# Staggeringly stupid idea



## KnackeredBike (25 Jul 2017)

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/15...ty_plan_to_install__dividers__on_city_s_roads





I am struggling to think how anyone who has ever ridden a bike can think this is a good idea.

Also once again Donnington Bridge gets touted as a good piece of infrastructure despite the obvious problem of* it dumping you on the wrong side of the road, at a junction*, if you try to use it to cycle towards Abingdon road.


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## Drago (25 Jul 2017)

A typical innovation by non cyclists, for cyclists.


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## swansonj (25 Jul 2017)

KnackeredBike said:


> ...
> Also once again Donnington Bridge gets touted as a good piece of infrastructure despite the obvious problem of* it dumping you on the wrong side of the road, at a junction*, if you try to use it to cycle towards Abingdon road.


A few times over recent years I have parked in one of the side roads off Donnington Bridge Road (where there is free all-day parking if the locals don't catch you first) and Bromptoned up the river towpath to use a library for work. I have always found it completely bewildering where I am supposed to join or leave those cycle paths.


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## MossCommuter (25 Jul 2017)

I don't understand

What does it do?


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## Phaeton (25 Jul 2017)

MossCommuter said:


> I don't understand
> 
> What does it do?





> Oxford city councillor David Henwood wants Oxfordshire County Council to install his own specially designed safety feature - called 'armadillos'


Make a fat cat even fatter


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## jefmcg (25 Jul 2017)

Edit: should have refreshed before posting. Almost word-for-word what @Phaeton wrote.


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## Noru (25 Jul 2017)

At least those have been installed on the painted lines in the photos.

Some of the armadillos in Greater Manchester are installed inside the painted line of the cycle lane making it even narrower.

They serve to stop vehicles driving down the cycle lane which is good...

but they're hell if you need to join the main traffic lane to turn right and result in more drivers seeing the main traffic lane as their own space by enforcing the us & them mentality via segregation which leads to more aggression when you are using the road not the cycle lanes.

They also do nothing to stop parking in cycle lanes, cause a problem getting round those who do park in cycle lanes and make it harder for street sweepers to clear the cycle lane of debris.

Reducing vehicles driving in the cycle lane is a great idea but armadillo's are not a good solution to the problem in my opinion.


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## winjim (25 Jul 2017)

Mr Henwood's pink bobbies.

@Fnaar


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## Cycleops (25 Jul 2017)

'Oxford city councillor David Henwood wants Oxfordshire County Council to install his own specially designed safety feature - called 'armadillos'
If you listen carefully you can hear the wind in Councillor Henwood's armadillos. 
Apologies to Kenneth Graham.


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## Drago (25 Jul 2017)

Why is the man in the photo in the article wearing a hard hat? What is he expecting to fall upon his head?


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## Mugshot (25 Jul 2017)

Drago said:


> Why is the man in the photo in the article wearing a hard hat? What is he expecting to fall upon his head?


I'm guessing the cyclist when they catch one of those stupid farking pink things.


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## Welsh wheels (25 Jul 2017)

Drago said:


> Why is the man in the photo in the article wearing a hard hat? What is he expecting to fall upon his head?


Health and safety. An asteroid might fall on his head.


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## classic33 (26 Jul 2017)

Drago said:


> Why is the man in the photo in the article wearing a hard hat? What is he expecting to fall upon his head?





Welsh wheels said:


> Health and safety. An asteroid might fall on his head.


Why no Hi-Vis vest, given he's in the road.


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## ufkacbln (26 Jul 2017)

classic33 said:


> Why no Hi-Vis vest, given he's in the road.



Becoz the pink fings is so effective that he is safe and doesn't need one


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## Drago (26 Jul 2017)

Just think of the risk assessment forms he had to fill out before kneeling at the edge of a road with no chainmail.


