Does any one ride on the wrong side of the road on tight country lanes

You are Philip Gilbert and I want to race you 😀

99% of my road riding is north of where I live, in the open country of the Ribble Valley and Bowland Fells and I never have any issues with drivers; local drivers seem to be quite accustomed to cyclists – there are a lot of them – and in less of a hurry. Even on a mass ride of about 40 riders from Whalley to Glasson Dock and back organised through Cycle Chat last Saturday we had no hassle, as far as I know.

However as soon as I head south into the formerly industrial conurbations of Blackburn, Burnley and further south towards Manchester I get hassled, abused and harrassed, usually by scroats in economy hatchbacks or idiots in vans.

Says a lot about country living, doesn’t it?

I’ve decided not to let idiot drivers ruin my rides. Don’t try and rush everywhere and tend to ride in a defensive manner. Assume every car and/or bend is possibly going to kill you and approach accordingly.

I do still get wound up by complete morons though. Their actions and my behaviour both deteriorate the larger the group I’m with though.

Private cars(I always have a polite word) if I can .. Company vehicles(liveried) if dangerous to me I always always report it to company concerned.. It may be a friend/fellow cyclist that doesn’t get off as lightly 🙁

Been to police few times as well to report private cars if I got reg.. The dangerous driving won’t stop unless we report/educate drivers…

@globalti

That’s my riding area too 🙂 Might see you out and about one day.

Based in Fulwood, Preston and usually head out north or north east towards Bowland/Slaidburn.

I try to just ignore the traffic. Easier than getting worked up or scared off by it.

Often see young dickheads in cars showing off to their mates sat by side of them. Some will swerve car in your direction, alot more will shout something at you as they pass .. alot of those types are too thick to wind window down too .. that makes me giggle 😆

Last week an old fella pulled along side me as I rode and went off on one about distance I should be from kerb .. he not noticing there was an island coming up in road, he had to slam on his brakes when he decided to look where he was driving.
I guess some dickheads never grow up.

Hora, where did you go? I ride round the Cheshire lanes and most are fine.

Get some level 3 National standards training. If your near Manchester or a Birmingham, Bikeright! are very good.

Regardless of how many years you’ve been riding you might be surprised what you pick up from a couple of hours with an instructor. It’s less about the Highway Code and procedures for taking junctions and more about negotiating road space, riding as part of the traffic and route planning.

I refuse to ride a bike on UK roads. The driving is just too dangerous.

Luckily I enjoy Spanish roads where drivers are courteous and safe.

I also have stopped road cycling in the UK, as in going for a big ride on a road bike. I ride into town, and down the pub, and to and from cannock Chase, that’s different somehow. But the last time i was really nervous on a road was in Spain. The E5 or N340 out of Tarifa towards Cadiz. Flipping heck – even with a wide bike lane it was terrifying.

As per my earlier reply I have fairly low expectations from motorised road users and they live up to them. Yes, most are extremely courteous and careful but with the 35 million vehicles on the road even a tiny proportion being dangerous puts a fair amount of loons on the road.

One option is night riding, Im lucky living East of the A12 in Suffolk which is pretty quiet anyway but ride those roads at night and you can do 50 miles and see less than a dozen cars.

I ride in the North East. No one around most of the time and the majority of people I do see are good drivers and friendly. Biggest concern at the minute is lambs, little things have no road sense.

I cycle almost 100% in Wales and I rarely have a problem. I use A and B roads as they are the best to train on and still quiet over there. Almost as soon as I cross back over the bridge back to Bristol I see a lot of poor driving. It has got to the point where I won’t use a lot of roads at busy times because people think it is ok to risk killing me to save a few seconds. Im unsure why it is, maybe just the volume of traffic or angry people caught in the rat race?

Full water bottle at rear window usually wakes them up

Cycle around the roads of Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Hampshire and rarely have any issues. The occasional close pass and that’s about it. I do pick my roads carefully though and have training routes where i know the roads to to be quiet or nice and wide. I have more bother from cars on the 5 minute commute to and from work than I do on long road rides.

