Daily Mail

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meic
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by meic »

[XAP]Bob wrote:Yes, the cyclist should have slowed.

Trying to apply that particular rule without cooperation would result in gridlock. The bus would never be such a position. A cyclist could never join traffic, because somewhere down the road is someone who will have to slow or brake at some point.

The bus doesn't actually require the cyclist to brake, just to idle for a moment. This us the same as if the bus had been in the lane in front of the cyclist for all eternity.


Not so, I have often thought of that as the motorists ultimate answer to the problem of cyclists,
it is OK just so long as we get up to our speed in a time that wouldnt inconvenience them any more than if we had been there all along.

So you think we should apply the rule about how to cope with bad overtakes for a cyclist who was being cut up by a lane change manoeuvre. And we shouldnt apply the rules about lane changes to a bus doing a lane change.

I suspect that you are the sort of motorist that doesnt believe in waiting for adequate gaps before changing lanes. This is probably a common attitude in city traffic. Which benefits the more pushy driver.
Yma o Hyd
kwackers
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by kwackers »

meic wrote:I suspect that you are the sort of motorist that doesnt believe in waiting for adequate gaps before changing lanes. This is probably a common attitude in city traffic. Which benefits the more pushy driver.

Cities are busy places and regardless of the wording of an out of date book it makes sense to allow some give and take; particularly for people changing lanes otherwise if everyone decided that backing off a few mph to allow another vehicle in wasn't allowed then the whole system would grind to a halt.
It's called give and take.

However since there was most definitely a bus sized gap and yet the cyclist chose to at least maintain speed in order to catch up with and 'hit' the bus then I think it reasonable to consider his behaviour childish, even more so when you consider the (at best) tiny infringement was seen by him to be enough to warrant a full on confrontation and when that failed to then try and stop the bus from overtaking!
Lets face it, anyone who's prepared to swerve out to stop a bus getting past isn't in full control of their facilities.

Behaviour like that is the reason you hear motorists berating cyclists for "owning the road" and having a "holier than thou" attitude. IMO he did nobody on here any favours.
thirdcrank
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by thirdcrank »

With regard to the comments in the Daily Mail which started this thread, whether anybody likes it or not they are real and express some widely held views. I suppose some will be written for effect and some will be carried along by the mob but we ignore them at our peril. At the very least, it would only need a couple of people with that attitude on a jury to prevent a conviction in a case like this. More sinister is the possibility that they may be driving the white van you decide to teach a lesson.

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meic
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by meic »

and regardless of the wording of an out of date book


Well everybody knows how they think the roads should be used but if we throw the rule book away there will be even more chaos.

The rule book shows who gives and who takes, if you wish to give a little extra, that is fine. (when I am stuck waiting to change lanes somebody gives me a nod fairly quickly). When people decide to take despite the rules and the obvious lack of invitation, THEN we have chaos and road rage.
Yma o Hyd
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by [XAP]Bob »

The gap was easily big enough for the bus.

The only reason for the initial altercation was that the cyclist refused to adapt their driving to the traffic conditions.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
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meic
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by meic »

I was trained back in the ages when you were not supposed to cause the vehicle with priority to have to change their course or speed. So for ME there was not enough space for the bus. Enough space would include a good safety margin AND a good comfort margin.

Nowadays, I suppose that if you can avoid collision it is considered enough space.

There was not even enough room for the bus to physically squeeze between the car and the cycle and the gap between the cyclist and the car increases as does the gap between the car and the bus.
It doesnt look to me as if the cyclist rapidly accelerated as the car in front is happily leaving them both behind.

There was plenty of space for the bus behind the cyclist.
Yma o Hyd
thirdcrank
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by thirdcrank »

meic wrote:
and regardless of the wording of an out of date book


Well everybody knows how they think the roads should be used but if we throw the rule book away there will be even more chaos.

The rule book shows who gives and who takes, if you wish to give a little extra, that is fine. (when I am stuck waiting to change lanes somebody gives me a nod fairly quickly). When people decide to take despite the rules and the obvious lack of invitation, THEN we have chaos and road rage.


I'd agrre that everybody should stick to the rules, but the point you seem to be missing, is that it's not their job to do a bit of freelance enforcement of the rules. Had the roles been reversed at the roundabout, I don't think we'd have approved of the bus driver "disciplining " the cyclist.

