It wasn't me

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OP
OP
Tinykin

Tinykin

Regular
Location
Bristol
Apologies to all for my poor writing skills. My 'just not smart' comment was to emphasise that right or wrongly the cyclist will always come off worse in an accident. Sort of similar to riding on the inside of a lorry, legal, but not smart.
I walk, cycle and drive that road everyday as I live just off it and have seen several cyclist related incidents, especially in winter.
Summerdays, yes that road has been modified a lot to accommodate cyclists such as repaving the sidewalk, reducing the speed limit from 40 to 30mph etc
But the whole road is quite confusing to drivers when they see it the first see it because of the cycle lane markings. At this spot they widened the sidewalk and made it cyclists only. But notice the curve in the yellow lines. Well one night, soon after being built, me and a few other drivers accidentally mounted that sidewalk as that was the natural layout of the road that we were used to. Anyway, I was certain that you guys would have picked up that the pavement for cylists only was maybe unnecessary. Just widen the road for cars and bikes.
 

byegad

Legendary Member
Location
NE England
It all depends on how it comes to an end. If it follows the usual British pattern at some point it ends and you have to stop in order to get back into the traffic. If that's the case the safest and quickest solution is to stay on the road.
 

summerdays

Cycling in the sun
Location
Bristol
Well while not idea, you have to stop to cross at the traffic lights but if you wanted to carry on, you could follow the path past the MOD, and onwards and get several miles further on with just a few roads to cross and it could land you almost at the city centre having travelled 80% of the way by path - most of it not running beside a road.
 

400bhp

Guru
Apologies to all for my poor writing skills. My 'just not smart' comment was to emphasise that right or wrongly the cyclist will always come off worse in an accident. Sort of similar to riding on the inside of a lorry, legal, but not smart.
I walk, cycle and drive that road everyday as I live just off it and have seen several cyclist related incidents, especially in winter.
Summerdays, yes that road has been modified a lot to accommodate cyclists such as repaving the sidewalk, reducing the speed limit from 40 to 30mph etc
But the whole road is quite confusing to drivers when they see it the first see it because of the cycle lane markings. At this spot they widened the sidewalk and made it cyclists only. But notice the curve in the yellow lines. Well one night, soon after being built, me and a few other drivers accidentally mounted that sidewalk as that was the natural layout of the road that we were used to. Anyway, I was certain that you guys would have picked up that the pavement for cylists only was maybe unnecessary. Just widen the road for cars and bikes.

Nope-if a car overtakes the cyclist in the situation above and hits another car, there is a chance the cyclist avoids the crash.

It can be a fine line cycling and the road/path to take. I try to avoid A roads & roundabouts because I perceive those to have higher risks. It's too difficult for any of us to say which is the better option in the picture, due to not having local knowledge, as has already been said.
 

byegad

Legendary Member
Location
NE England
Well while not idea, you have to stop to cross at the traffic lights but if you wanted to carry on, you could follow the path past the MOD, and onwards and get several miles further on with just a few roads to cross and it could land you almost at the city centre having travelled 80% of the way by path - most of it not running beside a road.

So that's a fail on my criteria.
 

steveindenmark

Legendary Member
If you don`t use a cycle path when it is provided. How do the courts view it if you have an accident and end up in front of the beak?

Steve
 

Norm

Guest
If you don`t use a cycle path when it is provided. How do the courts view it if you have an accident and end up in front of the beak?

Steve
In theory, exactly the same as if there were no cycle path, but you might have to say why you weren't using it. Which isn't generally too difficult to demonstrate.
 

summerdays

Cycling in the sun
Location
Bristol
From the Highway Code....
"
61

Cycle Routes and Other Facilities. Use cycle routes, advanced stop lines, cycle boxes and toucan crossings unless at the time it is unsafe to do so. Use of these facilities is not compulsory and will depend on your experience and skills, but they can make your journey safer."
 
