Cycling UK Forum

Auchmill wrote:Words take on new meanings, or shades of meanings in different contexts that go beyond the dictionary, which in any case always lags behind usage. From what I can gather it's use may have begun with teaching "advanced" driving skills. SeeWiki or ROSPA.

I stand corrected in the meaning given to the word defensive in the context of driving.

Nevertheless I understand that cycle trainers are trying to avoid giving people a long list of do's and don'ts (which students only forget or misunderstand) and try to focus on the skills of perceiving where dangerous road behaviour is taking place.

Take that recent case of a cyclist with learning difficulties ran into a pedestrian killing him. I wonder whether it had been drummed into the cyclist that cycling with cars was too dangerous and so he should always stick to the pavement?

Which dictionary mentions "being prepared for the unforseen" in its definition of the word defensive?

One definition of defensive is
intended or appropriate for defending against or deterring aggression or attack

Are motorists really trying to attack cyclists? Does the belief that they are colour the behaviour of cyclists?

It's my belief that the vast majority of road traffic incidents are due to road users being careless or reckless. Hence I think cyclists and other road users should be aware of which scenarios are risky and take measures to avoid them. Which on occasion means riding assertively.

The trouble with words is that the meaning of any particular one seems to vary from person to person.

"Defensive" to me implies an over cautiousness. Or an acceptance of an inferior status. Which can be dangerous as well as time consuming. Whether you are riding between pedestrians or cars, the less the speed difference between you and the others the safer things are. So riding fast and not hesitating often has a safety advantage when dealing with cars.

Hence the advantage at roundabouts of cyclists going at much the same speed as the cars.

I agree with Ben Lovejoy on this.

The BBC News reports are too superficial for useful insights. Some people, such as John Franklin, have spent many years shifting through the evidence and have appeared as expert witnesses in many a court case.
See http://www.cyclecraft.co.uk/infrastructure.html

Auchmill wrote:We're never going to persuade the reluctant cyclists that roads are relatively safe, (and could be made safer by reducing traffic volumes among other things),

That's a wild generalisation. Some people may never be persuaded. But others will, as we see when the price of petrol rises - some people do start cycling.
One big problem is that these "newbie" cyclists often cycle rather dangerously. It's not a matter of assertive cycling rather than defensive cycling, but perceptive cycling. The perceptive cyclist realises the dangers of crossing traffic streams and thus tends to avoid doing it. When a perceptive cyclist must cross a traffic stream they position themselves where they can be seen - i.e they take the path used by many motorists.

Also there's more to "cleaning a chain" than there might appear. E.g last night I cleaned a chain and spent:

32 mins - Chain removal, swishing in gunk, rinsing and putting back on
20 mins - Cleaning rings
7 mins - Cleaning jockey wheels
22 mins - Cleaning cassette

Add to that the time spent finding the tools and equipment, clearing a place (cold garage or warm kitchen - with the problem of the WD40 aroma), removing and replacing the back wheel, cleaning your hands afterwards.

I suspect that a full chain case would block 98% of all the muck heading for a chain, so enabling chain cleaning (and the sprockets they run on) to be done much less frequently.

I've been lucky enough not to have anything go wrong with my hub gear and on both occasions when I've had it serviced the mechanic had been known to me for years.

The big advantage with hub gears, IMHO, is that they allow use of a full chain case. In my experience, 98% on-road riding, after 500 miles a naked chain is caked. After 2000 miles a chain in a case has no more than a speck of grit every couple of millimetres.

Even without a full chain case, there's only one sprocket at the front, one sprocket at the back and no jockey wheels to clean with a hub gear.

I well remember at secondary school getting the remark on a report "good attitude but slow" for craft. At work I was far better on the design end of engineering than later on in the life-cycle.

On the city bike, I'm tackling the tyre issue with Marathon plus. But the numbers do show that my biggest time bandit is the transmission.

I hope to reduce the time on the transmission by only removing the rings, cassette and jockey wheels for cleaning when I put on a new chain. Paper towel and Wd40 in situ for the other occasions on which I remove the chain for cleaning. I've also spent too much time fiddling with chain measurements. I now think hanging up the old chain against an unused one is the quickest way to get an accurate measurement.

I'm not very happy with the time I spend on derailleur gearing maintainance. Between 1-Jan-04 and 1-Jan-08:

Giant City bike with full chain case and Shimano Nexus 7 speed hub gear (back brake in hub as well):

7,850 miles, 21 hours spent on transmission maintenance, 26 hours spent on punctures. 1 LBS gear re-pack £15. Two chains

The back inner tube can be replaced without removing the whole back wheel, by freeing the brake cable and pulling the tube out from the side opposite the chain.

Claud Butler conventional 8 speed deraileur

9,700 miles, 65 hours spent on transmission maintenance, 18 hours spent on punctures. Three chains

I'm currently part way through a session with the derailleur. After cleaning the chain without much fuss I discovered that the pivot bolt on the rear derailleur was very stiff, so I took it out and greased it, before it seized up immovably. But re-assembly appears to need fingers of steel powered by hydraulic rams!


I have to rotate the silver bit by 90 degrees anti-clockwise and then slip a circlip over the pivot bolt to hold the silver bit down. But the rotation is against the main spring.

I suspect the answer to that depends on the type of cycle path and the type of carriageway. And the culture of the road users in the area concerned.

If you believe the evidence to which drossall linked, I think you might conclude

* the severity of crashes is lower on path than on carriageways, until the path crosses a carriageway,
* a cyclist on a path where it crosses a carriageway is more likely to be involved in a crash than a cyclist who keeps to the carriageway

Restricting traffic volumes is not the only other alternative. There's slowing down motor traffic and there's allowing motorists to pass cyclists conveniently leaving a sufficient gap as well.

Oh no need to apologise.

As I've mentioned elsewhere on this forum, one of the strange effects of computerisation is that history and the present merge in virtual reality. In the past, in the days of paper, the past would yellow, flake or fade. With the digitalisation of memory, we experience both an "End of History" and an "End of Geography".

In other words, if you find something interesting or alarming on the web, always check the date and which place is being referred to.

That webpage is dated 07 Oct 1996.

To be blunt I think the sentiments expressed in the letter are nonsense.

The sums spent on research are too small to make any difference.

Anyway whatever money released would be spent on the wrong things as no-one has evaluated what works and what doesn't.

A better suggestion would be to divert the money being spent on car infrastructure (£Billions) on to making the roads fit for cycling. A certain proportion of the money would have to be on research and evaluation.

Is there no mention of making it safer and more attractive to cycle with motor traffic in Nicole Lavery's letter? E.g. effective 20 mph limits?

Anyone who has been around cycle campaigning for any time knows that it's virtually impossible to add cycle ways to an existing urban road network which are both worth having and separate from the rest of the traffic.

Eric the Red wrote:Sorry, but does anyone know what the CTC has actually done about this article?

The only thing which will move a national newspaper is lots of people complaining. The main thing CTC full-timers can do is to get lots of people to complain. The same goes for CTC volunteers, as there can't be more than a hundred of us involved in such political activities on a regular basis.

Nevertheless I understand that CTC staff have drafted a letter to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) complaining that the article was an incitement to violence. It's unlikely that the police will take action, although a threat to take The Times to court for causing ‘alarm and distress' might be enough to secure an apology and more importantly make the editors think twice before allowing something like this in future.

I think Matthew Parris likes to portray himself as some kind of enlightened thoughtful figure, by writing such bigoted tosh he may have well done his image severe damage. The more publicity that is given to this "lapse", the more memorable the lesson