A Cyclist's Complaint?!

EmBrooke

Hi there,
My name's Emily, I'm a final year Product Design student with the biking bug... I have chosen "Urban Cycling" as the theme for my major project, so will be looking to research, design and produce a biking product.
SO, as a fellow cyclist I need you help to kick things off. What frustrates you on your daily commute? What causes you annoyance/discomfort on your bike? Do you feel safe cycling? How do you cope with the weather?
ANY observations, complaints or comments are welcome!!
Thanks in advance,
Em.

Pross

I get frustrated that I haven't got an invincibility force field cloak like most of the other commuters have (or at least seem to think they have) so if you can design me one of those please in XL size

deptfordmarmoset

Cyclists cope with the weather by grumbling about it like the rest of the world, then they get out on a bike and grin and bear it!

I think that by and large the cyclist is well catered for as regards kit. The next step, long overdue, is the cycling infrastructure - designing bikes back into roads, that sort of thing. And one of the biggest kerfuffles is before you pick up your bike and when you leave it - cyclists spend thousands shaving weight off their bikes but if there's no secure parking facilities, they then spend another hundred pounds carrying heavy-duty locks and chains around with then. So, if the London bike hire scheme can design bike docking points, why can't someone design a similar bike-locking facility, so instead of getting a key to undock a hire bike you get a key to lock up your own? No more locks to carry around, you own personal key for every dock in town and a digital record of when the bike was locked and unlocked. Plus CCTV for the locking points, of course.

EDIT: Eek, I now actually think this is a feasible idea and I just found myself thinking of ways it could be linked into the London cyclehire scheme. Same keys with a nominal charge for use of secure bike cages located by the docking points.

shouldbeinbed

deptfordmarmoset wrote:

Cyclists cope with the weather by grumbling about it like the rest of the world, then they get out on a bike and grin and bear it!

I think that by and large the cyclist is well catered for as regards kit. The next step, long overdue, is the cycling infrastructure - designing bikes back into roads, that sort of thing. And one of the biggest kerfuffles is before you pick up your bike and when you leave it - cyclists spend thousands shaving weight off their bikes but if there's no secure parking facilities, they then spend another hundred pounds carrying heavy-duty locks and chains around with then. So, if the London bike hire scheme can design bike docking points, why can't someone design a similar bike-locking facility, so instead of getting a key to undock a hire bike you get a key to lock up your own? No more locks to carry around, you own personal key for every dock in town and a digital record of when the bike was locked and unlocked. Plus CCTV for the locking points, of course.

bob on particularly designing bikes back into the road infrastructure. civil engineers should be mandated to be on bikes (inc motor if able to ride em) and foot and public transport just as much as in a car and should be designing for genuinely multi modal/user infrastructure, not simply pay lip service to it.

and quid pro quo, the negligent (ninja, no lights, riding like the road is empty) or i'm-on-a-bike-the-law-doesn't-apply-to-me cyclist should be targetted as hard as the speeding or illegally parking motorist.

awallace

poor road surface that i need my mtb for and not a road bike!

Moaner

Hi viz extendable dog leads - 2 benefits in 'shared use' areas:

1. You don't try and ride between dog and owner and snare yourself in the almost-invisible-in-the-dusk lead

2. You can see when the little darlings are on a lead as opposed to being free to attack.


Cycling socks impregnated with something dogs hate the smell of.


Have I got an irrational thing about dogs? No, they keep trying to kill me!

Chrissz

Stupid clothing sizes! I can get an XXL in one make and have it way too small or an XL in another and have it huge :!:

I'd like to see a proper, standardized measurement/scale for cycle cloths. Then I could get on with worrying about the idiot road users, inconsiderate car drivers and other numpties encountered on a day-to-day basis

holmeboy

Lights! -decent lights!
Lost count of the amount of crap/broken lights.
Reasonably priced of course, have expensive broken lights too!

plowmar

As we already have 'Air con' can we have heaters please for these cold mornings - leading to warm afternoons so we do not have to have loads of gear.

Pross

shouldbeinbed wrote:

deptfordmarmoset wrote:

Cyclists cope with the weather by grumbling about it like the rest of the world, then they get out on a bike and grin and bear it!

