I believe that the hierarchy for right of way is walkers, horses, cyclists but you may need to check that. Personally I think it’s polite and will win brownie points for MTBs.

Kathleen. c Romancing The Stone era

I always wonder at people who spend thousands on travelling to the other side of the world to bang on about how beautiful the place was they went to, but have never spent any time in Cornwall, Pembrokeshire, North Wales, Lakes, Yorkshire, Scotland etc. You can show them photos of Torridon and they think it’s overseas.
A very good point, beautifully made.

+1 for having a conversation about it first, let them know they’re late, find out why. If you then want to add interest payments, tell them you will first…

99% of the time when things like this happen I find some open communications can help avoid an enormous amount of emotion, and talking about it can actually improve the relationship massively

Friend’s leaving do cancelled so I’m off for c20 miles on the road bike shortly 🙂

Where on Earth are they getting that idea from?

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt as I’ve got older is that holding a strong opinion about how other people should behave does not require the opinion-holder to have any commonsense, access to facts or even any experience of the matter in question!

Please leave your gazebo at home!

You’ve forgotten to pray for decent weather

You’re not going to cause anything of the sort, the driver behind is the one who will be causing a collision.

Rule 1, etc. (-:

You know what I mean! 🙂 Yes the driver behind will be legally at fault but it’s the one who stops dead in through traffic that causes the whole thing

brooess it’s not clear, but if the “one thing” kerley was talking about was crossing side streets then s/he is correct.

Agreed. Also agree that few drivers seem to know it, or at least care about it

The scenario we were talking about was that in Richmond Park, pedestrians appear to have priority at all points in the road, wherever they choose to cross… which is not what the Highway Code says for roads in general

So one of the most basic things in the Highway code on pedestrian right of way is a surprise to many here.

I am hoping none of you drive a car…

Well I think we’re all hoping you don’t either! If you go around stopping dead for every pedestrian looking like they’re about the cross the road when you’re through traffic with right of way, you’re going to cause no end of rear enders!

Rule 1 of the internet, check your facts before posting…

So, unless you go hunting for info, no-one knows that pedestrians have priority… that’s effective isn’t it!
And in the meantime, the Great British Public are so convinced that cyclists are anti-social menaces, that any shouted warning is assumed to be abuse… when in fact the problem that needs solving is proper communication to all Park users of the reversal of the right of way when you pass through the gates of the Park…

+ has anyone actually thought it through? – stopping a bike from 20mph ain’t easy…

I find there’s an inverse relationship between people’s competence and their use of bingo… they usually have no idea that they’re communicating nothing and causing massive confusion.

Luckily I work in a team which is made up of people of different nationalities so plain English is essential to make sure everyone understands…

I like ‘herding cats’ though – have you ever tried organising something when everyone else has their own idea how to do it, and no-one’s listening to anything anyone else has to say? IME it’s used tongue-in-cheek, like ‘Nailing jelly to the wall’ 🙂

You would assume that Maarzocchi had made the bridge the thickness it did for a reason – and if it could have been thinner in the first place, wouldn’t they have done it?

Pedestrians have priority when crossing the road, whether there is a zebra crossing at that junction or not.

IMO that needs to be better publicised then – no-one riding will know that – so the shouting may well be shouting a warning if someone’s stepping out into the road rather than abuse. It’s also a bit daft, changing the priority to the reverse of what it is on the public highway – it’s bound to cause confusion

I am not saying this is the norm, but from someone who is in the park everyday whether it is cycling, running or walking the dog, the anti-social behavior of a minority of cyclists is growing.

That’s a shame. I guess it’s a result of new riders carrying on behaviours they exhibit in other parts of their lives – ie: poor risk management and a sense of entitlement. I find though that the more people get into cycling, the more they adapt to the unspoken codes of riding with skill and consideration…

Re pedestrians crossing the road – are you saying drivers and cyclists all have to stop – as in at a zebra crossing but without any of the usual lights and markings – because that’s daft – changing the rules as you pass from the public highway to the park is bound to lead to confusion ie: how will anyone know the priorities have changed? I haven’t ridden in RP for a while but I never knew that and never saw any notices about it either – so if I saw a pedestrian stepping into the road, I’d be shouting out a warning – from the point of view of believing I had right of way and was preventing a collision, not from the point of view of any sense of entitlement…

shouting at everyone who dares to impede their progress.

Out of interest, what are they shouting?

I ride c100 miles a week, commuting and club and I’ve never experienced shouting in terms of abuse – but all the time in terms of warnings and safety – frequently me when pedestrians walk into the road without looking.

If you’re coming up fast behind a slow-moving group, shouting ‘coming through/on your right’ is common practice for safety reasons… if the faster riders kept their mouths shut and one of the slower riders didn’t look behind them before moving out for some reason, you’d have riders all over the floor… and in Richmond Park that means potentially under the wheels of a car.

Richmond Park is frequently used for training because it’s safer than main roads and has some tidy hills in it, so forcing everyone to ride slowly would be unhelpful unless we want UK to no longer be the pre-eminent country at pro-level by cutting off the grass roots.

