This morning's commute and other commuting stories

Probably everyone thinks this morning...DANG IT'S COLD!!!

Weirdly I've noticed a sharp change towards this sort of behaviour very recently (I ride the full length of CS7). There didn't seem to be half as much aggro this time last year.

Edit: Just realised I've started leaving work earlier so I'm catching the peak of the rush. Maybe the douchebags existed all along.

Had this yesterday.
An upright 2 wheel drift quickly became a Tripod drift at slow speed until the tyres meshed with the non slip textured slabs.

What was the caution for? Seems a bit harsh given that fact you had a face injury.

Heal up soon

Ice. Going up Wells Park Road. Because, even though workmen have been to "fix" the leak, there's still a leak somewhere under the road. This froze. Surprising that.

Nice fresh morning was enjoying my commute, not even the super aggressive knob biscuit who arriving late at the bike lights at Brixton/Oval trying to force his way through then riding like a mad man to reach the next set of lights, then telling the slowly riders to move over so he could smash it to the next set of lights, dampen my mood. If fact it was the Knob biscuit who made it even more enjoyable. Nothing better then watching someone go all out then you sail pass on a SS bike and you hear the sounds of extra gears being used.

Will commute at pace again.

.

An official caution, or just a "don't do it again, Sir".

File a report at the local station, for a hit and run. I'm assuming they didn't provide their details...

Were they turning with the sirens on? Otherwise don't see how you could be in the wrong - they cut you up?!

@Jingle_Jangle I do see your point about pushy riders not being at all responsible.

I think we can change the culture of cycling here.

I think the emphasis on 'sport' cycling is part of the problem ... winning ... workout ... all that competitive claptrap. Ride like that in copenhagen and get rinsed by a grandma on a gaspipe upright.

Upright bikes help, apparently, or at least correlate with inclusive cycling culture. I read this on twitter so must be true.

.

They cut you up, caused a crash and blamed you? Unless you were bombing it at some sort of dangerous speed then I fail to see how they can put this one on you in any way.
Same sort of thing happened to me in a hit and run. I reported it to the police. Not that they did anything about it, but I can't imagine them coming back and giving me a caution for someone else's crap driving.

Do I call their station and ask what the caution was about?

What was the caution for then? What does the paperwork say?

I thought a caution could only be given to somebody who has admitted a criminal offence.

.

Then that isn't a police caution.

https://www.gov.uk/caution-warning-penalty

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/397867/adult-simple-caution-guidance.pdf

Heading n/b?

.

Y143 Ysomething something silver Toyota Corolla.

You are a bad and inconsiderate driver and a bit of a w@nker. If you carry on like that you are likely to injure someone. I don't want you to have that on your conscience or them and their family to have to deal with it...

My new friend, you drove your corolla straight into the ASL and over the front line for good measure. You and I were both travelling north ish up marshalsea road where it hits Southwark Bridge Road to form a T junction. NB the light was ALREADY red in front of you long before you crossed into the ASL (you were about 5 -10 metres away from it, I was just behind you). I think you didn't see it. Do you think that might have been because you were on your phone? Holding it in your hand, probably on speaker, not to your ear, but still...

I waved, you wound down the window, I said very politely "you're in the box for bikes" you said "yes" I said "you're not allowed in here, not unless the light changed to red and it was unsafe for you to stop before the line" [I was surprised at my politeness] you said nothing I said "well, anyway, are you turning right?" as at that point you were not indicating*. You said "yes". But then put your left indicator on. I noticed this and when the lights changed, watched with some interest to see which way you would in fact turn. You turned left. I had been along side you, in MY ASL box, and I had indicated right. If I had started cycling at the same time as you, you would have knocked me off.

Please be a better driver and a better person.

Thanks!

[*NB barely anyone indicates at this junction, especially if they are going right, I don't know why, maybe right sort of appears straight on but it is dangerous and I have seen one crash and several close calls there]

Yep

The thing is, I actually wrote the Kynaston Avenue post before the other one and then decided to post replies in the order of the posts being replied to.