Let's imagine for a moment that the bus driver in this dreadful case had restricted himself to a prolonged blast on the motor horn. Even though the cyclist would have been spared injury, I think the casual observer and certainly most of us would say the driver would have been better concentrating on his own driving than anyone else's. Obviously, a cyclist would be in laughing-stock territory riding behind a bus and furiously pinging their bell so there's the temptation to do something a bit more positive. There can't be many cyclists who haven't been tempted to press the engine cut-out button on the back of a bus to get a bit of revenge. This may even flush out somebody who has done it. I've posted before about being chased at some speed by a double-decker bus around some side streets in central Leeds after I had had told the driver he was not fit to do the job. He eventually stopped and ended up standing in the road and shouting at me and generally making an exhibition of himself. The outcome of this case shows an alternative story line.

I think most of us would agree that an assertive cyclist will generally be safer than a kerb crawler, but assertive does not equate with being overbearing. At the practical level, it's just foolhardy.
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meic
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by meic »

I have not said anything about the cyclist's attempts to have words with the driver, i just am disagreeing with Kwacker's and XAP's saying that the bus driver was OK to try and push into the cyclists lane despite there being no safe place to go AND to continue to push into that lane despite the fact the cyclist was not yielding it.

I know that any enforcement will not happen but I dont see any problem in asserting your priority once in a while. I do it a lot when I am driving along a main road and people start to nudge out in front of me, it is their role to wait.

On the whole I am a pretty cautious sort of person, whenever I go in pubs I only look at my pint for fear of attracting a bullies attention, I always keep quiet when people push infront of me in queues and I never struggle when people try and gang rape me.
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kwackers
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by kwackers »

meic wrote:
and regardless of the wording of an out of date book


Well everybody knows how they think the roads should be used but if we throw the rule book away there will be even more chaos.

Bad wording on my part. It's not the book that's out of date it the notion that in a modern driving environment we can simply go from A to B and expect everyone to stay out of our way.
If he'd stopped pedalling for a couple of seconds he would have saved a lot of grief as would he had he been able to control himself in the face of fairly minor provocation.
thirdcrank
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by thirdcrank »

meic wrote: ... On the whole I am a pretty cautious sort of person, whenever I go in pubs I only look at my pint for fear of attracting a bullies attention, I always keep quiet when people push infront of me in queues and I never struggle when people try and gang rape me.
I'm not saying that if somebody is attacked they should not defend themselves. Nor am I saying that "provocation" justifies violence although it often precedes it. I am saying that on the road, trying to "police" other road users' behaviour is at least futile and often dangerous, with neither party being blameless eg the driver who intentionally blocks overtakers in the third lane because he's doing 70 so they cannot legally overtake versus the driver who sits on his back bumper to bully him out of the way; the driver who responds to being badly cut-in on by driving right up to the driver in front. Ironically, as cyclists we know how much we resent drivers telling us how or where to ride, whether that's face-to-face in a pub, a screeched obscenity from a passing car or intentional close cutting in when a rider prefers the carriageway to a farcility.

One real problem is that if somebody allows themselves to get steamed up on the road, their own performance is likely to deteriorate. The danger generally increases in proportion to the size and or power of the vehicle, but the principle applies to everybody. IMO.

On the specific question of motorway entry slips etc., it's often much easier for the driver with priority to adjust their speed to allow the other driver to join the main carriageway smoothly, than it is for the driver on the slip road who has the job of looking forwards, looking over their shoulder, judging speed and trying to spot a non-existant gap. (I do know that this occurred in an urban setting rather than on a motorway,)
thirdcrank
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by thirdcrank »

kwackers wrote: ... If he'd stopped pedalling for a couple of seconds he would have saved a lot of grief as would he had he been able to control himself in the face of fairly minor provocation.


We've got two broadly opposite approaches in the "stand up to bullies" and "let it pass" approaches. I've noticed an increased tendency on the part of some drivers to drive in an inconsiderate way that's designed to extort concessions. One example is drivers intending to turn right as the emerge from the minor leg of a "T" junction who position themselves a yard or more over the GIVE WAY lines and partly overthe centre line of the minor road to "encourage" right turners from the main road to let them out before turning. It could be argued that rewarding this type of bad driving only encourages it. The HC has already been quoted:-

147
...
slow down and hold back if a road user pulls out into your path at a junction. Allow them to get clear. Do not over-react by driving too close behind to intimidate them ...


