Things cyclists should know … POV driver who's incapable of cycling

tl;dr Be more visible, don't block overtaking, uk driving test poor, watch out for tinted windows on pickups.

Dare I stick my head above the parapet with this post??

I know there are drivers out there that don't consider cyclists at all. I am not one of them. I consider cyclists a lot. My husband cycles 32 miles a day commuting. I'm all for cyclists not getting knocked down.

It seems to me that a fair amount of cyclists don't drive at all, and I think have never considered cycling from a driver's perspective. Excluding all the things that basically just amount to total twatishness on the behalf of both parties, these are a few things that I think cyclists should be aware of when on the roads.

On visibility

• I can identify cyclists in bright/reflective clothing at a much greater distance than cyclists in dark clothing. The further away you are when I first notice you the better for us all.
  
• One dim light on the front and rear of your bike means that I am a lot closer to you when it becomes apparent that you are a cyclist. Flashing front and rear lights with a decent amount of brightness immediately trigger the 'cyclist' response in my head
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On overtaking cyclists
It is the driver's responsibility and the driver's responsibility alone to determine whether it is safe to overtake another vehicle/road user. Whether it is safe to overtake or not has multiple variables, two of which are driver ability, and vehicle capabilities.

When I come up behind you, at a place that it is not safe for me to pass you, I'm happy to pootle along behind you (at a safe distance) until it is safe to pass you. Please don't

• madly gesticulate for me to pass you, your arm movements causing you to wiggle all over the road. If my initial assessment was that it's not safe to pass you, what you are doing is making passing you less safe.
  
• pull over to the kerb and get off your bike until I have gone past. I'm not mad about the implication that I'm such a poor driver that I can't maintain a safe following distance behind you.
  
  

You reduce my opportunities to pass you safely when:

• you position yourself in the middle of the road, or in the right hand half of the road purely for the purposes of preventing a driver from overtaking you.
  
• you are a group of 3-4 cyclists riding abreast
  
• you are a group of 4 or more cyclists travelling one behind the other. A gap big enough for a car to pull into every two cyclists would be welcomed. A string of 10 cyclists, I would not be able to overtake safely unless on a very long straight road with no oncoming traffic, and those are very few and far between.
  
  
  

Being an imperfect person, when I am behind a cyclist/group of cyclists that could have been overtaken repeatedly had the cyclist/s shown just a little bit of consideration for me, I get ratty and irritable. My patience starts to wear thin from about the third passing opportunity that has been 'blocked'. Its not pretty, but according to Earthloop and the kid, my vitriolic outbursts are comical.

Blind Spots
There is a lot of info out there on how cyclists are not visible to HGVs.
None about how cyclists are not visible to a pickup. Unfortunately the person who originally purchased our pickup, had dark tinted windows put on the canopy.
We can see nothing with the rearview mirror day or night (other than the contents of the load bin) and are totally reliant on the wing mirrors. Visibility in a pickup with a canopy is limited at the best of time, with the shading, horrendous.

• From about a cars length away at the rear, until you are level with the front side windows, you are invisible to the drivers.
  
• Most importantly, when you decide to draft off the left side of me, I don't even know you are there unless I have a passenger that tells me about it.
  
  
  
  

On UK Driving Tests
There is excessive emphasis on 'making progress' in the UK driving test, which I consider, quite frankly, to foster dangerous habits amongst drivers, not only in terms of collisions with cyclists, but in terms of collisions with other vehicles too. Learner drivers are constantly told by instructors that the examiner will think that they lack confidence if they:

• drive slower than at the speed limit
  
• show hesitation at junctions with yield signs and at roundabouts.
  
• show hesitation when merging turning from a minor onto a major road
  
  

What the instructors and examiners consider showing hesitation, I consider making sure its safe.

I felt that these practices were unsafe when I did my UK driving test some 15 years ago (after having been a licensed tested driver in another country for about 12 years before that), and still feel these things create unsafe drivers when reminded of them a few months ago when our daughter did her test.