Please follow @cyclehatred on twitter.

[Boris Bajic]

BB, I'll wager we both endure similar conditions, it's just that you view them through the rose coloured spectacles of courteous, skilful and thoughtful driving. To me those are active, vital, dynamic processes utterly absent from the majority of driving peak hours on the roads of SE England. Sure, Sundays on a club run things are better.

Rush hour, majority of drivers are on auto-pilot. Managing to avoid hitting me isn't courteous, bothering to put a metre between me and their door mirror, as it requires some effort, is. The majority will not expend that effort because their convenience, and desire to remain in a stupor, is more important to them than my safety. Thoughtlessness defined.

Greg, I'll wager we both enjoy similar conditions too.

Cycling for forty years (I wear no spectacles) I have seen my share of discourteous, rude or dangerous drivers and cyclists.

They are few.

Most of my unplanned dismounts have been rider error on my part or a mechanical mishap.

I spent many years as one of those commuter drivers on the roads of SE England. I rather enjoyed it. Driving on Auto-Pilot simply isn't an option.

I do sympathise, as you seem to find parts of cycling on UK roads deeply unpleasant. However, I and very many other cyclists find it largely lovely. No rose-tinted specs here. I'm not even seen by friends and family as a particularly jolly person.

I'd suggest the train or the bus, but I think you might be making a point rather than painting things as they are. But that might be my rose-tinted specs talking...

Sympathies anyway. I wish it could be as good for everyone as it is for me. I type this after a bad night's sleep having decked the fixie yesterday on ice in a car park and cracked a rib. I blame the weather, which was on auto-pilot.

 

[Boris Bajic]

Trouble is, it only takes one to kill you.

Well they're not very good at it then. It's taken all of them put together over 40 years not to kill me.

At this rate I'm nore likely to be offed by an elephant falling out of an aeroplane.

I don't mean to trivialise more than is necessary, but I do think there is a little @Why Me?@ glumness in the online writings of some cyclists that I feel simply doesn't apply and is not helpful when written.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

I don't mean to trivialise more than is necessary, but I do think there is a little @Why Me?@ glumness in the online writings of some cyclists that I feel simply doesn't apply and is not helpful when written.

as opposed to naive denial combined with tiggerish optimism you mean?

 

[Recycle]

Well they're not very good at it then. It's taken all of them put together over 40 years not to kill me.

How easy is it to judge other cyclist's experience by your own?

I mostly commute to Canary Wharf from the south via the Greenwich foot tunnel. By London standards this commute can be classed as a low traffic route because the foot tunnel for obvious reasons isn't a traffic pinch point as are all the other Thames crossings, and the approaches to foot tunnel don't attract cars either.

Once a week I commute to the City and the experience is so different I may as well be on a different planet. All road users are in a fight for space with the cyclist being the only one without a protective shell.

If I were to judge cycling safety by my Canary Wharf commute I would also wonder what the fuss is about.

 

[Andrew_P]

All road users are in a fight for space with the cyclist being the only one without a protective shell.

& here lies the problem, without a doubt infrastructure plays a large part in this. I have travelled the same route for 2 years. I know where my aggro is going to come and it is always where there is a "fight for space".

12 months into my commuting life Surrey CC decided to put a wide island Ped crossing in a part of commute that had not even registered with me and turned it instantly in to a conflict\danger point.

I think peoples views really depends how many of these points there are. Also I see maybe 6/7 cyclist at the most on my commute so I would say my companion car drivers are not bike aware and a fair %probably bike haters.

Whenever Cycle safety comes up and the Radio stations start to have phone in on the subject my heart sinks not only with the number of haters (I know the producer probably guides it this way) but the fact that the Radio Show is essentialy spreading the word.

Backj on Topic, completely pointless engaging with them in fact probably counter productive and just reenforces ther some what skewed views

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Blimey this thread got big quickly!

Focussing on negativity has never had a positive outcome (only talking personally here).

 

[Boris Bajic]

as opposed to naive denial combined with tiggerish optimism you mean?

I am frequently accused of Tiggerish optimism - so I think that charge sticks like sheep poo on a shoe.