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## Wobblers (27 Jul 2017)

One of the bridges across the Clyde in Glasgow has a cycle lane featuring this (Bridge Street, @glasgowcyclist might be familiar with it). To call it a "fecking abomination" fails utterly to describe the sheer moronic dangerous uselessness of it. That bike lane was already useless - it's at the extreme left, but most cyclists go straight on, so it neatly puts anyone using it in direct conflict with left turning traffic. This halfwittery just makes it all worse. The safest strategy is to ignore this uselessness, and take the lane.


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## MacB (27 Jul 2017)

McWobble said:


> The safest strategy is to ignore this uselessness, and take the lane.



Though true this does create its own conflicts as drivers seem to get very irate when you ignore 'cycle facilities'.


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## glasgowcyclist (27 Jul 2017)

McWobble said:


> One of the bridges across the Clyde in Glasgow has a cycle lane featuring this (Bridge Street, @glasgowcyclist might be familiar with it). To call it a "fecking abomination" fails utterly to describe the sheer moronic dangerous uselessness of it. That bike lane was already useless - it's at the extreme left, but most cyclists go straight on, so it neatly puts anyone using it in direct conflict with left turning traffic. This halfwittery just makes it all worse. The safest strategy is to ignore this uselessness, and take the lane.



I know that road only too well, I used to use it regularly a few years back, before I moved office.

I haven't had the (mis)fortune to use that facility since it was put in but that route out of town was always bad for cycling on and it leads to where I suffered my first hit & run. As you point out, the cycle lane is useless so I always rode in the other lanes available.

For those who don't know, it's a wide one-way road with 4 lanes travelling south. 
Lane 1 becomes left only. Lane 2 is left or ahead, lane 3 is ahead only and lane 4 is ahead or right.

I was in lane 1 and had moved into lane 2 so I could go straight on. However, my position was not central in the lane and a car squeezed alongside me and immediately turned left. I was taken around the corner with it, thrown across his rear window and landed in the roadway while he farked off. I adopted primary in any of those lanes ever since.

Just look at where the council puts cyclists, then abandons them.


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## mjr (27 Jul 2017)

MacB said:


> Though true this does create its own conflicts as drivers seem to get very irate when you ignore 'cycle facilities'.


They don't get irate when you ignore cycle facilities. Some are just irate anyway. I've been told many times to get in the cycle lane or on the cycle path where no such thing exists. It's just a more acceptable shout than "get out of my way".

Those plastic kerbs are rubbish: too small to deter drivers but big enough to be a hazard to people walking or cycling. I suspect nothing less than posts is worth bothering with. So anyone advocating those little pink crash hazards is probably either clueless or malicious.


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## Wobblers (29 Jul 2017)

glasgowcyclist said:


> I know that road only too well, I used to use it regularly a few years back, before I moved office.
> 
> I haven't had the (mis)fortune to use that facility since it was put in but that route out of town was always bad for cycling on and it leads to where I suffered my first hit & run. As you point out, the cycle lane is useless so I always rode in the other lanes available.
> 
> ...



Sorry to hear about you hit and run, GC. I hope there wasn't much damage done to either the bike or (more importantly!) you. 

I go that way quite often whenever I'm back in Glasgow. That part - Jamacia Street and Bridge Street is probably one of the worst spots for cycling in any city I've been in. Your photo shows exactly why that cycle lane is so dangerously useless: like you, I don't use it.


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## glasgowcyclist (30 Jul 2017)

McWobble said:


> Sorry to hear about you hit and run, GC. I hope there wasn't much damage done to either the bike or (more importantly!) you.



Scuffed pedals on the bike and a few scrapes and bruises for me, nothing serious. 
Lesson learned on lane positioning for me though.


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## Dan B (30 Jul 2017)

mjr said:


> They don't get irate when you ignore cycle facilities. Some are just irate anyway.


I got beeped at repeatedly and a punishment pass the other day for using the carriageway alongside cs2. Perhaps the driver in question was irate anyway, but it'd have made me happier if he'd had to find someone else performing some other perceived infraction to take his frustration out on


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## Pete Owens (31 Jul 2017)

mjr said:


> They don't get irate when you ignore cycle facilities. Some are just irate anyway. I've been told many times to get in the cycle lane or on the cycle path where no such thing exists.


