Closest overtake ever

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Cab

New Member
Location
Cambridge
Crackle said:
Try a reasoned argument. If you think Magnatom is doing it all right then why is he having so many encounters?

I have months like that too. Just seems to happen sometimes.
 
Pissed off, does not equate to steaming anger and retribution, nor do I see how you can pass comment on my attitude based on not a lot really.

I think I adequately explained why someone jumping in front of me would cheese me off, whether you're on a bike or in a car makes no odds. Here's my abiding unwritten rule of the road:- "Do not cause others to compensate for your actions". Apply that test to every incident and see if it passes.

My personal view, is that Magnatom's positioning after filtering is not conducive for a stress free life. I would do it differently as explained.

Spindrift, like I said 10 years out of city commuting so I acknowledge my experience may be out of date.
 
Cab said:
Then you disagree with what is normally the accepted practice that is, usually, taught to cyclists by instructors. You disagree with cyclecraft. Your perogative, but you're simply in error.

:biggrin: I knew you'd say that.

I daresay there are aspects I'd agree and disagree with if I did the course and read the book but experience would overule training in certain situations.

Talking of training, hands up if you don't cross your hands going around a corner in your car (actually I bet you don't)?
 

tdr1nka

Taking the biscuit
I cross myself before I head out on the London roads!

But seriously, and this has been discussed on Magnatom's threads before, it is every cyclists perogative to ride according to Cyclecraft but until all drivers have read it and understand just how simply their driving can be refreshed to include cycles in their thinking we are stuck in a one way argument.
I have been cycling in London for years and have had more hairy incidents than I care to mention, almost all of these have been down to drivers who stolidly believe their presence on the road is 'legally' above mine and my personal safety.
 
I tend to cycle in the same manner towards lights as magnatom looking for safe gap to stop in be an ASL or a gap in the queue depending on my knowledge/ visibility to the lights. If I'm in the traffic queue I try to accelerate at an equal speed to the car in front and I've never touch wood had a problem when I'm part of the queue. Sometimes at ASL's however, horns sound, some people are in a rush to get to the next traffic queue only seconds away (I don't think I ever been beeped when the road was clear:excl:); so I'm starting to prefer the former.
 
"As I am sure you know filtering is perfectly legal."

I'm not saying it isn't but could you point me in the direction of where it says this is so?

Why didn't you adopt the secondary position when you pulled away from the lights?
 

atbman

Veteran
I agree with Crackle

Just been looking thro' Cyclecraft and can't find anything which says filter up middle and then cut in front of a driver waiting in line who has left a gap which is just about a bike length.

If you had been that driver and left a car length between you and the vehicle in front and a car had come up on the outside and then squeezed in, would you be annoyed? I would be, because it would be discourteous. I wouldn't retaliate, as your overtaking driver did, but your behaviour triggered his - his overtaking was potentially dangerous, but yours was selfish.

If you have as many near misses as you appear to, then there is something wrong with your riding. In 23 years of year-round bike commuting, I didn't have as many problems with other road users as you appear to have had in a much shorter period.

If you show this to the police, they might take action against the driver, but it is just as likely that they'll give you a bollocking.

Justifiable self-righteousness requires that you be right, and both you and the driver were not
 
The driver was an idiot but then drivers of old escorts usually are - you should have enough experience by now to appreciate that he/she would get wound up by a cyclist pushing in however legal it is.

I wouldn't have waited in turn though if that was a junction I knew well though. Lets be honest,the only reason we filter is to push in and take advantage of our size.

Saunter up to the front and anticipate the lights, rolling through as they change. Either that or position yourself ahead of the lights but before the junction as others have suggested, possibly jumping them slightly if need be by clipping in as the other phase goes amber. Illegal crossing of white line and possible RLJ but nothing to get het up about.

I judge my own success in city cycling by the lack of dangerous conflict with fellow traffic. On this measure how good is your cycling?

I'm in no way exusing the drivers behaviour here - truly bad stuff - but your positioning could definitely been better.

There's good debate on this forum and all credit to you for publicising issues. There's no way I'd put some of the moves I pull on youtube!
 

goo_mason

Champion barbed-wire hurdler
Location
Leith, Edinburgh
That was scary - brown trouser moment if ever I saw one.

Funnily enough, I did the same filtering today for the first time, after I'd gone round some idiots stopped across the yellow hatching and blocking the road ahead. I was aiming to get to the front but the lights started changing as I was about two cars short of my goal. The only difference with me was that when the lights went green, the left-hand queue went about three car-lengths straight on and then turned off left and the right-hand queue went straight on. No-one took exception and no-one tried to do an 'Escort' on me.
 

HJ

Cycling in Scotland
Location
Auld Reekie
Having experienced cars swinging across a bus lane to cut me up, I would say that only way to avoid dangerous conflict with fellow road users is to catch a bus. There are drivers out there who seriously think that cyclist shouldn't be allowed on the road.

