Motonormativity, bike hate:-(

Credit where credit’s due

Between this and the recent Isla Rowntree interview, GCN seem to be turning a bit of a corner and producing some thoughtful, grown-up content, I think I’ll be paying a bit more attention to their output if this is the new direction of travel under their present ownership.

people view cars especially as a “necessity” and for some they probably are, at least to live the life they have.

“My car is necessity” is usually followed after a bit of digging by “I chose to live x minutes drive away from work/shops/friends/etc.”
Cars being essential* are almost entirely  a product of personal choices** and societal drift that relies on personal car ownership.

“It’s really not that unsafe. It’s like you have been brain washed, as per the thread title!”

Indeed! Unless stats have changed massively since last time I looked, the health benefits from cycling/activity vastly outweigh the risk from injury. But we can’t dismiss that hostile environments, with regular beeps/shouts of abuse etc can definitely grind you down and put you off cycling before any collision occurs.

* for a given value of that word
**Yes Im fully aware some people have much less choice about their work/living arrangements than others

Not doing a 15 minute journey by bike for those reasons is like saying you won’t drive because the Paggani will get scratched in the multistory.

Its more like saying I wont drive because my 90’s Cosworth will get stolen with a coathanger down the door and left burnt out on an industrial estate, or my 80’s car will be on bricks and the wheels gone, or my 1930s car will have the fenders, lights and horn unbolted and removed and the petrol siphoned if my chaufeur leaves it unattended.

We’ve solved these issues (mostly, and the publicity of the exceptions prove the rule for the rest) for cars through a combination of manufacturers improvements, legistlation, and police action – all intended to make use of the motorcar the practical norm for the average man.

As yet, no comparable solution for bikes exists in this country.

I know from my local Facebook group that well used, non shiny, halfords hybrids and “mtbs” often go missing from town centre, train station, gym etc.

What a load of nonsense.

Driving’s just right and the British Way to get around.

If anything, I’d remove pavements altogether because let’s face it, they’re used by mostly undesirable types, who can’t afford to drive.

If anything, I’d remove pavements altogether because let’s face it, they’re used by mostly undesirable types, who can’t afford to drive.

So where will you park then?

@fasgadh

Lol

As yet, no comparable solution for bikes exists in this country.

You’re setting the bar unrealistically high then.

It’s not like cars are exactly secure anymore, anything from a Transit to a VW to a Range Rover is gone in 60 seconds with a laptop. 10-20 years ago there may have been a utopian sweetspot where cars were secure. But having an unhackable (at the time) immobilizer on a Skoda Octavia isn’t any different to having a decent lock on a generic commuter hybrid.

It doesn’t even make sense financially as a justification.

4 miles each way, say about 36mpg* at best (short trip, engine never warms up, lots of stop-start), that’s about a liter in fuel each day. £1.50.

Parking £3.50

That’s £5/day. 47 weeks a year that’s £1175

My commuter (one of those yellow OFO’s with baskets and shimano hub gears and dynamos for ~£100 a pop) could be stolen every month and I’d still be in profit vs driving into town.  And I suspect after the first couple of months the market for fenced OFO’s would be somewhat saturated anyway!

*picked for easy maths, 8 miles @36mpg happens to be 1 liter of fuel. It doesn’t really matter anyway when 3/4 of your costs are parking.

OFO

Are we talking these …

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-m&sca_esv=ea8345caca9cba8c&q=ofo+bike&udm=2&fbs=AEQNm0A-5VTqs5rweptgTqb6m-EbfO8uEAKwwfTIiAEOSBKJm6VufTAzfOY3nLuIIKh6isETPkOTjUCD7QEU4-R83OboSOR5yWv29O9XHiqCoRFsfbYs8BeibySPEOwcvvDafsDYW6Scn_FTJBoL7IO2OGmO9ud0SgA3bVcOjFi8GTRE3sDAB8JOALXhW1bqasiKmV-sL5azIgpZWufGB39oUKZnFwtsmA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjTldPi1cyHAxWBXEEAHSJvD2UQtKgLegQIDxAB&biw=96&bih=149&dpr=3.33

OFO

Are we talking these …

That’s the one, although mines gained a rear rack, rear light, and some extra bracing on the front basket.

They went bankrupt and most of them got scrapped. For a while they were being sold for £90-£110 each which is a bargain when the Nexus hubs alone cost that.

They’re like Boris bikes, heavy and slow.  But if there’s no intent to ride it further than the majority of car journeys (under 5 miles)  then speeds irrelevant anyway as the difference is only seconds / minutes.

Anyone else find they get more hate the more you look like a serious road/commuter cyclist?

I don’t have regular problems commuting but definitely get more in my hiviz and panniers than when I rode in jeans with a rucksack. As if previously I was a man on a bike, but now I’m a cyclist.

