Is it time to start calling out bad cyclists?

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  • I'm doing a 'wanker'.

  • If you know what I mean.

  • You won't be for much longer if he reads that.

  • withering look

  • Love blossoms again on lfgss

  • i saw a good one the other night where a van was turning into a side road (cuts across the blue paint) and a woman (with big headphones, say no more) was approaching the side road and i thought 'i wonder whether she looks left', she obviously didn't and almost got creamed when the van turned in across her path as he was already committed to the turn. this is like a daily occurance now

    Its worth understanding why they do this; cycle lane gave them an air of security, a comfort zone that help them feel more comfortable riding on the road.

    Unfortunately, the poorly designed lane mean more collision (which I'm still documenting CS7).

  • Bobbling merrily along the bus lane this morning, City Road approaching Old Street, taxi behind me about to overtake but giving me plenty of room. Chap approaches behind both of us, pedalling furiously, assesses the situation, decides the three foot gap between me and the overtaking cab suits him perfectly and dives blithely in.

    Clips me with a bony elbow then shouts at the taxi driver, who has had to brake so hard he locks his wheels to avoid producing a kamikaze-cyclist pancake. I rarely bollock other riders, but had to make an exception for this witless goon, who turns to me for moral support and is surprised to get an assessment of his lunacy instead. He mumbles something unconvincing about not telling him how to ride, to which I respond by informing him of the cycle training schemes widely available in London, even to morons.

    Then he got hit by a van after RLJing. That was probably the van's fault too though, right?

  • Instant karma?

  • Instant karma?

    Vanma, more like.

  • Tough not to chuckle at these ididots. The last couple of weeks I've ridden a lot of rush hour times...N.E.C (not enough chevrons). I don't know how you all manage to remember what these people look like.
    I was riding yesterday and some bell decides to RLJ through pedestrians and gets a "RED!" from me. He says something, not sure what but to the effect of 'chill out- I got this'
    Further down on Theobolds, whom do I see shouting the odds at an Addison Lee driver holding his passenger door open in the middle of the road?

    "What a surprise! It's you again" as I laughed at him. Cue him aggressively RLJing the next 2/3 lights. I wouldn't have been shocked to have seen him laid out on the floor on the way back. Nobend

  • I've taken to shouting this when I see wazzock behaviour.

    I'm hoarse.

  • If these people drove like they cycled they would kill either themselves or someone else their first time in the car. And they nearly kill thenmselves or others as it is. It's very sad.

    But no more calling out. There are too many of them out there and unfortunately righteous indignation will not heal the world. The only thing to do is let them get on with it, enjoy your own route and own little world and continue to use our skill to *look down the road and see into the future.

    *Unless of course someone undertakes a lorry in which case I will always take those fuckers aside and give them the what-for. There is too much at stake.

  • Not that it changes things one jot...

    But I've started calling out bad cycling...and...from the comfort of my sofa, am quite sanguine about (most) RLJ'ers ending up under a bus. Wouldn't actively wish it on 'em but if that's the outcome, so be it.

    The situation on the roads to date this year has reached an absurd new low. How low? Well I've started cutting boris bike riders a kind of slack because one can (perhaps reasonably) assume they don't know any better.

    But Kingsland road tonight displayed all the worst traits that car drivers lumber all cyclists with. From my side of the street if you run a red light while pedestrians cross with a green, then you're a cunt. I can live with that. But what I most abjectly resent is being typecast by other motorist. A sentiment expressed in many ways by others here I know. But it's hard to not take it personally when you're abused by motorists.

    As far as I'm concerned, anyone who RLJ's through a pedestrian crossing with real live humans engaged in the business of getting safely and legally from one side to the other is a complete arse-hole who deserves to be called out. Possibly more.

    Like I said, not that it changes things one jot...

  • ^^^^^

    Words cannot express the death wish that some cyclists have whilst RLJ over Dalston junction.

    To the cunt of a cyclist who nearly ran me and my 8 year old niece this morning whilst crossing. If you are on here, lucky for you, you missed my fist.

