Cycling UK Forum

horizon wrote:No, you need a very strong reason not to take the car (fitness, traffic, environment etc) which is why getting rid of the car altogether may be the only way of avoiding this no-brainer choice each time. No wonder people keep on driving no matter how big the jam, how expensive the petrol and how ill they get from lack of exercise.

Quite right. It's also the best way of bypassing all the silly self-righteousness about who is the greenest or the most dedicated. ONE simple (though, I admit, possibly painful) decision takes all this out of your hands. I'm pretty sure that if I had a car I would use it, and that I would find similar rationalisations for doing so to the ones everybody else uses. Everyone has their own ideas about what is "essential" use, but in reality there's no such thing - just different levels of choice, convenience and sense of entitlement, which in any case are not available to everyone. Simply wanting these things for oneself or one's children isn't immoral, so it's no wonder people get upset when the validity of their reasons for using the car is questioned. All this doesn't stop the dominance of the car, and every individual use of it, having profoundly negative social effects. If you can't bring yourself to get rid of it, don't feel guilty - but don't complain either if the rest of us try and bring in measures to curtail your driving privileges.

Good idea. I know the road, and it is enough to scare even the most vehicular of cyclists. Signing the petition is very quick and easy.

I've deleted this post as it was a response to Toomey's (now removed) comment.
theclaud

Priceless! I'm SO pleased that he looks like that, too. The responses are very encouraging, and it's not even a cyclists' forum.

Hi Sammy1

I assume John is being facetious, or perhaps has not considered the possibility that you might be female and/or might already be aware of the existence of antiperspirants.

Anyway, quite apart from the offensiveness of Lynx ads, I don't use antiperspirants because people sweat for a good reason. I do use natural deodorants. Those crystal ones (pitrok etc) are good initially but eventually they seem to stop working - maybe bacteria get resistant - so I reckon changing the type and brand as often as possible is a good plan. Of course, if you don't use antiperspirants you do get a build-up of sweat on your clothes.

High performance materials that a lot of cycling clothes are made of may be light and quick-drying, but they smell [ Gordon Ramsey] awful when sweaty. Cotton and other natural fabrics don't smell so bad and you can wash them at hotter temperatures. My other advice is to buy a shed load of very cheap base layers and always wash them as hot as possible - they'll fade and get ruined, but who cares.

Also, panniers or a trailer will be a better option that a rucksack - rucksacks make you sweat more, and they are inconvenient to wash often, so the general grimy sweatiness gets transferred back to your clothes from the shoulder straps...

Everything Si mentions above. Plus the following: enforcement of traffic laws for motorists, including hidden speed cameras; visible campaigns to encourage cycling (and discourage driving) by workplaces. I am fortunate in that I can usually dress casually (some might say scruffily) for work - I think less formal dress codes in workplaces would help. And a government drive to promote the Cycling to Work scheme, including obliging large employers to sign up.

Re: your survey - like Toby, I have a part XC/part road commute to work. I have a choice of routes, and on nice days I go the long way round for fun, so don't always separate leisure and commuting in my head. I think the method of grading the criteria for storing bikes is a bit unclear. Maybe ranking them most important to least important would be simpler?

Trucks are a tricky one, I think. Very dangerous, but not usually on the roads for the driver's private use. Therefore the driver, although responsible for his (or occasionally her) actions, is not responsible for the decision to drive the said dangerous vehicle on a public road. Do we need to bring in an element of corporate responsibility here?

Actually, Auchmill, it's a Saddleback x Duroc. Good guess though.

Fun, you say! We're not here to enjoy ourselves, you know. Seriously, though - I'd be delighted to hear some strategies for conveying the fun of cycling to others. We here all feel the joy already, but I have to admit that it doesn't seem to rub off too easily on the unconverted. No matter how happy I look when I arrive at work, I am daily treated at best as a bit of an eccentric, and more often as a something of a freak - and all this for choosing the most enjoyable, economical and efficient means of getting there. Perhaps it's the mud on my specs...

Hi Auchmill - if you haven't gone for a lie-down yet.

I wasn't advocating any kind of censorship - I'm sorry if I gave that impression. The point about Clarkson is that he wields a lot of power and influence, and by couching his rather extremist views in the language of "common sense", appeals very readily to those who prefer a neatly packaged and amusingly satisfying blend of prejudices, half-truths and disinformation to rational argument about a given issue. Powerful people do not just go away if you ignore them - they need to be actively opposed.

