My car has a pseudo electric handbrake. Basically if you keep the foot brake depressed the brake remains on for about 4 or 5 seconds after you release the brake (unless you then press the accelerator). Does make hill starts easy, but if I'm going to be stopped any time I put the handbrake on (and then come out of gear, it switches off the engine on its auto stop/start thing, which probably saves a miniscule amount of fuel, but hey).
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Today's rubbish driving...
(11330 posts)- Started 13 years ago by Stepdoh
- Latest reply from fergus
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Posted 11 years ago #
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I notice a lot of cars on fairly significant slopes being held at the lights on the clutch rather than the handbrake.
Their loss I suppoe as they'll just end up needing replaced more often will they not?
Posted 11 years ago # -
I do like the newer cars with the stop-start engine thingy. It gives me a few seconds head start at the traffic lights (or at leasts stops the BMWs* from roaring away on amber)
*Other cars are badly driven.
Posted 11 years ago # -
That's very true. It does take a second to fire the engine up again - and that does go through my head when I hear a car pull up behind then the engine shuts off.
@kappers, exactly!
Posted 11 years ago # -
Is it bad for the clutch to hold the car on it at traffic lights?
(Sorry if this is a Really Stupid Question, but I genuinely don't know.)
Posted 11 years ago # -
Bad for your bank balance.
Posted 11 years ago # -
@chdot why?
Posted 11 years ago # -
Wears out quicker and pads have to be replaced, also must use more fuel if you're 'balancing' accelerator and clutch.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Talking to a cabbie in York at the weekend he said that basically start stop is useless for most people making short/journeys cost wise, however it does add up for him driving around york for 8+ hours. Said that he was saving around £15-20 a week. This adds up over a year to almost a grand in the grand scheme of things.
Posted 11 years ago # -
You can wear the clutch plates. New clutch = lots of cash. Depends on how good someone's clutch control is to an extent, but essentially you've got parts rubbing together constantly that shouldn't be rubbing together constantly.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I was always told that at lights I should put clutch to the floor, leave the car in first gear, and apply the handbrake. Quicker / smoother away from lights, car doesn't roll if rear-ended plus the foot brake is a brighter light in the eyes of drivers behind you so more courteous to use the handbrake
Posted 11 years ago # -
Woohoo, a real, proper reason to do what I do. My boyfriend is of course wonderful, but he is always right about driving and sometimes I don't agree with him...
Posted 11 years ago # -
This morning, I had my invisible cloak on.
Despite me stopping, the elderly driver did not apologise. And aye, it was a bit wet, hence the rain drops on the lens.
Posted 11 years ago # -
wow mkns that could have been pretty nasty! Glad you were switched on and avoided the bump. Was the lack of swearing for the benefit of the camera or are you just a nicer person than me? ;-)
Posted 11 years ago # -
I surprised myself with the lack of swearing. I think I had anticipated him doing this so far in advance that I wasn't actually as scared as I might ordinarily have been.
I have another example of truly terrible driving on camera from this morning, which I'll post when I get home. The cam is coming in useful this week, unfortunately.
Posted 11 years ago # -
mkns, what kind of camera do you have?
Posted 11 years ago # -
It's a Contour+. It's now replaced by the imaginatively named Contour+2, which bizarrely is cheaper despite being very slightly better:
http://global.contour.com/en/uk/cameras/contour+2/invt/1701&bklist=icat,4,shop,products,cameras
That video was taken on 720p. The camera goes up to 1080p, though.
Posted 11 years ago # -
What a day. The ride in this morning contained one of those ridiculous overtakes that just makes no sense, and then this evening I had 4 separate incidents which left me wondering whether I was going to make it home.
First, this morning. The following video is on a road that is *not* a one-way street, which you might think it is based on the driving of the car:
And yes, that's a cul-de-sac; she saved one whole second with that move.
Then tonight, I had a run-in with a bus, then a car, then a bike, then a dog. My entire commute took 29 minutes. I'll save you the video of the bike (who, without indicating, turned right while I was overtaking it) or the large dog (which ran straight into the side of my bike when its owner failed to control it), and instead show a bus which squeezed me out, and the car which honked at me as I had the audacity to think I should be able to overtake said bus first, since I was in front of the car:
Note how the car which overtakes me deliberately gives me absolutely no room between it and the bus. The driver gave me an evil stare while overtaking me as if to say "how dare you think you can overtake someone before me". Also note how early I started to move out to overtake the bus - it's not as if I wasn't making my intentions clear early enough.
For those of you interested, yes I did catch her at the next junction and sailed past her with ease. Victory! And no swearing again!
Posted 11 years ago # -
@fimm - just in case you wonder what a Contour+ looks like when it's attached to a bicycle on the front fork:
That's where it is for all the above videos. Hence why you can see the wheel in the shot, but I like it like that. I also look less like a tit than when it is on my helmet, as I previously used it.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Thank you.
