Cycling UK Forum

Well I do have qualms about rule 61. Rule 63 is fine.

As I see it, cyclists have three areas of concern:

* attempts to prosecute for choosing the road, as in the recent Cadden case

* attempts by insurance companies to reduce compensation payments because a cyclist "put him/herself at risk" by riding on the road instead of a path (or other cycle facility)

* a minority of motorists who want to get/force cyclists off the road

The draft rule 61 says, in effect, "You may ride on the road, but you should ride on the path, where it is safer".

First this is wrong - it's not safer on average.

Second, neither of the second and third risks is reduced by a rule that maintains wrongly that the sensible thing to do is to ride on the path.

Thus the burden of proof is placed on the cyclist. Why should this be? Why not just say "Ride on the road if in your judgement it is safer"?

I have nothing against cycle paths - I choose to ride daily on the Stevenage ones. However, I am with those who say that telling cyclists that they should not be on the road if there is a path is like saying that motorists should not use other roads if a motorway is anywhere nearby. On second thoughts

It depends on the path. I ride to work in Stevenage, where the cycle paths are wide and open, and 18mph does not seem excessive. I don't do ever much more than that - for one thing I am on fixed and I have never been able to reach 200rpm like some riders

I'm not sure that pedestrians knowing their rights is an issue. They wander all over the cycle paths anyway

It's fine, but I'd prefer to share responsibility for safety - i.e. I look out for them and they look out for me. Some do that and just make mistakes sometimes, like I do. It's the ones who simply wander down the middle of a cycle-only path, don't look out for bikes at all, rely on me to do all the safety, and seem surprised and offended when I call a warning that puzzle me

Depends what you mean. The only relevant case I know of was Cadden one in Telford. That was a prosecution for inconsiderate cycling, not a compensation claim. The 18mph advice was brought up in the original case, but Daniel Cadden was convicted anyway. However, the prosecution was thrown out on appeal.

The forthcoming Highway Code changes are supposed to give cyclists more protection against contributory negligence claims related to choosing the road. I have to say the new wording does not entirely impress me as likely to achieve that.

Officially, therefore, you should not be subject to any such claim. However, who knows what insurance companies will try.

meic wrote:With this line of logic I cant quite understand why there is no speed limit given for shared use paths.

There's no legal limit but there is guidance that at 18mph or above (not a difficult speed to achieve...) the road is more appropriate.

I'm not sure it's anti-car stuff. It's just that it is really hard to do anything to eliminate a non-existent danger. You can only challenge the basis of the fear by pointing out the actual risk. The best way to give a feel for the actual risk is to point out that it is 200 times smaller than a risk that causes the average pedestrian no concern at all.

That's not to defend pavement cycling - it's just to get the thing in proportion. It helps no-one to be safer if we put all our efforts at reducing danger into chasing shadows.

Re-reading your post, I think we probably are, sorry. It was your mention of riding standards on cycle paths that I misunderstood.

I don't actually disagree that those standards can be poor. I jumped in a bit too quickly, however, to emphasise what you clearly already know - that this cannot be used to argue that poor cycling standards are in general the cause of problems on-road (which view is not supported by any of the available statistical evidence).

Going back to the standards on paths, I have sometimes wondered whether the issue is that the population in general do not fully recognise that cycles are vehicles. Remembering that cyclists are in general motorists, this perhaps results both in motorists failing to treat cyclists as "proper" road users, and in other motorists* getting onto bikes and failing to behave as though their vehicles were subject to the usual rules.

But it is the first behaviour that causes most of the accidents if the numbers are to be believed...

* Remember that I am not arguing that we are "proper" cyclists and they are "motorists riding bikes". I am pointing out that, statistically, the usual picture of "cyclists vs motorists" is nonsense, because we are (nearly) all motorists.

montmorency seems to have missed the fundamental point that cycle facilities also lead to more collisions with motorists, because they put cyclists in a place where the motorist is not looking.

We can't keep going back to this "Cyclists are their own worst enemies" thing. The stats simply don't back it up. Whilst no-one would deny that there is room for improvement in cycling standards, stats usually indicate that there won't necessarily be a consequent improvement in safety. Most of the issues are around interaction with motor vehicles and the causes of cycle accidents are, in broad terms, quite different from the kind of assumption that you make.

Kinda expensive when the rack breaks; not great if you want to choose a rack to meet special requirements; can't take it off when you want to go lightweight; would you have an integral front as well or bolt that on, and if the latter why have the integral rear?

There's famously a problem in Llandudno, where the failure to get a change through to allow cycling on the promenade is causing an interruption to the cycle route along the North Wales coast. However, my mother-in-law lives along there and frankly I'd cycle on the road - it's not that busy except in the actual centre.

Oh absolutely, and the tenor of this discussion should be that cyclists too must respect the residents' rights and obey the spirit of the regulations. However, we do not appear to be subject to the regulations as such.

I'm not sure about the motorcycles bit - a motorcycle and sidecar is just that, a motorcycle with a sidecar. In the absence of any other information, I assume that the limit for motorcycles applies - unless you know otherwise? (I've never ridden a motorcycle.) Maybe the 10mph reduction for a car with a trailer applies to sidecars on motorbikes too?

Anyway, you're right about the footnote. As far as I can see, the HC is simply wrong on a point of law. I wonder whether there is time to get that fixed in the next edition? It seems trivial, but if the authorities don't understand that "traffic" includes non-motorised vehicles then it could reflect a whole layer of faulty thinking.

As to Transits, prepare for a shock (bottom of page). I knew that applied to Transit minibuses, for which I have a permit, but I hadn't given much thought to the vans.

There's a big clue in the table in the HC, which doesn't have a row for cyclists.

However, the introduction to that table also references the RTRA sections 81, 86 and 89.

The RTRA quite clearly says "motor vehicles". You can't apply a law that says "motor vehicles" to vehicles without motors.

In the process of looking for that, I also found this, which appears to be (I'm no expert) the instrument under which Portsmouth are able to set 20mph limits. If that is right, there is no mention of extending the primary legislation to cyclists - in fact I suspect that no instrument could do that.

Just to be quite clear about this, cyclists can be prosecuted for reckless or furious riding. If caught doing 25mph in a 20mph limit, I wouldn't have thought you'd have much defence.

However, it has just occurred to me that there was special legislation of some kind to allow these 20mph zones. Was there some provision in that to cover cyclists?

More generally though, it's curious. Cyclists often think that their problems on the road are partly a result of people thinking that there is some kind of difference between bikes and cars in law (whereas in fact both are vehicles, with the same broad rights and responsibilities following from that). Here we have one of the few important cases where the law does make a distinction between the two, and everyone assumes it doesn't.

Bizarre or what?

No, they don't, and it's nothing to do with speedometers. The law just says that where there is a speed limit, motor vehicles must not exceed it. Bikes aren't motor vehicles.

Away from the public road (e.g. parks and promenades), speeds are governed by bye-laws. Those may be worded to cover cyclists too, but the national speed-limit laws are not.

I looked at it out of curiosity as I don't often visit Portsmouth.

One odd thing was the FAQs on the notices, which say that the limits apply to cyclists. Now if it isn't safe to drive a car above 20mph it probably isn't safe to ride a bike at that speed either. However, speed limits don't apply to cyclists, and if all they have done is change the speed limit then strictly these won't either.

As I said, I see it as a technical point, since cyclists should behave as responsibly as everyone else, but are the Council a bit shaky on their road law or have they taken some unusual power?

It's different when Councils make bye-laws for off-road facilities of course.