guttersnipe

[DavidT]

My brother hardly cycles at all, but does occassionally venture out

He reports that his most horrifying experience was cycling through some roadworks with cones protecting a trench on the nearside. He rode tight against the cones so as "not to hold people up" and was terrified when a lorry slowly edged past him in an overtake . Needless to say he learnt a lesson, and was very happy to hear that most experienced cyclists talk about taking the Primary position as an accepted method of riding in such circumstances.

[reohn2]

I've always treated the road between me and the curb as a safety zone/buffer ie;somewhere to escape into if I'm passed unexpectedly and or dangerously close.The closer you ride to the curb the smaller the safety buffer.
Obviously it would be ridiculous,selfish and stupidly unnessecary to ride in the centre of the lane all the time and I think it reasonable,though the odd motorist doesn't think so,if I ride depending on road and conditions,2ft to 2ft 6in from the curb which is about the middle of where the nearside wheel of a car would be usually .
When I deem it nessecary I will ride in the middle of the lane,where ie;I think it dangerous(for me) for motor vehicles to overtake,blind bends on narrow roads and when turning right to discourage motorists from overtaking on the turn/junction,etc.
I also think it reasonable to ride more than a cars door width away from parked cars,though a chap in big 4x4 towing a widee trailer in Bolton,Lancs didn't think so yesterday .

These measures I consider(along with many others)for my safety as a vulnerable road user.

[thelawnet]

i always cycle as close to the kerb as possible.usually about a foot from the kerb.and moving out [after checking for vehicles]when appropriate.this as been my practice over 60 years,i have cycled 1000s of miles both in uk and abroad untill comparitavly recently anyone riding away from the kerb would have been considered barmy and stopped by police as a danger to other road users.but it seems cyclist are now being advised to ride at a distance away from the kerb in the traffic flow pretending they are a motor vehicle. how many accidents will it take before cyclist accept that *the greater the distance from the traffic the less chance of an accident.*

It is not sensible to simply have a ride next to the kerb policy. Sometimes this makes sense, for instance I am going uphill at about 10mph, the roads is a 50mph busy A road and it would not be reasonable to hold them up for several minutes while I hold the middle of the road, and cars are welcome to pass me within my lane. OTOH, if I am going down hill on the other side I might be doing 30mph, I will move out a little because I am going fast and need more space for my own safety and my speed is not unreasonable for the road and for the period of time that I might block it.

Equally if I'm riding along an urban road I am probably doing 15-20mph, yesterday for instance there was a large coach parked blocking the offside lane, I moved out further into the road from the position I was riding (secondary) to reflect that it would be impossible to safely pass me at this point due to the coach on the other side. Likewise I will move out when approaching traffic islands.

Another issue is in some areas I am overall faster than motor vehicles, we might be going from traffic light to traffic light and I will filter past motor vehicles at the light, for instance approaching a red light it is more sensible to occupy the lane than to hug the left side of it, as some cars will overtake you at red lights for no benefit and a potential safety risk to yourself considering that you will just filter past at the red light.

Another place I take the lane is on the local three-lane A road going through the town, it is not a very pleasant road, but it is only a matter of a few hundred yards from light to light and even in a car despite the presence of three lanes cars cannot get that fast. I will occupy the left lane in order to make myself visible, I am not holding anyone up who waits behind me for more than a few seconds and if they want to pass they can use any of the other two lanes. When I witness cyclists on this road in the left of the lane having their road space invaded by cars passing quite fast in the same lane it makes me cringe. As far as I am concerned if someone wants to overtake they should do so at their own risk, in the adjacent lane, and not at my risk in my lane.

The other thing I was riding along last week along a cycle lane and it was filled with fallen branches caused by the overhanging trees that the council rarely if ever clean up, not possible to ride in the cycle lane and not really great to ride on the left of the motor vehicle lane either, because motor vehicles might assume you are (or should be) in the cycle lane - move out, force them to pass you safely.

i had an incident the other day,turning right at traffic lights [there was the usuall marked cycling area for cycles at the front]
i took my position at the left of the turning lane leaving plenty of room for the motorist behind to pass on my right.i was astonished when instead of passing he crawled along behind me,interfering with the flow of the traffic.this was a consequence of treating a bicycle the same as a car.

