Is this the unraveling of CyclingMikey?
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Not a lot to say, but (sadly) I'll have to agree with Ashley Neil.. I don't mind the intent of CM to video and pass those on to the Police of people doing something silly, but literally not just policing it, but forcing dangerous situations is ridiculous and needs to stop before he hurts himself or others..
Oddly, when commuting thousands of miles through Cheltenham (15-20 miles a day) on a bike, whilst I had 4 'incidents' in 5 years of heavy commuting, I seemed to manage fairly well with the traffic and never felt endangered by 'close passers' I always had enough room (even if not ideal) and just worked with the traffic.. I think these days people are so hung up on close passers and other 'minor' stuff that whilst maybe there is a case statistically to do this, the real dangers are seemingly just ignored and glossed over and I wish more effort was put in to that..
Oddly, when commuting thousands of miles through Cheltenham (15-20 miles a day) on a bike, whilst I had 4 'incidents' in 5 years of heavy commuting, I seemed to manage fairly well with the traffic and never felt endangered by 'close passers' I always had enough room (even if not ideal) and just worked with the traffic.. I think these days people are so hung up on close passers and other 'minor' stuff that whilst maybe there is a case statistically to do this, the real dangers are seemingly just ignored and glossed over and I wish more effort was put in to that..
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People are hung up on it for good reason.
- Our roads are getting ******* by the day so the chance of you needing to take evasive action on your bike is constantly increasing. You cannot do that if cars are passing too closely.
- Someone passing too closely at 60mph is very different to someone doing it at 20mph.
- A massive barrier to people getting on their bikes more is the **** behaviour of drivers around cyclists. We are an overweight population and we are trying to reduce our carbon input into the environment so putting of a large chunk of people isn't a good thing. My partner won't cycle anywhere near roads. 95% of that is because of **** drivers scaring the crap out of her.
Finally, we aren't going to change infrastructure over the god knows how many miles of road we have in this country any time soon. The biggest danger on our roads is drivers. Making drivers behaviour better is the fastest way to improve road safety.
To be clear, I've worked in London for my entire residence in the UK, and only moved out of London a couple of years ago, so my opinion's very much weighted towards London living and yes, I see billions of commuters in full-kit-****** every single day.
I worked with a few over the years and the one thing they all have in common is that they all stink something spectacular when they get to the office.
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Man of Honour
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My Son in Law works for a trucking company and every two years they have to complete a cycling course.
Every time he does it he can't believe why I put myself in so much danger willingly.
he can't believe the abuse he gets while he's on the course and says all of them are cycling within the law.
"It's because you don't pay Road Tax dude".
Oh they should 100% make drivers take a cycling part of the test. They should make drivers cycle on our roads and if they are incapable then they should be put through what they do for some lorry drivers in other countries and make them sit on a static bike as cars/lorries fly past them at speed a few feet from them.
To boot, they should make every driver take a yearly test online that brings them up to date with changes to the highway code so they have no excuse for not adhering to it or knowing about changes because as far as I can tell, very few drivers keep up with it. Somewhat understandably honestly.
Finally the last statement on the test would be "No, you don't pay road tax, you pay VED based on how polluting your oversized car is".
Then again, perhaps those people who scream road tax would like to play a game of who paid the most tax in the last 10 years to decide who is allowed on the roads and who isn't as they clearly think its all about "paying for it".
Soldato
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I've had a couple of witty exchanges with 'smart ass' drivers moaning at me for being on the road and not paying 'road tax'.
I say I do pay (for my car), and ask them how much they pay? Each time they've been in a crummy hatchback, paying £100 odd or so. At the time, I was paying over £500......and I said on that basis I have more right to be on the road than you! Funnily enough they didn't have much a response.
I'll defend HGV drivers, they are generally really polite and patient. Have a few close calls where they pull in too soon, and you almost get taken out by the back of the trailer.
