Why Are Many Drivers So Anti-Cyclist In This Country?

[Unleash The Nade]

As a cyclist and a driver, I can appreciate there are good and bad examples of both which we can all relate to.

However, it never ceases to amaze me the amount of abuse and road rage some drivers show towards cyclists, especially when they're doing nothing wrong.

I cycle quite a bit, both on my own and with a local club, I/we are always courteous, never take risks, don't jump lights, give proper and early hand signals, yet are often subject to torrents of abuse by passing motorists, many of whom doing dangerous manoeuvres, which could result in a serious accident and injury.

The biggest misunderstanding by many motorists, is that they fail to appreciate its legal for cyclists to ride two abreast.

This in fact benefits the motorist if there's a large group ( say 20), as they only need to pass 10 bike lengths instead of 20, if the same group rode single file.

The clearance at which they should pass two cyclists, should be the same as for one, so anyone suggesting that as an argument, it simply doesn't stack up.

I'm interested to hear a debate from both sides here, especially any non-cycling drivers.

[Lord Bastion]

I don't mind sharing the road with cyclists, but

get two side by side who refuse to pull in on a windy country road and my blood boils.......

[cambozpar]

Cyclists are all c***s! No exceptions

[Unleash The Nade]

I don't mind sharing the road with cyclists, butget two side by side who refuse to pull in on a windy country road and my blood boils.......

Agree, that's an example of bad cyclists

It's much the same as the local farmer doing that in his tractor for several miles

[Lord Bastion]

Agree, that's an example of bad cyclists

It's much the same as the local farmer doing that in his tractor for several miles

Exactly

[Unleash The Nade]

Cyclists are all c***s! No exceptions

The first very measured and highly intelligent reply

You're obviously one of these drivers with windscreen washers on the inside of your car

[DA Baracus]

I heard a bit about this subject on the radio the other day.

I am all for cyclists on the road. There are many benefits and hardly any drawbacks, and most of the drawbacks are down to people being idiots and nothing to do with cycling itself.

The rage from some of those against it calling in was pretty staggering. There was the usual pish that cyclists should have to pay road tax and have to pass tests and have a license etc. One guy, who seemed that he was in the middle of a heart attack brought on by pure rage, claimed that cycling was childish and that all those who ride a bike should 'grow up'. What a deeply stupid view.

Anyway, most cyclists are fine. There are some fannies, but I imagine that if they drive as well, they will also be a fanny in their car. There is a very vocal group of motorists who hate cyclists, and most of the time it's due to being caught behind one/a group for all of 20 seconds or so. Are people that impatient? There are some motorists who's irrational hatred of cyclists borders on the criminal in terms of how they behave around those cycling.

Oh and that Traffic Droid guy is a massive tit. He's an utter embarrassment to himself and really should be taken in to custody, or at the very least have his tyres let down and his brakes cut, or failing that a stick in his spokes.

[Pride_of_the_Clyde]

As a cyclist and a driver, I can appreciate there are good and bad examples of both which we can all relate to.

However, it never ceases to amaze me the amount of abuse and road rage some drivers show towards cyclists, especially when they're doing nothing wrong.

I cycle quite a bit, both on my own and with a local club, I/we are always courteous, never take risks, don't jump lights, give proper and early hand signals, yet are often subject to torrents of abuse by passing motorists, many of whom doing dangerous manoeuvres, which could result in a serious accident and injury.

The biggest misunderstanding by many motorists, is that they fail to appreciate its legal for cyclists to ride two abreast.

This in fact benefits the motorist if there's a large group ( say 20), as they only need to pass 10 bike lengths instead of 20, if the same group rode single file.

The clearance at which they should pass two cyclists, should be the same as for one, so anyone suggesting that as an argument, it simply doesn't stack up.

I'm interested to hear a debate from both sides here, especially any non-cycling drivers.

There are many, many others who don't do these and other abysmal behaviours on the road.

Essentially, many of them show a disregard for their own safety in the belief that the onus is on the motorists.

[Aubrey Maturin]

I heard a bit about this subject on the radio the other day.

I am all for cyclists on the road. There are many benefits and hardly any drawbacks, and most of the drawbacks are down to people being idiots and nothing to do with cycling itself.

