Any Opinions On This Incident Welcomed.

[stewartpratt]

From experience of that road, it is not safe for a mini-bus/car to overtake a cyclist in secondary position whist the cyclist is parallel to a parked car.

But the point snibgo and I were making is that it clearly would have been safer if the space you'd put between yourself and the pavement was between you and the van instead. If it's "not safe" in the first place then why make it less safe?

I'd always err on the side of assuming people will try to fit through a gap they think they can get through. On that premise, there are two options for maximising safety: one is to make the gap so small that they quite clearly can't fit though it, and the other is to make the gap as large as reasonably possible. The former isn't always reasonably possible, necessary or appropriate.

[wirral_cyclist]

I always use primary on the understanding it does not stop close passes just discourages them.

I think this is at the heart of the problem.

Using "primary" (I hate that term, it's too easily misunderstood) inappropriately - and I take "always" to imply that you're fairly indiscriminate with its use - will not discourage close passes, it will encourage them.

If you're using "primary" and it doesn't stop close passes then you shouldn't be using primary.

Occupying the lane only works when you (a) need to and (b) are able to prevent passes. Not one or the other, both. If you're in the centre of the lane and have a close pass, then clearly there was enough space for the vehicle to pass you whilst giving you the additional space that you've placed on your kerbside - and I know where I prefer that space to be.

My problem was caused by not taking a strong enough primary position and hence leaving just enough room for the mini-bus to squeeze past me and the parked car.
From experience of that road, it is not safe for a mini-bus/car to overtake a cyclist in secondary position whist the cyclist is parallel to a parked car.
Primary does not stop all close passes, I discourage the close pass at pinch points but monitor the vehicle behind to see if they are going to wait or not, if not then I take action to prevent contact, slow down and/or move as far left as possible.

Are you a politician?
Having been told several times that the line you took is plainly iffy, you still insist that you didn't compound the issue in any way! If you are monitoring behind so much, perhaps you are not looking ahead enough to realise you would become an actual pinch point at the potential pinch point?
Moving from what is clearly a very ineffective primary, to what in this case would clearly be a much safer secondary seems to still escape you, perhaps you need to look ahead more, it appears most people spotted the potential conflict your choice of road position would cause with the errant driver.
Do you really think that moving right another two foot would have stopped the minibus driver? It may have done, but in blocking him it doubtless would have caused even more aggro immediately to you (but more likely for some other poor sap just a bit further on), moreso even than your 'benign' hand signal (or whatever mumbo-jumbo, back peddalling phraseology for the 'finger' wagging you used).
Secondary position at the percieved pinch point would still give you plenty enough wobble room, and if done as he started the pass would have been trivial, of course it would have further spoiled the footage, but no more than the poor sound/edit transitions did.

An HD movie of WVM stamping Dunlop ever so clearly across even a foam protected head is hardly a 'win' surely?

I never gutter grovel - ever, I use secondary all the time, and use primary where it works, but if I had to I would certainly use the kerb/hedge rather than be dead but 'in the right' (not happened so far).
I'm 110kg on the bike, a Smart car 850Kg, a proper car 1500kg you do the maths.

[thirdcrank]

I was grateful to whoever it was (snibgo?) who pointed out to me that the term "primary position" originated with motorcycling but I suspect if a defended cycling case came up, then John Franklin would be the obvious expert witness, as he was at Telford. I've had a look at what he has to say. In my edition of Cyclecraft, which is not the most recent, he says "prevent overtaking" but in his more recent IAM book it's "deter overtaking." As some of the comment on this thread shows, there's a big difference between those two words. It's perhaps unfortunate that JF has written in this apparently inconsistent way.

[uphillbothways]

I think that the helmet-cam culture a perfect example of what's wrong with the modern world.

To my mind, the choice to use a helmet camera betrays a deeply unhelpful attitude. The helmet camera user is implicitly saying that other people are the problem, that the driving of the people around them needs to be surveilled and scrutinised. I see a whole lot of Youtube videos vilifying other road users, but very few analysing the roadcraft of the camera-wearer. Don't get me wrong, I don't like cars and I'd like to see private car ownership banned for all but the disabled and infirm; But I completely fail to see what the point is in blaming a driver or getting angry at them.

I see absolutely no positive benefit to blaming other drivers. All you do is raise your own blood pressure and, if you blow your top, put yourself at risk of being attacked or arrested. It's easy to paint a driver as an idiot or a thug, but we just can't judge a person based on a single incident. He might be an excellent driver who made a single misjudgement. He might have any number of perfectly understandable reasons for not having his mind on the road. If the police locked up everyone who occasionally errs, they'd soon run out of people to nick.

I think that the only useful reaction to a close call is introspection. Not to blame yourself, but to think about how you can learn from it and better protect yourself in future. Think about your road position, your observations, your use of signals, whether you're visible enough, whether you could plan a safer route. There's always a lesson to be learned, even if that lesson is only to avoid a certain road or a certain sort of vehicle. Sure, chuckle to yourself about the other guy's bad driving, but don't let it distract you from your own development and growth as a cyclist.

