Coming home last night in a taxi down Calder Road, in rush hour conditions that Cyclestreets would describe as hostile. In conversation with the driver who said he would never cycle in those conditions (I tend to agree!). I said that the key was confidence,
At that moment we spotted up ahead a chap on a bike who was heading in to town on a well-lit bike, highly reflective and doing everything by the book. He took the middle of the bus lane, he took the middle of the roundabouts and generally (while going hell for leather) showed us how to cycle confidently in really unpleasant conditions.
My taxi got stuck behind him on the greenway: we couldn't overtake because of all the traffic beside us and he quite rightly wasn't letting us past, so trundled along at his 20mph or so. I asked the driver what he thought of this.
Here's the point of this post. The taxi driver said two really interesting things. Firstly that he didn't mind bikes at all so long as they were decisive and confident so he could tell what they were doing, and secondly that what he disliked most was when they jinked through the traffic so he didn't know where they were and appeared on his left and then his right and so on.
It was interesting hearing his point of view, as it's not normally featured here...
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