I'm not sure about naive denial though... Despite being a lifelong and slghtly pacifist civilian, I've been shelled, shot at, had people with knives and rifles make beastly (and credible) comments about what they're going to do to me and been over several car and van bonnets and under one or two vehicles in my five decades of life, so I've not sure there's any naive denial here. I know what hurts and I know what's scary. I've been scared enough to lose muscle control more than once. One time (with shelling imminent) I was unable through fear to move my clutch foot in a lorry, causing loud curses from the man in the cab with me. I couldn't move my foot off the pedal, so we stayed where we were. Afterwards it was treated as a big joke, but I was literally scared stiff at the time. Really, I don't think I'm being naive about the dangers and the attitudes of other road users.

Like very many contributors to these pages, I believe that the great majority of road users all over the UK show skill, courtesy and awareness at most times.

If I saw things as you seem to, I would not encourage my offspring to ride. All do ride, with gusto. One is starting to race.

But Tiggerish optimism, Guilty as charged. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I like your posts and don't want to get waspish and tart about this. We see things differently.

 

[Glow worm]

Well they're not very good at it then. It's taken all of them put together over 40 years not to kill me.

I'm not quite sure I follow your logic. 110 cyclists killed on UK roads last year, 107 killed in 2010 and already this year 106 cyclist deaths. Are you saying we should all ignore this because you've manage to wobble your way around the place so far unscathed?

Yes cycling is statistically relatively safe (although seemingly less so year on year), so sure, be optimistic, but don't ignore the facts.

 

[Boris Bajic]

I'm not quite sure I follow your logic. 110 cyclists killed on UK roads last year, 107 killed in 2010 and already this year 106 cyclist deaths. Are you saying we should all ignore this because you've manage to wobble your way around the place so far unscathed?

Yes cycling is statistically relatively safe (although seemingly less so year on year), so sure, be optimistic, but don't ignore the facts.

Good point and well spotted! It isn't logic, so you're right there. It was a slightly waspish response to what I thought was a fairly dramatic post.

I was rather trivialising a serious issue and I accept that.

Give or take a score of deaths, the figures have changed little year-by-year during my adult life. I'm not saying at all that road deaths should be ignored. I do not ignore them myself. I'm not sure I'm even implying it, although I can see how it might seem that I am.

Although I'm not a great cyclist, I like to think I do better than to wobble around unscathed. Further to that, I have been 'scathed' and am curently nursing a cracked rib from a cycling accident. Not dead, just scathed.

I think my post was a response to what I see as a slightly maudlin outlook in some quarters and a mistrust or dislike of motorists that seems quite out of proportion when I look at road behaviour generally. i continue to believe that most road users are skilled, courteous and aware. Some think otherwise. They may be right.

I cycle and encourage my children to do so. At 200 deaths a year, I would do the same. Similarly 300, 500 or more. Each death is a tragedy for many people, but I do not find the stats affect my enthusiasm for cycling. Nor would they if they doubled.

This is not callous, naive or wilfully rose-tinted. I accept a degree of risk and in this case I see the risk as relatively trivial. Some do not.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

I like your posts and don't want to get waspish and tart about this. We see things differently.

Ditto those two sentences.

Here's my perspective....

For my sins I'm secretary of the local cycling forum. I'm an active campaigner.This brings me into contact with dozens, and on occasions hundreds, of local cyclists and would-be cyclists. I chair our workplace BUG. I sit in an office surrounded by cyclists, the three on my left, right and opposite me, with another two in my direct line of sight all ride to work from some distance. Fifteen folk in the room six cycle regularly to/from work. One of whom lives in the same town as me and rides the same routes in and out. Beyond them are about another ten or so more occasional cycle commuters. Beyond them are dozens of staff who drive to work and regard those of us who are cyclists as slightly mad and they are happy to share the reasons why they think that, and why they would never consider cycling.

From the tales I hear, none of them, cyclists or drivers, appear to buy the idea that great majority of drivers they encounter on the roads of Sussex show skill, courtesy and awareness at most times. I'd happily take anyone for a ride on the same roads on a Sunday morning but rush hour, I'd question their wisdom unless they are very experienced and have a thick hide.

Maybe it is a local thing. But it isn't just my opinion.

 

[Arjimlad]

Thanks for posting up about this Twitter account. I have been struck by the relative youth of the "haters" posting crap about running cyclists over - they are mostly teenyboppers out & about in Vauxhall Corsas and Peugeot 106s etc.. perhaps with age comes some wisdom, at least over when to tweet and when not to tweet.

I have been enjoying responding to many of these numbskulls too !

 

[DiddlyDodds]

Slagging off folk because the mode of transport they choose must never become a hate crime. car drivers are ********

And all cyclists are ********* , and that probably includes me dont you know.