Cycling UK Forum

horizon wrote:

Ellieb wrote:why this means that the risk is not about each individual case.

Exactly. Which is why Chris Whitty was wrong when he said:

Don't hug grandma if you want her to survive Christmas, Chris Whitty warns

(as reported in the Daily Telegraph and other papers).

However, when we come to make our individual decision, our assessment of risk may be different.

So it's ok to break the speed limit in a car, because my assesment of risk may be different

Yes, thirdcrank objected to it as well. Just to clarify, I used the helmet analogy to demonstrate that there are times in life when risk is present but we ignore it. That isn't reckless, it's life. I didn't mean to imply that catching the virus is akin to wearing a helmet.

Surely a better analogy would be car drivers speeding: The chances of being killed whilst exceeding the speed limit in an individual instance are tiny. Clearly this leads to the conclusion that speed limits may be safely ignored......
There are also people on this thread who really cannot understand what happens with an exponential growth rate in a pandemic & why this means that the risk is not about each individual case.

During early lockdown there was a vast increase in the number of people cycling. Most of those were ‘normal people’ not ‘cyclists’. You have to ask yourself why those numbers have dropped since then. I suspect it isn’t because of people wearing Lycra.

Hmm. I am still a bit (easily) confused. You are at a Toucan crossing which has the signals: red man, green man & green bike (but no red bike). If the red man is showing, is it legal to ride a bike across?

I understood it to be that if the signal was a red man then it was advisory on a bike, but if it was a red bike then it was mandatory to stop.

Put the bike in the garage. Forgot to close the door. Went back to close it 90seconds later. The bike had gone. Retrieved it 3 months later from the possession of a couple of 16 year olds who left it outside a shop. I went into the shop to reason with them when the shopkeeper said "Errrr.. we have recorded CCTV" so I decided not to reason with them.

Interesting that his first action was to switch off the camera

I believe you are mistaking him for someone who actually has the faintest clue about the subject.

One goes round in a circle and the other goes forwards & backwards?

There are plenty of gaps wider than 3m which you have to take care going through, so I'm not sure how this helps.
If you tell the general public that bikes are 3m wide the main result will be drivers complaining about/blaming cyclists riding their bikes as if they aren't 3m wide, which of course they aren't. (which after all is the main advantage of riding a bike in urban traffic). I'm really not seeing why you think this is a better way of educating drivers, and it is, despite what you have said above, really a thread about how much space for car drivers to leave a bike.

I also think it will be a very difficult message for many cyclists to get because from a cyclists perspective the size of a bike is a variable. From 3+m or as narrow as the cyclist deems safe when overtaking/undertaking/filtering.

So are you suggesting that faced with a 2.5m gap on the inside of a right turning car, a cyclist should not go through it?

freeflow wrote:

Tangled Metal wrote:Not riled just making the point that you've asked a poorly defined question that's meant for education but at it's basic level is measurable, in my case the bars are 440mm wide. In order to have any educational function for motorists you've got to consider the cyclist as well and safe passing distances. But you've not brought that into the original post leaving it for respondents to consider. Just don't find being obtuse a good trait if you have educational aims.

By being more specific in the question you limit the considerations that might be given to the answers. You might think its a poor question, I don't. I don't ask poor questions.

Perhaps other people are best positioned to make that judgement.

[XAP]Bob wrote:

Ellieb wrote:I take it that those who answered 3.0m and above dutifully stop their bikes and wait when faced by a 2.5m gap in traffic such as one on the inside of a car waiting to turn right? Thought not.

There is all the difference in the world between a cyclist negotiating a narrow gap and a motorist passing a moving cyclist with enough energy to kill the cyclist several times over.

Anyone equating the two is an idiot

Sadly I wasn't equating the two. I was pointing out that if you genuinely think a bike is 3 metres wide you are going to end up in some funny situations on the road because it seems this isn't a question about how much room to give a cyclist. Clearly it is about how wide a bike is.... apparently

I take it that those who answered 3.0m and above dutifully stop their bikes and wait when faced by a 2.5m gap in traffic such as one on the inside of a car waiting to turn right? Thought not.

Yes, my take on it is that even if you jammed the front brake on you are unlikely to fly over the bars at 5mph, especially if you are that heavy. You might come off forwards and get tangled up in the bars as you subside to the floor, but I can’t see him executing a graceful swallow dive over the bars and onto his head..