If cyclists were licensed and bikes were "taxed"…

Most dangerous road users in London are cyclists. They are a menace to pedestrians.

haha – loving the logic there

I refuse to read any of those twitter feeds, farcebook pages, etc. just as I also refuse to pay attention to any of those cyclist video youtube pages where the guy shouts out the car reg. numbers of every other car.

Getting put in a wooden box by some nutter in a van is one thing. I’d rather not do it myself by getting stressed beyond healthy levels.

Getting put in a wooden box by some nutter in a van is one thing. I’d rather not do it myself by getting stressed beyond healthy levels.

“It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”

I refuse to read any of those twitter feeds, farcebook pages, etc. just as I also refuse to pay attention to any of those cyclist video youtube pages where the guy shouts out the car reg. numbers of every other car.

Same, have unfollowed all the crazy-numberplate-shouty-people!

My standard answer to morons stating that cyclists shouldn’t be on the road as they don’t pay “road tax” is generally the following which I found somewhere once:

By that logic, you shouldn’t be on the road if you’re disabled, if your car’s older than 40 years, you drive a tractor, an electric vehicle, anything with emissions lower than 100g/km, an NHS vehicle, or a horse. Or, of course, you’re on foot.

have unfollowed all the crazy-numberplate-shouty-people!

If you are prepared to pick through the angst and shouting there is sometimes some good information to be had there (e.g. learning from other people’s mistakes: as a driver and a cyclist!)

The only way some motorists will stop hating cyclists, is if we all stop cycling.

This ^^.

Let’s suppose for a moment that there was a way of “taxing” all bikes and that all cyclists started paying this nominal sum and it was enforceable, traceable etc.

Straight away there’d be complaints that it wasn’t enough or that we needed insurance too or that we still jumped red lights, rode on pavements, didn’t use cycle paths…

Quite apart from the fact that a bike tax is completely unenforceable and impractical, it wouldn’t solve the problem, it’d just shift the complaints elsewhere. Appeasement isn’t the answer – it’s going to take years of education to dispel the myths and bullshit that people come up with. And every single time a newspaper or website runs their usual clickbait anti-cyclist rhethoric, every time some Jeremy Clarkson wannabe posts on the Daily Wail forum, it takes things one step back.

it’s going to take years of education to dispel the myths and bullshit that people come up with

Education that isn’t being provided.

Has been done before – I started the thread.

General consensus was that most people would not pay tax for riding their bike and no it wouldn’t change motorists perceptions…

The only way some motorists will stop hating cyclists, is if we all stop cycling.

this, and it depresses me beyond words.

Driving is such a frustrating experience these days, so all you’re seeing is the frustration targeted at another group. Nothing to do with actual cycling or taxes, just a venting. Personally I hate driving round town in rush hour – can’t think of anything worse.

Although cyclegaz (the shouty bloke) is actually quite an intelligent guy and has a lot of method in what initially appears to be madness

One if the tabloid s used one of his videos without crediting him and he got thousands out of them by being very professional and sensible about it all
Gave it to a charity I believe.

Yep, Gaz has managed to get a couple of good convictions based on his video evidence.

This one being particularly scary:

And he also runs Silly Cyclists which is an effort to highlight bad cycling and educate cyclists through examples.

Never understood the term filtering as effectively your overtaking on the inside or outside of traffic

whoever ran the Stanford Prison experiment

I know this one! It was Zimbardo – do I win a prize?

It was on a prog on R4 about an hour ago 🙂

This one being particularly scary

No! No! No! you have to realize that this sort of thing only ever happens when there is a cyclist with a helmetcam to film it. He deliberately made it happen so he could film it.

Steam rollers don’t pay “road tax” either.
Car drivers tend not to try and squeeze them off the road.

brooess – Member

…..I can deal with being hated. It’s the driving straight at me which scares me.

But this happens when I’m in my car and running/walking as well.

I know it feels like we’re under attack when riding sometimes but my observation is it’s wider than car vs cyclist – there’s a much bigger problem about how some people display psychopathic behaviour when they get in the driving seat…

exactly

recent conversation

women with dog steps out from behind car parked in layby onto shared use path (I’d already seen her with tail gate up and slowed) but then she blocks my line “you can’t ride here its a pavement”

me pointing to sign “its a shared use path”

women “you should be on the road”

me “I’d prefer to be on the road but its very busy and a lot of drivers pass too close”

women “you ride too close and scare my dog”

me “I was riding slowly and you stepped out in front of me and your dog should probably be on a lead, I try to be considerate when I pass people”

women “you don’t pay road tax”

me “I drive, I pay road tax to register my vehicle, I pay plenty of other taxes that actually pay for roads – now tell me when you’re driving your car and a cyclist is in front of you do you actually hate them being there?”

women “why don’t you just f*** off”

its a pointless debate

“you should be on the road”
…
“you don’t pay road tax”

You’ve gotta respect that kind of logic! 😆

I was once shouted at for “riding on the pavement” by someone who was actually standing on the big painted bike symbol and about three yards from the big blue shared use sign.