Also, not commuting, but never had any problems on the MTB on the road dressed in MTB attire, admittedly not in rush hour though.

@fasgadh

Why, my imposing £80,999 Range Rover Defender 130 takes me anywhere I want to go. It’s composed on any surface (such as British roads), and allows me to embrace any adventure. It’s a smooth and engaging drive whether one smashes through school fences, walls, killing little kids (Landrover call it “unstoppable” for good reason), maiming cyclists, or just generally getting in the way of everyone else. I love it.

but never had any problems on the MTB on the road dressed in MTB attire

Ashamed to say I shouted a load of abuse at a driver that honked at me and my partner on sunday. She stopped and explained she was just letting us know she was there! I mean PROPER use of the car horn, how was I supposed to know that! My brain is tuned defensively because of the attitude to cyclists in this country. I did apologise and say we really aren’t used to drivers being nice.

The roads are very congested and most car drivers think everybody else should change because they are a special case and have the devine right to behave as they always have. Governments won’t tackle cars and take positive steps because it would make them unpopular. In the villages around Manchester they are building lots of little developments of luxury large executive houses, the buyers of these will probably site the lack of transport links from thier door as why they all need to drive every where.

When new roads/by passes are built it spawns a lot of new builds along the road, the road then ends up with big jams where the new road meets the existing road network.

On new roads cycling provison is a second class provison with the main priority to separate cars from bikes and keep cars flowing. Cycle provision is poor and slow to navigate.

Enforce speed limits and traffic laws. Lower speed limits especially in small country roads and sentence all car drivers who hit horses, cyclists and pedestrians to transportation to somewhere nasty with hard labour.

I’d like to see drivers with attitudes like those shown be forced to hand in their driving license, as they have no right to own one with such levels of complacency and irresponsibility. The video is a good advert for compulsory re-testing and re-education every decade to retain the privilege of being in charge of a dangerous vehicle on the road.

On new roads cycling provison is a second class provison with the main priority to separate cars from bikes and keep cars flowing. Cycle provision is poor and slow to navigate.

Ironically new roads seem to go OTT in my experience.  There’s usually a really wide shared path set away from the traffic even if it’s a bypass to nowhere from a cycling perspective just linking one busy road you probably wouldn’t want to be on, to another one the other side of the village.  Bypasses don’t make sense on a bike, generally we want to be in the village because the journey lengths will generally be short (i.e. one village to the next, not multiple villages away requiring a bypass in-between)

They’re not always done well, the Arborfield bypass has a mile long diversion to cross it on the old Swallowfield Road. And the A329 form Coppid Beach to St Crispins makes the mistake of having the driveways at the road level so the cycle path (which is still ~5m back from the road so there’s no reason for the driveways to be sunk down)  making it so undulating it’s motion sickness inducing!

What I think we do so wrong is “brownfield” cycle paths.  It get’s squeezed in, where it can be on wide straight roads, often where it’s not needed, then disappears where it is at junctions and pinch points. Reading Road <-> Wokingham Road is a good case in point, one end is a shared use path that engineers in conflict at every point.  The other is a cycle lane that starts/stops, goes on and off the shared pavement, and disappears just as you need it to get through the junctions at Winnersh Sainsburys or Reading BP.

Enforce speed limits and traffic laws.

This. There’s a campaign in Todmorden against plans for a cycle lane linking the centre of town to the local park. I joined the facebook group and unsurprisingly it’s full of the usual anti-cyclist/pro-car vitriol. I told them if they didn’t want the cycle lane then the solution is to enforce the 20mph limit and other traffic laws so that cyclists could use the road safely. They didn’t seem to like that either!

I’d like to see drivers with attitudes like those shown be forced to hand in their driving license, as they have no right to own one with such levels of complacency and irresponsibility. The video is a good advert for compulsory re-testing and re-education every decade to retain the privilege of being in charge of a dangerous vehicle on the road.

I dunno if that would work, I think most people could pass a re-test if they closed their mouth and stuck to the speed limits for 45min.

I’d rather it was “normalized” to suspend licenses for relatively minor offenses. So rather than 12points = middling length ban, make it a weeks ban for each point leading upto that as well.  Get caught speeding – 3 week ban, on your phone 6 week ban, get caught again and it’s cumulative so 3 points + 3 points = a 3 week ban and a 6 week ban.  The existing points system makes the idea of loosing your license so remote and alien that people just act with impunity anyway.  It should be “If I go 37 in this 30 on my commute today I’ll be on the bus/bike/train next month” not “If I go 37 in this 30 on my commute today there’s a slim to no chance of a meaningful punishment because I’ve only been caught once in the last decade so the points expire quicker than I can accumulate them”.  Either that or just remove the expiration date on the points so they hang around until you get a ban at some point.

The hard of thinking woman who claimed that a number of cars killed Peds because of cyclists is astronomicaly stupid. It’s probably never happened.

