it’s not just when cycling you have to be careful. Recently had a few cars almost rear end me whilst driving as they tried to jump lights, although i was stopping for an amber and infront. Just assumed I’d go through the red, so they would too.

Looking properly, driving at the speed limit, waiting till there’s space for your vehicle before you pull out, all seem out of fashion at the moment.
Doing what suits you and then having a strop at anyone who’s in your way seems more fashionable.

+ a million

I’m not saying I’m the best driver in the world but I like to think I’m patient & I make every effort not to drive like a dick.

However, the sheer no of people ive witnessed lately pulling dumb ass manoeuvres is mind boggling. Like the billy stitch earlier who instead of driving behind me decided to pull out into the right hand turn only lane beside me, only then to floor it & cut back in front of me before slamming on her brakes 🙄

left then immediate right – typical rat run manoeuvre – probably saw you but chose not to bother to correctly judge your speed or care a toss – cyclists can slow down for proper traffic

On a helpful note….

In my London commute I use a small knog light(4 LEDs) and a very focused Lenzye Super drive (450 lumens?) on my helmet. I have the Lenzye pointed down so not to dazzle people. When ever I feel there is a danger though I shine it back and forth over a drivers eyes. Works wonders to get there attention. It’s the equivalent to eye contact in the day time.

As I merely flash over there eyes I don’t think this is dazzling but kit makes sure they acknowledge me.

Be safe y’all.

At least you have a chance with cars emerging from junctions, you can sense what they are about to do in a lot of the situations. It happens fairly often on the motorbike – like the TV ad.
Its the people overtaking you on the major road to turn left into the minor road that annoys the hell out of me! twice recently that has happened, causing me to slam the brakes on. I mean, WTF? You’ve obviously seen me to overtake me?!
I dont ride my pushbike too much on the road nowadays, it tends to be getting to my trail centre or occasional commute, but considering the amount I do, it amazes me how many poor drivers there are out there, trying to get to their destination with little regard for others.

Is there anything i can do to make myself more visable…

If it’s safe to do so try riding in primary position when passing a side road, you’ll be more visible and cars will have less room to ‘just nip’ out.

I stopped commuting by bike. Too many tired, out of date prescription glasses drivers out there let alone the malicious types. Plus low-sun, grey/rain, twilight etc conditions now.

Why risk your health? Just as its legal doesnt mean its right anymore.

Want to be seen ? Wear a reflective top and shine a light on yourself
Stupidest post of the week?

You couldn’t be more wrong.

I started a post on this last year. After a couple of side road SMIDSY’s, I decided to change tack. I put a small led flasher pointing forward and a fenix torch pointing towards me, I wore an unstylish building site hi viz. the result was extraordinary, totally changed drivers reactions, they could actually see it was a person. I had half a dozen drivers comment on the effectiveness of my light ( they weren’t aware what it was about it that made it effective, just they could see me really clearly. ) on two separate occasions drivers turned around and flagged me down to find out what light it was so they could get one.

It totally convinced me that from a side road, all people can see is a meaningless pinprick of light with no distance or context reference.

I’m sure a lot of drivers do see what’s coming but pull out anyway. A bloke at a junction in a skip lorry took one at my smart car and pulled out right in fromt of me yesterday. Perhaps drivers some don’t judge speed well? I read somewhere (CTC magazine?) that flashing lights on a bike make it more difficult for drivers to judge the speed of the bike- does anyone know if that’s true?

Many drivers don’t judge speed well. I think Belgians and Brits drive similarly- closing to a car infront so they decided to suddenly pull out into your lane to avoid being trapped regardless of your closing speed. I think its either they really need to wear glasses because they can’t judge another cars speed and/or the mentality I want to get out infront of you because I’ll feel trapped if I’m behind a car.

In Belgian on dual carriageways I’d be making good progress and a car doing 50 behind another would suddenly pull out and continue at 52.5mph overtaking.

Until everyone on the planet is aware of saccadic masking and how to combat it, we are all fcuked.

+1

I think pictonroad has a good point.I was thinking yesterday that cyclists would become very visible if they could illuminate themselves. The problem is how do you do it without the light affecting your vision.