Do you realise how absurd you make yourself when you repeatedly make this claim?
To anyone who cycles regularly on roads the intimidation that comes whenever we ignore a parallel facility is a routine experience, and it is rather offensive for an advocate of those parallel facilities to attempt to gloss this over.

Whenever someone points this out there is always a reply claiming that this happens without facilities. Curious how this is always from the same person. In half a century of cycling I have not experienced a motorist telling me to ride on a non-existent facility. Not once, ever. Yet since they built a cycle path along my route to work (and don't try to insult our intelligence by pretending you are somehow opposed to it) this is a weekly experience. I really have difficulty believing that other cyclists experience things differently, or that the population of Norfolk really are the stereotypical inbred morons you would have us believe.

Now I realise that as advocate of those facilities it is an experience that you are never personally subject to, because it would be utterly hypocritical of you to not use the infrastructure you deny is dangerous. But you need to comprehend that this is a real and unpleasant reality caused by the farcilities you champion.


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## mjr (31 Jul 2017)

Pete Owens said:


> Curious how this is always from the same person.


Curious how the same net stalker always replies to me, too.



Pete Owens said:


> Yet since they built a cycle path along my route to work (and don't try to insult our intelligence by pretending you are somehow opposed to it) this is a weekly experience.


I've no idea whether I oppose that one, so how can you know? I've not seen or tried it. I oppose infrastructure that's bad for cycling, whatever it is, but unlike the hardcore who seem happy for cycling to be only for the fit and the brave, I believe good infrastructure is possible, if still rare here.



Pete Owens said:


> I really have difficulty believing that other cyclists experience things differently,


And that says it all, doesn't it? You have difficulty believing what other cyclists experience and have been unwilling to listen. Pete Owens knows best and Pete Owens has decreed that all cycleways are to be opposed because everyone should ride like Pete Owens or give up. We'll have no wobblies and gimps here... 



Pete Owens said:


> or that the population of Norfolk really are the stereotypical inbred morons you would have us believe.


Yeah, I'm sure the lovely motorists abusing me on Aldgate and Russell Square this weekend were from Norfolk, and so were the ones when I lived for years near Bristol(!) 



Pete Owens said:


> But you need to comprehend that this is a real and unpleasant reality caused by the farcilities you champion.


That's so contrary to my experience that I really doubt a causal link. Existence or not of nearby cycling infrastructure seems uncorrelated with the levels of abuse for carriageway cycling. Far stronger factors are the number of people regularly cycling in an area and time - there's far less abuse now than the 1980s/90s.

I feel it's too easy to attribute any abuse near a cycle path to the cycle path while dismissing other abuse as common-or-garden road rage - I wonder whether motorists realise that including some element of "get on the cycle path" in their rant will draw support from some cyclists.


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## KnackeredBike (31 Jul 2017)

mjr said:


> I feel it's too easy to attribute any abuse near a cycle path to the cycle path while dismissing other abuse as common-or-garden road rage - I wonder whether motorists realise that including some element of "get on the cycle path" in their rant will draw support from some cyclists.


My advice - wear headphones. I have never knowingly been told to use a cycle path but then I have no need to hear any advice from drivers because it is inevitably complete bollocks.


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## mjr (31 Jul 2017)

[QUOTE 4901500, member: 9609"]he had to drive a similar distance to play golf, he wouldn't dream of endangering others by playing golf up and down a busy road. - I was completely lost for words[/QUOTE]
Well I guess some say cycling is the new golf  Maybe you should have asked him if he endangered others by motoring up and down a busy road when there's a perfectly good motoring circuit constructed at great expense at whatever's the nearest one to you?


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## classic33 (31 Jul 2017)

mjr said:


> Well I guess some say cycling is the new golf  Maybe you should have asked him if he endangered others by motoring up and down a busy road when there's a perfectly good motoring circuit constructed at great expense at whatever's the nearest one to you?


Nearly always private and seldom for the public to use. Track days aside.


