This always descends into an “us v them” arguement - always.
As a cyclist I will not be riding in the middle of the road so traffic on both sides of the road can now attempt to kill me or head around a roundabout unsafely with one hand waving hoping on the off chance someone doesn’t flatten me. No thanks.
I’ll stick to what I’m doing at the moment - use lights (even in daylight), wear a helmet and abide by the rules as safely as I can which has just about kept me alive so far.
I presume most of you that hate cyclists have a valid reason other than:
You don’t pay road tax and shouldn’t be on the road and caused me to slow down for a nanosecond so Tarquin was late for his ballet practice and I had to park my car on the pavement like a cunt and had the temerity to beat me from a standing start at a red light and it’s also your fault I didn’t see you when I nearly killed you by pulling out / into a junction and you’re a cunt cause you wear comfortable cycling appropriate clothing and I’m a fat lazy bastard
Looking at that picture, if the distances in pic 3 are accurate, then the red car in pic 2 is not allowed to overtake the bicycles riding two abreast in the adjacent lane as he wil be too close. What a load of fucking cock.
Looking again I think you’re right. It probably is a two lane road. I thought it was two lanes of a four lane road. However my point is still good. There’s not enough room to overtake the two bikes riding abreast if you’re going to leave 5 ft of space.
Paul’s main point does still stand though. If the HC is now saying that closer than 5ft is too close then it shouldn’t much matter which direction the vehicle’s heading. I fear it hurts even more if you’re knocked off by a car going the opposite way to you than if it’s going the same way. I’ve got personal experience of being ‘nudged’ into the verge by a passing bus who’d got himself into a position where his only alternative would have been a head-on with a fast-moving skip truck. I swore a fair bit, but as our relative speed was probably less than 10mph no real harm was done.
4 is a guaranteed way to piss people off unnecessarily. We have a dual carriageway near us with a decent, wide, clear cycle lane the entire length (5 miles). Yes it involves crossing some adjoining roads at junctions and roundabouts but its a safe route. Of course, many don’t use it and cause a hazard travelling at around 50mph less than the prevailing traffic, often with poor lights, no reflective clothing even in bad weather. And then you get the time-trial brigade who seem to think it’s an appropriate place to ride oblivious to the traffic to get their best time.
What you’ve shown is a cycle path, not a cycle lane. All other things being equal, cycle paths are safer than cycle lanes (but you try rejoining heavy fast traffic when a cycle path comes abruptly to an end, or finding ‘your’ cycle path has bunches of gobby schoolkids and doddery pensioners walking along it).
What 4 does is to give cyclists the option of using the lane if they want to. If it’s been well-designed then the sensible ones will want to. If it’s a badly thought out, poorly maintained piece of wretched tokenism then they won’t.
Selfish stupid cyclists will be selfish and stupid whatever we do (true of drivers as well, of course). Some of the two-wheeled ones will also become suddenly crippled or dead.
I don’t understand the antipathy towards cyclists. We have loads using the roads around here. Some are sensible, some not. However, there are far fewer of them than cars, and the consequences vastly different.
If they are riding too slow for you, then you either haven’t left enough time to get where you want to be (poor planning), or you’re too impatient (being a potential danger to yourself and others). You really shouldn’t be driving in that case.
In general I agree, although there are some cyclists around here who seem so determined to have the moral high ground that they want to have a fairly high speed crash with a car to show how dangerous cars are. They are a fairly small minority, but they scare me silly!
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