Safety figures etc are very important, but the study of discourse is equally so.

In response to a few posts earlier (sorrym but it really hots up on this board at lunch time and I can't quite keep pace) - to label as “anti-car” anyone who calls for even the mildest restriction on the freedom of drivers to do as they please, regardless of the harm it might cause to others, is a gross misrepresentation of the position of most people posting on this board and a reductive argumentative strategy. Even so, I’m not quite sure why we need to get so defensive when the rather silly “anti-car” accusation is thrown at us. Cars are machines, not people, and their drivers are not a marginalised or oppressed social group – to be anti-car is not in the same category as being an anti-semite, a misogynist or a homophobe. We do not need to hate drivers to conclude that the dominance of the car in our society adds to the sum of human misery. The focus on the current board (quite properly, given the opening post) has been safety, but the negative impacts of car culture on all our lives go well beyond this single issue. Call this position anti-car if you want – it’s a label which suggests more about the labeller than about anything else.

Drivers may not be the enemy, but the car lobby most certainly is, as Howard’s press extracts demonstrate. To be anti-Clarkson, therefore, is for me an unproblematic position, for it is to oppose just about everything he publicly stands for.

And for ianr1950 - I recommend the following site, which might help you to sharpen up what Howard rightly identifies as wildly inaccurate political terminology – http://www.politicalcompass.org.

Quite so. The aim is not just slower and better driving in smaller cars but less driving altogether. A lot less. And preferably more cycling and walking. I would have thought that was fairly uncontentious in this setting, but apparently not...

Sorry Ian - I wouldn’t want to cause all this shuddering – it might make you fall off your bike. But anyway, I didn’t say that. Obviously a cyclist could very easily cause an accident (although rarely without endangering him/herself at least as much as anyone else – something that is not true for motorists). All I am saying is that the reason cyclists’ mistakes are often dangerous on the road is the nature and volume of motor traffic. And that the more dangerous a vehicle is, the more restrictions there should be on its use. Cyclists should take responsibilty for the control of their bikes, but they are not responsible for the fact that other people are operating more inherently dangerous machines in their vicinity. Jay-walking is dangerous because of cars, not because is is unreasonable or irrational for a pedestrian to want to get from point A to point B without going on a long-winded right-angled jaunt. And because car driving (and parking) is a private appropriation of public space, it is a privilege and not a right. Therefore pedestrians and cyclists, making mistakes or not, should not have their lives threatened by motor vehicles.

I hate to steal your words, but making errors isn't intrinsically dangerous. Pedestrians can make pretty much as many as they like, and they are unlikely to kill anyone. Cyclists can make a fair few without carnage ensuing. The problem is making errors while driving a heavy thing. And the bigger problem is making errors while driving a heavy thing too fast. And the slower they're going, the less the errors matter.

And I might add, anyway, that driver error is not always the issue. A child might run into the road from a concealed place into the path of a car. Not the driver's fault (except in the sense that s/he could probably have got there some other way), but s/he will still do more damage the faster the car is moving.

I agree that those are simplistic slogans, although my real objection to the last two is less to do with oversimplification than with the regressive political agenda they serve. “Smoking kills” is a simplification, but a useful one. In other words, from the whole raft of facts and arguments about the pleasures and dangers of tobacco, it presents starkly the most important mass health and social issue. Perhaps you think we should all go round with stickers saying “speed is one of the most significant contributory factors in the severity of accidents”? The reason we don’t is that window stickers are not solely or even primarily statements of fact – they are statements of a political position on a given issue. The point, though I hate to say it, IS rather simple: we could easily stop drivers speeding, and the number of deaths and injuries on the roads would fall. It would have lots of other benefits too, of which upsetting Jeremy Clarkson is only one tiny example.

Good point Mhara, about the Eden project. I'm pretty sure I will vote for Connect 2 - I just wanted to air the misgivings first.

Another slight irritation is that a Sustrans officer I know is urging everyone to vote five times (you can get away with this from the same phone, apparently). Presumably all the competing schemes are doing this, but it's slightly galling that in addition to participating in the whole distasteful TV vote, people will feel need to cheat. I will only be voting once, but of course the that vote is devalued if other people use all five...