Been done? Cycle craft author says road cycling ‘very safe’?

suppose the thing is, I feel pretty safe because I’ve been doing this shit for over 30 years
And this too.

Quite a few of us on this thread have cycle commuted for decades so that’s rather like that saying about granny and sucking eggs. Last winter I took a few weeks off because it was getting too dangerous. I resumed when the clocks changed, but shortly after needed to start using the car anyway. At the moment I’m enjoying my riding and not having many incidents because I can pick and choose when and where I ride and I don’t miss the cycle commute at all.

Your comments are absolutely relative to where you ride – London. Even when I lived there 30 years ago it rarely felt unsafe, and that was before the weight of cycle commuters had hit. You even reference it in your comments – you’re more likely to get caught RLJing in a car in central London, and traffic crawls anyway. It isn’t representative of a dark morning commute in Liverpool, Sheffield, Swansea….

To be fair, the village I live in gets a bit testy come 8:00 when the railway crossing barriers come down four times an hour in rush hour. The number of cars that don’t understand what a keep left sign or zig zags on a zebra crossing mean is astonishing! Someone was hit on the pedestrian crossing by a driver on the wrong side of the road who decided they could not wait. Have hassles about once a month, but there is little car drivers can do in such congestion. It’s the oncoming traffic holding you up, not the cyclist.

London has done a lot for cyclists. The C9 into central London has decent segregation, but I think the 20 mph limits have made a bigger difference for me. I’m certainly enjoying the Zone 2 base miles. Will be out with the club on our regular Tuesday night club ride into SW London later this evening. The state of the road surfaces rather than traffic are a bigger hazard. But we ride after 7PM.

It isn’t representative of a dark morning commute in Liverpool, Sheffield, Swansea…

Chapeau! That’s one helluva commute

London has done a lot for cyclists. The C9 into central London has decent segregation, but I think the 20 mph limits have made a bigger difference for me.

It’s almost like you making eyes at cab drivers and doing everything you can to please them isn’t the root cause of not having many issues.  It’s as if riding somewhere where the combination of a critical mass of people on bikes and low traffic speeds means that things become much safer no matter how bad the quality of riding (and/or driving).

Maybe that should be your takeaway rather than implying it’s the fault of people who ride bikes because they aren’t as virtuous as you?

Quite a few of us on this thread have cycle commuted for decades so that’s rather like that saying about granny and sucking eggs.

Jeez, talk about taking a quote out of context. Did you actually read what I typed??

For a start the saying is “teaching granny to suck eggs” and I wasn’t trying to teach you anything. I mean, how dare I!?

Anyway dick swinging and antagonism aside, the most interesting posts on this thread (IMO) were actually from a couple of days ago when someone basically stated they wouldn’t cycle on the road and tried to articulate why:

alexb17
Free Member
Interesting thread but I thought I’d throw my two pennies in as someone who will NEVER cycle on the road or in an urban environment where bikes and vehicles can mix to give a bit of context to why it’s difficult to get people on bikes.

Statistics are great at allowing us to understand risk but the simple fact is that every vehicle that overtakes me could be the one that ends it all. No amount of quoting statistics or telling me to be more confident on the road changes that fact. The vulnerability on the road is just too great for me. A 95kg lump of squishy flesh and bone vs two tonnes of metal and glass? No thanks.

To me, when cycling on the road you have to trust every single person who is driving with you life. The 17yo who has just passed their test, the person who just got a text, the one who had a couple of lunchtime beers, the one who is late. I appreciate that these same risks exist when I drive my car but I am in a metal cage that has had years of engineering to protect me and a load of air bags.

Logically I know there is a high chance I could cycle every day, carefully and diligently, and never have a scratch. But I also know that if something does go wrong I am utterly unprotected.

Until it’s all separate (which it never will be) I’ll stick to the off-road stuff.

^^That^^ is much more interesting (in the context of this thread) because it’s an insight into the thought processes of someone who is into bicycles, but won’t use them on the roads.

So What does it tell us? My own takes:

-Stats don’t offer much assurance and are naturally trumped by the sense of physical vulnerability (the lack of a crumple zone). Comes back to the “confidence” discussion I suppose

-There is a view of cycling on the roads as a “trust exercise“, couple that with a generally poor view of Humanity (not uncommon TBF) yeah I can see that it’s the wider disposition of our species that ends up acting as a major deterrent to dancing with Range Rovers.

