RED lights read this....

[adrian]

[quote]An interesting thread, particularly for city cyclists - for me, almost never cross the red light, although there are times when it is safer to do so than not, never position yourself on the inside of high sided vehicles or buses at TL and for all others, if you have to be on the inside eyeball the driver and smile, works wonders, and, if possible always get to the front before the green and dominate the front of the queue but watch out for the change in lights, and if on the inside be prepared to slow down to the the speed of the car on your right that has noticed you, and even dive for the pavement if you begin to fear being cut up.

[Mike I]

I'd like to say that Ms Bryson's article is the biggest pile of tosh I have read in a long time, but I get to read some pretty offensive stuff at work from time to time. It's not far off though. She seems determined to concede the moral high ground to the motorist; unfortunately, in doing so, she concedes it for all of us.

Maybe we should invite her out on the CR so she can find out how to deal with other road users safely, confidently and legally. At the moment I suspect that her riding fits none of these descriptions.

Outraged of Tooting

[Nick]

I have forwarded a reply after reading some of your comments.

Will post her reply if I get one.

Nick

[Sylv]

A bit more sense seen in the Guardian ...


[quote]Sure, there is a thing called the Highway Code, and you can find books about it in libraries, and many of them are now handily arranged as multiple-choice questions, so you can be informed and have some fun. But a lot of the stuff is just plain unrealistic, and if you follow it, you will be laughed at by other cyclists, or maybe killed. These rules are better. If you are a pedestrian, and you object to bits and pieces, let me tell you a story about my mother: she is always complaining about cyclists on pavements, and I really think she over-eggs the pudding, so I bet her she couldn't take a phone-photo of 10 errant cyclists in the space of a week. After some phone trials, during which she took pictures of her knee, she did, I have to admit, track down 10 pavement infractions and get pictures of them all. She even had one very dramatic picture of her friend Christine shouting at the cyclist. But in the face of all evidence, most of it from my own flesh and blood, I still maintain that it is sometimes safer and - crucially - more just for a cyclist to go on the pavement. So there's no point writing me a letter of complaint. I will pay it no heed.


Roundabouts
Among motorists, I have heard it maintained that cyclists shouldn't get in the way of the traffic at a roundabout, whichever way they intend to turn. This is even in the Highway Code - you must be in the left-hand lane, as a bike, regardless of your end destination. The point, I believe, is that you will slow down the traffic in any other lane.

Needless to say, I have some objections to this injunction, most of which are London-specific. First, if you start at the far left, you will often find yourself having to turn left simply because cars and motorbikes have no courtesy. This is very annoying if you weren't intending to turn left.

Second, who cares if you slow down cars on a roundabout? They slow you down all the time. They shouldn't be going that fast anyway, since they will be moving off in first gear or, at the very most, in second.

Many cyclists still do not like roundabouts, because they are hairy, and that's fine. I wouldn't sit in the middle of the middle lane of a roundabout just for fun, or just to make a point, or just to improve life for cyclists of the future. But you have rights! You have a right to travel in the direction that you want to end up, and you have a right to prosecute a course that will allow you to do so.

Red lights

We're on pavement-cycling territory here, but if you are at a straightforward red light - no intersection, just there for pedestrians - and there are pedestrians waiting to cross, then you should stop, not least because they get incredibly cross and some of them are quite fast. I want to take a moment here to explain the concept of the toucan crossing, since many people who took their driving test before 2000 don't understand it, and pedestrians, lamentably, rarely understand any rules at all. It is a cross between a pelican and a regular crossing, which is why it's called a toucan. When it's red, stop; when it's green, go; but when it's flashing, think pelican - if there's no one there, you can go; if there is someone crossing, you have to wait. It is their right of way. You can't huff at them or shout or in any other way give them to understand that they should hurry up, because they shouldn't. The red period has been deliberately shortened to allow for this flashing period.

Phew. I'm already quite cross, and we haven't even turned right yet. Now imagine that you're at a red light at an intersection. There is a wide green band painted on the road to indicate cyclist space, but motorists, of course, are ignoring it. The guy in the car next to you intends to turn left and you don't want to. He has given no indication of having seen you or caring for your safety in any way. In the split- second between the cross light going red and yours going green, when all pedestrians have cleared the area anyway because their light ended ages ago, you have my blessing to jump this light.

Amber lights

Speed up at amber. Be an amber-gambler! That's what Boris Johnson does: he has written that and I have actually seen him, and he has civic duty coming out of his posh ears.

Turning right

I find that the less familiar a driver is with the Highway Code, the more likely he or she is to make this rudimentary error. Picture the scene: you are proceeding down a major road, and you want to turn right. You indicate to move into the centre of the road, and position yourself, still indicating, in the centre, to wait for a break in the traffic coming from the opposite direction. So far, so totally legal. The uninformed driver, whether inconvenienced by your directional choice or not (and it would be hard for him to be, unless it were a very narrow main road and he was coming the other way, also wanting to turn right), decides to honk or otherwise abuse you. Sometimes this is straightforward swearing and cussing, other times it is dressed up as concern for your safety, as in "get out of the way, you're going to get yourself killed". An anger-management course would probably sort this out for me, but I find this enraging and I am incapable of talking myself down afterwards. You need a coping strategy; shouting back does not help. Long-term, I have devised a scheme whereby any given cyclist can call an 0800 number to complain about a driver, giving details of the incident. When a driver has notched up a certain number of complaints - let's say 1,000, to weed out mischief-making cyclists and drivers who genuinely made a mistake - they get three points on their licence. First, though, I have to become mayor.

Road positioning

You might think, and motorists will also give you to understand, that you should be as far towards the curb as possible. Not so; cars will give you as much room as you've given yourself, so if you're three inches from the kerb, you'll be clipped by a wing mirror before you can say, "Just treat me like a human being, why don't you?"

London Cycling Campaign lessons specify that you should cycle a car door's distance from parked cars or a stride's distance from the pavement, whichever is applicable (in case a walker steps out or a door opens) and this generally puts you in the middle of the road. My first worry was about road-conflict, but it causes much less conflict than someone driving too close to you and having you off your bike, and it doesn't do drivers any harm to have to exercise some patience and wait till they can pass you safely. They don't, after all, do any other exercise.

Cycle lanes

There was a move a year ago to make it obligatory for cyclists to use a cycle lane wherever possible, and this highlighted the background animus we have towards these stupid things. They are often not long enough even for a bike; they stop suddenly, for no apparent reason; they drag you round the most counter-intuitive routes, often putting you in harm's way, lengthening your journey - in one astonishing instance (in Herne Bay, this is, but still) sending you up a hill and then back down again, for no reason bar the fleeting convenience of cars. That's right. You have to use energy from your hamstrings for the momentary benefit of someone who is buying their energy from a pump. In Vauxhall Cross, in south London, it would be quicker to get off your bike and take the train than to take the cycle route. They are often "shared" with bus lanes, which in real terms means getting run over by a bus. They are full of parked cars outside yellow-line hours, which means you can't use them at weekends. They are often full of broken glass, or potholes, or otherwise badly maintained. They are rubbish, in other words. We will use them under sufferance when we see fit, and not otherwise.

Pavement cycling

Almost always don't. If you are coming up behind a bus and it stops, definitely don't try to scooch round it on the pavement, since this is where the people getting off it are going to pop out (that might sound like an obvious point, but it's like running out of petrol on a motorway - you can never be told too many times). If you must, see the toucan rules, ie, absolutely no huffing at pedestrians, and if one does shout at you, take it with grace and don't give them the finger. If you see my mum, don't. If you see her friend Christine, definitely don't.