CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
I think of myself as a man of the world who is rarely surprised by the actions of other road users.
However, I was taken aback by a pair of riders I passed on the way home the other day. An open invite for a lorry or bus driver to crush them lifeless...
Fairly topical since the ASA just issued a humiliating back down on their ruling about gutter cycling.
All cyclists must try to be more 'assertive' in their road positioning, with due regard to the Highway Code; otherwise we will always get squidged and squeezed into oblivion! Ask any 'road kill', if you can get an answer out of it?
Noticed a lot more gutter cycling too with uptick in summer cycling but I don't think it is realistic for many to cycle in a more assertive manner.
I'm big on taking the lane but I cycle a lot of miles every week and am a 6ft male in the prime of life.
Try the 8 to 80 thought experiment. Would you expect your daughter or Granny to take the lane on a 60mph A-road at rush hour?
Gutter cycling and the need to Take The Lane are both symptoms of lack of proper cycling provision.
The source of the danger is the politicians not the cyclists or even car drivers!
I must admit that I only started cycling recently and only have a few miles under my belt. I am guilty a bit of the gutter crawling but I hope that as I get more confident on the road then I will improve. I do watch other cyclists but it's hard to know what's a bad example (for a newbie anyway!)
@holisticglint - I quite agree. There is an awkward dichotomy that exists for cycling campaigning which is that we want better infrastructure which is about separating bikes from motor vehicles and facilitating active travel for Grannies and Children. At the same time given the existing infrastructure, cyclists are trained and encouraged to be assertive (and often vehicular) cyclists, and car drivers should be educated in good cycling practice.
There's no middle ground really - you have one or the other - unfortunately I think this sort of cycling comes about by expecting the former, and not being trained in the latter.
A practical take on road position in this situation is that if you take the lane at that point not only are you preventing bad overtakes, but if some nutter decides he must get in front and squeeze past then you have some space at the left to escape to.
"The source of the danger is the politicians not the cyclists or even car drivers!"
I think there is too much truth in that!
I'm a vehicular cyclist of the Franklin school through and through, but I accept there's no sensible future in this, and segregated dutch style is the way ahead.
If only our politicians actually understood the issues.
Absolutely lethal positioning with the squinty rail bridge coming up IMO - while I'll defend any cyclist's right to be on the road, canal would surely be a safer option if that underassertive?
I'm surprised the MGIF antics of the #35 bus driver at the start of the video haven't elicited some comment - worthy of re-education surely? (I'm undecided if I mean in the Soviet sense or not)
Saw a fair bit of this sort of riding in London recently, exclusively on Boris Bikes and (it seemed to me) predominantly tourists. Scared the hell out of me.
Shows the need for infrastructure along side the hire bikes. Glasgow take note...
I'm surprised the MGIF antics of the #35 bus driver at the start of the video haven't elicited some comment
I did think it was slightly annoying. He gave me an apologetic wave out of the window as I pull around him (not sure if this is clear from the video), so meh.
From Dave's blog: "I’d rather have a shouting match with a moron every six months than be six feet under."
It seems to be every other day with me at the moment. I even got beeped at for riding slightly to the right of the middle of the cycle lane yesterday! The idiot van driver wanted to drive in my lane. When I told him where to go and informed him of my presence in a cycle lane, he overtook, pulled over in front of me and told me I was "walking the line" (ie. about to get beaten up if I crossed it). I repeated my advice about where he could go with the aid of an overused Anglo-Saxon phrase, and rode on.
Oh and then there was the taxi driver the other day who was outraged I was holding him up by taking the lane and signalling to turn right. After beeping and cursing at me, he attempted to squeeze past on my left. I asked him what the problem was. Where was I supposed to go? Into the oncoming traffic lane perhaps?
There are some real morons on the road, and no mistake!
As I waited at the Jocks Lodge lights this morning. I observed a slow moving cyclist come up Smokey Brae and into Willowbrae. Willowbrae is very narrow there and the cyclist was hogging the gutter to the extent she went down and up a drain indentation. Sure enough a car squeezed through - very close indeed. I think there are rails there - making it even more dangerous.
Any doubt? Take primary!
Agree with Holisticglint. I think it is very easy to condemn other cyclists when you yourself are fast and confident rider. Getting beeped and shouted at is the sort of thing that is likely to put some people off cycling for life, far more so than close passes which can at least be taken as ignorance rather than direct aggression.
My daily necessary hard primary is the approach to the right turn into Napier Road from Colinton Road. The other week a chap, who'd had to slow down a little for <25m, voiced the opinion that I was taking up too much space.
The thing that tickled my funny bone was that he did this as he drove past(carefully and at appropriate speed, credit where due) on my left side as I waited by the centre line for the oncoming traffic to clear. A move he'd have been entirely unable to do had I been in a motor vehicle.
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