I think another thing is cars, motorbikes, vans etc are fairly consistent in how and where they appear, especially to someone looking to pull out from the left. Cyclists vary greatly in appearance, different lights, reflectors etc

Even if you’re lit up like a Christmas tree, there are still three main inherent problems:

1) Many drivers don’t care about anyone apart from themselves
2) Many drivers expect cyclists to yield to them
3) Many drivers don’t appreciate the speed you’re going and that they don’t have time to pull out or make that turn they’re so eager to get to

I find having a fatalistic acceptance that someone might kill me, and then doing my best to disappoint them gets me through my commutes.

Is there anything i can do to make myself more visable… Not sure anything I can do to protect myself from these idiots.

Sadly no – the only thing you can do is to learn to anticipate people’s actions, and the sooner that you learn to anticipate that they will do almost the exact opposite of what you should, by all reasonable logic, expect, the longer you will survive.

Motorcyclists have know this for aeons.

what he said .

read the road , look ahead – anticipate they might move out …. only occasionally youll get caught out.

mines was i anticipated the car at the junction was going to pull out and had slowed – but the car behind that was hidden behind a wall and thus couldnt see me – just pulled out anyway without looking at all – how can you anticipate that.

Until everyone on the planet is aware of saccadic masking

😆 I’ve been aware of it since I was about 12, watching Johnny Ball on TV. How awareness of it would help cyclists (or make us F.*&£ed, if we’re not) I have no idea!

Like the billy stitch earlier who instead of driving behind me decided to pull out into the right hand turn only lane beside me, only then to floor it & cut back in front of me before slamming on her brakes

Is it just me or is most of the shit driving these days perpetrated by young women in the 18 – 25 age group, usually in Citroen C1/Toyota Aygo/whatever the Peugeot equivalent is/Ford Ka, usually with a phone clamped to their ear? Eh? EHH?

Until everyone on the planet is aware of saccadic masking and how to combat it, we are all fcuked.

+2

This is the reason we see so many posts on threads like these along the lines of “the driver looked directly at me and then went anyway” – the (entirely reasonable) mistake is thinking that if someone’s head is turned so that their face points towards you that they must have seen you – in fact they may well not have done.

There was a link posted a while ago to an interesting thing written by an ex fast-jet pilot about how they are specifically trained to look at stuff in a different way – scanning the angles in a way that ensures that their brain actually receives all the inputs rather than automatically filtering out those that cloud the picture. Fundamentally our brains and eyes (and the mechanisms linking the two) have evolved to cope with travelling at person speed, not car speed, so if we’re going to use those mechanisms to cope with car speeds then we need to work around some of that evolution.

In reality, very few drivers are going to understand, let alone learn to do this. And then there’s the danger that those who do make the effort will do that “I’m a fully trained advanced driver with the visual skills of Top Gun so now I feel the need, the need for speed” thing and be dangerous for that reason.

On the flashing light making it difficult to judge distance, I think the best solution is a balance of two lights – one flashing which grabs the attention (hopefully) of a fast scanning head and one fixed (with some space from the flashing one) to help the viewer get that distance perspective judgement thing going on.

EDIT: Found the link I was talking about – everyone really should read this if they haven’t already, it really helps:

Linky

Until everyone on the planet is aware of saccadic masking

I’ve been aware of it since I was about 12, watching Johnny Ball on TV. How awareness of it would help cyclists (or make us F.*&£ed, if we’re not) I have no idea!

DezB – just by being aware of it, you stop thinking that just because a driver’s head has turned in your direction that therefore they “must” have seen you and you ride accordingly (i.e. you still anticipate that they may well pull out in front of you).

EDIT: This is explained much better than I could and more fully in the article I’ve linked to in my post above. There’s specific advice for cyclists in it.

I always assume that if another road user (of whatever type) could do something stupid and dangerous that they will, and then when they sometimes do, there’s a greater chance that I’ll have some scope for evasive action because I was expecting it.

I’m not sure what else you can do – a car stopped at a junction and then pulled out straight into me and my bike on the main road during the summer, in broad daylight with clear sight lines and no other traffic around. They freely admitted to me and the police that they simply hadn’t looked before pulling out.

There’s nothing you can do to improve your chances with people like that, IMO.

