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I reckon overtaking cyclists fast is fine, getting past them quickly (within a speed safe for the road/situation) means less time spent alongside, which is the dangerous bit.
Yup, don't want to spend more time alongside anything than necessary. I figure that when I do go past, after having cruised behind a cyclist for a while, the change in engine when the extra power kicks in should let the rider know that now is the point I'm going past instead of cruising behind.
Horses of course crawled past with a little change to engine sound as possible ... and then once past etc I like to be a fair distance ahead of the horse before accelerating.
You have reminded me though of an encounter about a year ago, with a guy who had a horse on a fairly long line, on some grass at one of the squarish bits at a T junction. He seemed to be trying too acclimatise the horse to the sounds of traffic and was getting quite annoyed by the various vehicles not accelerating after making the turn as they usually would.
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I hate hearing the sound of a gunning engine behind me. I can never be sure if it means the driver is going to overtake me properly, drive into my back wheel, or pass me at an exponentially increasing speed at a distance of 6 inches. Then there's the ones who start to gun the engine after they've begun the overtake and I've no idea when they're going to pull back in, but the aggressiveness of the engine sound makes me think it'll be a matter of inches, straight into my front wheel.
:(
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I can usually tell from their actions pre-overtake, if they've been up your arse and aggressive for a while, prepare for a close overtake, if they've held back and there's an opportunity for being overtaken, it'll be fine. Also I look back every few second if there's someone behind me, I like to know what they're up to and for them to know I've seen them.
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Plus, help them know when you think it's safe for them to overtake, move from the centre of the lane to the left a bit and look at them, they'll probably get the message.
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You reduce my opportunities to pass you safely when:
[]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....so every formation of a group of cyclists is imperfect then? Because the amount of shit I get riding in a small group 2-up suggests drivers aren't too keen on that either!
When we ride we try and keep 2-up and a few deep, we take up about as much space as large van – sometimes longer when we single-out for twisty bits.
As you say it is your responsibility as the approaching, overtaking vehicle to asses the situation an overtake safely. We can't always see everything behind us!
Credit for posting though. I'd rather you did this than just shout at us on the road.
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You should film and record all this stuff.
Like this Aussie mother whom got filmed by an idiot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JUh-DErllVg
http://www.sydneycyclist.com/forum/topics/child-endangerment-verbally-abused-filmed
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Like this Aussie mother whom got filmed by an idiot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JUh-DErllVg
http://www.sydneycyclist.com/forum/topics/child-endangerment-verbally-abused-filmed
Idiot driver, shouting questions at a cyclist who's concentrating on staying alive, what a penis.
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I hate hearing the sound of a gunning engine behind me.
:(I hate hearing the sound of a gunning engine when I'm at a walking across the road at a crossing either. There is a big difference though, between the sound of a gunning engine, and that of an engine that accelerating a vehicle smoothly.
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I can usually tell from their actions pre-overtake, if they've been up your arse and aggressive for a while, prepare for a close overtake, if they've held back and there's an opportunity for being overtaken, it'll be fine. Also I look back every few second if there's someone behind me, I like to know what they're up to and for them to know I've seen them.
I already look behind me every few seconds. I have to, because I'm deaf. Doesn't mean I like the vroomvroomvrroooooooooooom as somebody gets accidentally stampy on the accelerator.
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Credit for posting though. I'd rather you did this than just shout at us on the road.
I really can't see the point of shouting at other road users, however they are using the road. I can't really see any situation where shouting at someone would improve things. My verbalised frustration (when it comes) remains in the vehicle and is for the entertainment of my passengers only :)
I do understand that 4 cycles abreast and 4 cycles long is about the same size as a van.
I seem to be doing a very very poor job of expressing how I would ideally like to be able to overtake cyclists ... let me try again ...
I would like there to be a minimum space of approx. half a lane between the left hand side of my vehicle, and the nearest cyclist to my vehicle as I come alongside and past the cyclist. I can achieve this minimum gap, which I consider to be a safe distance, only if the closest cyclist to me is fairly central in the lane or to the left of centre of the lane. If the cyclist/s is to the right of centre of the lane, this gap decreases.
I am happy to pass a van taking up the entire lane, because I can safely be closer to a van than I can safely be to a cyclist. Cyclists taking up the exact 'floor space' of a van are easier to deal with than a van in terms of being able to see 'through' them, but, overtaking them as if they were a van puts me much closer to the cyclists that I would like to be.
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I do not know the names or numbers of the roads, where I see things that scare/horriify/frustrate me. If anyone does set up a thread for naming problem roads as was suggested earlier, I will try to start to keeping track of where I see these things happening. This is pretty much always A or B road in deep deep countryside - one thing that the type of roads have in common is lots of bends, and lots of blind rises.
