Dangerous/stupid driving near cyclists

Lum

Here, I made a crappy photoshop to illustrate the point.

Strider590

LMAO!!

If you applied the rule that way to a car, you'd need a 3rd lane

I think what it's saying is that your road position should be the same as for overtaking a car.....

Lum

I always took the rule "give them as much space as you'd give a car" to mean you give them that additional space because a cyclist is more likely to wobble or fall over than a car which could get very nasty if you're close alongside.

Or to put it more graphically, if a cyclist falls over I don't want their head under my rear wheel, even if it is their fault.

I made that image to illustrate the point that when they ride two abreast like that, it's impossible to give a good safe gap when overtaking, so you either cause risky overtakes or a rolling roadblock.

Strider590

Well im not sure how the HWC intended it to be, but I know one thing.....

Overtaking a line of 10 cyclists would be far more risky than overtaking 5, it's not as if you can just pull back in if a car comes the other way (which is what most people would do), squashing 1 or 2 cyclists in the process.

Lum

I find that once you get 4 or more cyclists in the same place they tend to ignore the rules anyway and ride in a massive blob shaped swarm that you have little hope of passing safely.

I was referring specifically to the case of two cyclists.

Limey

I experienced a classic Gosport cyclist manoeuver on the way back from lunch today.

2 lane one way road, I'm in the right hand lane cyclist ahead in the left hand lane. The road splits ahead one lane goes left, t'other right. Said cyclist looks over his shoulder (one plus point to him) and moves into the centre (no signals though minus 1 point), goodo thinks I he's going right like me. But no, said cyclist swings accross my lane and up onto the pavement. If I hadn't been watching Mr Numpty and applied my brakes I'd now be explaining to the local Police why I have a cyclist decorating my truck. Minus 100 points to him. :rotfl:

To be fair there are just as many unobservant and incompetent drivers and moped riders round here, it's just that such behaviour on the road by cylists is more likely to end in their own demise as has been mentioned.

As always treat everyone else on the road & pavements like they're complete and utter morons and you won't be suprised when they are.:D

thelawnet

Lum wrote: »

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.

I know the stretch of road very well but even if you didn't it was clearly never a good spot to overtake. The truck got past at the next roundabout.

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.

But accelerating past a bike at probably over 40mph only to come to a stop at a roundabout 1/2 a mile ahead is not going to save any fuel at all.

Besides which I am not convinced at all that the fuel consumption is going to be significantly higher at 25mph than 40mph, certainly not any amount worth caring about. What do you suppose the optimum speed is for fuel consumption?

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.

Well I was merely an onlooker. I was held up by the bicycle for a short time, but I noted my speed was actually quite reasonable for the road.

Sometimes people are just @rseholes - I was just standing on the side of the road now, mini-roundabout Royal Mail mini-van entering, a car on his left, she doesn't give way, he beeps his horn and she responded by effing and blinding at him (to which he reciprocated by calling her a f***ing b*tch).

thelawnet

Lum wrote: »

Here, I made a crappy photoshop to illustrate the point.

I'm not quite sure what they mean here.

Either: imagine the bike in front of you was as wide as a car - where would you overtake.

OR
leave as much distance between your left wheel and the bike as you would between your left wheel and the right wheel of a car.


Quite clearly, in spite of protestations to the contrary, if cyclists are riding two abreast it's going to be significantly easier to overtake them than it would be a tractor or car. Do two adjacent cyclists take up more room than a car? No.

Lum

Missed the bit about the roundabout, but I guess they were working on the possibility that the roundabout might be clear and thus they wouldn't have to stop and would remain ahead of the cyclist.

Like I said, I wasn't there and have never seen the road, however.

Optimum speed for fuel consumption is generally between 40 and 60 depending on the vehicle, and given that we're talking about vehicles that get around 8mpg on a good smooth constant speed run, I'm sure that the cost of being stuck behind a cyclist is significant.

spadoosh

Please inform your observations to the 2 cyclists (seemed fairly profesional, all the gear though no idea!!) I sat behind for 20 minutes because they felt the need to have a discussion in the middle of the road during rush hour (side by side making it impossible for anyone to pass)..... not cool!