@martymac

the problem is they dont look properly, the head turns (optional) but they arent actually thinking about anyone else.

As you drive for a living, I’m sure that you will also have clocked the number of drivers emerging from side roads who look left first, instead of right towards the most imminent hazard?

I once did an experiment outside my local pub which is situated on a T-junction – just sitting at one of the benches outside with a mate, we counted 20 cars emerging from the junction onto the main road, and of those only the drivers of two actually looked right first…

The high-vis+light is a good idea. Let’s all try it and see how it goes. Report back on this thread?

I stopped commuting by bike. Too many tired, out of date prescription glasses drivers out there let alone the malicious types. Plus low-sun, grey/rain, twilight etc conditions now.

Why risk your health? Just as its legal doesnt mean its right anymore.

very very sad that you feel this way.

I was going to write a big piece about how you shouldn’t let yourself get bullied off the road and that by giving in in this way you’re helping to validate the opinion that cyclists shouldn’t be on the road, and that climbing into your car is probably a bigger long term risk to your health but it’s all been said before, and probably not worth saying it again…

Amedias I understand what you are saying but when you’ve been on the bonnet/windscreen of a moving car, wondering if it’s going to stop and worrying about whether you are going to die and never see your kids again (all thoughts I had during my 10 seconds on the bonnet) then stopping feels like the sensible option.. I dont feel bullied off the road, I’m not sending a message, I just don’t feel confident any more. Hopefully my confidence might return over time but at the moment no.

Well I was specifically responding to Hora, and his comment about feeling it has become too dangerous so his fix for that is to get off the road.

Personally I think the fix is to try and improve the situation, not run away from it, and yes, I have been taken off by a car before, and helped mop up a number of other unfortunates that have been hit, for me it just strengthens my resolve to NOT stop riding and campaign for improvements.

I can totally understand the justification and your decision, and I would never think less of someone for putting their family first, that’s why this makes me so angry, that you’re put in the position where you feel you have to make that decision, same with Hora, it is a very very sad state of affairs. Even if you don’t feel like you’ve been bullied off the road you effectively have, you’ve evaluated your circumstances and made the decision that its safer to remove yourself from the situation because of the actions of others.

The fact that this puts more people into cars on an already overcrowded road system and reduces activity levels and health in general is just the very bitter icing on this sh1tcake of a situation.

I think the state of play in the UK at the moment is terrible, and to some degree getting worse, but I think we need to take steps to remove the danger from the roads, not remove the cyclists from the danger.

A bloke at a junction in a skip lorry took one at my smart car and pulled out right in fromt of me

rules of the jungle. in my van no one pulls out on me – drive the GFs car and people just pull out from left on roundabouts, in front at junctions etc.

Sad but true.

Amedias. Tried commuting in Manchester past Old Trafford?

I did 7yrs commuting into central London. Ruthless drivers who had their eyes open. Manchester is full of blind idiots

Totally sympathise with amedias and hora. After getting knocked down in August in broad daylight I still suffer a level of anxiety getting on a bike for a road ride that I have never experienced in 30 years of bike riding that used to include dual carriageway tt courses in the 90s.

I have two young kids and I wonder where the line is. My principles and ideals vs their right to have their father alive and safe for years to come. At the moment I still ride to work occasionally (it’s 35 miles round trip and a long hours job so it would never be daily) but it’s always with trepidation when I leave the house now.

And I echo the post above about roads policing. Where is the REAL roads policing now? We need it more than ever the pervasive attitude of selfishness that infects our roads will not be cured with gatso’s alone.

supersaiyan…

Apparently motorcyclists, advanced drivers and police drivers all have less of an issue with this as the brain can be ‘trained’ to pick out more points of contrast when building up the perceived picture.

To cut a long story short – we have a crappy driving test that doesn’t accurately address the roads situation as it is in modern times. An element of advanced driving test plus cycling, motorcycling and hazard awareness issues would help the situation.

And, maybe, an IQ and personality test. (last points I’m semi joking about) 😉

There’s a really interesting article on this kicking about the interweb (wrt motorbike accidents and the “I didn’t see you, but I was looking” syndrome)

I commuted in Manchester for 10 years, got knocked off a few times, which is one reason why I prefer mountain biking.