Traffic wardens on bikes!

salsajake
salsajake Posts: 702
edited July 2009 in Commuting chat
A frightening development I have noticed this week in Brum. These guys are awful riders, wobbling around all over the place. I can see the advantage for them in covering a bigger patch, BUT they are riding along whilst looking at the tickets, not the road, they are riding along the pavement, they are riding the wrong way down a one way street and I have just seen one of them checking his mobile phone and (how ironic!) riding straight into the parking ticket machine, swerving and narrowly missing the cars and pedestrians. These guys are just worsening the cause of cyclists and surely it is unacceptable for an employer to just send people out on bikes without proper training or at least instructions not to ride on the pavement/wrong way down one way st etc?

Comments

  • roger_merriman
    roger_merriman Posts: 6,165
    ooh not good, down here they use mopeds/smart cars etc.

    but lot of firms bikes can be badly ridden i see posties going the wrong way down the road on the cycle lane etc.
  • bomberesque
    bomberesque Posts: 1,701
    make a complaint to the cops. That's what a car driver would do.
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  • il_principe
    il_principe Posts: 9,155
    Ha ha, RLJ, pavement riding Traffic Wardens. That's plumbing new depths! I bet their bikes are a piles of junk as well.
  • salsajake
    salsajake Posts: 702
    bomberesque wrote:
    make a complaint to the cops. That's what a car driver would do.

    Funnily enough I just saw one of their foot-mounted colleagues so I legged it and spoke to her. It is a trial scheme and 5 or 6 are doing it, they all had to take cycle proficiency tests before doing it. I mentioned what I had seen and was thanked for informing them, with an agreement that it was not acceptable and that they would only need someone from the council to see it and the scheme would be scrapped. I said I had no problem with the principle, but the fact was cyclists got enough bad press and it was not good for local authority employees in a position of authority to be riding so badly as part of their employment. She said she would refer my comments to her employees.
  • salsajake
    salsajake Posts: 702
    Il Principe wrote:
    Ha ha, RLJ, pavement riding Traffic Wardens. That's plumbing new depths! I bet their bikes are a piles of junk as well.

    Absolute piles of crap. Not seen an RLJ, but bearing in mind they are coming into the one way street the wrong way, they won't even be able to see what colour the lights are!
  • blu3cat
    blu3cat Posts: 1,016
    Saw a couple in Richmond area the other day on a very low end Trek hybrid (we're talking apollo BSO low end).

    Made me chuckle.
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  • salsajake
    salsajake Posts: 702
    Saw them again today - on foot! They must have been told off and had their bikes confiscated!

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