In defence of motorists

[mickle]

I'm not claiming any supernatural abilities but I never misjudge the speed of other road users. Especially cyclists.

 

[cd365]

I'm not claiming any supernatural abilities but I never misjudge the speed of other road users. Especially cyclists.

And my Nan's Bob Marley

 

[Dan B]

That I have, that it is not always easy for a motorist to judge a cyclists speed

There's actually a very simple way to do this if you're behind the cyclist. What you do is, you slow down until the gap between you and the cyclist is no longer shrinking, then you read the number off the big dial in the middle of the dashboard. [ edit: no, not the rev counter. no, that one's the oil temperature. look for the one that probably has markings between 0 and about 100 and has the legend "mph" on it ]


Better spatial awareness and more practice will help to shortcut this process, and I would say the vast majority of drivers who pass me (and many of the ones who don't pass me) when I'm cycling are correctly judging that I move at around 20mph. But of the ones that for whatever reasons can't, I would suggest that they probably shouldn't be attempting overtakes made dangerous by their lack of ability

 

[cd365]

There's actually a very simple way to do this if you're behind the cyclist. What you do is, you slow down until the gap between you and the cyclist is no longer shrinking, then you read the number off the big dial in the middle of the dashboard. [ edit: no, not the rev counter. no, that one's the oil temperature. look for the one that probably has markings between 0 and about 100 and has the legend "mph" on it ]

That is the stupidist thing I have read yet. So a car driver sees a cyclist in front of him, should slow down, match his speed, work out his speed and then decide to overtake.

Do you actually ever drive?

 

[GrasB]

I then realised the cyclist was going a lot faster than I had anticipated; the road was a slight downhill gradient so he was probably doing 22-25mph. I was probably only going 5mph faster than him. Hence me putting a bit of a squirt on to make sure I can pull in in-front of him at a safe distance.

I'm a little concerned with the use of 'anticipated' here, if you're behind a vehicle with a relatively small closing speed there's little excuse as to why you couldn't gauge their speed fairly accurately.

The road was clear ahead, the cyclist was not doing the speed limit, I was perfectly entitled to overtake. The problem arised when a car entered the road from a side road. Now unless I can predict the future there was no way for me to see that was about to happen!

The road wasn't clear, it had a junction on it, something like that should be viewed in a similar manner to the road having a central refuge. The reason for this is that with side road so you can anticipate with a fairly high probability someone may pull out. Remember you're approaching the junction on the wrong side of the road, the driver won't be paying much attention to road to their left as it's unusual for anything to be there. Sure it's bad driving but it's also common habit.

THis winds me up no end, the amount of times I have been following someone for miles at 45-50, I then overtake and find myself at 70 with them just behind also doing about 69, after a little while they will disappear as they drop back down to 45-50; why do so many drivers do this, are they trying to cause an accident?

This bugs me as well, it's nice to have a car that has a surprise overtake feature - it's very quiet but so quick. On occasions you can see people actually flooring it after you've basically passed them, like . Much harder to do in the lotus which is loud, in fact dropping a gear often 'encourages' the driver to speed up a bit & move to the offside, it's a bit like "I'm not going to let you overtake"

 

[cd365]

This was an urban road and like any typical urban road it had side roads coming off it and a junction at either end. If the view is that you can never overtake a cyclist because there is a side road within 200/300/400? yards then every other vehicle would permanently have to stick behind the cyclist because no overtake would ever be deemed safe.

In a perfect world there would be well maintained, wide cyclist only lanes on every road, with it being illegal to block these lanes. But we do not live in a perfect world, everyone has to share the road.

 

[Mad at urage]

CD365, every reply you make tells me that you need better driver training:

"I was perfectly entitled to overtake." No, there is nothing in the HC or in law that entitles anyone to overtake, ever. Overtaking is a potentially dangerous manoevre and should be approached with forethought and planning. It seems you did not even manage to estimate the cyclist's speed correctly, even though it can only have bee a few mph slower than your approach.