It's ultimately a question of narcissism over humility. We can act and think as if we're the main character in a movie, or we can accept that we're just a bit-player in someone else's. We can tell ourselves a story about the idiot that cut us up, or we can think about the story of the guy who got cursed at by a cyclist who held him up for no reason. One story makes us angry; The other makes us happier, more compassionate and a better cyclist to boot. If nothing else, remember that 95% of people think that they're above-average drivers. If most people who are incompetent aren't aware that they are, how sure can I be that I'm not incompetent?

[Graham O]

and I'd like to see private car ownership banned for all but the disabled and infirm;

Are you serious?

[karlt]

There's a massive philosophical question about the degree of adapting one's behaviour to account for other drivers on the road.

Take me, yesterday. I nearly smeared myself over the main road into Dronfield. I was approaching a mini-roundabout, could see a car approaching from the opposite direction. Both of us doing about 20. He was signalling right; it was clear that we'd hit the roundabout at about the same time.

So it should be fine. By the time he's got round the mini-roundabout I'll be past it and gone. Not so. Moton cuts straight across the mini-roundabout and nearly straight into me.

In future, I'll just have to accept that idiots will do idiotic things like that and stop in that sort of situation. Not fair, annoying, but better losing momentum than losing a layer of epidermis.

[stewartpratt]

As an aside, even 15 years ago when I was learning to drive, drivers were being taught that mini roundabouts were things you could (even should?) drive over rather than round - and my instructor was a pretty conscientious one.

I regularly drive through certain mini roundabouts and IME there's a worrying number of drivers who don't even have any clue of who they're supposed to give way to at such a roundabout. If two or three people arrive at the same time it's a total stalemate and necessarily ends up with someone just dropping the clutch and going for broke.

They're a failed piece of road design, it would seem, and I tend not to trust anyone around them.

[Vorpal]

I was grateful to whoever it was (snibgo?) who pointed out to me that the term "primary position" originated with motorcycling but I suspect if a defended cycling case came up, then John Franklin would be the obvious expert witness, as he was at Telford. I've had a look at what he has to say. In my edition of Cyclecraft, which is not the most recent, he says "prevent overtaking" but in his more recent IAM book it's "deter overtaking." As some of the comment on this thread shows, there's a big difference between those two words. It's perhaps unfortunate that JF has written in this apparently inconsistent way.

There may be a difference between 'prevent' and 'deter', but that isn't solely with the use of primary.

I recently had someone try to overtake when I was in the middle of a narrow, single-track country lane. The driver had to go well onto the verge to attempt his overtake. He only aborted the overtake when he saw a car coming from the other direction. It would have been a stupid overtake, even if I'd been gutter cycling.

Thinking about the incident later, I realised that the mistake I had made was assuming that my road position would prevent overtaking rather than merely detering it.

[karlt]

As an aside, even 15 years ago when I was learning to drive, drivers were being taught that mini roundabouts were things you could (even should?) drive over rather than round - and my instructor was a pretty conscientious one.

He was simply (dangerously) wrong:

188
Mini-roundabouts. Approach these in the same way as normal roundabouts. All vehicles MUST pass round the central markings except large vehicles which are physically incapable of doing so. Remember, there is less space to manoeuvre and less time to signal. Avoid making U-turns at mini-roundabouts. Beware of others doing this.
[Laws RTA 1988 sect 36 & TSRGD regs 10(1) & 16(1)]

Note this is from the 1988 RTA, so this has had legal force for at least 23 years, and I believe has always been the case.

[BSRU]

I think that the helmet-cam culture a perfect example of what's wrong with the modern world.

To my mind, the choice to use a helmet camera betrays a deeply unhelpful attitude. The helmet camera user is implicitly saying that other people are the problem, that the driving of the people around them needs to be surveilled and scrutinised. I see a whole lot of Youtube videos vilifying other road users, but very few analysing the roadcraft of the camera-wearer. Don't get me wrong, I don't like cars and I'd like to see private car ownership banned for all but the disabled and infirm; But I completely fail to see what the point is in blaming a driver or getting angry at them.

I think you missed the main benefit of recording/posting video's, the ability to analyse incidents after they have happened.
The wearer can view the video, looking for their own mistakes and anything different they could have done to avoid the incident. Other cyclists can view the same video, comment on the wearers cyclecraft and offer opinions as to how to avoid/reduce such incidents in the future. Other cyclists can point out mistakes made by the wearer which the wearer may not have considered a mistake/error on their part.
This does rely on the wearer being open to criticism and advice.
Personally I know I am far safer cyclist than I was when I first started commuting on the road, I have vastly reduced SMIDSY's, close passes, left hooks etc and these days "major" incidents are very very rare.

