OT - unbelievable

When you become president ... please add bus lanes to the list.

|| Its about time cycle lanes were made compulsory Manchester Airport || spent millions on them and the tossers still ride on the road. || Derek

And round here too. The council has spent hundres of thousands of ratepayers' money on building cycle lanes alongside the busiest roads, and still some buggers use the road and hold up the traffic. I can't see why - the cycle lanes are ten foot wide, new surfaces, no obstructions, very inviting. Perhaps they are just being arsey and making a point "I have as much right to use the road as you do". Well, the day you pay £195 a year in road tax you do pal. And still we sit in a queue behind an artic that's waiting for a clear stretch to overtake the cyclist doing 10mph.

||| Not that I care much anymore as we're leaving the ||| country for good in a few weeks! Yippeee! ||| ||| Matt || || You lucky bugger - if I thought it would work I would set up in || France at the drop of a hat.

And me. Tell you what - you sell them the Landy bits and I'll teach them the English to order them in. Howzat?

Then pull over and bow down to HGV drivers who obviously have a much greater "right" to use the road because they pay so much VED.

The day cyclists cause as much damage, noise, pollution, deaths, injuries and congestion as motorists is the day they pay £195 in VED.

Most cyclists are tax-paying motorists too (such as myself - one bicycle, two motorbikes, one Land Rover and a classic car) and the upkeep of roads is paid for by those taxes. VED is a premium on top of taxes for the privilege of driving a motorised vehicle on the public highway.

I ride my motorbike to work and every day I am held up (only slightly, I can usually ride down the side of the traffic queues) by cars with just one person inside and all going to the same place at the same time. One person wrote into the local newspaper because they had driven from their house on one side of town to a shop on the other side and back and it took over an hour. They then walked the same route and it took 40 minutes. They tried to blame the traffic problem on the town council but failed to realise that they were part of the problem even though they could have walked, saved 20 minutes, got some exercise and saved on fuel.

Perhaps motorists should start looking at themselves as being the cause of congestion rather than grasping at straws and blaming cyclists who are obviously bastards intent on using the road for which the poor motorist has paid for.

HGVs kick the crap out of the roads, which is why they pay so much.

: Perhaps motorists should start looking at themselves as being the cause of : congestion rather than grasping at straws and blaming cyclists who are : obviously bastards intent on using the road for which the poor motorist has : paid for.

er, did someone forget his cynical pill this morning?

The OP on this was was about a cyclist, jumping a red light, getting caught by plod, fined, arguing in court that he shouldn't have been fined, and getting a larger fine and costs.

Me no see anywhere that there is anyone other than a cyclist to blame there - or am i missing something?

Si

Sounds very similar to our household - except we have more bicycles than you can shake a stick at.

if you say so - I reckon it barely covers the cost of collection.

That argument is an extension of the call against the 'need' for a 4x4.

The issue here is with the fixed costs of owning a vehicle - personally I'd be happy to maintain a fleet of different vehicles, each suited to its own set of tasks. It ain't gonna happen though - is it.

Of course that works if the item in question fits snugly in your pocket and the real argumement is about the destruction of the hight street. There is no Butcher, Green Grocer or Fishmonger within walking distance of where I live in a fairly anonymous suburb. However, if I want to buy a new house or a 2nd hand jacket, then I'm spoilt for choice.

heh - I know where that rant comes from - most folk have experience of many different views of our road network, driver, rider, pedestrian. You know as well as I do there are arsoles and they ain't gonna change just because they're using a different form of transport.

I try to treat each one on their merits (a bit like posts on usenet), remebering that everyone has a bad day occasionally.

Everyone has a bad driver/cyclist/pedestrian story.

:-)

It's the comment about how cyclists having no right to use the road because they don't pay £xxx.xx amount each year in VED that got me slightly miffed.

But I wasn't replying to the OP.

For the original post, yes. Cyclists who don't follow the rules of the road are bringing the whole sport/pastime into disrepute and should not be allowed to get away with it. I've had disagreements with several pavement riders so the original post made me chuckle.

That's not the point I was making.

Bicycles do bugger all damage as well as producing no more pollution than a pedestrian so they shouldn't have to pay any VED yet some people seem to think because cyclists don't pay VED that they somehow have no right to use the roads.

If the amount of VED a person pays gives them more rights to use the road then by that reasoning it's the HGV drivers who practically own the roads and all other road users should give way to them.

I'll let you have that, but they MUST be insured given the idiocy i see from some of them.

That's the current status quo isn't it? ;-)

Sounds like my daughter :-))

However, no VED then no roads and considering the fragility of most bikes they could not then be used. Either go back to horses ( good for roses) or mountain bikes.

I think the point to make is that as we are ALL road users we should all drive with a little care and attention, bikes included. In the end bikes do not pay for tarmac upkeep and generally are not insured.

|| It's the comment about how cyclists having no right to use the road || because they don't pay £xxx.xx amount each year in VED that got me || slightly miffed.