Well perhaps you move particularly slowly on your bicycle, but I move off at the lights faster than some motorists (I am rather younger than you however), I would be rather annoyed if I was passed while in the process of turning,this doesn't make sense at all, the problem is described here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... nC4#t=173s

basically when moving off a cyclist is not necessarily going to be travelling in a straight line, you are quite likely to wobble and add to that there is no one 'line' to take when turning and it adds up to a situation where it is absolutely wrong for a motorist to try and pass, and silly to encourage them to do so. ASLs are positioned IN FRONT of the traffic, and the idea is that you go first and they wait for you.

Cyclists are noted in the Highway Code as vulnerable road users and this is quite apt, bicycles are generally not maintained as well as cars and they lack airbags, two wheels, crumple zones and so on, and if you are in your car you really have no idea whether that cyclist ahead is wobbly, whether their chain is going to come off when they try to move off, if they are in the wrong gear, or any number of other potential problems that could spell disaster when a motorist passes them.

the only regulation appropriate for a bicycle [its talent far exceeds that of other vehicles]is that it should be ridden at all times with *due care and attention*

Well there are quite a few appropriate regulations, including obeying general traffic law really.

I do appreciate that not every cyclist is the same, my average speed over a journey is quite moderate, around 13mph and I wouldn't expect motorists to go that slow, equally some cyclists average perhaps half this, while others will average 20mph, so there is no one size fits all, the manual of vehicular cycling 'Roadcraft' notes that one should have a 'sprint speed' of I think 20mph, which I do, but it I'm sure the concept of having to accelerate to that extent is impossible or unthinkable to many cyclists. There is a grey-haired woman locally who wears very large skirts and cycles to an from the town centre on her very practical bicycle, she tend to ride along in the gutter and I wouldn't presume, being none of those things, that she should adopt my riding standards.

[ronyrash]

[continued from my previous post]
iv had a look thru the latest post and i am very impressed with the insights shown and the dilligent,hard work it as taken to express them.
let the facts speak for themselves,if there is not a register of cycle/motor vevicle accidents, giving all details (i e distance from kerb on collision] then in this computor age there dam well should be, i urge all cyclist to press for a public register -on line- of all cycle/motor vehicle collisions,then we will be able to base our riding skills on facts not speculation.

[snibgo]

There is such an online public register, called RRCGB, which comes from the STATS19 database, which is data collected by the police at the scene.

It doesn't include the distance of the cyclist from the kerb. It wouldn't help much if it did, unless we also knew what proportion of cyclists rode at the various distances.

[Audax67]

I ride just inside the area swept clean by the traffic. Where a cycle lane has been painted on the road, this usually means that I ride on the outer inch of the painted line, the rest of the lane being full of debris. But coming up to junctions, roundabouts etc. I assert my place as a fully-entitled road-user, and if there's no room beside me there's still plenty behind. I have a special set of hand signals for drivers who don't agree.

[drossall]

In other words, some things about cycling are counter intuitive (please add more to my list).

Slightly OT, but:

• Cycle paths are often more dangerous than the road
• Riding two abreast can be safer than single file
• Slick tyres give better grip
• You should ride hands off sometimes
• Signalling left turns is dangerous
• Lo-vis but surprising clothing may work better than hi-vis but conventional
• ... and some very odd stats suggesting that cyclists with lights are more likely to get hit

[anothereye]

In other words, some things about cycling are counter intuitive (please add more to my list).

Slightly OT, but:

• Cycle paths are often more dangerous than the road
• Riding two abreast can be safer than single file
• Slick tyres give better grip
• You should ride hands off sometimes
• Signalling left turns is dangerous
• Lo-vis but surprising clothing may work better than hi-vis but conventional
• ... and some very odd stats suggesting that cyclists with lights are more likely to get hit

thanks drossall, I'm curious about some of those:
In keeping with the current thread I'll only respond to the danger reduction issues:
Hands off? is this so you're up straight & more visable?
Signalling left turns? I always do but usually from the primary position, what did you have in mind?
cyclists with lights are more likely to get hit; I've never heard that before, can you link to research?

[drossall]

Hands-off is just that steering doesn't really happen with the hands, so it does no harm to your technique to practice it with hands out of the picture. Also, it shows up problems in the bike's front end. This was argued in the famous Richard's Bicycle Book, but is probably one of the more marginal ones in my list, and I'm not going to spend ages defending it. It's not that you're safer at any one moment hands off - you're not - it's that you may be safer overall if you do it occasionally at carefully chosen moments (i.e. when there is no traffic).