Or maybe its very smart, adopting a strong position and not using a farcility which may result in more chance of conflict (just because it says cyclist only doesnt mean there won't be pedestrians or street furniture in the way), failure to interact (driver and cyclist) when the cyclist rejoins the carriageway which might be a dangerous place, an unknown path may be littered with glass, tree roots etc which may damage your bike or lead to an accident. We could go on all night but I think I'd use the road too.
 

summerdays

Cycling in the sun
Location
Bristol
And then there is Daniel Cadden's case:

"CTC member Daniel Cadden was cycling fast downhill on a single-lane carriageway when he was stopped by police who believed that the position he had taken in his lane was forcing cars to cross the solid white line in the centre of the road illegally in order to overtake. But rather than stop the cars that had broken the law, the officers decided to charge Daniel Cadden with inconsiderate cycling.
The judge and two magistrates accepted the arguments put forward by Cadden’s barrister, Francis Fitzgibbon, that there was no legal obligation for cyclists to use cycle tracks, that the police’s evidence did not support the alleged offence and that causing only a short delay to drivers did not constitute “inconsiderate cycling”.
The judge who sat at his first trial believed Daniel should have not been on the road at all and instead should have crossed three lanes of busy traffic to use a cycle path, which runs alongside the road where he was stopped."
Link to CTC site
 
OP
OP
Tinykin

Tinykin

Regular
Location
Bristol
To visually show what Filton road was like I used my mobile phone to make a movie. It was really crap as the picture was jumpy and it picked up the sound of the dashboard rattles. But it showed a biker travelling on the wrong side of the 4 lane A road and then entering Filton Rd on the wrong side. Madness! Then on my return home another cyclist performed the same manoeuvre.
After publishing my clip, I then noticed other Youtube clips showing incidents on the same road. The road is less than a mile long and never particularly busy. Fun and games on Filton Road:tired:

Here's my clip, again sorry for the poor quality:


Then the others:

This incident was at the same spot as my original photo. I hope now all can see why I say that it wasn't smart riding although perfectly legal.



Close overtake


 

summerdays

Cycling in the sun
Location
Bristol
On the video marked close overtake - you can see why cyclists take to the road - it starts with about 4 vans and cars parked on what looks to the cycle path. And the one where the taxi pulls out, that is a known problem on that road as I had mentioned on a previous post. If you cycle on that road you go down it knowing that there is the potential for it to happen and you should cycle accordingly.

Going downhill I might have cycled further out to prevent the car overtaking when I could see the oncoming car and knowing I would be going at a reasonable speed.

In almost all those videos the cars caused the problem, and so the solution should be looking at changing/preventing their behaviour, rather than by saying the bikes shouldn't be on the road.

As for the cyclist on the wrong side of the road. Without knowing the changed layout, I know that the problem on that road used to be that the cycle path suddenly ended if you came off the main ring road path and suddenly left you on the wrong side of the road with no where to go. Is it caused by difficultly getting into that road from the direction he was coming from?
 

Nebulous

Guru
Location
Aberdeen
Tinykin I'm not sure what you are trying to prove, but coming onto a cycling forum as a driver to complain about a cyclist (a biker rides a motorbike) minding his own business on a road he is entitled to use is always going to be a hard sell.Most cycling infrastructure is designed by non-cyclists, with so many compromises that on balance they provide more drawbacks than advantages.

People on road bikes can be dangerous to others on a shared path, with one recommendation being that you don't ride on them at over 12 miles per hour.

Most of those clips that you have found are showing inconsiderate and potentially illegal behaviour by drivers. It's their problem, not the cyclists.

As has been said though local knowledge is needed, and I take a case by case decision on what I'm doing. I can quite possibly see me changing from day-to-day on that road, depending on traffic conditions. Some of the best situations for me in busy traffic are buslanes. They're there anyway, they don't impact on pedestrians, and they are quieter than the road, without all the stopped queues of cars to impede my progress!
 
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