Fast riders shouting a warning seems to be the best way to manage the problem of riders moving at different speeds.

I’d like to see this case publicised more widely to make sure drivers know there are consequences…
Deleting the phone record is despicable…

+1 for the ‘if your job’s not that well defined, focus on the stuff you’re good at/want to do/can fix’ and let the other stuff go. If it means you go in each day motivated, in control and delivering solutions then it’s good for your boss too… you’re helping him out. The days of jobs being well-defined and given to us on a plate are gone IMO – take advantage of it!

I do this as a contractor – frequently dropping into counselling mode when clients have stuff they’re struggling with and just need someone to talk to and helping them with that. Who cares that I’m being paid to deliver marketing services – if it adds value then it’s a win-win…

99% of people don’t, because they don’t want to mix with lots of traffic. This isn’t going to change with education and or an adjustment of attitudes, and even it it did people will always make mistakes.

I believe that one reason for building specific facilities is it encourages those who are currently too scared because of lousy driving – and the more of those new riders on the the road we get, we slowly change the balance of numbers and slowly change attitudes and cycles eventually dominate…

ie: the infrastructure is seen as a more effective route to behaviour change than training, testing, education, marketing communications, law enforcement etc… which I do get, it just seems a long winded and expensive way to do it…

I also think Bikeability is fantastic. I did levels 2 & 3 a couple of years ago (been riding nearly 40 years at that point and learnt loads of really good techniques). It teaches you to be more assertive and more communicative. It’s interesting how drivers will change their behaviour if you’re more confident and assertive with them… so cycling safety can be improved by changing the behaviour of cyclists – which is waaay cheaper than loads of infrastructure.

I’m not in favour of compulsion but I’d like to see a massive effort in driving up participation in Bikeability – campaigns from CTC, BC, NHS, Mayor of London, bike shops etc etc – I reckon if 75% of cyclists took Bikeability and used it, you’d transform the safety stats… and also put a lot of the more tantrumy drivers back in their boxes

I don’t like cycle lanes because they represent segregation – with the ‘lower value’ party being pushed out of the way of the ‘more important’ party. I don’t like the inherent ‘when you’re on your bike you’re lower in the hierarchy of road users’ idea that this represents.

We badly need cycling to be treated as a priority form of transport in the UK. Not because I happen to like it, but because we have major, major health issues, which cycling can help to resolve: something like 30k dead each year from pollution-related diseases and similar from obesity-related diseases + the cost of obesity to the NHS. There’s also the small matter of destroying the planet…

In terms of the benefit to individuals, to communities and to society as a whole, the car needs to be made the clear secondary choice – and cycling needs to be massively encouraged – for the sake of everyone….

The debate about cycle lanes IMO is far too parochial, far too focussed on a point of detail – we badly need to get people out of cars and cycling should dominate road use, not cars. The debate needs to be about obesity, mental health and the environment, and ‘what do we do about these problems’ and conclude that everyone riding is a great and very cheap way to help – rather than talking about how best to paint the side of a road or where to put the concrete – it’s like Nero fiddling while Rome burnt!

Plus roads are perfectly safe when drivers are observant and careful – they must be – I’ve been riding for nearly 40 years and not been knocked off yet… so cycling can be made a lot safer with a tougher training, testing and legal regime for drivers

Just logon to Spotify and pick a playlist that sound like your kind of thing

I buy bikes if I like the way they ride. My summer road bike is carbon and lighter than my singlespeed steel commuter but the commuter is still a beautiful bike to ride – very comfortable, just rolls along. I wouldn’t want a fast bike for commuting anyway – riding steadily is safer in traffic

Allows someone else to sell a stolen Reverb as ‘new/boxed’?

i am not sure that social media being used as the modern day equivalent of the lynch mob is necessarily a good thing and that ruining his business is the appropriate response here

How else do we deal with incidents like this then? It went all the way to the Police and all he got was a fine for a public order offence… where was the charge for dangerous driving?

One of the reasons we/cyclists take an opportunity like this to hit out is because harassment and abuse is a daily occurrence when riding, yet there’s never any Police around to support us in trying to get justice and even when the Law does get involved there’s minimal action… look at all the times someone’s been killed when riding and only fines/points/short sentences result.

We’ve got to change peoples’ behaviour somehow if we want cycling to be a peaceful, safe thing to do instead of the preserve of 30 something+ males who feel confident enough to take on the risk… it people like this guy who scare women, children and everyone else off the road.

If we want cycling to become a mass participation activity then highlighting cases like this are one of the few ways open to us as a community…

this guy’s a victim of nothing except his own inability to deal with his anger… and he looks like he’s got enough cash to pay for a few sessions with a therapist so no excuse for not doing that either!

I do like the idea of him wrecking his bike-related caff business because of this – hit him where it hurts. Facebook is taking a pasting too.