The state of the roads is a fair point too. They are appalling in cars, with suspension and fat squidgy tyres. Imagine no suspension, rock hard tyres, and minimal padding under your ass......doesn't take you long to wonder what your taxes are paying for, and how this countries' roads are worse than developing countries in places!
I say I do pay (for my car), and ask them how much they pay? Each time they've been in a crummy hatchback, paying £100 odd or so. At the time, I was paying over £500......and I said on that basis I have more right to be on the road than you! Funnily enough they didn't have much a response.
I'll defend HGV drivers, they are generally really polite and patient. Have a few close calls where they pull in too soon, and you almost get taken out by the back of the trailer.
The state of the roads is a fair point too. They are appalling in cars, with suspension and fat squidgy tyres. Imagine no suspension, rock hard tyres, and minimal padding under your ass......doesn't take you long to wonder what your taxes are paying for, and how this countries' roads are worse than developing countries in places!
My point is that hyper focussing on only one of the reasons is (IMO) detracting from more widespread awareness of all the other (and more likely in some cases) causes for serious injury/death on a cycle..
Your response seems to list all very minor 'comfort' reasons (that I don't disagree with!) then conflate it all at the end under improving road safety.. I don't share the opinion nor can find the evidence that close passers are also more likely to be the ones that fail to see you (the #1 reason for serious harm to cyclists)..
I'm not for one second admonishing close passers or even suggesting we shouldnt' care, I just think we should spend equal time on educating drivers (and cyclists!) on all the other dangers which seem to be over shadowed.
It's because people aren;t used to them, they panic and try to put their foot down it's the natural instinct.
they should go to a grass field and practice falling off, you have to realise when your about to fall and can't save it or the best thing is "oh im falling, I will control how I fall off, not wait for it to happen"
A couple of days ago I had something similar happen… except my bike didn’t completely fall apart and I wear normal trainers
I was approaching this spot where I needed to turn left and head down a really steep hill. The problem was, two cars were parked almost parallel to the road, basically blocking the corner on the left side.
I slowed down to about8-12mph and raised my left hand to indicate I was turning. My right hand was on the grip, with two fingers resting on the brake lever—pretty standard MTB practice with big disc rotors.
As soon as I signalled, my dropper post suddenly dropped 3–4 inches for no reason (it’s one of those air cartridge ones, like in an office chair, controlled from the bars). That shift in height completely threw off my balance whilst I have only one hand on the bar..
I jerked the bars to the right with my one hand trying to stay upright, which made me accidentally tug the brake for a split second sending me tumbling forward as the suspension dips violently.. At that point I realized I’d pulled the bars so hard that the only way to save it would’ve been swerving into the oncoming lane—which I wasn’t about to do with 2 oncoming cars So I just let go and fell forwars between the seat and the bars on the left side with my bike basically falling underneath me as I fell
I somehow walked away with just two cuts on the back of my hand, bruises on my knee, elbow, and hip, plus this weird orange-striped bruise on my thigh. (slow speed sure but my seat is like 4ft in the air it's pretty big drop still)
People need to learn how to fall and when to purposely crash off the bike, they shouldn't be scared of falling, it's when you don't control it and act as a passenger that you should worry
Oh, and I was carrying £2k worth of camera gear in my backpack—thankfully I managed to avoid falling backwards onto it.
Safe to say: I’m never signalling for a corner again, actually might look if theres some indicators that exist you control from the handle bars, since my bikes a bit of a tractor on the roads
Neither of the oncoming cars stopped when I fell btw, even though they clearly witnessed it happen, they just drove straight past :/
I got up straight away and was fine... but still... they didn't even slow down and check in their rear view.
if I see a car crash I'll be sure to do the same.
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Its all part of it I agree but imagine how much change and how much will for change there would be if a large part of the population cycled on our roads and demanded better infrastructure and safer infrastructure rather than getting their knickers in a twist when someone suggests spending any money on active infra.
