bad cyclist giving us a rotten rep.

[davehann]

i was on my morning commute in cardiff this morning. fair paced across Cardiff Bridge from Wood Steet to Tudor Street, when another cyclist pulled accross the road (at a crossing in front of me).

'RED LIGHT!' i exclaimed as i breaked hard.

'*uck you' he called after me as i sailed past his back wheel.

Oh i do wish i had had the patientce to be the better man and not chuck a bigger insult back;
but i did overcome the urge to chase him down and beat him.

was i wrong?

 

[fossyant]

Nope! Just a plonker who doesn't care - like so many people these days.

 

[400bhp]

It's so tempting to push one of these wooden tops over as you inevitably pass them at a later point.

 

[summerdays]

I seemed to have seen more than my fair share of stupid cyclists this week including those going through red lights ... but also one (not very skilful) who was trying to hold a bottle of juice in his hand and to help him, he was trying to wedge it between the grip and the brake lever! and another one whose skill far exceeded that one who was cycling along with a bottle in one hand and a phone to his ear in the other disappearing into the distance without a worry.

 

[downfader]

I think the answer is to ride right at their back wheel on a s*** bike of your own and take them down.












God no, I'm just kidding.

 

[Dan B]

Bad cyclist; check. Giving us a rotten rep? No. We are not responsible for bad cyclists any more than car drivers in general are responsible for, say, the 1.2 million people who drive uninsured. This kind of stereotyping should not be accepted

 

[delport]

If this type of attitude continues in Britain without pause for the next 20 years i wouldn't like to see how it will turn out.
What you are describing happens every where now in the uk.In every town and City.
Personally i quickly weigh up situations, i tend not to have a go at people that annoy me on the road as there is a 50% chance you are just going to get abuse back, or violence, it's almost become the normal way to behave now, it's so common.

I'm getting on now at 45 years of age,what i see nowadays was more of a rarity in the 70s, we still had huge problems back then, but there were was actually a better attitude in general.
The ME generation have taken over now
there is a saying "to know the price of everything,but the value of nothing".

It hasn't just turned this way over night, it has been gradual.

p.s:i don't read the sun or the daily mail.

 

[John the Monkey]

Eh, I've been put at risk by a fellow cyclist precisely once, oddly, that was a red light jumper too.

Car drivers do things that worry me every day, and things that put me in serious danger around once a week. (Or that would do, if I wasn't doing their thinking for them).

I find it hard to get angry at crappy cyclists, personally.

As for giving us a bad reputation, get used to the fact that it's ok for drivers not to like you in the UK, and consequently, quite a few don't, because they're idiots, largely. If every bad cyclist started riding according to the Highway Code & Bikeability TOMORROW, those drivers would still be idiots, and would just find another post hoc rationalisation (not using cycle paths, going too slow, you name it) for their dislike of us.

 

[asterix]

The only RLJ'er I have remonstrated with (a long, long time ago) said he did it because of the way car drivers treated him and it was less hassle if he had a head start. He was a York utility cyclist of the old school, probably never owned a car. We agreed to disagree (about rlj-ing, not car drivers!)

 

[Adasta]

I'm getting on now at 45 years of age,what i see nowadays was more of a rarity in the 70s, we still had huge problems back then, but there were was actually a better attitude in general.
The ME generation have taken over now
there is a saying "to know the price of everything,but the value of nothing".

It hasn't just turned this way over night, it has been gradual.

The fault of your generation and its lackadaisical parenting skills.

 

[delport]

The fault of your generation and its lackadaisical parenting skills.

Or the fault of people simply wanting more and more of everything?

Life was fairly simple in the past, you made do with what you had, many people would never own a house, they paid a cheap rent and got on with it.
Nights out down the pub, jobs for life,plenty of skills and trades available,plenty of uk businesses.One parent working, the other bringing up the children.Neighbours knew each other, respect was common,people even said hello in the street.

We have moved on since those days, money has taken over in a big way.
There was a violent assault on a cyclist in Gosport not that long ago, i don't know if the person survived or not, but it fits in with what we are talking about.
The anger at times on our streets is obvious.

My generation, as you put it, is the thatcher generation, i left school to nothingness and obliteration in 1981, need i say any more?

 

[JonnyBlade]

Or the fault of people simply wanting more and more of everything?