Most of the time when you get this kind of treatment the worst thing is that feeling you can do nothing to defend yourself and no way of ensuring punishment is given. It’s interesting how much this thing has exploded – I suspect there’s so many cyclists who’re sick and tired of the harassment and abuse that now there’s an outlet, everyone’s in there…

Social media has its uses…

Is the bloke in the brew-cafe website the maniac nutcase on video ?

Someone on Roadcc has named him and linked him to that business. It looks like it could be the same bloke… but that’s not the same as an official confirmation!

If you look at his Twitter (assuming it’s the same bloke) he’s posing with a meat cleaver…

Was going to do it last year, got ill and didn’t.
Hoping to do it this year for the first time. Not sure how we’re getting home again yet

n+1
I’d feel deprived if I only owned one bike now…

Pic 1[/url]

Pic 2[/url]

Here it is in situ – absolutely spot on – fits the bars and the light perfectly. Needed a Lezyne strap rather than the Exposure one as the bracket is slightly wider but otherwise 100%

Just goes to show what the combination of the internet and 3D printing can produce 🙂

Thanks hugely to Dez and Euan for sorting this out – I’m massively grateful!

A brand might not be able to price fix in law, but they can choose to not supply you if they don’t want you to openly advertise the reduced prices.

Notice how hard it is to find Specialized shoes at any kind of discount online? Whereas you’ll easily find Northwave, Sidi and others at big discounts

I wouldn’t take an overly local view of it myself… global economy is not looking too good. Russia, China, Brazil, USA, Eurozone, UK all underperforming against expectations, in deflation or recession…

I’ve been reading the FT a lot recently and it’s not got a particularly positive tone… lots of concern that the underlying issues leading to 2008 have not been resolved, overwhelming amounts of debt, frothy property bubbles all round the world and very little room for manoeuvre by central banks if things start to slip. Historically there’s a recession c every ten years… next one’s due in c 3 years therefore.

Best case scenario is one of slow growth… personally I’m revisiting my expectations of an ever-increasing income and standard of living…

I didn’t know what AndyRM has said but it sounds right to me.

Data is a major asset these days to help retailers run a sound business so some companies will want to capture your details a) so they can recontact you with future offers b) get a better understanding of their own customer base and who their best customers are..

Think about how Amazon makes recommendations to you…

Back in the day, your local greengrocer did this themselves ‘Good morning MR Brooess, will you be having your usual today?’ etc but with ecommerce it has to be automated.

Other retailers recognise that forcing you to log in loses the sale and they’ll give you a login-free route to purchase…

Basically, like most business, sometimes it’s done well, sometimes not… capturing data to give you better service is good. Capturing data to spam you is stupid.

Increase the output prices, which would boost GDP. Simple 🙂

I’m not sure if this would really impact on productivity the way it’s measured but the most productive I’ve ever been has been either working in a small company with a focussed, hard-working, highly skilled team or on my own managing and delivering a project entirely myself…

The least productive is in the corporate environment with dire leadership, unclear objectives, decision by committee, bullying and manipulation and politics. I’ve seen some really good people utterly wasted through lousy management.

Culturally I think UK corporates are totally in the wrong place… quite a few of my most ambitious friends are basically cruising after 20 years of work, having grown so tired of all the political nonsense – we’d all love to work really hard but have come to the conclusion it’s not worth it in the cultures in which we work. Maybe the fact we’re in financial services has something to do with it!

I suspect some cultural change would help…

Notice how it’s never difficult for the Press to find a photo of Gideon with a dark look in his eyes. He’s a game player par excellence. So was Balls IMO. In love with the game of politics but no interest in actually doing the job…

Even the Economist struggles to find much positive to say about him.e.g. their take on Gideon announcing more power to the regions is that way worse cuts are coming than we had in the last parliament. Give the regions power just as the massive cuts come through and the electorate makes a (wrong) correlation/causation and blames local government…

With a massive deficit to be paid off, there’ll be plenty of ways that taxes will be found – there has to be or we’ll end up broke. This looks like populism, not policy. Why on earth would you freeze taxes when such a massive deficit has to be paid off? Maybe he’s going to do the sensible thing and tax BTL and foreign ownership till they bleed, and give housing back to ‘hard-working families’ instead of spivs… but I doubt it, sadly

People can be amazingly flexible with their morals when there’s something in it for them. Not just the officials but the fans as well… sad really…

My Flash and Flare have repeatedly gone back for repair – bought in 2011. Replaced last year and just fixed again…
From a ‘do they work’ point of view this is rubbish but when they do work they’re great and Exposure’s service has been excellent – always taken back and tried to fix them (albeit not always successfully).

Personally I would send them back again and ask them to fix or replace…

Although I have a couple of Lezyne Zectos which have been faultless…

Saw him at the Albert Hall last year – and Glasto a couple of years ago. Stunning, one hell of a racket. His homemade guitars are part of the entertainment 🙂

I’ve had a few overly personal/meaningless criticisms on here and I’ve just bailed from the thread and not gone back… same tactic if you get some ranty driver when you’re riding, just walk away from them…

There’s so much positive advice and knowledge on here, you can’t let the negatives outweigh the positives. IMO