OK, let me make this a little clearer. I drive and I cycle (there was a time when a bike was my only means of transport, on a daily commute of 32 miles across hilly country). I like cycling. It's healthy, it's green, it's cheap, and we all should do more of it. My comment about the cyclist's non-payment of VED was a bit tongue-in-cheek.

However, our County Council decided a year or two ago that very few people cycled to work. They reckoned that the reason was that there weren't any cycle paths, and potential cyclists were put off by the busy roads in the morning rush hour. So they spent, and continue to spend, hundreds of thousands of pounds (of other people's money) on a network of cycle tracks alongside the main routes. Now if the cyclists said "brilliant, just what we have been campaigning for, loads of money spent on a cycling infrastructure, lets use it and make it a success", I would be delighted. As it is, very few people use them (because Pembrokeshire is hilly and it rains a lot, things which seem to have escaped our masters in County Hall), and for every cyclist I see on a cycle path, I see at least one still using the road. I just can't understand why (better surface, gradients evened out, junctions with cycle priority, no cars, safer), unless they are the kind of wazzocks I got to know when I was involved with cycle campaigning groups many years ago, who despised cycle-paths as a kind of segregation, and insisted on their RIGHT to use the roads and get in the way of evil car drivers. Just to make a point.

So if I sit and look at an empty cycle path, paid for with my money, while I'm waiting in a queue behind a cyclist who insists on his "right" to use the main road, I too can feel slightly miffed.

This was actually in our local paper yesterday (yes - I'm sorry to say I live in Bristol!) On the 'comment' page the guy wrote pretty much exactly what has been said in here and went on about what in idiot the cyclist was, and that it is about time cyclists started being prosecuted for ignoring the rules of the road.

Matt

On or around 14 Jul 2006 07:24:13 -0700, "Dave P" enlightened us thusly:

c*ut. You ride on the road, you obey the rules same as the rest of us, and running red lights is almost always dangerous. I suppose he'd still be of the same view if his thoughtless action had caused an accident wherein others, not he, got hurt.

or worse yet, a motorbike.

Amazing thread.

There's a similar, but opposite thread flaming 4wd drivers in a bike forum I belong to, I'd cross post but I like you guys too much to start a nuclear flame war.

Let's face it, the *average* cyclist is as law abiding as the *average* motorist. None of us has never made a mistake.

Get over it!

Karen, who drives a car, drives a Land Rover, and has two treadlies too. AND wears Lycra (tm) I do as many kms in the motors as I do on the bikes per week.

On or around Fri, 14 Jul 2006 16:56:37 +0100, "William Tasso" enlightened us thusly:

properly done, they work quite well. properly, they work in concert to allow the main traffic flow to proceed across the rdbt in whichever direction it does, (or 2 flows in more than 1 direction) while stopping it every now and then to let the minor flow traffic have a chance.

the biggest weakness of roundabouts is that they fail quite quickly if there's one heavily-trafficked path across them. All other inputs get swamped. The only solution is lights to stop the heavy flow every now and then. Of course, in overall light traffic the lights can be switched off, and some of them are. It should be easy enough to combine this with sensors for waiting traffic and a decent programming setup to balance the needs of the traffic flows.

Having recently done quite a bit of big-roundabout stuff on motorway junctions and the like, when there's significant traffic, the ones with lights almost invariably work better.

Of course, mini roundabouts are the work of Stan and should be ignored where at all possible - the roundabout rules just don't work properly, on such a small device. Just use a normal junction, and if the traffic doesn't flow right, put lights on it.

On or around Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:02:19 +0100, PDannyD enlightened us thusly:

while I agree in general, I also take Richard's point: if there's a good, usable cycle path, f*cking well ride on it. in our area we have narrow, bendy main roads and the drivers of artics are well aware for the most part of the problems and dangers of passing bicycles. Thus you get a build-up of traffic at 5mph up a hill behind a bicycle. Now if the cyclist has no option but to use the road, then I have no complaint at all. But if there's a good cycle path, then the best thing for all concerned is for the cyclists to use it, and to deliberately eschew it simply to make a point is, in my view, pathetic.

And yes, I'm well aware that SOME cycle paths are not good and usable, and if it's clearly more difficult to ride on the path than on the road, then I would still support the cyclist in riding on the road.

There's also the point from the highway code about drivers of large or slow vehicles pulling in where possible to allow faster traffic to proceed, and I reckon most cyclists could heed that, too.

more tolerance and less impatience and less downright orneryness will make the roads more bearable for all of us. As example the 2 miles or so of 5-10 mph traffic on the south side of the roundabout on the A417 last evening where it goes from 2 lanes down to 1. I sat in the outer lane (since that's where I arrived at the back of the queue) and pootled steadily along at 5-10 mph, and only actually came to a standstill about 3 times. At intervals there was a gap in front of me of as much as 50 yards, and sure enough on 4 occasions sometosser from the other lane jumped into it, then had to stop, then didn't make any better progress. 2 of them switched back to the inner lane and still made no better progress.