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@GentlemanBear
Just seen, this - horrible... thoughts with the rider's family.
Without wishing to derail the thread, I've spent the long weekend as a pedestrian, generally with my baby son strapped to my chest or in his buggy, walking round east london and The City, and I've caught myself wincing at [what I'd regard to as] dangerous or careless driving behaviour on a dozen occasions over the last four days. Skip-lorries thundering down inside lanes and narrowly avoiding cyclists in ASL boxes; drivers waiting to turn right deliberately pulling out across cyclists and making it the cyclists' problem; young blokes in posh motors hovering eighteen inches from a cyclist's back wheel because sitting behind a bike, even at 25mph, just doesn't compute for them.
I think when I'm on my bike I try and outrun as much of this danger as I can, by filtering to the front of traffic, 'safe' RLJing, deliberately taking as dominant a lane position as I can to stop the motorist even thinking that they have a chance of squeezing by if it's tight. But this thread made me wonder how much of it is down to a lack of visibility, and how much of it is simply aggressive driving? Some of the things that I've seen as a ped in the last few days make me a bit circumspect about the safety of my daily commute.
Like I say, not trying to derail the thread, if indeed the cyclist in question is seriously harmed or worse, then it's a terrible terrible thing. Just interested in thoughts on the best course of action to stay safe - hi-viz? aggressive riding? rlj-ing? all of the above?