Posted 11 years ago # -
(Copy of e-mail sent to Keith Brown MSP, by my wife prompted by some rubbish driving this morning)
Dear Mr Brown
I read with interest the article on the BBC website re the "Nice Way Code". Two stories for you from my cycle commute into work this morning.
1. Coming along Gilmore Place in Edinburgh where you can either turn left or right (no straight on). Quite often there is at least one vehicle parked in the bike lane here and there is always cars parked outside of the shops. I checked behind me, indicated and moved out so that I can make the right hand turn. I'm passed by a motorist who shouts that I hadn't indicated. I spoke to him at the traffic lights (on red) to advise that I had indeed indicated. He then said "you were in the middle of the road". Try as I might to advise that I was doing the right hand turn just like him and had to move out a little earlier than I ideally would like because of parked cars, fell on deaf ears. I won't repeat in this email what I was called.
2. A couple of minutes after incident (1) above cycling along Melville Drive in the bike lane. A long vehicle (carrying pallets of something) passed me and then started to manoeuvre into the bike lane as there was a car stopped in the road waiting to do a right hand turn. Luckily I realised what was about to happen and started to slow down at the same time as shouting to the driver. At the next set of traffic lights (again on red) words with the driver of this vehicle.
These two incidents within a 5/10 minute time period are not isolated in any way. I wish you well with The Nice Way Code but don't believe that it will work. Better policing of bike lanes to stop cars parking in them and education for motorists has to be the way forward.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Coming past the Water of Leith visitor centre, I was impressed by the amount of space the Audi behind was giving me. Was about to give him a friendly thank you wave when I realised the driver had his phone in his hand! So I made "PHONE!" gestures at him instead... and then felt a bit guitly because thinking about it afterwards, I think he might have been using his phone as a dictaphone, and I don't think that is illegal.
Posted 11 years ago # -
This was actually yesterday as I was walking to work. Biiiig tipper truck making a right turn (I took a note of the company in my phone). Looked like he was taking car as he was having to turn around an island in the iddle oif the road into which he was turning, and there were parked cars ahead. Then noticed he had a phone held to his left ear.
And then... The turn proving difficult he.... Took both hands off the wheel to transfer the phone to his right hand and ear so that his left hand was free to change down a gear.
Still got to send the company a wee email about that.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Forgot about the one from this morning. I was at Tollcross taking pics of cyclists. Group of five setting off from the lights coming from the Meadows. Van coming down from Lauriston completely blows its lights and almost takes out the first three cyclists off the line (and I know they didn't go on red because one of the cyclists is a colleague who I spoke to about it after getting into the office).
Posted 11 years ago # -
@fimm - using any hand held device is illegal and is covered by law, so yes what he was doing is illegal. One of our valuers was caught using a dictaphone on the way back from a property inspection and penalised.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I had one in Prestonpans this morning/lunchtime (heading east towards Port Seton).
I pulled towards the centre of the lane due to parked cars.
A guy in a green estate decided to pass me (started accelerating *after* I'd moved right), almost crashed into a white convertible coming the other direction, then swerved in front of me to avoid that collision.
As he sped away (being sworn at by the other driver). I wondered where he was going in such a rush...
... only to see him pull into the Co-op car park 80m down the road.
80m. That was it. That's the maximum distance I could have held him up for had he waited.
But, no, he clearly thought almost taking out a cyclist and having a head on collision with a car was a fair price to pay to save those precious seconds.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Yesterday, coming through Inveresk going around 20 mph a car came up behind me and as we turned down the hill past the school tried to overtake. It's that old chestnut of course; if someone tries to overtake you should let them past according to the Highway Code. But by the time he and I realised that he wasn't going to make it past in time to avoid the oncoming car, he was alongside and I didn't want us both to brake at the same rate and risk a side-swipe. So he braked hard and pulled back in behind me. And all that to join a queue at the lights at the bottom of the hill.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Clearly a lot of people, when driving a car, only focus on their immediate next move. So they see a bike going slower than they are, they want to overtake, of course. It's only they've done that that they focus on their next move (say, braking in order to turn left).
Given how commonplace this is, I assume its something we all do without thinking. So asking people to be change their behaviour isn't much use, if they're just on autopilot.
That's why I'd rather have infrastructure designed to cope with how people behave.
Posted 11 years ago # -
@deckard112 I stand corrected. Thank you for that.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Two morons decided to pass within inches of me, within a minute of one another. Not so much rubbish but really, really annoying. The first might have been a punishment pass, the second I think was just numptyness (and a reminder to me to take a wider line at the spot where it happened).
Now I need to find the good driving thread...
Posted 11 years ago #
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