Life was fairly simple in the past, you made do with what you had, many people would never own a house, they paid a cheap rent and got on with it.
Nights out down the pub, jobs for life,plenty of skills and trades available,plenty of uk businesses.One parent working, the other bringing up the children.Neighbours knew each other, respect was common,people even said hello in the street.

We have moved on since those days, money has taken over in a big way.
There was a violent assault on a cyclist in Gosport not that long ago, i don't know if the person survived or not, but it fits in with what we are talking about.
The anger at times on our streets is obvious.

My generation, as you put it, is the thatcher generation, i left school to nothingness and obliteration in 1981, need i say any more?

'D' do you notice the masses in Gosport that ride around with no helmet or more frequently in the dark without lights? I certainly do. And we're in one of the areas that has a big crime rate for bike theft!!!

Jonny

 

[mickle]

Or the fault of people simply wanting more and more of everything?

Life was fairly simple in the past, you made do with what you had, many people would never own a house, they paid a cheap rent and got on with it.
Nights out down the pub, jobs for life,plenty of skills and trades available,plenty of uk businesses.One parent working, the other bringing up the children.Neighbours knew each other, respect was common,people even said hello in the street.

We have moved on since those days, money has taken over in a big way.
There was a violent assault on a cyclist in Gosport not that long ago, i don't know if the person survived or not, but it fits in with what we are talking about.
The anger at times on our streets is obvious.

My generation, as you put it, is the thatcher generation, i left school to nothingness and obliteration in 1981, need i say any more?

Yes indeed, the days of leaded petrol rampant homophobia, racial intolerance, domestic violence and football hooliganism, don't we all miss them?

The days when they put two blades in a Stanley knife separated by a match to make a wound impossible to stitch up. That was the seventies that was and I remember them well..... Please don't pretend violence is a new phenomenon.

 

[moralcrusader]

Bad cyclists hack me off and WILL get verbals if they do anything that puts me at risk. Mainly due to my one any only accident on the roads being a stupid POB that pulled out across and RLJ'd a pedestrian crossing HERE, four feet in front of me. Naturally, I T-boned him, writing off my bike and my chin in the process. Bastard picked himself up and rode off leaving me in a pool of blood on the road.

As such, bad cycling makes me bloody angry and I have no qualms about telling people about it.

 

[Adasta]

Or the fault of people simply wanting more and more of everything?

Life was fairly simple in the past, you made do with what you had, many people would never own a house, they paid a cheap rent and got on with it.
Nights out down the pub, jobs for life,plenty of skills and trades available,plenty of uk businesses.

[...]

My generation, as you put it, is the thatcher generation, i left school to nothingness and obliteration in 1981, need i say any more?

You've contradicted your argument within one post! Loads of jobs but you left school to nothingness?

This avarice you speak of was surely instilled by your generation. Personally, I wouldn't blame all the baby-boomers and Generation Xers for it all but to say it's my generation's problem is ridiculous. No-one is denying problems exist now but your rose-tinted view of old Albion is fantasy.

These jobs for life you speak of - were they in the mining industry? Or perhaps the manufacturing sector? Or the IT industry, which laid off huge numbers of people when the rise of IBM, Apple and Microsoft suddenly made vast swathes of technology obsolete.

It's easy for you to sit there at 45, look at the youth and say "God, how feckless they are!" But who raised them? Whose values do they follow? When they see their family buy a new big screen telly because the rapidity of technological advance forces down prices to appeal to an ever-growing middle class, they are inadvertently told that this is possible for every one. Indeed, their parents tell them that via their actions. How many parents sit down with their children and explain to them the effects of a loan at 18% taken out over 5 years when you lack the capital to settle the debt? Back when you were young (or maybe if you were 55, say), maybe one person in your street owned a car, and he was probably educated or at least highly-skilled. That system fell by the wayside a long time ago. People avoided poverty in the past because they saw its effects. They knew they had to work to get away from it.

The world is a different place now than it was when you grew up and your generation had a part to play in that! My generation was not handed the same rules as yours; it was not shown the same way of life; it did not wake up to the same world.

I don't want to launch an ad hominem against you because I know you are not being aggressive; I would just like you to see things from my (our?) perspective...

[sorry for the thread derailment]