I'll offer a reason why the fact that this was a bus reinforces what kwackers has posted.

I don't suppose that many people have a problem with the idea of giving way to an emergency vehicle with the blue lights flashing "to indicate to others using the road the urgency of the purposes for which the vehicle is being used." A lot of cycle campaigning emphasis the importance of drivers being considerate of cyclists. I'll suggest that the potentially numerous occupants of a bus have a sort of moral right to as clear a run as possible through urban traffic. (I'm not saying they should be driven like fire engines.) Here's the HC again:-

223
Buses, coaches and trams. Give priority to these vehicles when you can do so safely, especially when they signal to pull away from stops....


So I'm agreeing with kwackers (and I'll reiterate that none of this justifies any of what happened further down the road.)
Ayesha
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by Ayesha »

Do we know exactly what the cyclist said to the bus driver when he had his bike leant against the bus and was 'flicking the wiperblades'?
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by [XAP]Bob »

meic wrote:I have not said anything about the cyclist's attempts to have words with the driver, i just am disagreeing with Kwacker's and XAP's saying that the bus driver was OK to try and push into the cyclists lane despite there being no safe place to go AND to continue to push into that lane despite the fact the cyclist was not yielding it.

I know that any enforcement will not happen but I dont see any problem in asserting your priority once in a while. I do it a lot when I am driving along a main road and people start to nudge out in front of me, it is their role to wait.


I disagree that he was "pushing in", when he moved over he was well ahead of the cyclist, and the cyclist had ample opportunity to avoid the situation - we all know that bus drivers have a set route to drive, I imagine that the cyclist knew the route for this bus (I know most of those routes which I cross, or at least know where each bus is going to go when I see it).

I have however just re-watched the video a number of times looking for various things specifically....
- The gap behind the cyclist is no larger than the gap in front (maybe a yard longer?)
- The road layout is counter-productive (see later in this post)
- There wasn't an obvious gap in the lane to the cyclists right (which is also a valid route for his chosen exit)
- The bus didn't brake
- The cyclist did not (that I could tell) pedal whilst on the roundabout, i.e. he was free wheeling

I still maintain that the bus driver behaved in a reasonable fashion, assuming that this is the start of the incident*. The last of these observations is interesting - as it implies that the cyclist was actually taking reasonable action, but was going significantly faster than the vehicle ahead before the start of the clip, and was in/on a vehicle that could take the corners quicker than the traffic around him. But he would have been able to see the bus on the bus lane (and indicating) from a long way back.

I'd like to see CCTV from either the bus, the cycle or preferably the approach road.

What I'd like to see on this junction is that the bus lane should be signal controlled (priority given by bus detection, green provided both before and after each of the other two phases if needed).


* I can't recall, or find, where I read something about the cyclist claiming that he was undertaken onto the roundabout. If the bus had been close behind him, and then ducked into the bus lane then that puts a different complexion on the incident.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
Ayesha
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by Ayesha »

Had several more views of the BBC report with the island incident. What island incident?

The bus entered the island well ahead of the cyclist. About ten yards.
The bus was indicating right when the cyclist was trailing the bus.
The cyclist tried to occupy the same roadspace as the bus and almost collided with the rear of the bus.

That was crap cycling.
The cyclist obviously didn't see the bus's indicator lamp. The cyclist didn't percieve the bus was moving into the lane ahead of him. The cyclist attempted to overtake on a traffic island.
Any experienced cyclist would see the bus moving across and back-off to a safe distance.

IMHO, the "cyclist rode too close to the bus", not the way it was reported.

No-one can excuse the bus driver for his actions, but the bus driver did nothing wrong on the traffic island. The cyclist almost hit the rear of the bus.
He was probably completely astounded at the cyclist's commotion & deliberate obstruction and lost his temper.

Note to commute cyclists.
This is what happens if you try to push a bus out of its lane on a traffic island, and then argue the toss about it.
broadway
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Re: Daily Mail

Post by broadway »

And then obstructing the bus once off the island when it tried to overtake, rubbish cycling indeed. If a car had behaved in the same way as the cyclist there would be calls for prosecution of the car driver.
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