Left turns is that it tempts drivers to turn in with you. If they don't know you're turning, they can't do that. I'd signal if a driver were waiting to turn out and didn't need to wait because of my planned turn, but not if a driver were likely to come round me from behind, or turn in from the opposite direction alongside me.

Lights is the kind of study reported here. In essence, the proportion of cyclists involved in night-time accidents, and lacking lights, keeps coming out in research as low. If you assume that lack of lights leads to accidents, then you have to say that ninja cyclists are disproportionately represented in the accident statistics - but most people say that the proportion of ninjas in the general cycling population is already high. This gives you a choice of (a) admitting that the vast, overwhelming majority of cyclists have lights (to maintain the assumption above), or (b) denying that lack of lights is likely to lead to accidents.

For clarity, I'm still a fan of good lights, and I wouldn't advise anyone to ride without them. However, I'm also a fan of taking evidence seriously, and I would like to see a debate that doesn't ignore the evidence (but this is the wrong thread for it). One line to consider (again, not for this thread) is that unlit cyclists are so annoying that motorists focus on them, and so don't hit them, on the many streets that have good ambient lighting. Another is that the research is somehow not representative of the real world. Take your pick.

[thelawnet]

When I go to my kids' school, I have to turn left into an uphill road with cars parked on the offside, the curve is fairly sweeping and inviting to pass given the uphill and cars blocking overtaking once in the road.

A good proportion of traffic turns into this road, especially at school times when I am going there.

For this reason I do not signal this left turn, I do not want to be cut up by 3 tonne 4x4s desperate to pass me

OTOH, going home the left turn into my road I will generally signal because only a tiny proportion of traffic turns left into my road and signalling left is likely to calm the nerves of impatient straight-on drivers (the vast majority) that I will be getting out of their way and that therefore do not need to overtake me dangerously.

[Vorpal]

[continued from my previous post]
iv had a look thru the latest post and i am very impressed with the insights shown and the dilligent,hard work it as taken to express them.
let the facts speak for themselves,if there is not a register of cycle/motor vevicle accidents, giving all details (i e distance from kerb on collision] then in this computor age there dam well should be, i urge all cyclist to press for a public register -on line- of all cycle/motor vehicle collisions,then we will be able to base our riding skills on facts not speculation.

Have a look at the TRL report PPR445, "Collisions Involving Pedal Cyclists on Britain's Roads: establishing the causes". It can be downloaded http://www.trl.co.uk/online_store/repor ... auses_.htm
While the positions of the cyclists are not recorded, and therefore not available for analysis, the results are nonetheless interesting. And might give you some reasons to ride away from the kerb on occasion.

[John Holiday]

We teach children to ride 'defensively' & that includes riding about a metre from the kerb (secondary position).
This means that on most roads a driver will have to make a concious decision to pull out & around the cyclist.
Should the driver still come too close,then at least the cyclist has some space on his left to move into safely,& not clatter the kerb.
We also emphasise the need to keep a constant 'look behind' so that one is aware of approaching traffic.A mirror often makes this easier.
Correct positioning in the road is a vital part of safe cycling.
Riding alongside the kerb simply invites drivers to push past without varying their line.

[anothereye]

[*]... and some very odd stats suggesting that cyclists with lights are more likely to get hit[/list]

The link doesn't say this; just that very few incidents involve cyclist with no lights. There may have been less if these few cyclist had lights.

[drossall]

No, but I said "suggesting". Again, if "very few" cyclists involved in accidents lack lights, but, by popular consent, "very many" cyclists on the road do so, then ninja cyclists are disproportionately unlikely to have crashes.

I've seen a few studies reporting this kind of result, and none the expected one. I'm no nearer to understanding it.

[Mike Sales]

No, but I said "suggesting". Again, if "very few" cyclists involved in accidents lack lights, but, by popular consent, "very many" cyclists on the road do so, then ninja cyclists are disproportionately unlikely to have crashes.

I've seen a few studies reporting this kind of result, and none the expected one. I'm no nearer to understanding it.

Risk compensation innit? Us properly lit cyclists expect drivers to see us, and to behave accordingly. Most often this works. Ninjas scuttle off in the margins, and cannot afford to be depend on being seen.