Membrane,
I am not responsible for anyone else's actions but I certainly can suffer as a result of them. I have a duty to ensure my own safety. To ensure that safety I ride with the aim of keeping anything that can cause me harm at a safe distance. Therefore, I need to claim an area of road, not as my own, but as my safety zone. The size of this safety zone depends on a number of factors, road type, my speed, traffic speed, available light, weather etc.
For example in very slow moving traffic, where I am moving slowly and visibility is good and there are no areas where possible conflict can occur then my safety zone can be fairly small. Cars can be close to me without any danger to me or them. However, when approaching a blind hill, where you cannot see the road ahead,and so cannot be sure of what is over the other side of the hill, and where I know that cars can and do attempt dangerous maneuvers at a fair speed, my safety zone increases in size.
In the section of road in this video I need a large safety zone, which I need to defend. To defend my space I make space on the left of me (I suppose this is my escape zone). Taking the primary position provides me with this escape zone. It also (more often than not) provides a safety zone behind me, as following cars can see me easily, see that I am taking up the space of a car and thus should treat me with the same respect as a car, i.e. leave me room and only overtake when it is safe to do so.
If as I pass over the hill, a car decides to overtake (which I reduce the risk of by assuming the primary position) and it enters my safety zone to my right I have the option of moving into my escape zone. This would be vital in the situation where if he overtook and another car came over the hill overtaking. He would swerve toward me and I would have an escape route, that hopefully I could take.
Your notion of me provoking his behavour by my road position is preposterous! Imagine this chap was sitting his driving test. What would he do to pass. He would approach behind, hold back a safe distance, wait for me to pass over the hill. I would pass the other cyclist, pull into the secondary. He would then pass me when the road ahead was clear and who knows I might even give him a cheery wave to say thank you for driving well (I actually do this when it is appropriate). Chap passes his test and everyone is happy.
He would fail instantly if he came up behind me aggressively, hit his horn to get me to move out of his way, then waited until another vehicle was coming towards me and then endanger the lives of me, his passengers and the people in the bus on the other side.
If I cycled in the gutter, the learner, to pass his test would have to take the same road position to pass me safely, over the brow of the hill (gutter cyclists are more likely to swerve unexpectedly for instance). So to pass his test in this case he would do exactly what he did in my first example and hold back until he had passed the hill.
Of course once people have passed their test they often don't take the same safety precautions that they were taught to take. So as a vulnerable road user (although not with the correct precautions) I cannot assume that if I cycled in the gutter that the driver would give me enough if any room. If he did not, I would have no escape zone (see wall to my left) and so if anything went wrong I would be at significant risk.
So you see I had good reason for doing what I did. If he had reacted in the way he was originally trained, no conflict would occur and he would have been held up for a very short amount of time.
If anyone here is a cycling standards officer I would love your input on my cycling in this video, and I would also welcome any driving instructors to confirm or refute my assumptions about the drivers passability.
What do you think membrane?
I am not responsible for anyone else's actions but I certainly can suffer as a result of them. I have a duty to ensure my own safety. To ensure that safety I ride with the aim of keeping anything that can cause me harm at a safe distance. Therefore, I need to claim an area of road, not as my own, but as my safety zone. The size of this safety zone depends on a number of factors, road type, my speed, traffic speed, available light, weather etc.
For example in very slow moving traffic, where I am moving slowly and visibility is good and there are no areas where possible conflict can occur then my safety zone can be fairly small. Cars can be close to me without any danger to me or them. However, when approaching a blind hill, where you cannot see the road ahead,and so cannot be sure of what is over the other side of the hill, and where I know that cars can and do attempt dangerous maneuvers at a fair speed, my safety zone increases in size.
In the section of road in this video I need a large safety zone, which I need to defend. To defend my space I make space on the left of me (I suppose this is my escape zone). Taking the primary position provides me with this escape zone. It also (more often than not) provides a safety zone behind me, as following cars can see me easily, see that I am taking up the space of a car and thus should treat me with the same respect as a car, i.e. leave me room and only overtake when it is safe to do so.
If as I pass over the hill, a car decides to overtake (which I reduce the risk of by assuming the primary position) and it enters my safety zone to my right I have the option of moving into my escape zone. This would be vital in the situation where if he overtook and another car came over the hill overtaking. He would swerve toward me and I would have an escape route, that hopefully I could take.
Your notion of me provoking his behavour by my road position is preposterous! Imagine this chap was sitting his driving test. What would he do to pass. He would approach behind, hold back a safe distance, wait for me to pass over the hill. I would pass the other cyclist, pull into the secondary. He would then pass me when the road ahead was clear and who knows I might even give him a cheery wave to say thank you for driving well (I actually do this when it is appropriate). Chap passes his test and everyone is happy.
He would fail instantly if he came up behind me aggressively, hit his horn to get me to move out of his way, then waited until another vehicle was coming towards me and then endanger the lives of me, his passengers and the people in the bus on the other side.
If I cycled in the gutter, the learner, to pass his test would have to take the same road position to pass me safely, over the brow of the hill (gutter cyclists are more likely to swerve unexpectedly for instance). So to pass his test in this case he would do exactly what he did in my first example and hold back until he had passed the hill.
Of course once people have passed their test they often don't take the same safety precautions that they were taught to take. So as a vulnerable road user (although not with the correct precautions) I cannot assume that if I cycled in the gutter that the driver would give me enough if any room. If he did not, I would have no escape zone (see wall to my left) and so if anything went wrong I would be at significant risk.
So you see I had good reason for doing what I did. If he had reacted in the way he was originally trained, no conflict would occur and he would have been held up for a very short amount of time.
If anyone here is a cycling standards officer I would love your input on my cycling in this video, and I would also welcome any driving instructors to confirm or refute my assumptions about the drivers passability.
What do you think membrane?