I think that by and large the cyclist is well catered for as regards kit. The next step, long overdue, is the cycling infrastructure - designing bikes back into roads, that sort of thing. And one of the biggest kerfuffles is before you pick up your bike and when you leave it - cyclists spend thousands shaving weight off their bikes but if there's no secure parking facilities, they then spend another hundred pounds carrying heavy-duty locks and chains around with then. So, if the London bike hire scheme can design bike docking points, why can't someone design a similar bike-locking facility, so instead of getting a key to undock a hire bike you get a key to lock up your own? No more locks to carry around, you own personal key for every dock in town and a digital record of when the bike was locked and unlocked. Plus CCTV for the locking points, of course.

bob on particularly designing bikes back into the road infrastructure. civil engineers should be mandated to be on bikes (inc motor if able to ride em) and foot and public transport just as much as in a car and should be designing for genuinely multi modal/user infrastructure, not simply pay lip service to it.

and quid pro quo, the negligent (ninja, no lights, riding like the road is empty) or i'm-on-a-bike-the-law-doesn't-apply-to-me cyclist should be targetted as hard as the speeding or illegally parking motorist.

I'm a highway engineer, road safety auditor and ride a bike but agree with you. Unfortunately we suffer from lack of funds and lack of road space - given a chance and a time machine I'd go back to the early 80s and build a series of inter-urban surfaced cycle routes on them. Within urban areas is more tricky though.

Berk Bonebonce

Pross wrote:

I'm a highway engineer, road safety auditor and ride a bike .... given a chance and a time machine I'd go back to the early 80s and build a series of inter-urban surfaced cycle routes on them.

"Inter-urban surfaced cycle routes!?" No wonder we are in a mess with people like you.

I want roads that are safe to ride along. I do not want to be 'designed out' of the road network and made to ride along paths.

finchy

Berk Bonebonce wrote:

Pross wrote:

I'm a highway engineer, road safety auditor and ride a bike .... given a chance and a time machine I'd go back to the early 80s and build a series of inter-urban surfaced cycle routes on them.

"Inter-urban surfaced cycle routes!?" No wonder we are in a mess with people like you.

I want roads that are safe to ride along. I do not want to be 'designed out' of the road network and made to ride along paths.

Off the road isn't as bad as you make it sound - reduced pollution, noise and stress - as long as it's designed properly.

Pross

Berk Bonebonce wrote:

Pross wrote:

I'm a highway engineer, road safety auditor and ride a bike .... given a chance and a time machine I'd go back to the early 80s and build a series of inter-urban surfaced cycle routes on them.

"Inter-urban surfaced cycle routes!?" No wonder we are in a mess with people like you.

I want roads that are safe to ride along. I do not want to be 'designed out' of the road network and made to ride along paths.

I agree with you to an extent, certainly for leisure riding I lwould get out on quiet roads and wouldn't want a specific cycle route but I feel it is different for using a bike as a mode of transport. The vast majority of people who would use a bike more to get around would rather a traffic free route and it would also offer the chance to provide delay free routes that would make commuting by bike a quicker and, therefore, more attractive option. If you mix traffic and bikes the truth is you will not get 'safe' routes as there is the inherent danger from a human being in charge of over a ton of metal. It isn't roads that are unsafe, it's the people who use them so how do you feel the holy grail of providing roads that are safe for cycling (and just as important that encourage cycling) can be built into a shared road network?

Cressers

The lack of bike-mounted ordinance available.

inkyfingers

I don't think the UK will ever be a truly bike friendly place as we have never designed it in to our system in the way that they have in Belgian and The Netherlands. We simply don't have the space to add it retrospectively, and in many cases the narrow cycle lanes on already narrow roads make it feel even more dangerous as it somehow makes the cyclist feel like they shouldn't be on the road. Most of the dedicated cycle routes built in recent years are merely glorified footpaths or run side by side to footpaths so are often very hard to ride along at a decent speed due to people walking, dogs, dog poo and broken glass. Good cycle routes would be their own entity, running paralell to major road routes, but this is impossible in most parts of the country so I guess we'll have to make do with what we get.