"That is the stupidist thing I have read yet. So a car driver sees a cyclist in front of him, should slow down, match his speed, work out his speed and then decide to overtake. " Yes that is exactly what you are meant to do. You are certainly not meant to make a wild guess and hope you can get safely past.

"If the view is that you can never overtake a cyclist because there is a side road within 200/300/400? yards then every other vehicle would permanently have to stick behind the cyclist because no overtake would ever be deemed safe." Indeed, given that the cyclist is moving at around 75% to 85% of the speed limit (note, not target) then nothing is lost by waiting until he turns off from your route. Just how many seconds did overtaking save you anyway (given that you assure us you did not exceed the limit)?

"The road in front of me was now clear, i.e. no oncoming traffic, so coming up to the cyclist I gave him plenty of room as I prepared to overtake, about 200m down the road a car turns into the road and starts to head towards me. " So, you had prepared to overtake (which should mean you matched speeds and pulled out to overtaking position*) when a car [pulled into the road 200m away. At this point you are on the wrong side of the road with a car approaching; this is when you should have aborted the overtake and pulled back behind the cyclist.

*Get a copy of "How to be a better driver" (Advanced Driving) from IAM, which covers this amongst other things. Better yet, take a 'Skills for life' course.

 

[John the Monkey]

In summary, the op sees nothing wrong in what he did, and is unconvinced by arguments to the contrary.

Maybe it's best to leave this one alone now?

 

[mickle]

OT I know but when I had my Ferrari 412 drivers were very keen to get out of my way.

 

[Crackle]

In fairness to cd365, the posting style of some members has put him squarely on the defensive. I'm sure he's learnt something from all this and if he encounters the same situation again he'll approach it differently, which I think he said somewhere.

 

[TheDoctor]

The OP may think he did nothing wrong, but if you did that on a driving test you'd fail. And rightly so.

 

[GrasB]

This was an urban road and like any typical urban road it had side roads coming off it and a junction at either end. If the view is that you can never overtake a cyclist because there is a side road within 200/300/400? yards then every other vehicle would permanently have to stick behind the cyclist because no overtake would ever be deemed safe.

I think you've missed the point here. It's not that you can't overtake, it's that when you see a junction it should be treated in the same was as you would if there's a centre refuge there. It might be perfectly safe to overtake in the space provided it may not. The point is that you shouldn't be within the overtaking maneuver by the time you get to that junction.

In a perfect world there would be well maintained, wide cyclist only lanes on every road, with it being illegal to block these lanes.

I'm going to STRONGLY disagree here, I'll not go into the reasons why as that's another, heated, thread in its own right.

 

[Alien8]

In a perfect world there would be well maintained, wide cyclist only lanes on every road, with it being illegal to block these lanes. But we do not live in a perfect world, everyone has to share the road.

Unfortunately this has demonstrated your lack of understanding of road safety - for all road users, not just cyclists.

 

[Dan B]

That is the stupidist thing I have read yet. So a car driver sees a cyclist in front of him, should slow down, match his speed, work out his speed and then decide to overtake.

If he genuinely has no other way of judging the cyclist's speed (which was your claim not mine), what else do you suggest he do? Try and overtake anyway on the offchance?

Do you actually ever drive?

Yes. But I seem not to have as much trouble judging the speed of other road users as you suggest I should have. Perhaps that's because I make the effort to, instead of assuming they're all dawdling along and that I'm "entitled to overtake"

 

[Dan B]

THis winds me up no end, the amount of times I have been following someone for miles at 45-50, I then overtake and find myself at 70 with them just behind also doing about 69, after a little while they will disappear as they drop back down to 45-50; why do so many drivers do this, are they trying to cause an accident?

I doubt it's malicious: I think they're just driving on autopilot and don't notice until they see another vehicle that they're going much slower than they could be.