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.
Just as I was approaching the Balgreen roundabout...
He leaned out his window and yelled: "Where did you get that rear light? It's great!"
I was a proud wee hamster, since I'd only got it yesterday; Smart 1/2 watt, with the 35lux battery-gobbler up front. I wonder what he'd have said if I had something even beefier.
Sounds like our own splitshift? hard to believe there's another keen cyclist lorry driver? Would be nice though...
"hard to believe there's another keen cyclist lorry driver?"
Don't see why - any professional driver knows cycling makes senses!
Quite a few LB drivers cycle to work.
Well there's at least one other - Smudge. :-)
I also have one of these on the back of my tool pouch under my seat. They are very bright!
@smudge @splitshift @Min
This is _such_ a great bunch of people :)
@Min, Hmmm, I'm not sure if I count as an actual "driver" any more as I only drive heavies occasionally! ;-)
@SRD, awww shucks.
I think he was a Londoner and he did indeed say he was a cyclist.
I had a similar comment last week out on a run. Guy pulled up at the lights and said something that I couldn't here so I went over expecting some abuse and he actually saying my lights were great, you could really see them. Nice.
My rear set up is a combination of a Light and Motion Vis 180 that does a strange, painfully bright, pulsing thing and a small flashing three LED bog standard one.
I know some of them are nutters but I'm sure most drivers want to see and avoid cyclists. Nice that some appreciate it when they can.
"I know some of them are nutters but I'm sure most drivers want to see and avoid cyclists. Nice that some appreciate it when they can. "
Exactly.
This is why I use my Dinotte rear light in day light...
But Kim.... ;)
I'm sure I've seen you argue against hi-viz on the basis that drivers only then look out for hi-viz. Surely if you run with a lit rear light all the time then drivers are going to be looking out only for lit rear lights...
But anth...;)
You presume the drivers that endanger you look out... ;-)
But Smudge... ;)
Not me doing the presuming...
I've certainly read it somewhere that hi-viz becoming the norm for cyclists means that cyclists not wearing hi-viz aren't noticed. And I've definitely read arguments against a law making side-lights a legal requirement at all times on the basis that drivers will then only be looking out for lights.
"Surely if you run with a lit rear light all the time then drivers are going to be looking out only for lit rear lights..."
Your words not Kim's I think!
However joking aside, I think that "I was only looking for Hi-viz" or "I didn't see them because I expected hi-viz" can really be filed alongside the excuse of car drivers who caused crashes by pulling out in front of (motor)bikes and claimed that as it had twin headlamps they had "thought it was a car further away",* what the late J Wayne might have termed "Horsesh*t"!
Or a convenient excuse for an "otherwise law abiding motorist" to hide behind in court after committing an act of criminal stupidity/carelessness.
*Genuine excuse, allegedly resulting in all modern twin headlamp bikes only running one at a time. So if you have two lights on the front of your bicycle look out!
Anth I find the drivers look for red lights at 1m off the ground far more than the look out for hi-viz.
And I never "argue against hi-viz on the basis that drivers only then look out for hi-viz". I have always said the hi-viz is urban camouflage, it is a form of invisibility cape, and therefore ineffective, you are confusing me with someone else...
But Jackson Priest spotted me on the way home last week when I was wearing my freebie Spokes/LRT/BikeStation dayglo hi-viz tabard...
Looking for something specific and seeing/not seeing it/them is/are one/many thing(s); having your attention unavoidably grabbed by something (such as a Light & Motion Vis 180) is quite different. It's not generalising too much to say that if a car driver sees two white lights their brain (such as it may be) fills-in a car behind the two lights. A single static red or white light on a bike might be swamped by surrounding lights, or dismissed by the brain as specular reflections from the surfaces of existing readily-spottable vehicles. Even if drivers try and claim to have not been able to see them, most should be aware of what a cycle is and the general form they take. Reflectives which help to define a torso-shape above a relatively weak light (flashing or static) might help to flesh out the shape of the rider of the cycle, or at least suggest that an isolated light moving in the same direction at the same speed a few inches beneath isn't a reflection from a source somewhere else. Similarly large white circles beneath the torso-shape and between the front and rear lights might help the driver-brain to imagine 'wheels' somewere underneath, much as two yellow rectangles going up and down beside each other are hard to mistake for something other than pedals going up and down.
In the opposite form, it's not the first time I've gone to speak to a driver, and they've expected me to complain about their driving, when I'm just letting them know that one of their lights aren't working. The surprise from the drivers is quite nice.
wisnae me ! but a group of us drivers at work are trying to geta bike club sorted, theres already about 15 names, real hard core boys n gals, I think two have done lejog and many have frequently broke limbs quite spectacularly on two/one wheel !If your on a bike and youve got lights on, your doin well, its the stealth jobs that try and cut us up, at 40 mph , at dusk , in the rain that we shout uncomplimentary things at !
and then try to outstare us, with our beer guts, and bridies and two litre bottles of irn bru, with a fish supper on the lap and the mobile in our left hand( we all drive automatics for that very reason ! )while reading a H to Z ! The first ten pages were used to clear the mirrors last week !
10 4 good buddies !
ahh a good ole boy,
ten on the floor I bet,
keep the sunny side up, the greasy side down, wheels between the ditches and yer ass inside yer britches, catch you on the flipside, 10 10 until... etc etc ;-))
you been drinking toilet duck ? ive no idea what all that means ...........
gear jammin !
Sure you don't... lol
Didn't know why the name "gear jammer" was used until a few years ago, on the day my nice modern wagon went in for maint and they gave me a proper old school eight legger with a non-synchro box for half a week :-o
I know now!
Mind you, the eaton twin splitter on the EC10 is almost as bad, the clutch is purely decorative as soon as you get it moving!
I was once given a very old Scania 23Tonne 6 wheel flatbed. They said the gearbox had worn out (it had done that many miles) and had a chinese gearbox... Turned out the gears were in reverse, so 8th was in 1st and 1st in 8th. Oh and it was a split box too. Ignore the split when empty but when loaded took and age to get through those gears.
@smudge..... would that old school 8 legger happen to be black and white ? I knew a few guys used to drive for , M+D Russel, i think, tippers, they had one that was used as a stand in......everyone tried to kill it !
Its when you stall an auto now that embarresment kicks in ! Also got a few renualts with volvo auto boxes, you can get them to stick in drive, wont start , wont tow, great !
TBH I can't remember, I was agency driving and doing a couple of weeks multi-dropping building supplies/scaffolding etc. It was an old Leyland, really my main memory is of missing a gear while accelerating up a hill then trying to get a gear (ANY GEAR lol) on this unfamiliar museum piece while someones granny drove right up to my rear end while presumably wondering why the big lorry was slowing down... :-o
Interesting times lol
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