In this case he may well have been upset by Mag filtering up in front of him, but that was no excuse for dangerous driving, bulling people because you are bigger that them is wrong.

Looking at the road layout and the speeds involved primary is the correct position to be in, cycling in secondary would only encourage overtaking followed by a left hook as drivers tend to misjudge the speed of cyclists who travel at more that 10mph.
 
OP
OP
M

magnatom

Guest
Blimey, this one has moved on. :smile:

Ok, lets recap. I filtered. This is something I do on a regular basis in exactly the same way that I did on this video. I can think of only two occasions over the last 2 years 9 months where I have had any hassle involving this. Once where a taxi driver threatened to knock me off my bike, and on this occasion. I commute 5 days a week on very busy roads in a city where cyclists are very much the exception and where I have found over the last few years that a lot of drivers are in fact agressive towards us. Over that 33 month period I have placed online 47 videos of incidents (not all are public). Of these 20 of these (I counted) are not incidents involving me as such, but videos of guys weeing in the street, videos of pavement cyclists, videos of cycling through the clyde tunnel, videos of cars going through red lights etc. So over a period of 33 months I have had 27 incidents.

So a rough back of the envelope calculation suggests that I have cycled on approximately (and I am being conservative here) 920 days to and from work. That suggests that I have an incident rate (some of which are actually fairly minor) of (in terms of days) of just under 3%.

So it would appear that suggestions that I am always having incidents are far off the mark! People suggesting that they do not have incidents could be for a number of reasons. Maybe they are incredibly lucky and don't have incidents. Maybe they do have them, but 10 minutes later forget them. I know this happens because I sometimes look back at films and see things that I forgot happened. Memory is a funny thing (an area that I research). Or maybe, and I've seen this happen (see here,


View: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KaVHUrSvx-o
) some people are oblivious to the dangers surrounding them.

I have stated exactly why I take the primary position here. I travel close to and sometimes faster than the prevaling traffic. I am traffic. I want to be seen and to discourage poor overtaking. What I can't post is the amount of times that I have prevented bad overtaking etc. I know that I have prevented daft manouvers on numerous occasions. My cycling isn't perfect, but I think it generally keeps me safe.

As to the fact that filtering is legal. I think the important question to ask here is, where does it say it is illegal? My knowledge of the law is not the best, but I beleive laws are generally written in the prohibitive sense. So DG show me where it says it is illegal.

I have discussed the fact on here before about me coming across as self righteous online. That is probably because of a number of reasons, one of them being the fact that I have to defend myself against what are sometimes stupid arguments (I am not suggesting that anyone on here is doing that, but have a look on youtube). However, I am certainly not self righteous. How many times have I posted mistakes I have made, how many times have I posted comments suggesting that I need to keep learning, that I am not perfect and that I don't have all the answers. People seem to blank out these comments.

With regards to this particular video I could have edited this just to show the pull off from the lights. I did not, because I wanted to put it into context, realising that some might question the filtering. How could placing your own cycling online and leaving it to public scrutiny be classed as being self righteous! I have changed my cycling because of previous comments on my videos, if I was self righteous would I do that!

Oh bugger this. I'm just grumpy tonight. It never usually gets to me.....:blush:

Im off.
 
Now I feel guilty for starting the criticism, especially in light of what you've been through recently :smile:

As far as memory though. I remember every hairy incident from the days I started cycling to school at 16 to the most recent one 18 months ago. I could list them in order, including major mistakes I've made, accidents I've had etc... They're imprinted.

Close overtakes (not like yours), stupid stunts, drivers not seeing me, no I don't remember all of them and some I don't count. Like the car who followed another I'd waved through at a passing place, leaving me a couple of feet room or the one who ignored me in the middle of the road at a cattle grid on a singletrack or the recent truck who dashed past me nearly hitting an oncoming lorry, I don't count them because i was alert to the danger and so in no danger, bail out plans had been made. You don't need to cycle in a city to face dangerous moments on a bike. It's the ones you can't mitigate for that are truly dangerous though.

Take it easy Magnatom, sleep well.
 

mr_hippo

Living Legend & Old Fart
Are we now getting into the realm of the vigilante cyclist? Two wheels good, four wheels bad? "I was almost hit by a car today" - is that the same as "I almost won the lottery"? Some videos do show examples of bad driving cycling.
magnatom says on the video that he was 'forced from primary to the gutter by the overtake.' Look at the gray car in front of the Escort. If magnatom was forced to the gutter then the gray car would have been seen further to the right in the shot. I admit that magnatom did change his line not by much and for less than a second.
The other video that I want to comment on was the one of the Peugot pulling out of the road on the right -


View: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pCT-vtLqw_0
. Were you aware by the position of the car that she may pull out? Did you adjust your speed and position? If not, why not? Please do not say that you had 'right of way', St Peter at the Pearly Gates is getting sick of that excuse!
Does the camera lie? Yes, it does! When I have time, I will compile a video of my apparent near-misses.
 
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