I’m not quite sure how Si Richardson kept his cool at that point. I’d still be there smacking the woman around the head with a rolled up copy of the Daily Mail.

What (smack) you read (smack) in here (smack) is not facts (smack smack smack).

I reckon it will eventually stabilise it’s self. The cost of driving, hideously congested roads, parking nightmares, astronomical purchase prices for new cars, a fuel crisis that very realistically could happen at some point, materials shortages, working from home or remote all might start to take there toll on mass private car ownership. Won’t obvs be in my life time but I don’t reckon it will be that far down the road. I struggle to believe the whole infrastructure can just continue to grow at its current rate.

My previous employers owned and run by 2 families (8 people from 2 households) all drove to work in separate cars! 8 cars instead of just 2. That’s prime motomormality.

But then you’ve got a culture in which moving around a mostly 2-3 square mile radius in a 1.5-tonne tank is considered the height of success. The modern Range Rover and similar vehicles epitomise the crass individualism and cosmic stupidity of 21st century consumerism. More so, “Moronmativity” isn’t the result of accident — it is the conclusion of well-funded lobbying in government by the extremely powerful interests, backed up and supported by the oligarchy press because a threat to a Range Rover is the beginnings of a threat to their obscene super yachts and private jets.

it is the conclusion of well-funded lobbying in government by the extremely powerful interests, backed up and supported by the oligarchy press because a threat to a Range Rover is the beginnings of a threat to their obscene super yachts and private jets.

See also the ridiculously OTT sentences handed out to Just Stop Oil protesters recently.

Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if there were some opaque fossil fuel lobbyists having a quiet word in the ear of Government saying “we need to make an example of these people”.

Can’t be having the world thinking “holy ****, there is a massive existential crisis in the shape of climate change and we need to do something about it NOW”. That might upset the oil industry profits.

One can only hope attitudes change when fully self-driving cars become the norm (probably 20+ years away?) and car sharing becomes practical – then private ownership may decrease (or a Government finally has the balls the face up to the problem of too many vehicles on the roads)

I reckon it will eventually stabilise it’s self.

This is probably correct. As more people buy electric cars, the charging points will become (more of) an issue. There’s almost certainly going to be too great a shortfall for the number of people wanting to charge their cars. ebiking a reasonable journey will probably become something more people do. <crosses fingers>

a 1.5-tonne tank

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but some of these behemoths are already topping the 2.5 tonne mark. It wont be long before the fully electric bloated WinkPanzers will be knocking on 3 tonnes. Why anyone should be able to drive one of these – with the added danger of its mass on other road users- on a standard license is beyond me.

This is probably correct. As more people buy electric cars, the charging points will become (more of) an issue. There’s almost certainly going to be too great a shortfall for the number of people wanting to charge their cars. ebiking a reasonable journey will probably become something more people do. <crosses fingers

Yeah but the relatively cheap cost per mile for those who can charge cheaply at home is also going to boost the number of short car journeys “oh my car is zero emissions so I can drive it anytime anywhere I like”

Just finished cycling with the family from Passau to Vienna down the Danube. What a joy- every Austrian town we visited had brilliant provision for cycling, well laid out infrastructure and demonstrated its value by the huge numbers of town bikes doing short journeys, utility bikes, loads of bikes at the stations etc. Just showed what it could be like, if there was a will to improve things.

It doesn’t even make sense financially as a justification.

4 miles each way, say about 36mpg* at best (short trip, engine never warms up, lots of stop-start), that’s about a liter in fuel each day. £1.50.

Parking £3.50

That’s £5/day. 47 weeks a year that’s £1175

that’s if I’m doing it every day as a commute. If I was, I’d certainly be taking your suggestion (or getting that Brompton)

my example was a one off (or occasional) local journey into town that didn’t require carrying any items, and it was a nice day. I really considered walking, it was a lovely day. From an eco point of view, I’m a bit annoyed with myself that I didn’t.

Personally I’d be bored to tears if my job meant going to the same office location every day. Appreciate that this isn’t the norm.

 I think most people could pass a re-test if they closed their mouth and stuck to the speed limits for 45min.

Yup. I wouldnt fancy a retest personally and thats with trying to pay attention to highway code updates so being able to pass the theory.

Something I liked recently  was all the press reports and the statements along the lines of “people wont know the new rules” with the implication therefore we shouldnt change the rules vs the alternative of maybe asking why the **** people werent paying attention to rule changes.

Slightly off topic but something I have been thinking about recently due to the crap weather and spending more time on the road bike.

Anyone else noticed that quite a few close passes are down to drivers being right up your arse for a while before managing to do the overtake resulting in them moving out to a semi-sensible (since they wont have paid attention to the suggestions about how wide to pass) about a cars length after they have actually gone past and hence at the stage they were going past it was too close.