-100% Segregation is the only circumstances that would get some to use a bike as transport, and those people are quite realistic about the likelihood of the UK achieving a 100% segregated cycling network…

I think it’s important to consider these sort of perspectives when talking about why people do or don’t want to cycle. Those of us that are confident enough to ride a bicycle on the Kings Highway are perhaps ascribing the wrong motives and/or projecting our own ideas onto people. But they don’t come to these view points out of nowhere, influences and experience have gotten people to this point.

There are some questions that follow on for me:

Would people consider using their bike on the road in residential areas subject to a 20 mph limit? Especially if those allowed you to get to the ideal segregated routes alongside higher speed/more major routes?

If that 100% segregated cycling network existed, what would you use it for? Commuting, shopping? taking your kids places? would you replace some of your car travel with a bicycle under those circumstances?

Would/could you ever view the whole “Trust Exercise” thing as more of a “Mutual interest” one? I mean shoft the perspective from feeling you have to trust strangers with unknown motives to accepting that everyone who drives past you doesn’t actually want their own day ruining with an RTC?

Quite a few of us on this thread have cycle commuted for decades so that’s rather like that saying about granny and sucking eggs.
Jeez, talk about taking a quote out of context. Did you actually read what I typed??

I typed a long reply then thought I could summarize it —

calm down, we’re all in general agreement but some of us don’t like being talked down to. We all commute, have done for a long time and all have different experiences. And yes, I know what the saying is.

Good comments and questions from cookeaa, but I think it focuses very much on the urban opportunities, which is not a bad thing – segregated routes and 20mph limits (together with ebikes)  could and should be revolutionising how we travel in towns and cities, especially when combined with better public transport to further reduce the need for car journeys.

Our village is 2-3 miles outside the nearest town. You have to either use a pretty busy A road, with draggy/steep hills in either direction, or muddy off road tracks. There’s disused railway line between the two as well, now overgrown and lost but when we came here 20 years ago it was just about passable and there were public consultations about getting it added to the Northern Greenway project – it just never happened. Even without adding any linking tracks, that project would have connected the village to all three of the secondary schools without kids needing to travel any distance on road. That’s probably 200 kids a day not needing a car, or the school bus, or taking the dodgy walk across the footpaths.

It would also have opened up a cycling option for some of the kids out of school activities in town as well, normalising bike use as transport, and some sort of e-cargo bike would be viable for the local shop. Neither of the kids choose to use a bike to get into town because of that  A road, but it would be a case of “build it and they will come”. Eldest at least used a bike to get around at uni, so yes, they are willing when facilities are there.

I’m firmly in the “mutual interest/trust” camp. There’s only a very tiny minority of drivers who would ever actively seek to hurt a cyclist, but trust and respect go both ways – if we want to be accepted as part of road traffic we need to behave responsibly as other slow moving traffic would do. Occassionally pull over if you are causing a queue – I did today a couple of times, once on a busy road with shocking parking  that meant cars couldn’t get past me, and once on a narrow country lane when a milk tanker was following me up a long hill. Cost me 10 seconds, if that, got me a cheery wave and thanks both times. Exactly the kind of argument we use when motorists do daft stuff to save themselves 10 seconds. It’s not worth it.

don’t like being talked down to

sod it. Yeah I see, you quoted TIred’s quoting me out of context, ok forget it.

But I also know that if something does go wrong I am utterly unprotected.

It all sounds like part of an FMEA/risk assessment doesn’t it. Severity and Occurrence. Occurrence can remain as unlikely as you want, but the potential for severity is massive. And a helmet makes so little difference as to be irrelevant when you get collected on the bonnet of a distracted driver doing 40… Even being able to see the inevitability of it (Mirror) only helps if they’ve left you enough space and you have somewhere to go.

100% Segregation is the only circumstances that would get some to use a bike as transport, and those people are quite realistic about the likelihood of the UK achieving a 100% segregated cycling network…

The problem is that sooner or later, segregated infrastructure has to cross a road, and IME that’s where I am most likely to experience conflict with a car.

Oh hello. This thread has been picked up by Road.CC

Here

Even being able to see the inevitability of it (Mirror) only helps if they’ve left you enough space and you have somewhere to go.

No – you are in control of that

This thread has been picked up by Road.CC

Christ, must be a spectacularly slow news day