Is it time to start calling out bad cyclists?

Although it might explain your bike handling ‘skills’.

To the guy yesterday wearing Assos shorts, a replica world champs jersey, riding a red Merida. F*ck you.
He wasn't fast so I overtook him several times, but twice he overtook me as I was behind a slower rider and there were peds coming the other way, so he just rode AT THEM forcing them to jump out the way. Of course this was also punctuated by a couple of RLJ's for good measure. If this was some kid on a stolen mountain bike I would understand it, but this guy was wearing £200 shorts, riding a £2k+ bike riding like he was escaping the scene of a crime.

Lucas Brunelle skitching a paramedic vehicle, risking his own life and the person needing urgent medical attention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_AXHFIY-M8

You think that riding with effectively no hands on your bars is good cycling when there's other cyclists riding next to you in a narrow space? I don't. I'll get a picture some time to demonstrate.

I'll get a picture some time to demonstrate.

By riding one handed when there's other cyclists riding next to you in a narrow space?

When I'm stopped dropping my kid off at school and she goes past. Fuck off.

Was only meant as a joke; there's no need to be so defensive.

I have no problem with it per sé. Particularly if it is, as you say, a narrow bike and she has her hands near the brakes.

If she is veering side to side, cutting people up or swerving erratically then I'd mind. Otherwise I don't see why I'd give a shit. c.f. headphones and checking a phone and not wearing a helmet and blah blah blah.

For flying fuck's sake will this guy just fucking get himself killed already.

2+ cyclists? how fucking narrow is this space like only a dual carriageway?

:-p

12:46 Austria 2013 mofo.

Most of the time I see RLJing cyclists as being discourteous to those on foot but rarely particularly perilous to them. However last night while I was waiting at the lights on Rosebery Avenue where it intersects with Farringdon Road, some absolute weapon bombed through the assembled cyclists and through the crossing at a speed that would have caused some serious injury had he hit the woman who was crossing. It was really just lucky he didn’t, as he was riding with absolutely no regard for anyone, and you could see she was pretty shocked. Off he shot west down Farringdon Road. The same twat reappeared later on my route when he RLJd again at speed the wrong side of the pedestrian island on Barnsbury Road turning right into Copenhagen Street while I was waiting at those lights. For all the furious riding and twattery he hadn’t got anywhere faster than me. Nice one, dickhead.

For all the furious riding and twattery he hadn’t got anywhere faster than me.

Always is the case. I regularly see people pop up both before and after my detour along the canal, and often they're the ones giving it the beans and stressing at red lights.

Nice one, dickhead.

Did you have a word? Sounds like one was warranted.

a word? Sounds like one was warranted.

Just the one. Starts with C

After the second appearance I really wanted to - it seemed almost a sign I should - but I was running late for nursery pickup. The first RLJ was so out of the ordinary dangerous that getting on his case would have been an absolute delight.

The problem is that RLJers either only RLJ at minor junctions or through the All Green Pedestrian Phase at major junctions. As I've said numerous times before, it's the widespread introduction of AGPPs (in themselves a good thing) that caused RLJing to overtake footway cycling as the number one concern about bad cycling some years ago.

People who RLJ at minor junctions quite often suffer much longer delays at major junctions, and even if they get through there the time 'saving' will at best be a few minutes.

RLJing at AGPPs mainly signals that these riders consider their cycling as a form of assisted walking rather than use of a vehicle and quite apart from the terrified pedestrians it creates (it has to be said that actual crashes are rare, but that's not the point), it's the worst public image if cycling is ever to be taken seriously as a mode. As it is, most people see bikes as annoying and dangerous toys for people who've never grown up.

'most'?

^^ interesting insights as ever. Always learning from the Schick!

Yes. In this country at least it's a majority view. The result of decades of misinformation about cycling and demonisation of cyclists.

Apologies, accidentally used the reply function.

I'm not sure I agree though my 'evidence' is anecdotal, meeting a lot of people who only want to cycle more or start cycling and only knowing the situation in London. I'd agree that there is a lot of fear of cycling but I'm not sure that the view that people who cycle are people who have never grown up is that widespread. Widespread on the internet and in BTL comments but not so sure about in real life.

I imagine we're not mates with people who are of this opinion, so we'll experience it just online which indicates a certain demographic who do have this view.

London is just different (and has changed a lot in the last fifteen years or so). Also, most people who have vague anti-cycling feelings won't think them through to their consequences. At the end of the day, you judge them by their actions, and that relatively few cycle is more eloquent than all that they say.

The dominant contemporary ideology is still some kind of futurism in which it is not respectable to use a simple machine when you can use a really heavy, expensive, and unnecessary one. People make these comparisons all the time. Obviously, you can take a modern bike and point out all the innovation, the super-bright LED lights or the latest bit of electronic shifting kit or whatever, and its eye-watering price, and all that may appeal to someone like a London banker using it as a status symbol and to save time keeping up a high fitness level through commuting on it from the Surrey stockbroker belt, but it's still something on which you're sitting out in the rain when it's raining, something that makes you sweat, etc., and we've overcome all these animalistic displeasures, have we not?

For most people in big cities, public transport is the immovable default (you arrive at work looking nice and smart and all that), but even in cities people see cars as universal tools, e.g. you can be dry, fast, comfortable, listen to your music, carry passengers and heavy loads, never mind that most of the time you don't do either of the latter, and much like Thatcher's remark about using buses when you're in your thirties (or something like that, can't remember the exact quote), the default assumption is that if you ride a bike you must be poor, because you're not solving all your problems by adopting modern tools. You can do everything with a car, if you have kids it's inevitable that you MUST have a car, and so on.

This is not excessive generalisation but a summary of thousands of conversations I've had on that topic over the years, at stalls at festivals, in social contexts, etc. Not everybody holds all of these views, but most people hold at least a few of them. Part of the reason why so many people turn evangelists when they have started to cycle is because the revelation is so profound, and some then proceed to piss off their friends because they're so strident, when cycling is really just a completely normal thing (which is the thing to keep promoting, rather than assigning any kind of exceptional status, however positive, to it).

Oh well.

that was a good read - the revelation is indeed profound