What I referred to previously of a group of cyclists so wide that it was taking up half the lane of oncoming traffic as well as the left lane was on such a country road, somewhere in East Anglia (I travelled through more than one county that day , and to be honest, couldn't even say which of the counties that the group was in. I do know that the group of riders were likely to be taking part in the same cycling event that Earthloop was taking part in.
As it happens, that wasn't the scariest thing I saw that day, the scariest was a black vw polo who I would really really hope never to see anywhere near a cyclist again, but having figured out that the driver was a relative of someone in the event, he will probably be near cyclists a lot. The polo (not the cyclists on that bit of road) was responsible for a tailback of about 30 vehicles, incidentally it took 90 minutes before an opportunity to pass the polo safely came along and it was a bloody terrifying 90 minutes. Never been so glad to eventually get away from another road user in my life. On the country roads, its not always easy to just take a different route to get to where you are going.
These things that bother and frustrate happen with lone cyclists, club rides, groups of friends out on a ride and during events. There doesn't appear to be any particular sort of cycling demographic that does any of these things more or less.
I have noticed though, that quite a lot of clubs do seem to have a rider at the rear of their groups, that seem to shout forward to the others that there is a vehicle approaching, following which the riders space themselves closer together on the left of the lane allowing the kind of spacing I like to have between me and the cyclists when I go past them. They restore my faith in the concept of cyclists considering other road users when I've just had an experience with the other kind, and when I'm back in my lane I usually flash my hazards a couple of times as a thank you.
In summer when the windows are down I've often heard club members yelling at other club members for not cycling in a manner which the club considers appropriate. This sort of thing on a club level I think is quite good for everyone concerned.
While I could contact a club to raise concerns, I don't necessarily know what the club is from the jersey worn ... lots of acronyms out there, and I certainly wouldn't be able to give specifics as to what rider it is, because I don't really pay attention to what I consider unnecessary detail like hair colour/eye colour etc (nor to details like what bike they were riding which I'm sure many of you could identify in a heartbeat - all bikes look the same don't they??), best I would be able to do is "cyclist/s on this road doing xyz". If the club spoke to any of the cyclists known to be out that day, they would all probably say something along the lines of "wasn't me guv" etc etc.
Not ever going to start filming my journeys ... I think its better for me to concentrate on my driving what is around me, that where to focus my camera. Even with general photography and a still camera, its never to hand when you see the best things.
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Not ever going to start filming my journeys ... I think its better for me to concentrate on my driving what is around me, that where to focus my camera. Even with general photography and a still camera, its never to hand when you see the best things.
You just stick it on the dash and forget about it, that way there's an impartial witness to the strange behaviour that seems to follow you around on the roads, the handicapped person on the scooter, gangs of cyclists riding along on the wrong side of the road etc.
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ftfy
It's emptied every night before I even get home, and the windows let the tea leaves see that without having to break in. So, thanks for fixing my post, but it didn't need fixing.
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If the riders were taking part in a cycling event there might have been riders riding at different speeds.
The riders on the right hand side of the road might have been overtaking slower cyclists, i.e doing exactly the same as you wanted to do.
They though were in front of you, and you assume that because you have a car only you should be on that side of the road. -
Sounds like she has already said she was behind them calmly for quite some time, I'm sure if they were overtaking it would of been done, she seems a very calm and rational driver.
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yes, she does, but she appears to have an assumption that owning a car makes her more important than someone on a bike, as far as I can tell
she is clearly wrong
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yes, she does, but she appears to have an assumption that owning a car makes her more important than someone on a bike, as far as I can tell
You really get that from what she's written?
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There's no question pickups are more dangerous vehicles, they score particularly poorly on child occupant and pedestrian safety:
http://www.whatcar.com/car-news/pick-up-safety-criticised/231468/
Anecdotally, both on the roads and speaking to the pickup vehicle owners as part of my job, they are often unpleasant people, I mean drivers of the L200 or Navara. I think there may be a penile compensation about the drivers of vehicles called "Shogun" or "Warrior" or whatever stupid name they think up. Macho and threatening.
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Things cyclists should know … POV driver who's incapable of cycling
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I see your horses and ...
Hereabouts, the horses are not too bad (although plentiful - lots of race horses, as well as the usual kiddie/general riding stables) ... and seemed to have quite good riders. The riders pretty much all use the controlled pedestrian/horse crossings too.
... raise you 1 mobility scooter ;)
We do have one mobility scooter rider that never fails to leave me slack jawed in amazement though ... She has the ability to ensure that no one can get past on either side of her (I have even seen a cyclist fail after a 'well timed' swerve of the mobility scooter). She uses the centre line as a guide to wherever she is going, and never bothers to stop/slow down at junctions. Whatever way she goes at a junction, I go another! My first experience of her was in a network of residential streets that I'm not very familiar with, and it took us about 10 mins of incredulous travelling to go about 3/4 mile to the junction with more major road that I am familiar with