PhilofCas

drivers who drive past you very close in a silly type of protest of somekind

rick_chasey

More than anything it's the out-of-the-blue abuse.

Fine if I've cut someone up or sworn, then I have it coming to me. But more often than not there is literally no other reason other than the fact I happen to be riding at the side of the road on a bike at the time they pass which seems to warrent abuse, whether it's something being thrown, shouting, swerving towards you as the pass or whatever.

Not that that's much help to your product design....

How about non-nickable lights, especially front ones?

Pross

inkyfingers wrote:

Most of the dedicated cycle routes built in recent years are merely glorified footpaths or run side by side to footpaths so are often very hard to ride along at a decent speed due to people walking, dogs, dog poo and broken glass. Good cycle routes would be their own entity, running paralell to major road routes, but this is impossible in most parts of the country so I guess we'll have to make do with what we get.

Unfortunately that is the case and the reason I never use footway cycleways together with the fact that they are generally token gestures and are cluttered with sign posts / low sign faces and more there so that a highway authority can claim to be encouraging cycling. The other way of catering for cyclists is, of course, to let them share a 3m wide lane with buses and taxis neither of which are ever in a hurry and desperate to pass you in the limited space available. Obviously, the ideal situation (other than for all road users to respect each other regardless of size) would be to have a dedicated cycle lane that is regularly maintained and swept running between the road and footway with dedicated crossing at junctions (particularly roundabouts) where cyclists are at their most vulnerable. However, this would take a huge amount of money and (in those places where it could actually physically work) road space would have to be taken off the motorist which would be hugely unpopular so I can't see any politician ever committing to it.

Anyway, I seem to have taken the thread off topic as none of this will help the OP with her project sorry. :oops: Some sort of metered secure bike parking as suggested earlier would be a good idea though.

deptfordmarmoset

Berk Bonebonce wrote:

Pross wrote:

I'm a highway engineer, road safety auditor and ride a bike .... given a chance and a time machine I'd go back to the early 80s and build a series of inter-urban surfaced cycle routes on them.

"Inter-urban surfaced cycle routes!?" No wonder we are in a mess with people like you.

I want roads that are safe to ride along. I do not want to be 'designed out' of the road network and made to ride along paths.

Hey, BB, I can understand your cynicism but I think you should cut Pross some slack. The bike was almost certainly not deliberately planned out of road infrastructure but back in the 80s the car was the way forward and it kind of followed that bikes got marginalised or left out entirely. This happened a whole professional generation ago so Pross certainly wasn't responsible for that.

I think, on the contrary, we should be grateful for the chance to have a dialogue with a bike-friendly highway engineer on here, because he's exactly the kind of person we will need if we're going to correct the short-sightedness of the past.

EDIT: Yes, sorry Emily, we seem to have hijacked your thread :oops:

ride_whenever

I'd prefer some sort of engine cut-off so that cars that are moving past too close get stuck into neutral and turned off.

Pross

deptfordmarmoset wrote:

Hey, BB, I can understand your cynicism but I think you should cut Pross some slack. The bike was almost certainly not deliberately planned out of road infrastructure but back in the 80s the car was the way forward and it kind of followed that bikes got marginalised or left out entirely. This happened a whole professional generation ago so Pross certainly wasn't responsible for that.

Unfortunately there are still a lot of that generation involved at at the top levels among the decision makers. People are trying to put things right and the Manual for Streets is helping (although probably more beneficial for walking and improving residential streets). I also have a colleague who is heavily involved in promoting shared space although this meets with lots of resistance, mainly from people who misunderstand the concept and, due to the misuse of the phrase 'eye contact' understandably from blind groups. It's not the be all and end all but certainly has its place in the future planning of towns.

Sorry again Emily - we should probably start a thread for this subject :oops:

tx14

right hand side car doors should be welded shut.

