Cycling UK Forum

My thoughts exactly . Road best avoided for the heads down brigade, trying to earn their Kudos points or whatever they do.

Let Darwin do his bit

Quickly summarised

"Major reform in Vehicle Excise Duties to pay for a new road building and maintainance fund"

Just found a new one today
Been open 4 weeks
Nice people
Nice coffee
Nice brownies
Great location for downs link MTB's and roadies between partridge green and ashurst/Steyning

http://www.stansbikeshack.com/stansmap.html

The roads are Crazy in SL. Not sure if the have a motorway yet, so an easy mistake to make. They have been building an mway for years, not sure if its open yet
Saying that I've witnessed their pro's often over the years. Most, from memory, are military. Some of the roads they train on are more suitable for horse and cart. After being there im never going to complain about the roads in sussex agaion

Saw these lights demo'd at a stand at the Bike show at the Excel

My mate and I wrote them off immediately as a gimic. Drivers will only be confused by the image, even if they spot it. The girl on the stand was more interested in telling us that the concept had been crowd funded than the design features - says it all really.

Did anyone catch the last in the series last night? Fascinating fly on the wall docuementary of Ainscough Crane Hire and their heavy lifting equipment......

Until......


They did a piece on how the drivers were remunerated.

The cranes are only earning money when they are on a job. Ergo the staff are paid basic wages if they are in the depot, which they don’t like!

Segway to a piece on compulsory Cyclist awareness training, based at the yard. This came about because the company were basically informed by Boris’s bods that they can’t work in the city unless they train their drivers – so not exactly a company driven initiative, more a commercial reality.

Clearly it’s a great idea for awareness training and well done to The Mayor of London’s office for implementing and initiative like this. Anything they can do to make it safer gets my vote ( if I had one in London).

Not only were the drivers grumpy about loss of earnings, some of them just did not “get it”. The Beeb did a good job with the statistics in terms of numbers of cyclists killed and injured by HGV’s being disproportionate to other road users.

The drivers, when given bikes to ride in the yard, did nothing but mess about. The same happened on the road – weaving about, crossing the centre line (albeit on the quiet residential street), until the very patient instructor stopped the lesson and gave them a lecture. Cue some rather interesting pieces to camera by a couple of the drivers.

Can’t remember the exact words, but along the lines of

“I’ve not injured/killed anyone (yet – my words), so I can’t see why I should do this”

“Cyclists are unpredictable – weaving etc” – was that what you were doing matey??

“I’m a professional driver, I don’t need this. It’s the cyclists that need the training”

The instructor was great and had some very rational thoughts to deal with the blame issue in terms of its does not really matter who caused the incident, – think of the vulnerable road users and be prepared to avoid incidents rather than apportion blame after someone is lying injured on the street.

I hope that the views expressed by a small number of Ainscough drivers is not representative of the industry, but I somehow think otherwise.

Ainscough perhaps need to be having an attitude realignment discussion with their staff and perhaps should consider cyclist awareness as an essential part of training rather than something they had to do to gain access to the streets of London.

Seems the local rag only got it part right - he was bailed on the more serious charges pending further investigation, but they have remanded him for driving whilst banned and without insurance

One misscreant off the road for the time being

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-24339337

Yet another senseless loss of life. Condolenses to the family.

Followed this news story building in the local rag.

http://www.wscountytimes.co.uk/news/loc ... -1-5539382

http://www.wscountytimes.co.uk/news/loc ... -1-5539964

scumbag - disqualified driver - does a runner after KILLING someone

http://www.wscountytimes.co.uk/news/loc ... -1-5542660

...... and he is set free until January at least. How long before he is driving on the roads of Sussex again?

+1

We were over to do Ventoux ( and a few others) last week and one of our group broke a spoke at Sault.

We popped over to Bedoin with the wheel and it was sorted out a few hours later ( they were busy that day!). Great service and not expensive for repairs.

A great shop for ventoux logo cycle kit - this was costly!

The (apparent) other side of the story

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-22636230

"" "The tweet and the incident are completely different, it doesn't relate to the accident," she said. ""

Reading the latest story she seems to be adding perjury to the list of offences. But cleverely its now one cyclist against one driver. Can the second cyclist be an independent witness?

Also whinging about the media circus. Hm let me think about that one - Twitter????

Just my unlucky day I guess, you only see what you see.

I forgot to mention that after I had passed the incident with the cyclist lying at the side of the road, on the next corner I gestured for a boy racer in a blue clio to slow down as there were quite a lot of people at the side of the road. At least he slowed down, but just to give me abuse and get off the "fn" road.

I hope he felt guilty when he saw the incident.

Also thanks to the rider at the end of the event that told me my numberplate board was upside down and giving conflicting indications to my car. Fixed at the next layby. Lesson learned, check before driving off.

It was indeed a very well organised event, a credit to Wessex CTC for being able to continually stage such a good mass start event. The numbers were significantly more than last year, one could tell by the sheer volumes of queues at the tea stops and the numbers of riders on the road. I had pre-registered and I was 903, my buddy paid on the day and he was 1200 ish and there were still circa 50 behind him in the queue.