  • http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2012/07/hell-on-wheels/9008/

    I’ve biked dozens of American states and all over western Europe, and nowhere else have I encountered a cycling culture so cutthroat, vicious, reckless, hostile, and violently competitive as London’s. New York City’s cyclists are, by comparison, genteel, pinkie-pointing tea-sippers pottering around Manhattan with parasols, demurring, “No, after you, dear.” London cyclists accumulate in packs of 25, revving edgily at stoplights, toes twitching on pedals like sprinters’ feet on the blocks at the starting line. Rule No. 1 on the road here is that submitting to another slender tire ahead of you is an indignity comparable to allowing oneself to be peed on in public. Bafflingly, this outrage seems to be universal: purple-faced octogenarians on clanking three-speeds, schoolkids with handlebars plastered in Thomas the Tank Engine decals, and gray-suited salarymen on fold-up Bromptons—all will risk mid-intersection coronaries to overtake any other bicyclist with the temerity to be in front. To stir this frenzied sense of insult, you needn’t be slow. You need simply be there.

    "cutthroat, vicious, reckless, hostile, and violently competitive", I think I want this to be my epitaph.

  • What an incoherent load of old tosh.
    *Dozens of bikes obstruct cars that have the right-of-way while streaking across the hectic roundabout at Hyde Park Corner. *
    What does that even mean?
    *They cruise alongside three-ton lorries, right in the truckers’ blind spots, and when the lorries turn left, grinding them into biomass, everyone is supposed to feel sorry for them. *
    Idiotic beyond comment.
    My territory has been invaded
    Ah, now we're getting to the nub.
    When cyclists were a rare annoyance, authorities left us alone; now that cops are handing out tickets like girlie-show fliers, it’s fiendishly difficult to slip harmlessly through a red light with no traffic in sight. Not long ago, my serene, sneaky, below-the-radar form of transport was an option on that ever-scarcer frisson of modern life: getting away with something. Now cycling’s infernal popularity threatens the last redoubt of freedom in this world.

    Poor Lionel. Poor, poor Lionel.

  • Though it's fair to say her snobbery and resentment wouldn't exactly stand out even on our own dear forum.

  • Well quite

  • Some of Shriver's article must be ironic, but it's rather hard to tell which bits.

    What an incoherent load of old tosh.
    *Dozens of bikes obstruct cars that have the right-of-way while streaking across the hectic roundabout at Hyde Park Corner.
    *What does that even mean?

    She must be referring to the inadequate crossing provision from Hyde Park to Wellington Arch. To an ignorant observer without the background knowledge, that's probably what it looks like. Never let facts get in the way of your journalism, eh?

    *

    They cruise alongside three-ton lorries, right in the truckers’ blind spots, and when the lorries turn left, grinding them into biomass, everyone is supposed to feel sorry for them.
    *

    Idiotic beyond comment.
    My territory has been invaded
    Ah, now we're getting to the nub.
    When cyclists were a rare annoyance, authorities left us alone; now that cops are handing out tickets like girlie-show fliers, it’s fiendishly difficult to slip harmlessly through a red light with no traffic in sight. Not long ago, my serene, sneaky, below-the-radar form of transport was an option on that ever-scarcer frisson of modern life: getting away with something. Now cycling’s infernal popularity threatens the last redoubt of freedom in this world.

    Poor Lionel. Poor, poor Lionel.
    Total self-pwn. 'They're all like me now.'

    At first, I expected her to move towards a Foresterish law-abiding position, but the lament for an 'I'm not really here' cycling style is very silly.

    She's also fallen victim to just about every urban myth:

    When the Tube shut down in 2005 following the terrorist attacks of 7/7, many Londoners discovered that bikes were faster and cheaper than their public transport, the most expensive in the world.
    That was only a temporary adjustment, and the temporary spike this created was soon swallowed up in the general growth of cycling; it didn't create anything extra.

    I actively discourage anyone considering biking in the capital: “It’s much too dangerous,” I say. “Breathing all that exhaust, too—terrible for you.”
    I think this may be an attempt at irony, but I can't tell. It's also wrong. Cycling in London is very low-risk, despite what the headlines tell you.

