Feeling intellectually superior.....

Eat My Dust

....to the halfwits in their cars. Is this wrong? I just can't help it. The level of driving and road awareness I'm witnessing at the moment from drivers is close to none existent. I even saw a car the other night accelerate through a light that was just changing to red, skid and smash into a row of bollards, the impact lifted the rear of the car off of the road. The driver then reversed and drove off, even though the front axel looked like it had broken and both wheels were wobbling in different directions!!

p.s. Hi to everybody, I've not been on here for a while, I've been busy working!

fonty1978

I can relate to that after having made the switch from 4 wheels to 2 and have never felt better. Also i think regularly cycling improves your road sense, so people who mainly cycle and occasioanlly drive do so with a bit more consideration. [IMHO anyway!!]

Clever Pun

fonty1978 wrote:

I can relate to that after having made the switch from 4 wheels to 2 and have never felt better. Also i think regularly cycling improves your road sense, so people who mainly cycle and occasioanlly drive do so with a bit more consideration. [IMHO anyway!!]

I'd go with that, whenever the missus drives I'm always telling her to give more room to more vunerable road users and she's already pretty good at playing nice

SmellTheGlove

Not really wrong - at least I'm feeling this way this week when a major road is closed for water main repairs and forcing all the traffic to gridlock the side streets. Secondary benefit, I can ride over the repair site - always good to get some more gravel under the wheels even if it's only 50m. And this morning I had to suppress an urgent need to ride up the ramp of the low-loader on the site that had just unloaded an excavator.

I know, I know - I should have given in and just done it

Bassjunkieuk

fonty1978 wrote:

I can relate to that after having made the switch from 4 wheels to 2 and have never felt better. Also i think regularly cycling improves your road sense, so people who mainly cycle and occasioanlly drive do so with a bit more consideration. [IMHO anyway!!]

Agree with that too, I think my driving has really improved now I do it a lot less (drive that is, stop sniggering!) There are some drivers out there that I often wonder how on earth they are allowed out of the house by themselves, let alone drive around in couple of tons of metal.

The only saving grace is that as I usually commute in area's with heavy traffic I rarely have the chance to share the same bit of road with an idiot driver as I'm normally long gone!

walkernomore

Sorry to have to disagree, at least as far as central London is concerned. But for nearly a year now I have commuted most days from Battersea to Croydon - 8 miles or so each way along mainly very quiet residential roads. With only a few exceptions I find the car drivers I come across to be considerate and courteous. Some are a bit daft, but never apparently malicious.

But I had on Monday to cycle into and out of central London during rush hour for the first time in several years. It was horrible - not because of the cars etc. but because of fellow cyclists. Not just one or two but seemingly dozens of complete tossers, riding on pavements, RLJing (including shouting at pedestrians who were crossing on the green man), undertaking, including once when I was approaching a left turn signalling very clearly what my intention was, giving no indication as to their intentions, shouting at car drivers when they, the cyclists, had clearly cut the car up weaving in and out of traffic. And more.

I commuted into central London virtually every day throughout the nineties and don't remember anything like this. If anything the motorised traffic was less considerate and could be more aggressive then, but that was OK - so long as you worked on the assumption that every b%£$^%d was out to kill you, you controlled situations. I supose there were still idiots on bikes then but far fewer, and perhaps generally the keener types.

After my experience on Monday I certainly won't be claiming any moral (or intellectual) high ground on the basis of cyclist behaviour compared to that of motorists.

Mark

biondino

I'd agree that a higher proportion of cyclists ride dangerously or illegally than car drivers, definitely (NB I am discounting speeding - the kind we all do - from illegality, for a more pragmatic approach).

Bikerbaboon

biondino wrote:

I'd agree that a higher proportion of cyclists ride dangerously or illegally than car drivers, definitely (NB I am discounting speeding - the kind we all do - from illegality, for a more pragmatic approach).

sooooo all divers speed and speeding is ok ?

biondino

No, speeding's not okay, but pretty much all of us, when we drive, exceed the speed limit and don't feel we're being remotely dangerous when we do so (if it's dangerous to speed, we don't speed). Right? I have a feeling I'm on a hiding to nothing here...

Coriander

You are.

If it's dangerous to jump red lights we don't jump red lights, right?

Kieran_Burns

Oddly since cycling to / from work I've found my speed in the car has reduced (as well as increasing my awareness).

Previously i would consciously lower my speed to the indicated maximum, now I find I have to concentrate to bring my speed UP to the posted limit.

Bassjunkieuk

biondino wrote:

No, speeding's not okay, but pretty much all of us, when we drive, exceed the speed limit and don't feel we're being remotely dangerous when we do so (if it's dangerous to speed, we don't speed). Right? I have a feeling I'm on a hiding to nothing here...

I've slowed down with my driving a lot since I started cycling. I think most of it is to do with the fact that I feel a lot calmer in my car now, as racing around only wastes petrol (especially visible as my Prius has an economy graph feature which shows my average fuel economy in 5 minute chunks over the previous half hour) and doesn't really get me to my destination that much faster! After all you can only goes as fast as the car directly in front of you which is normally stopped in London!

If I want an adrenaline fix now I'd much rather turn to my bike then to go flying around in my car, I can get the same feeling from going a lot slower (in real world terms) and get a work out at the same time all for free!

Yes there are idiot cyclists who disregard the law, but on the flip side there are also some excellent drivers who never or rarely exceed the limit and drive like saint's. As with RLJ cyclist's giving us (cyclists) a bad name, drivers who speed/talk on their phones/cut in to close end up giving off the same poor impression of other car drivers.

In an ideal world everyone on the roads would obey the laws, unfortunately that is very unlikely to ever become a reality.

chuckcork

Bassjunkieuk wrote:

After all you can only goes as fast as the car directly in front of you which is normally stopped in London!

In Ireland its a tractor.

Occasionally one will pass me going just slow enough, around 25mph, that I can jump onto the back of it and get a nice tow to work!

Mike Healey

Before I retired, I must have lived in an alternate universe, since I rarely had really scary moments - about 8-10 in 23 years. I found the vast majority (99%+) of drivers ok. This may have been caused by my own cycling to some extent, since I did my best to position myself in the best place on the road. I also never RLJ'd and never found it necessary for my own safety.

From time to time I had minor left hook experiences, but always spotted it in time to avoid real danger, so I've never found the pro-RLJ arguments convincing in the least.

I also find it strange that so many helmet cam riders have so many unpleasant experiences.

In reality, most drivers co-operate with each other, since not doing so would render moving in traffic next to impossible.

Of course, it might be different somewhere like London, but, on the whole, I found commuting between Bradford, Leeds, Halifax and Kirklees fine, apart from the odd numpty