Debian
New Member
- Location
- West Midlands
As my bike has been reshaped I'm temporarily walking / driving to work depending on which site I'm to be at that day. This morning I was driving, there was one moment that gave me a brief insight as to how, sometimes, our behaviour impacts on a drivers point of view.
It was 6.30 a.m. today, very little (virtually none) traffic.
I'd just pulled into the main road and noticed the pedestrain lights just up ahead were changing to red. No issue normally but from the right hand side of the road trots a person pushing a cycle. Said person slowly walks across the crossing and reaches the other side just as the lights are changing. Person proceeds to stop about four feet out from the kerb, starts getting on the bike and then having done so wobbles off up the hill displaying no lights; he/she was wearing a hi-vis vest but it was still quite dark. By this time a little bit of traffic has built up on the other side of the road so that there's no room for me to safely overtake the wobbly cyclist.
Now, all in all a minor incident, I know but the fact is that there was no need for this at all. There was next to no traffic and nothing stopping even the most nervous of cyclists from entering the road like any other vehicle. Pedestrian crossings are for people, not cycles after all. And then to use the crossing to hold up the traffic before holding it up more by mounting the bike part-way across the road compounds the situation. Push your bike across the road if you really must if it makes you feel safer but don't then block the road while you mount up and wobble off. And use lights when it's dark!
I found it slightly amusing in a silly-sod , shake-of-the-head sort of way but I can see that a driver with a tendency to be anti-cyclist to start with could get a bit het up about it.
It was 6.30 a.m. today, very little (virtually none) traffic.
I'd just pulled into the main road and noticed the pedestrain lights just up ahead were changing to red. No issue normally but from the right hand side of the road trots a person pushing a cycle. Said person slowly walks across the crossing and reaches the other side just as the lights are changing. Person proceeds to stop about four feet out from the kerb, starts getting on the bike and then having done so wobbles off up the hill displaying no lights; he/she was wearing a hi-vis vest but it was still quite dark. By this time a little bit of traffic has built up on the other side of the road so that there's no room for me to safely overtake the wobbly cyclist.
Now, all in all a minor incident, I know but the fact is that there was no need for this at all. There was next to no traffic and nothing stopping even the most nervous of cyclists from entering the road like any other vehicle. Pedestrian crossings are for people, not cycles after all. And then to use the crossing to hold up the traffic before holding it up more by mounting the bike part-way across the road compounds the situation. Push your bike across the road if you really must if it makes you feel safer but don't then block the road while you mount up and wobble off. And use lights when it's dark!
I found it slightly amusing in a silly-sod , shake-of-the-head sort of way but I can see that a driver with a tendency to be anti-cyclist to start with could get a bit het up about it.