Is it time to start calling out bad cyclists?

Here in Japan, 99% of cyclists ride on the pavement. No one shits themselves with anger about it, either.

Oh yeah, my parents live near Teramo, the number of times I haven't seen a rider until the last minute at night beggars belief, they seem especially light averse on the flat roads in the valleys.

Yeah but the cops come down on you hard for having no lights or in some cases not having your bike registered.

They all ride about 10kph, though and the pavements are about 5m wide.

Ways to fuck up a cargo bike...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VSZA79ComA

Not my video some random cabbie uploaded it so can't pick the name.

Just chatted to a guy on my commute who was dressed up in the kit of a local club. He was riding ss with only one brake and when I politely tried to tell him it was illegal ("hey, I'm not trying to tell you what to do but do you know that ss with only one brake is illegal?") he was insistent that "the highway code says you only need one braking system". I mentioned to him to look up the Charlie Alliston case he said he had and that you only needed one brake... It was all perfectly civil apart from his insistence and a slight "are you sayin' I'm wrong" tone to his voice and then he peeled off at a junction.

I used to ride with his club occasionally when I lived nearer, and I'm a member of their Fb page. Should I post a comment to their Fb page politely liking the relevant section of the highway code "to the guy on the silver singlespeed" or is that a busy-body step too far?

He knows he's wrong. He's just being a tit.

Since that court case I've held my tongue a couple of times when I've seen a SS one-brake setup. I (ignorantly) ran that briefly when I built my first bike, and I would have appreciated someone telling me why it's wrong.

Name the club.

Zappis (Oxford). Turns out the club doesn't exist anymore and the FB page has been replaced with a "Friends of Zappi Racing Team" (their junior/u23 development team) page with 1500 members so it's unlikely a message would get to the guy anyway...

Hopefully our brief chat will be enough for him to double check the law... I think his bike was drilled for a rear brake anyway so it would be a pretty easy addition.

I'm sure there's an exception for polo bikes.

I doubt you could get up enough speed to warrant a furious driving charge on a polo bike.

Cycling becomes furious at 4mph, anything above walking speed is insane.

A furious driving charge is how you start every game.

And the mother of the year award goes to the cunt the blasted through about 6 red lights with her kid sitting in its child seat on the back. I tried to catch up to you but I had to wait until each light went green.

Watched a lady roll down the left-hand-side of 3 or 4 cars turning left at Clapham North this evening. All of them were indicating, the last one of them almost took her out.

I thought a gentle 'You've got to watch out for those left turners!' might help her see her mistake, but all I got in return was a 'Yeah, they never indicate!'.

No, they never do... except for every single one of them in that dedicated left-turn lane. I didn't bother saying it - I didn't have the time for that level of stupid. Too busy remaining zen.

To the guy riding something stealthy / carbon who knocked the coffee out the hand of the woman crossing Great Easton street. You knew what you were doing. And you looked like a cock.

Took a detour out west this morning to collect something from a forumenger and my route from there to work took me through Hyde Park on the shared pedestrian/cyclist path. Pretty much every cyclist was riding very aggressively and very fast. Completely inappropriately considering there were dogs, joggers, pedestrians and other cyclists all using the same bit of tarmac.

Arseholes, to a man.

Cyclist RLJ at Denmark Hill crossroads (near the park/station/hospital). All four ped crossings on green, with people crossing diagonally as well.

Cyclist was coming down the hill so going pretty quickly and swerved around people crossing. Ped shouts something to him and cyclist slows down and turns round to shout back. WAC

Calling myself out. There's a Toucan crossing underneath Mancunian Way, has ghostbike where rider killed a few years back. I normally ride the road route on commute bike but today on mobike going much slower speeds, so used toucan.

Pedestrian called me out for not riding on road on city centre side, we'd crossed the Toucan together and I was riding as slow as he was walking. I said I'd always assumed it was shared use path as fed by Toucan crossing, but that I don't usually cross there on bike. We both looked around but found no blue person/bike circle signs to indicate this or any markings on floor.

Checking the gm cycle map later there's no cycle path marked so seems I was in the wrong.

Seems odd to have a Toucan feeding a footway & not shared use path so will raise this with the council.

Also calling out Brompton rider in an Evel Knievel potty helmet who bombed past on the same pavement like he was in a race... collective responsibility argument from Ped to me at that point wasn't ideal.

Getting Tram home as punishment.

Seems odd to have a Toucan feeding a footway & not shared use path so will raise this with the council.

It depends on the traffic order that's in force. There may well have been signs at one point that were removed by people working on something else or simply stolen/vandalised. Look in the surrounding shrubbery. :) In my experience, what is unusual is a council forgetting to put them up in the first place.

I will be back for another look, footway tallies with official map though so reckon I won't find signs.

There's a toucan i cross every morning on my commute that, as far as I can tell, leads to nowhere. In the view below, you can see the cycle path resumes on the right after the zig-zags. It means leaving the crossing halfway across and joining the road which doesn't feel like it should be the right way to use it but it's how I ride it. The path after the crossing is no cycling, the ramp straight ahead is for wheelchair access and there's no indication anywhere that bikes are permitted on it.
https://goo.gl/maps/d5fQJipkus62

e: in any case it fails the guidance from the Department for Transport

Cyclists who need to cross the road will be directed to a cycle facility off the main carriageway, adjacent to the waiting area for pedestrians.

This is an example of a Toucan crossing that isn't implemented correctly. It lacks three of the four 'jug handles' on Southway that are required for cyclists to move from the carriageway onto the footway to access the crossing and back (if desired) to re-enter the carriageway after having crossed.

You can often read the scheme's history from a simple look at it. This one would have started by the bus authority wanting a bus stop there (perhaps to access the hospital?). However, there was no way of implementing one without losing a general traffic lane on Southway eastbound because of the acute angle between Crouch Street and Southway. This is why the decision was taken, probably welcomed by residents of Crouch Street, to install a modal filter at the junction and then embed the bus stop in it. Further west, where the 'corresponding' westbound bus stop is, that 'problem' didn't arise, as Lexden Road (as the A1124 is called there) is narrower (but to a traffic engineer that also means the bus stops can't possibly be located opposite each other).

Obviously, a crossing was needed, and for some reason (perhaps because the Crouch Road-Hospital Road connection was on some local 'cycle network' map (it looks that way)), it was decided to make it a Toucan. They would have tried to avoid that, as Toucans officially require longer signal phases than Pelican crossings, but I expect that the crossing time was kept pretty short, anyway.

Do you know if Hospital Road was filtered before this scheme or only later? It may have been an older anti-rat running measure. I'd suspect this, as it doesn't look as if a Toucan crossing was planned for at the time. In that case, the bus stop people probably only had money for the crossing and the northern side of Southway, and they thought everybody would be able to muddle along until the next slice of funding became available. That would have been quite a few years ago, traffic engineers would have moved on, few if any complaints would have been received, and lots of other priorities have since taken over ... :)

I assume that Hospital road was cut off when they dualled Balkerne Hill in '77. Maldon Rd roundabout was made bigger and that bit of southway to the west was added. That's why Crouch street is so chopped up, it used to just be a straight road with a crossroads at balkerne hill but now it's 3 distinct and pretty awkward sections. The Toucan crossing is probably a much later addition but I couldn't tell you how long it's been there.

It's kind of moot now though since it was all dug up and closed as of about 2 weeks ago. All the brick lined vegetation between crouch street and southway has been levelled down to bare earth and they've temporarily closed the crossing to work on the road there. Will be interesting to see how it gets reborn.