Shockingly, I did even more posts last night in which I didn't follow my own lead. :)

The drift into the ASL is a typical passive aggressive London driver manoeuvre. When the Evening Standard reported the police were considering fining motorists for it suddenly there were no drivers drifting into ASLs for about a week. Likewise when the police set themselves up at junctions suddenly motorists are capable of hanging back behind the line. It's one of those things like drifting left or right to cut off space for filtering. It's not major road rage, but just the little acts of selfishness that make riding in London so tedious.

For example, many cyclists think it is OK for them to ride on footpaths crowded with pedestrians, of through a pedestrian crossing - something you see every day in the city.

That's not a very good comparison to behaviour in the Foot Tunnel, though, as for the most part footway riders ride on the footways for very different reasons.

For this reason, for better or worse, we need rules and these rules need to be enforced. At the moment, the rules in the Foot Tunnel (Foot Tunnel, the clue is in the name), prohibit cycling, and should therefore be observed.

I agree, for as long as they're in place, they should be followed (and enforced, but that won't happen, especially with local authority funding cuts). I also completely agree with your description below:

What I see every morning is not a group of rational, socially motivated cyclists riding carefully through a shared-use space; rather I see a group of vacuous; self-important individualist determined to get through their journey in the least possible time without any regard to the needs of others.

I've seen this, too, although I use the tunnel only rarely and usually not at peak times. However, as you say yourself, the rule is not being followed. It is part of the quality of a rule whether it works, and that includes whether it's observed. If it's not observed, it brings the law into disrepute, making it appear toothless and easy to run rings around, so sometimes it's better not to have laws but instead to venture into relying on people.

It's the old problem of the social contract on a small scale--'well, here's this rule with which I don't agree, what's that you say? it's based on this social contract that was passed hundreds of years ago by people alive then, so they've more recently followed all the agreed procedure for introducing the cycling ban, well, I wasn't around then and I wasn't consulted, so there'.

The problem is that bans are proposed to take it out of people's hands to decide how to act, so the only decision left to people is whether to observe or not to observe the ban. People do want to make their own decisions, though, and they will, unless enforcement is watertight.

By contrast, if people come into a social situation (which is what traffic, including shared use, basically is) where there's an established way of doing things that clearly works (and you need behaviour codes to be fairly well-established and not to have the rules changed backwards and forwards all the time, for them to have staying power), you're going to get far fewer people transgressing. You can never remove that entirely, but you can persuade more people to sign up to the 'social contract' there by not making it formal and allowing it to be confirmed or renewed with every new encounter. You're still going to get conflict between people, but generally far less than in the current situation, and where it occurs the issue to discuss won't be about 'ban or no ban' but 'what you did just there was wrong', much more specific and localised.

Riders won't think 'I'll just have to get through this tunnel quickly to avoid being caught' and walkers won't feel as if riders are transgressive. (The problem of the 'scofflaw' perception of cycling is one of the fundamental problems inherent in promoting it; relatively few people want to join a faction that's seen as unlawful.) Those who ride very fast will be exposed much more, as they won't have very many others to hide among, and most of them will adapt their riding style. (There's also a long history of cycling in the tunnel, which I've been observing for over ten years; there have been some interesting twists along the way.)

(NB none of this is meant to sound like a Thatcherite argument, who I would argue actually decreased people's freedoms and individualism in many ways, although I agree that fast foot tunnel cycling looks like a symptom of her kind of thinking. I'm actually heavily in favour of individualism, but the kind for which you need to be in close and collaborative contact with others, or how is anyone going to notice your individualism? If it's only you it's not individualism but solipsism. The sort of misunderstanding of 'individualism' associated with Thatcher is actually just a complex of social anxieties (e.g., 'I'm better than others so I have to keep a class apart') that doesn't have much to do with the real meaning of the concept.)