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My twitter feed is filled with various cycling campaigners who use cameras and are daily throwing up images, short films and so on, of their interactions with cars and trucks and traffic layouts and shit roads and whatever. Some post perhaps 2 or 3 times a day...
I cycle to work every day, I use the roads at weekends on my bike. I don't have anything like the sorts of numbers of interactions with traffic that these folks seem to have (for a given value of personal anecdote is not data) Are they just riding around constantly looking for issues to film? Does it help raise awareness? Can anything on Twitter be anything other than confrontational?
I'm not sure that they don't just reinforce the message that cycling = danger.
I’m not sure that they don’t just reinforce the message that cycling = danger.
That's my concern too. We can be our own worst enemy at times.
I've cycled and commuted round Nottigham and Derby (shires) for 19 years now, and while I see a lot of rubbish infrastructure and poor driving, I rarely feel in danger or want to rant show it off. It got better after I had some roadcraft training and more experience.
I shouted at a driver who pulled out on me last week and couldn't remember the last time I'd had a real near miss though I accept peoe gave different thresholds for feeling threatened.
Maybe I'm lucky, but I can't help feeling that if you intend to share images of poor driving there may be a subconscious desire to get in those situations.
Where's that thread on the intentional plane crash?
My advice is simply to stop following these folk - and those that Retweet them.
Can anything on Twitter be anything other than confrontational?
I think Twitter tends to attract a certain personality type, as well as the way it works driving toxic behaviour in many of its users. It's a bit chicken-and-egg and I'm sure there's plenty of more reasonable, nuanced exchanges on Twitter - but its the aggro that gets the highest profile.
re. bad driving footage - road.cc's business model seems to be based on stoking tension between cyclists and drivers as well. They are part of the problem IMO.
Are they just riding around constantly looking for issues to film?
I do. My biggest hope is to get killed by a bin lorry turning left across me. I've got it in my Will to put it on Youtube to teach the driver a proper lesson.