I do wonder how much this blinkeredness contributes to the “cyclists illegally ride on pavements” trope.

Had a conversation with a female driver last week.
She overtook me on a blind, near 90 degree bend on a narrow road with high stone walls limiting forward view, double white lines (a pretty good indicator of the advisability of overtaking) and two oncoming vehicles.
I waved my hand at her and she stopped. I spoke calmy and politely all through the conversation, i told her that what she had done was dangerous & illegal because of the double white lines.
Her reply was that she gave me plenty of room & she knew what she was doing because she had family that cycles and rode horses.
When i asked if she would be happy for her family members to be passed that close on such a tight corner she could only reply “oh, you’re just being a tosser now” so i rode off.
Ultimately she knew very well what she had done was wrong & dangerous, but she truly believed that her need to be past was far more important than the safety of myself and the oncoming traffic (i did mention she put them at risk too)and was therefore justified in her actions.
How you deal with people like that i have no idea.

That’s what I don’t get.

All these people who just have to pass right NOW. Immediately. They’re all in a huge rush to get past but they all seem to have the time to stop and shout abuse or tell you to pay road tax. How’s that work then? Either you’re in a hurry or you’re not; if #1 then do your dangerous overtake and sod off. Don’t then stop and argue about it!

I keep wondering if i could have prevented the incident, i was in primary approaching the bend & went through the corner on a ‘racing line’ i.e. From primary through the apex & then attempting to retake primary as i was exiting the bend. Never occurred to me that someone would be so daft as to overtake right on the apex of the bend as traffic was oncoming.
Looking back, i cant be sure she even knew i was there, i don’t remember hearing her car but i was doing around 20mph at that point (before braking for the corner) & the wind cancels out engine noise somewhat.

Despite the powerful lobby groups here in the UK there will be more and more regulation of motorised traffic, lead by the strong Green Party contingent of our European Parliament.

I suppose there is also an argument to regulate cyclist too because whilst the consequences of stupidly on a bike may be different the cause(****) is the same and the more people you prise out of cars the more likely people on bikes become an annoyance.

The answer IMO is somewhere in RichMtb’s post, why is driving a car and riding a bike so different in France and Spain than it is in the UK?

I wonder how much sat nav has to do with the overtakes into oncoming traffic… people have essentially switched off their navigation/observation function, and delegated it to the talking machine on the dashboard…

Oh and I did see a few cars try to squeeze past a steam roller last week – on the A23 in Purley – the road narrows as you go past Tesco and at least 3 cars accelerated into the narrowing gap as the steam roller trundled along. The last of the 3 nearly got crushed 😯

I shall adopt footflaps excellent post as my argument in future, should it be required. Bike is low emissions, hence zero VED. I like it.

Mine isn’t after last nights Biryiani and methane is 50 time more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2

Read CycleHatred on twitter

What I found most astonishing about the comments on there (and on this thread) is how many people believe cyclists should be on the pavement (illegally). You just can’t win, can you.

*rides on the road* – “oi, get on the pavement!”

“Oh, ok!” – *rides on the pavement* – “oi, get on the road!”

We’re not going to change anything until either cyclists are as common as cars and drivers are thus much more accustomed to dealing with them, or the infrastructure is in place to carry non-motorised traffic as a separate stream (which is never going to happen). Till then, we just have to try not to get killed.

Or until the law enforces acceptance through truly punitive sanctions against those who transgress the relevant laws.

You know, we’ve managed to turn things like drink driving, not wearing a seatbelt, and (almost) using the phone whilst driving into socially unacceptable actions. You reckon we could get to a point where driving a ton and a half of steel into someone could be viewed as similarly antisocial rather than an admirable goal?

We’ve had cars in the hands of the plebeian masses for over 60yrs now & we haven’t managed it yet. As a society we are so wedded to the idea of the car that we accept the 2000+ deaths a yr (& many more injured) as a price worth paying.

The weird thing about the “dangerous cyclists using the pavement” trope is that, if you look at the figures, there are loads of people killed on the pavement by CARS every year and usually one or zero killed by cyclists.