EmBrooke

No, thanks guys! It is useful. My theme is "Urban Cycling" and cyclist's safety on shared road systems is clearly a critical topic!
OK, so it's unlikely I can go away and redesign the Nation's road network to include cyclists, but I can look at the problem and try to find solutions to improve the situation we have. Be it better lights/communication between bikes and other road users, or whatever, it's a great starting point.
So thank you.
What would you say the biggest threat to a commuter on a bike is? Drivers encroaching on their share of the road?

rick_chasey

EmBrooke wrote:

No, thanks guys! It is useful. My theme is "Urban Cycling" and cyclist's safety on shared road systems is clearly a critical topic!
OK, so it's unlikely I can go away and redesign the Nation's road network to include cyclists, but I can look at the problem and try to find solutions to improve the situation we have. Be it better lights/communication between bikes and other road users, or whatever, it's a great starting point.
So thank you.
What would you say the biggest threat to a commuter on a bike is? Drivers encroaching on their share of the road?

For me on my commute it was when cars slowed down/stopped to let oncoming cars turn right. There was a desiginated, (painted) cycle lane alongside the road, and enough room for the cyclists to travel at their own speed.


It just meant the oncoming car would turn straight into the cyclist > having not seen said cyclist because the cyclist was behind the car and visa versa. Have had two grandstand views of my mate flying over a car bonnets.

Thick Tester

EmBrooke wrote:

What frustrates you on your daily commute?

Folk freewheeling

What causes you annoyance/discomfort on your bike?

Nothing

Do you feel safe cycling?

Yes

How do you cope with the weather?

The same as i would if i were on foot - dress accordingly

ANY observations, complaints or comments are welcome!!

I predict a 'Desmond' for you. The problem you percieve is not one that can be solved by product. Its behavioural - both on the part of the rider who must ride defensivley and the motorist who must learn to respect the cyclist.

No product will ever solve it

rick_chasey

Thick Tester wrote:

I predict a 'Desmond' for you.

:? A little unncessary? And largely unfounded.

jim453

Thick Tester wrote:

EmBrooke wrote:

What frustrates you on your daily commute?

Folk freewheeling

What causes you annoyance/discomfort on your bike?

Nothing

Do you feel safe cycling?

Yes

How do you cope with the weather?

The same as i would if i were on foot - dress accordingly

ANY observations, complaints or comments are welcome!!

I predict a 'Desmond' for you. The problem you percieve is not one that can be solved by product. Its behavioural - both on the part of the rider who must ride defensivley and the motorist who must learn to respect the cyclist.

No product will ever solve it

Helpful post.


I think the derailleur was rubbished as being an unnecessary and impure addition to a bicycle on it's development.


Good luck with the degree.

EmBrooke

Thanks guys.
And "Thick Tester", well. I'm glad nothing causes you any discomfort or annoyance on your bike. And that you feel perfectly safe. Do you perhaps use lights on your bike in the dark? I'd suggest they were a useful product designed to make you feel this way. For example.

CyclingBantam

Not sure if this is of any use but I think bike storage at home is something that is often looked at but not always 'resolved'. I'm thinking of me, living in a small house with no outside space. I want some way of storing my bike (s) without them being clutter. In addition though, I have lots of stuff that goes with my bkes (gloves, helmet, tools) that doesn't have another seperate home. I want to keep them together but I can't always do it without it just being clutter.

Another thought that popped up from here was wet clothers. If I cycley to work I am lucky to have somewhere to have my clothes where they 'normally' dry. Not everyone is as lucky. Some sort of box that you could store them is that would dry them over a few houts would be very useful.

Hoe this sparks some thoughts. Good luck.

desweller

BenBlyth wrote:

Another thought that popped up from here was wet clothers. If I cycley to work I am lucky to have somewhere to have my clothes where they 'normally' dry. Not everyone is as lucky. Some sort of box that you could store them is that would dry them over a few houts would be very useful.

Now that's a good idea! A sort of antibacterial office-friendly mini-tumbledryer. With added compartment for spare underpants on the inevitable occasion that you forget to pack any.

stonehouse

Belgian and The Netherlands

So you are happy cycling along pavements along with pedestrians, as that is what you get in Belgium?

We were quite happily cycling along a quiet country road (Belguim) until a Policemen came along and made us use the cycle lane, which was actually the pavement! Let's face it, mixing road bikes with leisure cyclists and pedestrians is not a good idea IMHO.

We are entitled to use the road as much as everyone else, we all need to get along and show each other respect, then it will work as it does elsewhere in Europe.