    Worst of all, blogs and call-in radio shows teem with irate British motorists clamoring to license cyclists. Our previous mayor, Ken Livingstone, advocated numbered plates for bikes, which could be read by the city’s ubiquitous surveillance cameras. An Evening Standard columnist recently called for cyclists to carry third-party insurance. The chairman of London’s leading mini-cab firm demanded this spring that cyclists pay a “road tax.”
    To list these things without more comment is unhelpful. It's always worth putting them in context. Livingstone, while expressing this preference, was also quite clear that it was unworkable (admittedly after the LCC did some convincing). So did every other agency concerned with it. Many bike riders do carry third-party insurance. You can simply become an LCC member (or a member of another major cycling organisation like the CTC) and you're insured, for instance. Putting the 'road tax' nonsense in again without briefly explaining that there is no such thing and that cyclists already pay all the relevant taxes is sloppy at best.

    I think this bit is worth quoting, too, Will, just before your last quote:

    Thus popular momentum gathers to subject bikes to the whole grotesque legal apparatus that makes driving such a drag, and so to undermine precisely the uncomplicated independence of pedaling that first captivated me as a child.
    Apart from the obvious fact that she's not a child any more, and should expect to be judged as an adult, while there are certainly problems with existing legislation, in general it works fine. You can either want no traffic laws and a free-for-all, which would probably result in far higher levels of casualties than right now, or you want different standards for different kinds of road users (fair enough, there are some legal advantages that you could justly give to users of pedal cycles, but ultimately they would still have to abide by quite a few of the same standards as other road users), or you can accept that you cycle as a grown-up and live your life lawfully in the same way that you (probably) live lawfully in respect of many, many other laws. I'm not going to comment on that debate at length here, as it has been debated ad nauseam, but childish cycling is not good. If you need to rediscover your childhood, go and play in a sand pit.

  • i ride the CS3 every day and its actually becoming more dangerous than riding on the main highway!

    It always has been. Cable Street should get a completely different treatment. The cycle track should be taken out and modally filtered (introducing selective 'road closures' that 'filter out' through motor traffic but allow people on bikes to go through, e.g. bollards or gates with cycle gaps). Cable Street should be divided into about three distinct sections in this way. Result = two-way cycling in the carriageway, no through motor traffic, no rat-runners trying to avoid The Highway. It's being talked about but probably will take some time yet.

  • The article has its flaws. But she's right we do have a bizarre cycling culture. Having just come back from Amsterdam I can see the stupidity of London cycling with fresh eyes.

  • I have no issue with someone making emotional points, but she needs to get her facts right and not just skate over issues trying to use them to somehow support her point while not engaging with them at all.

    The main issue with just about anything in London is just London. Some of the phenomena that people criticise about cycling don't have anything to do with cycling. These are issues such as excessive competitiveness (the morning sportive from the Surrey stockbroker belt along Cycle Superhighway 7 being an example) or the excessively long commuting distances which cause people to choose functional wear, plus many other things which I could tediously list. They become more visible about cycling because cyclists are more visible, but they are actually very similar across all other vehicular modes of transport.

    Amsterdam is of course a much more liveable city than London, but it is a much smaller place where the competitive stakes are not as high as here, in a less unjust country, with a much higher standard of living. The average length of trips in Amsterdam is tiny compared to London and of course that enables people to use heavy, impractical bikes and 'normal' clothes, but it is simply because people are not forced to cover such long distances for mundane journeys (the need to travel has increased tremendously in the Netherlands, too, but Amsterdam is still organised better than London). There are factors such as these (corresponding to the opposite causes in London) which influence people's perception of cycling there more than the actual symptom of cycling.

  • 'excessive competitveness' - this sums up much that is absurd about London commuting. I've been overtaken by guys riding their road bikes at speeds that would be tough to follow on a club chain gang, but wearing ordinary clothes and with a backpack on. They then have to slam their brakes on to filter through a queue of traffic, before accelerating hard again.

  • "excessive ineptitude" sums up much that is absurd. I have overtaken people in full lycra on hybrid bikes at speeds they could more comfortably achieve walking, rather than wobbling alarmingly. They still have to undertake/filter at the lights, barging to the front of the queue, only to set off at a snail's pace all over again.

  • OK, how about 'competitive ineptitude'/'inept competitiveness'

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Is it time to start calling out bad cyclists?

Posted by Avatar for Multi_Grooves @Multi_Grooves

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