Man of Honour
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I've always said this about me and everybody taking written online tests.
My wife no matter how many times I've told her still won't give priority to pedestrians except when they are by a zebra crossing.
Touch wood never had problems with professional drivers in 15 years, even white vans except for a SKY 'Engineer' who knocked me to the side and the car behind me was an unmarked Police Car who chased after him
Another white van pulled out, I emergency braked and he wound his window down and couldn't apologise enough.
Car drivers just abuse you even though it's their fault.
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As someone that has worked in London for the past decade and regularly walk inside the square mile, I can honestly say I see the vast majority of cyclists jump red lights. It is at the point where you cannot confidently step into the road even when the pedestrian lights have been on for seconds, as some **** will potentially mow you down. I've seen people hit numerous times outside Bank and Liverpool street area. The injuries sustained by the illegal 30mph e-bikes in particular can be life changing.
Just saying. I can understand the anger directed towards cyclists in the city.
Just saying. I can understand the anger directed towards cyclists in the city.
Man of Honour
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I've always said that London is probably a different animal and I have seen it myself.
Here in Stoke cyclists are rare but I'll see dozens of cars going through red lights.
Today I was at a red light here and the car behind was blasting his horn for me to go through.
To be honest 99/100 it's not going to hurt anybody but I don't want anger aimed at me saying "Look another **** going through on red".
You can probably get the data from the Police. In some counties the police ran close pass operations where they had a cop riding a bike and when they got close passed, they radioed ahead and pulled them over. If it was a dangerous pass they would get a ticket, otherwise they would be spoken to. In the vast majority of cases, when asked why they did the close pass most said they didn’t even recall passing a cyclist
Unregulated e-bikes are a menace, and police should be cracking down on them.
Is his actually a thing? I love this idea. Do they have vids?
let’s open up a can of worms.
The road tax/VED thing.
Considering cars are not permitted on public roads if they don’t pay your VED and the definition of a tax (paraphrasing) is a mandatory financial levy imposed by the government.
While it is technically not the actual name, it isn’t that wrong to call it a road tax.
Side note: Also people always feel entitled when they pay for stuff. The first example that comes to are police officers who get told that there wages are paid with that persons tax contribution.
Man of Honour
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It's part of the training my Son in Law does I mentioned above.
They do theory, sit on a static bike, ride around the premises then go on the road.
Turning the handle on the can opener.
1. 'Road Tax' is an accepted colloquial term for Vehicle Excise Duty (VED), previously known as Road Fund Licence (RFL). If you search for either of the 3 times you'll land in the same place. It's only pedants with no real point that argue "no such thing as road tax".
2. Those that oppose introducing VED to cyclists will turn blue telling you that VED is based on vehicular emissions however VED is now being applied to EVs, which have no emissions so there's now precedent to add other zero emission road vehicles, such as cycles to the VED system.
The “no such thing as road tax” argument is usually used as a foil to the “you don’t pay road tax” argument that gets directed at cyclists. The point then being that no one pays road tax. And even if people do pay road tax, chances are that the cyclists pay road tax in respect of the cars that they likely also own… In any case, the alleged road tax is not ring fenced for road maintenance so it is just tax and just goes into the general pot.
As regards whether it’s based on emissions or what, the issue is the amount of wear that cars cause to the roads. If the road tax is in some way hypothetically intended for the upkeep of roads, then it’s only right that it should now apply to electric vehicles, particularly as they’re heavier and thus cause more wear than ICE cars. As for bikes… they do next to no damage to the roads, so there’s very little case there for cyclists to pay VED.
Additionally, the only roads that are maintained directly out of central government funding are motorways, which cyclists can’t use anyway. Surface roads are maintained by councils out of council tax and out of their allocations from the central government. Given that cyclists pay council tax, they are paying for the upkeep of the roads that they can use in any case.
How frightfully boring all this is, I’m sure.