OP
OP
nethalus
New Member
- Location
- In my house
That would be like me getting on an aeroplane and critising the way the pilot flew it when I know sweet FA about flying!
Was this bus driver bad?
- Thread starter nethalus
- Start date
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Tetedelacourse
New Member
- Location
- Rosyth
nethalus said:
pff that's it, choose what you want to respond to and discount the rest!
OK couple of questions for you:
1. Have you ever flown a commercial aircraft?
2. Do you remember 9/11?
3. If the answer to 1 is no and the answer to 2 is yes, do you feel unqualified to say whether how the plane that hit the WTC was flown that day was dangerous or not?
Or:
1. Have you ridden in the tour de france?
2. If you saw a rider in the bunch putting a blindfold on, in the bunch sprint, would you refrain from describing that behaviour as dangerous even though the answer to 1 is no?
Or:
You are a cyclist. You cycle every day in town traffic. You are asked on a CYCLING forum for your opinion on a situation described by a bus driver, involving a cyclist. Do you:
1. give your opinion
2. keep your opinion to yourself
3. book yourself onto a crash (no pun intended) course on bus driving so that you can later justly give your opinion knowing that you are THE authority on buses and bikes and therefore fulfil all the criteria required by a forum member to respond to their posts?
Honestly, you're not for real are you? Come on, seriously.
Tetedelacourse
New Member
- Location
- Rosyth
ps I think it's just us at the party now. Sorry I was late. Typical, all the good folk have left. Och well, should I just leave?
Rhythm Thief
Legendary Member
- Location
- Ross on Wye
nethalus said:
There is something in this, as it happens. Because nearly everyone can drive a car, nearly everyone assumes they can comment intelligently on the driving of much larger vehicles. Why that should be, when threads about, say, arcane points of the law are left to lawyers, solicitors and others with a knowledge of the law, I don't know.
col said:
What in particular don't you understand?
Bus pulls out into a space a cyclist is in or is imminently about to enter. Thats a mistake. If you couldn't see the cyclist its a pretty easy mistake to make, but its a mistake nonetheless.
When you make a mistake like that what matters is how you respond. The highway code is crystal clear on this, you don't pull out into traffic that is moving if doing so is going to cause another vehicle to have to suddenly swerve or stop.
Its also very clear on what to do if you find yourself half way through an overtaking manoevre; you either maintain constant speed and direction or you slow and let the vehicle go, depending which is the safest option. What you don't do, whats actually illegal and dangerous, is to accelerate to stop the other vehicle thats half way past you from coming past. Go back to the very first post made by Nethalus, thats what she did.
No one has invented anything about what she may or may not have done, the arguments put forward are based entirely on what she said that she did. Going solely on her stated actions she did three things wrong; she pulled out into moving traffic that had to swerve or stop to miss her (a bike is moving traffic, despite Nethalus asserting that there was no traffic, only a bike!), she then got shirty with the other person who was aggrieved by this error, even though that person wasn't really rude, and then she compounded this by continuing to out-accelerate a vehicle that was overtaking her.
But all of that, all of it would be a 'yeah, well...' event if only she'd realise her error. What makes someone dangerous on the road isn't that you make the occasional error (everyone makes mistakes), what makes anyone dangerous on the road is not accepting that such behaviour is erroneous.
Rhythm Thief said:
The only part of this that really depends on a large vehicle is whether or not Nethalus could see the cyclist. I'm sure you'll agree that a big vehicle like a bus is rather hard to see around from the drivers cab, but I hope that you'll also agree that if you've missed a bike coming up behind you the correct response isn't to get shirty with the cyclist and then try to out-accelerate him if he's already coming past you by the time you see him.
OP
OP
nethalus
New Member
- Location
- In my house
Cab said:
Oh alright then.
I didn't pull out into any traffic as there was none when I pulled out. Before pulling out I checked the off side mirror, see traffic is stopped at lights. Then I checked the nearside mirror to make sure no one is coming round the corner, as although it's rare for people to turn left out of that junction it's never wise to assume. You can see the junction better in the nearside mirror, that's the one nearest the pavement! Back to the offside mirror, still nothing, handbrake off start to move. Remember the mirror checks only take a few seconds and while pulling off I'm still glancing in them. A third glance at the offside mirror shows a cyclist who's seemingly appeared from no where.
If she'd been there on the first mirror check when I was not moving then I would have hung back, but she wasn't. She appeared after I had released the handbrake and started to move. So I never pulled out into any traffic, point refuted.
BentMikey
Rider of Seolferwulf
- Location
- South London
She may have been hidden in the blind spot at the back of the bus, and decided to overtake when she shouldn't have.
Rhythm Thief
Legendary Member
- Location
- Ross on Wye
BentMikey said:
That would be my guess.
BentMikey
Rider of Seolferwulf
- Location
- South London
And everyone on here should be familiar with quite how big and how far back that hidden spot at the back of a bus is!!!!!
nethalus said:
So, you've looked at the road, there clearly was a cyclist there, but you missed him/her. For whatever reason. Maybe the cyclist was slowly moving through your blind spot, maybe the cyclist turned around the corner and by bad luck wasn't visible in any of the mirrors you looked in when you looked at them. Freak event, happens. But nonetheless, the cyclist was there. So its your mistake, allbeit an entirely understandable mistake, a simple accident of not noticing. In itself, its probably not that big a deal, but it is important that you realise that it was still an error, even if it was accidental. And what really matters is what you do next.
The cyclist is traffic. The cyclist didn't materialise out of thin air. And once spotting that there is a vehicle overtaking you, your duty is not to try to out-accelerate it. Thats clearly laid out in the highway code. You know that, don't you?
So you've missed spotting the cyclist, pulled out in front of it, the cyclist now has to manoevre (presumably quite sharply) to miss you. You then continue to accelerate to out-pace the cyclist, which is contrary to the highway code.
Inbetween the two, you were really rather rude to the cyclist who cannot be shown to have broken any law, or to have definitely done anything wrong.
You made three errors. Thankfully, no one was hurt; next time, if you try to out pace someone who is already overtaking you, someone could be. Please don't do it again.
BentMikey said:
Maybe. Hard really to say; we know theres another turn off on the road that the cyclist could have come out of. So it could be a case of being in a blind spot and coming out too late to be seen. Or it could be that the cyclist came out from that junction while the bus driver was looking the other way. Or it could be that Nethalus, not expecting traffic (and a cyclist is traffic) to be coming from the side road, simply didn't see it.
The point is that this first mistake, not seeing the cyclist, is quite common. It happens. The important question is what you do if you make a mistake.
The right thing to do is to simply accept it, and not make it worse. The wrong thing to do is get shirty with the other person, especially if you just can't know how much of that error was theirs. And the very worst thing to do is compound that by increasing the risk you're subjecting the other person to, i.e. in this case the bike is part overtaken the bus now, you don't go and out-accelerate the bike on the inside because its illegal and dangerous.
BentMikey
Rider of Seolferwulf
- Location
- South London
And the first person to get shirty was the cyclist, not Nethalus.
