Dangerous/stupid driving near cyclists

martinthebandit

Tachographs?

all they show is speed and time vehicle is being driven, how will they stop or prove dangerous driving?

jase1

Cyclists can be a flaming menace. I always try to accommodate them as best I can and never overtake dangerously but I can see how some of their antics can inflame some drivers.

On a few occasions now for example there have been riders on tight, windy A-roads riding 2 or even 3 adjacent. Cue queue of traffic two miles long and they won't go single file, preventing anyone from overtaking.

Is it really too much to ask that they ride single file for a while to let others pass?

Lum

thelawnet wrote: »

I think you've missed the point, it's not the stopping distance of the lorry it's the fact that you've got a cyclist doing a decent speed for the conditions, no room to overtake, but the lorry is still positioning itself as if it's going to overtake, and yes I could see as the road bended left. When you're on a 10kg bike, having 30 tonnes of lorry making its intentions to pass you when there's never going to be room to do so nicely, is intimidating and unsettling.

A large lorry is one of the worst things that can pass you on the road.

You do need to consider this from the lorry driver's perspective as well. In may cases they can see a lot further ahead than you, but also it's very difficult to overtake in a lorry, if the driver knows that an overtaking opportunity is coming further down the road, they may well need to start accelerating, in the hope that the next bit is clear, in order to actually perform the overtake.

It's also worth noting that the fuel consumption at 25mph is significantly higher than at 40mph, which is bad for the environment and bad for the finances in an industry that's seriously struggling to stay afloat these days.

Obviously I wasn't there and in this case it may not have been anything like that at all and the driver was just being a douchebag, but in general things would go a lot better if every road user tried to look at things from the perspective of other road users, both small and large.

Strider590

jase1 wrote: »

Cyclists can be a flaming menace. I always try to accommodate them as best I can and never overtake dangerously but I can see how some of their antics can inflame some drivers.

On a few occasions now for example there have been riders on tight, windy A-roads riding 2 or even 3 adjacent. Cue queue of traffic two miles long and they won't go single file, preventing anyone from overtaking.

Is it really too much to ask that they ride single file for a while to let others pass?

But single file would increase the length of the overtake by double or more.... PLUS you should give cyclists as much room as a car anyway!!!

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Highwaycode/DG_070314



Cyclists riding in tandem may seem annoying at time but it's actually the best thing they can do!

Bongles

Lum wrote: »

in general things would go a lot better if every road user tried to look at things from the perspective of other road users, both small and large.

Eggszackerly

martinthebandit

Strange isn't it, if you ride a bike fitted with an engine then if you have an accident it usually seems to be the motorcyclists fault.

But if you ride a bike without an engine then it usually seems to be someone else's fault.

Its a funny old world

Lum

Strider590 wrote: »

But single file would increase the length of the overtake by double or more.... PLUS you should give cyclists as much room as a car anyway!!!

To obey that rule when overtaking a pair of side by side cyclists, that car would need to have it's offside wheels in the gutter!

esuhl

jase1 wrote: »

Cyclists can be a flaming menace. I always try to accommodate them as best I can and never overtake dangerously but I can see how some of their antics can inflame some drivers.

On a few occasions now for example there have been riders on tight, windy A-roads riding 2 or even 3 adjacent. Cue queue of traffic two miles long and they won't go single file, preventing anyone from overtaking.

Is it really too much to ask that they ride single file for a while to let others pass?

Car drivers can be a flaming menace. I always try to accommodate them as best I can and never cycle dangerously but I can see how some of their antics can inflame other road users.

On a few occasions now for example there have been drivers on narrow A-roads overtaking with less than 10cm between my bike and the car. Cue twitchy, erratic driving and "panic braking" when there are vehicles coming the other way and they are concentrating hard on using every spare millimetre of space as they recklessly try to squeeze between a bike and oncoming traffic. The last person I noticed doing this was a taxi driver - as a professional driver he should know better and ought to have been banned from driving for life.

Is it really too much to ask that they avoid such monumentally stupid and dangerous manoeuvres and wait until there a safe space in which to overtake?

Lum

I think everyone would agree that taxi drivers are often idiots to be fair.

They have no additional driver training over Joe Bloggs who does a 15 minute commute twice a day, yet they're on the road for a long period of time and in a situation where the faster you drop someone off the quicker you can get another fare and make more money.

This isn't an excuse or a defence, just an attempt to explain their behaviour. I like to give them a wide berth where possible.

jase1

The above postrelies on my statement that I accommodate cyclists being a lie. It is not.

It's just that there are occasionally times when it's safe to get past them on the right hand lane, but by taking up the whole lane they're effectively forcing what Lum alludes to; namely the rider on the right is demanding even more space to be given. This can prevent cars from passing.

A bit of give and take is all I'm asking for. You can get past a tractor in a small amount of space precisely because you don't need the space to the left of the car. By taking that space away in order to be able to talk to one another the cyclists are causing rolling road-blocks.

I never overtake unsafely, but selfish actions are not the exclusive domain of the faster motorist and never have been.