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## Dan B (31 Jul 2017)

classic33 said:


> Nearly always private and seldom for the public to use. Track days aside.


Same is probably true for the golf course


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## gaijintendo (31 Jul 2017)

Given all the sightings of these things, it makes you wonder if Mr Henwood invented this thing at all... Or if he invented it, then became a councillor in various local authorities to get them to install them.


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## simongt (31 Jul 2017)

A similar idea was tried on a refurbished road in Norwich last year. They were removed pretty sharpish as cyclists were catching their wheels on them and it restricted their movement too much. To be fair though, the local council do work fairly well with the cycling fraternity. Currently part of the A.11 going out of the city is being altered to give more space for cyclists & pedestrians. Causing chaos with the motor traffic, but who cares - ?


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## chriscross1966 (7 Sep 2017)

Pete Owens said:


> Do you realise how absurd you make yourself when you repeatedly make this claim?
> To anyone who cycles regularly on roads the intimidation that comes whenever we ignore a parallel facility is a routine experience, and it is rather offensive for an advocate of those parallel facilities to attempt to gloss this over.
> 
> Whenever someone points this out there is always a reply claiming that this happens without facilities. Curious how this is always from the same person. In half a century of cycling I have not experienced a motorist telling me to ride on a non-existent facility. Not once, ever. Yet since they built a cycle path along my route to work (and don't try to insult our intelligence by pretending you are somehow opposed to it) this is a weekly experience. I really have difficulty believing that other cyclists experience things differently, or that the population of Norfolk really are the stereotypical inbred morons you would have us believe.
> ...



I've had people shout at me to use a cycle lane where there is none present. When using them I've had pedestrians shout at me because we're sharing pavement space (Oxford is rubbish)


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## hoxtonhopper (29 Sep 2017)

chriscross1966 said:


> I've had people shout at me to use a cycle lane where there is none present.



Me too, once or twice in 25 years of cycling.

Whereas it's routine to encounter hostility when one chooses to remain on the carriageway in preference to a hazardous and/or inconvenient alternative.


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## MiK1138 (29 Sep 2017)

glasgowcyclist said:


> I know that road only too well, I used to use it regularly a few years back, before I moved office.
> 
> I haven't had the (mis)fortune to use that facility since it was put in but that route out of town was always bad for cycling on and it leads to where I suffered my first hit & run. As you point out, the cycle lane is useless so I always rode in the other lanes available.
> 
> ...



Use this route everyday, I agree it is a nightmare when coming from the cycle path on the bridge, recently I have started crossing the river on the Millenium (triangle) bridge and joining Bridge St at Clyde Place where they have a priority light for cyclists this allows me to take Lane 2 before the motorised traffic


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## presta (29 Sep 2017)

Drago said:


> A typical innovation by non cyclists, for cyclists.


I think you've got the wrong end of the stick, the purpose of cycle paths is to keep bikes out of the way of motorists, not for the benefit of cyclists.


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## mjr (29 Sep 2017)

presta said:


> I think you've got the wrong end of the stick, the purpose of cycle paths is to keep bikes out of the way of motorists, not for the benefit of cyclists.


All too often for too many in this country, you're right, but it doesn't have to be this way. Another streetscape is possible.


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## Ming the Merciless (29 Sep 2017)

That looks incredibly narrow and I can easily see someone hitting it and falling into traffic.


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## KnackeredBike (1 Oct 2017)

presta said:


> I think you've got the wrong end of the stick, the purpose of cycle paths is to keep bikes out of the way of motorists, not for the benefit of cyclists.


They've just opened a new one near me which, at 2m wide, residents have realised is a perfect width for everyone to park their cars on.

Plus they've put a sloping kerb between the cycle lane and road so it is lethal to try and move between the two at speed on road tyres.


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## Tin Pot (1 Oct 2017)

KnackeredBike said:


> http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/15...ty_plan_to_install__dividers__on_city_s_roads
> 
> 
> View attachment 364148
> ...



What a stupid daffodil.


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