I’m going to guess that a lot of the animosity towards cyclists outside London has increased due to the popularity and coverage on TV/internet of GoPro commuters careering through gaps that aren’t there putting themselves in harms way just to make a point, screaming at the top of their voices and pontificating at anyone who they think will listen/can hear over the sound of the car radio.

I guessed that at some point somebody would pop up to blame cyclists for the poor behaviour of some drivers. I’m glad I wasn’t disappointed…

I’m going to guess that a lot of the animosity towards cyclists outside London has increased due to the popularity and coverage on TV/internet of GoPro commuters careering through gaps that aren’t there putting themselves in harms way just to make a point, screaming at the top of their voices and pontificating at anyone who they think will listen/can hear over the sound of the car radio.

So how do you explain the harrassment of those cyclists riding legally, legitimally and according to Bikeability principles?

I’m pretty certain I’m going to be killed by a pink princess airhead driving a Fiat 500/Mini, who is updating her Facebook page instead of looking at me.

She might tweet about how annoying it was afterwards.

I came very close to being taken out last week by a knob in a black Mercedes CLS.

I was riding on a short section of dual carraigeway on my way home from some local trails and he overtook me while undertaking a learner driver in the outside lane.

I swear his wing mirror was under my bars. It was a windy evening as well so a gust could have easily pushed me into his path.

Some people are just knobs

I think I’m going to buy a couple of video cameras, front & rear-facing.

No intention of becoming a youtube legend but I would definitely try to use them as evidence if I got hit.

…Hora 40 year pld women with pigtails you say….mmm. Nothing wrong there

^^^^ that (not tymbians post the one above) maybe. One of the issues is I believe the admissibility of the footage in criminal prosecutions. There was a case reported by CTC of a barrister who made a claim of assault against an abusive and threatening driver but the Police and CPS said the video evidence wasn’t allowable for a criminal charge to be brought.

Civil liability is I expect different.

On a wider note I think there are two issues with driving standards:

1 roads policing – there really isn’t enough of it to cope with anything but the worst cases

2 the societal ill that is the perceived right to drive (however the **** you want)

Problem 2 is constantly reinforced by problem 1.

@mrblobby

Where are these routes in Berkshire you speak of? I have a 30km loop mostly on B roads that starts near Swinley Forest, up to Windsor Park and back. I have a short bit on an NSL B road which is a nightmare. If you have any quieter routes you’d like to share then I’d be very grateful.

My e-mail address is mailtocuriousyellow at gmail dot com if you’d like to help me out. Advice gratefully received!

I find controlling the lane if it gets narrow or approaching a bend help, signalling my intensions early, you still get the odd idiot but you just have to let it go, I refuse to let bad driving and cycling anger me now.
Motorist are like cyclists, it is the 1 bad one that leaves the impression not the 100 good ones.

Curiousyellow, I’m further west in Newbury. On your side loads of the roads either side of the A4 in the M4/M3 corridor between newbury and reading are all pretty quiet, just steer clear of the busier A and B roads. A lot west of newbury too but guessing that’s a bit far.

If I want to try something different I’ll plot a route using Bikehike and pick some roads that look like they aren’t obviously busy then download it to my Garmin 810 and just follow that. Pretty quickly get to know the roads that are quiet and have a decent surface.

Cheers. Just put a little 45km loop together. I will have a go tomorrow morning.

Do you find a specific window during the day to be better to go out? In London I’d be fine if I got out for 0800, or right after noon for a couple of hours at the weekend. In Berkshire it seems quite changeable.

This +1000. I don’t always manage to control myself well enough, but a friendly wave at somebody who is being an arse always leaves me feeling better than if I get angry and make rude gestures – the chances are it’s also more likely to leave them feeling more confused and possibly worse if they stop to think, as they’re undoubtedly expecting the rude gestures. Of course there has also been the occasion where somebody hooted me, I gave them a wave and it turned out they were hooting me because they were being friendly anyway!

The point of the thread was after all supposed to be about how you cope with bad driving, and this is certainly a better way of coping than most suggestions involving getting angry.

I think of this

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThYHIawVhFw[/video]