[stewartpratt]

He was simply (dangerously) wrong:

Indeed. The point is that, unfortunately, people are taught that it's ok to drive over them.

[thirdcrank]

... Note this is from the 1988 RTA, so this has had legal force for at least 23 years, and I believe has always been the case.

The nit-picker in me says that this is not quite so straightforward. The Road Traffic Act (which is itself subject to amendment) simply creates the offence of failing to conform with specified traffic signs, and that specifying is in subsidiary legislation, which is, in turn, modified from time to time. If a new mandatory traffic sign were to be introduced tomorrow, disobeying it would be on offence against the RTA 1988.

It's my impression that mini roundabouts are a fairly recent idea (although I fear that increasingly applies to things dating from around 1970 )

[uphillbothways]

and I'd like to see private car ownership banned for all but the disabled and infirm;

Are you serious?

Deadly. We're running out of fossil fuels and will have to dramatically reduce our energy consumption. We need to act now, while energy is still cheap and before the resource crisis completely destabilises international politics. The electric car isn't really a solution, as it simply moves the problem from the petrol pump to the power station; Renewables will only produce a tiny fraction of the energy that we use today. We need to make massive changes to our transport infrastructure which will take decades. The increasing price of oil will price everyone off the road within my lifetime, but if we wait until that happens it'll be too late; The economy would be thrown into severe depression by the lack of affordable transport.

I would convert motorways into broad-gauge railway lines, a-roads into tramways or light rail and the rest into guided bus facilities with segregated cycleways. Rip out most street lighting, install tens of thousands of Trampe lifts, put cycle storage facilities everywhere and change the culture to make lycra and gore-tex acceptable business attire. This will all cost a fortune, but the only choice we have is whether we do it sooner or later. We can force cars off the road and build a coherent, efficient and affordable transport system, or we can wait for them to be priced off and hurriedly build piecemeal solutions when people are forced out of their homes and jobs due to transport costs.

[scottmac]

I think that the helmet-cam culture a perfect example of what's wrong with the modern world.

To my mind, the choice to use a helmet camera betrays a deeply unhelpful attitude. The helmet camera user is implicitly saying that other people are the problem, that the driving of the people around them needs to be surveilled and scrutinised. I see a whole lot of Youtube videos vilifying other road users, but very few analysing the roadcraft of the camera-wearer. Don't get me wrong, I don't like cars and I'd like to see private car ownership banned for all but the disabled and infirm; But I completely fail to see what the point is in blaming a driver or getting angry at them.

I was forced off the road the other day, not by one car, but two. Boy racers on a quiet country lane. One of the pondlife shouted out of the window at me to "Go forth and multiply with myself". I'm sure you can read between the lines...

Re. "To my mind, the choice to use a helmet camera betrays a deeply unhelpful attitude."

I would have loved a helmet cam because it would have shown whom was in the wrong. uphillbothways - I think your attitude stinks. If an idiot misses you by inches at high speed and shouts abuse at you (for no reason whatsoever) then I think the average Joe has every right to be angry and one's blood pressure would rise. It's a natural response. We can't all be Christian, monk like do-gooders like your goodself. Now, go and read the Gardener's Weekly and sit back in your shed on the rollers.

Finally, regarding my incident, the scumbags were from, you guessed it: SWINDON.

Bit of a coincidence that, isn't it...

[bogmyrtle]

I think that the helmet-cam culture a perfect example of what's wrong with the modern world.

To my mind, the choice to use a helmet camera betrays a deeply unhelpful attitude. The helmet camera user is implicitly saying that other people are the problem, that the driving of the people around them needs to be surveilled and scrutinised. I see a whole lot of Youtube videos vilifying other road users, but very few analysing the roadcraft of the camera-wearer. Don't get me wrong, I don't like cars and I'd like to see private car ownership banned for all but the disabled and infirm; But I completely fail to see what the point is in blaming a driver or getting angry at them.

I was forced off the road the other day, not by one car, but two. Boy racers on a quiet country lane. One of the pondlife shouted out of the window at me to "Go forth and multiply with myself". I'm sure you can read between the lines...

Re. "To my mind, the choice to use a helmet camera betrays a deeply unhelpful attitude."

I would have loved a helmet cam because it would have shown whom was in the wrong. uphillbothways - I think your attitude stinks. If an idiot misses you by inches at high speed and shouts abuse at you (for no reason whatsoever) then I think the average Joe has every right to be angry and one's blood pressure would rise. It's a natural response. We can't all be Christian, monk like do-gooders like your goodself. Now, go and read the Gardener's Weekly and sit back in your shed on the rollers.

Finally, regarding my incident, the scumbags were from, you guessed it: SWINDON.

Bit of a coincidence that, isn't it...

I'm intrigued as to why you feel the need to resurect an old thread just to have a go at people from Swindon.