jonny jeez
Legendary Member
- Location
- Chislehurst, Kent, UK
What!!!...half a dozen times a week...that's pretty much every day of the week!!Hi S.Giles,
Good post and I was interested to read this because I get the same verbal abuse from car drivers sometimes say about half a dozen times a week. I've been cycling for about 25 years and I don't know why but I don't seem to remember getting the same levels of abuse whilst out on the road when I cycled a great deal of miles in my younger days between school and friends houses which were spread out over a large distance.
On my daily commute, which is a 20 mile round trip, I pass a stretch of cycle path which is probably about half a mile long so makes up less than 10 per cent of my journey. This cycle path is covered in loose chippings, hedge trimmings, various other plant debris and it is not gritted when it's cold. In addition it is a cycle path, in what seems to be the only excuse for a cycle path in my area, i.e. what was previously the path anyway but it's had a cycle sign stuck up at the start of it and it's now dedicated as a mixed use pedestrian path for walking as well as being allocated for the use of cyclists. As well as being a cyclist I'm a parent with two young children and I'm accurately aware of the many types of people walking on the path such as parents with prams, toddlers walking with them, dog walkers, the elderly, the hard of hearing, partially sighted people the list could go on. Fingers crossed I like to consider that I'm a pretty considerate person and I believe that the last thing that pedestrians using the path need is a large number of cyclists sharing the path with them. Now I'm not saying that there aren't places, such as perhaps the Netherlands or Denmark for example, whereby planners have really thought about cycling infrastructure and have constructed dedicated cycle highways for cyclists only separated from both the road and pedestrians which maybe a very sensible idea to use. However that type of cycle path does not exist in many places in this country.
Therefore taking my cycle commute as an example I choose not to use the one bit of mixed use cycle & pedestrian path that makes up less than 10% of my journey distance and I choose to cycle on the road. This leads to an almost daily barrage of abuse from car drivers who seem to deem it acceptable to drive up right behind me honking their horn and sounding down their window to hurl verbal abuse at me. I like to think that I'm a considerate cyclist and it's a wide road meaning that I'm not blocking the road and the vast majority of road users drive straight on past me with no problem at all. However the is a persistent and intimidating minority who carry out the type of behaviour that you have described. On the same stretch of road I also witnessed the same verbal abuse that I've received dished out to many other cyclists who choose to use the road in the place and so it's not just me.
Surely there must be a common denominator to attract that much abuse?