On the downside was the incident you mentioned. Don’t know what happened, but my mate had to give GPS co-ordinates for the emergency services as the people initially helping him out did not know where they were. I was a bit behind my mate and he told me that a paramedic on the ride arrived and helped out whilst awaiting the ambulance. Hope the rider has a good recovery.

On the volumes of riders, I wonder if this led to the higher numbers of very angry and abusive motorists. I witnessed at least ten incidents where there was sound of horns, gesticulating and shouting at cyclists all minding their own business, riding sensibly and following the highway code. In many cases, where I was catching up on groups I had an excellent view of road positioning etc. and could honestly say that there was no reason whatsoever for the various drivers behaviour. Noticeably all the incidents were drivers coming towards the groups, over-takers seems to be a lot more patient despite long strings of riders.

I think the funniest incident was on a descent through some woods where the road was probably about three cars wide, and this Hyacinth Bouquet type in the passenger seat of a Volvo was swatting the air indicating that everyone should move over. Perhaps something happened further on up the road that I did not see.

The slightly more dangerous episodes involved white van men. The first was on a long flat, but narrow straight with good visibility. A flatbed white van with a trailer absolutely raced at the single file riders, whooping and yelling. It would have taken one wobble for a wipe out.

The worst one was a high top white van with a personalised plate. I thought it was HKT 1 R, but that number does not seem to exist. I was run off the road by him on a single track uphill through a cutting. He must have been doing about 50. How he managed to rally drive with one hand whilst gesticulating with the other, I don’t know. I had just worked my way past a group of about 15 riders on the downhill and I heard the yells behind me as they clearly all scattered to get out of his way. Hopefully they came out it unscathed.

This was my third consecutive Grid Iron and I certainly enjoyed the slightly altered route, but I think it will be my last as clearly the numbers are getting to big. A Sunday ride out has, to me, to be a totally enjoyable experience. I can ride round the back lanes of Sussex without the grief I witnessed yesterday.

groberts wrote:I used to do this walk every day (thankfully no longer) and even for some years worked at No1 London Bridge, so know it well. First, it is not possible to cross the road in the centre of the bridge without climbing two fences, one on each side - dressed in suits etc this seems unlikely? However, as you come off the northern end of the bridge there are some gaps in the fences, do you mean there? If so there could be some sense (only some mind you) - if you wanted to cross the road (which is actually the A3) to the west side, perhaps to access offices there or get to Lower Thames Street or Cannon Street etc, it would be marginally quicker to cross the road than use the underpass or the crossing further along.

That's the point, I'm afraid - apart from the pinchpoint at the city end and the safety barriers at the crossing at the BB & B, all the barriers have been removed, allowing pedestrians free to cross 6 lanes at any point for almost the whole length of the bridge. Call me old fashioned, but I preferred it the way it was, you knew your place. As a pedestrian I felt an awful lot safer even though I have no evidence of a vehicle ever hitting the barrier (or mounting the pavement after it was removed)

Agree with Vladimir - morning rush-hour means very few tourists, mainly city workers who seems for some odd reason the be in a hurry to get to work

Vladimir

In answer to your question, "Why do they cross?"

A- Because they can

Until 2 years ago there was a metal waist level fence on both sides and it actively discouraged traversing the traffic lanes other than at pedestrain crossings at each end of the bridge. Still dont know why they removed the barriers, they were there to protect the peds, both from themselves and from cars/motor bikes/bikes. - the fences were very heavy duty.

Interestingly this morning I also had an incident at the crossing outside the Barrow Boy & Banker - Southside. Walking across on the green man, along with about 30 other peds, was nearly mown down by 3 "cycists" who clearly did not believe in the Highway code.

The trouble is we cant have it both ways. Unless "we" collectively start behaving then, we dont get any respect from others. (for the record, I was all cycling kitted up having commuted to my local station and yelled at them. Waste of time in two cases as they were listening to thier ipods....)

Oh dear, another jar of hornets that good old BH has given a a damned good shake and opened the lid

My main point was about a a truck driver getting a much deserved comeuppance

OK back to POB's

Every morning @ 6:30ish on Two Mile Ash Road (Unlit B road in the middle of nowhere) I come face to face with a Sussex POB. Dayglow orange bike, Dressed in black, no lights. Should I stop and give him advice - I think it has been discussed on this forum before before.

2 Evenings a week in Cripplegate Lane I meet two teenage girls on Bikes on their way back from badminton. No Lights, but at least they are safe on the pavement.

One of my neighbours prior Christmas, says " You do a bit of cycling, I must get some advice from you, I'm buying a bike". never spoke to him again until the new year when he tells me that he had to take his bike back as the gears and the brakes were not working. A tesco special......

This morning prior to the incident on the city side of London Bridge, I spotted a female on a trendy sit up and beg bike, flowing long skirt, wearing these huge "can" headphones, oblivious to the world, smiling inanely (perhaps because she is saving the planet by not burning fossil fuels to get to work), zigzagging up the bus lane, nearly taking out three other faster cyclists who were trying to second guess which side to overtake on plus a line of buses who could not get past her.

Cyclists - none of the above. These people have got off their bums and bought bicycles and are making thier journey, for whatever reason on those bikes, but are not cyclists ,albeit that others who drive cars/buses/trucks/walk might see it otherwise