifty with nothing on the inside, put them on a bike they will be the same, put them in a supermarket where they put their trolley in the middle of the aisle and you have to say excuse me, they usually mutter an apology and move it but in a car you lose that communication and people tend to be more aggressive/impatient, some people just arent aware of anyone else but themself.

[Coolbanana]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Providing a cyclist, horse-rider etc is going about their business in accordance with the rules of the road, they absolutely do not have to give way to you simply because you are able to travel faster. The Police have tried to educate people for a long time as to how to safely overtake - if waiting for a safe overtake is too much trouble for some motorists, they should be banned from driving.

That said, if a cyclist can make way without inconveniencing themselves then they can do so as a courtesy to fellow road users - just as horse riders and drivers of slow vehicles like tractors may do. It isn't, however, a requirement and in the case of a cyclist training for race events, he / she may be focussing upon their ride and time - as is their right - and be unable to accommodate the courtesy without inconvenience. This applies to them not using cycle lanes too. I do think cycle lanes should be compulsory in cities where training for racing can be dangerous, but in suburbia and the countryside, absolutely not.

The standard of education among the British Public in general is decades behind that of other, more progressive European countries where cycling is seen as very much equal to that of motoring. A friend of mine is a Cycling Instructor and Coach and has recently accepted a post in the UK whereby his role is to promote cycling over motoring for shorter commutes - a move to try and drag the UK Public forwards.

[Antony Moxey]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Probably the same one you’d give if a car came up behind you. Do you move out the way to allow quicker road users unhindered passage?

[foxbody-87]

greenarrow said:

I have huge sympathy for cyclists. For the first 10 years of my life I cycled to work

Jeez, they got you working early. I hope you had stabilisers!