The rage from some of those against it calling in was pretty staggering. There was the usual pish that cyclists should have to pay road tax and have to pass tests and have a license etc. One guy, who seemed that he was in the middle of a heart attack brought on by pure rage, claimed that cycling was childish and that all those who ride a bike should 'grow up'. What a deeply stupid view.

Anyway, most cyclists are fine. There are some fannies, but I imagine that if they drive as well, they will also be a fanny in their car. There is a very vocal group of motorists who hate cyclists, and most of the time it's due to being caught behind one/a group for all of 20 seconds or so. Are people that impatient? There are some motorists who's irrational hatred of cyclists borders on the criminal in terms of how they behave around those cycling.

Oh and that Traffic Droid guy is a massive tit. He's an utter embarrassment to himself and really should be taken in to custody, or at the very least have his tyres let down and his brakes cut, or failing that a stick in his spokes.

He wasn't from Perthshire was he?

[DA Baracus]

I don't mind sharing the road with cyclists, but get two side by side who refuse to pull in on a windy country road and my blood boils.......

Why should they pull in? I suppose it would be sound of them to do so and is the expected etiquette, but they have a right to use the road. It's up to you to overtake them if they 'refuse' to pull over.

I neither drive nor cycle incidentally.

[DA Baracus]

He wasn't from Perthshire was he?

Nah it was some guy from England.

[DA Baracus]

There are many, many others who don't do these and other abysmal behaviours on the road.

Essentially, many of them show a disregard for their own safety in the belief that the onus is on the motorists.

Most people remember the fannies who do such shite, but the reality is that the majority of cyclists are fine.

[acannidaeit captain]

Cyclists are now riding as 3s, taking half the road !! Arrogant rides

[Lord Bastion]

I would actually be tempted to take cycling up, but the amount of numpties on the road (drivers) puts me off.

[tamthebam]

As a cyclist and a driver, I can appreciate there are good and bad examples of both which we can all relate to.

However, it never ceases to amaze me the amount of abuse and road rage some drivers show towards cyclists, especially when they're doing nothing wrong.

I cycle quite a bit, both on my own and with a local club, I/we are always courteous, never take risks, don't jump lights, give proper and early hand signals, yet are often subject to torrents of abuse by passing motorists, many of whom doing dangerous manoeuvres, which could result in a serious accident and injury.

The biggest misunderstanding by many motorists, is that they fail to appreciate its legal for cyclists to ride two abreast.

This in fact benefits the motorist if there's a large group ( say 20), as they only need to pass 10 bike lengths instead of 20, if the same group rode single file.

The clearance at which they should pass two cyclists, should be the same as for one, so anyone suggesting that as an argument, it simply doesn't stack up.

I'm interested to hear a debate from both sides here, especially any non-cycling drivers.

2 abreast? I'm afraid the Highway Code says "NO". See Rule 66.

Typical f*cking cyclist- doesn't know the laws of the road!

Tam the Bam, proud owner of a Lothian and Borders Police Cycling Proficiency Certificate, 1984

[Unleash The Nade]

There are many, many others who don't do these and other abysmal behaviours on the road.

Essentially, many of them show a disregard for their own safety in the belief that the onus is on the motorists.

Totally agree and ax a driver also , they piss me off

However it seems the case with many people that if some cyclists do this ,then all others get tarred with the same brush , but the same doesn't seem to apply with bad motorists.

[Spain]

There's two points I'd like to make.

The thing that annoys me most about cyclists are the vast amounts of money that has been spent constructing cycle paths for them the length of the A9, and yet they still decide to cycle on the road. While I'm not a road-rager at cyclists generally, I don't think the A9 is the place for them.

Cyclists do need further training though, or at least the government needs to do more awareness campaigns aimed at cyclists. As an owner of a company with a road haulage division, the amount of cyclists we see trying to undercut artics at traffic lights is staggering. Undercut an artic, and he won't see you. It's not his fault when he flattens you when the lights change.

Car drivers who get the rage though can whistle.

[welshbairn]

Quoted this* on another topic. Thing that gets me is cyclists, who pay no road tax, insist on cycling on the main road and blocking traffic when they have a perfectly good cycle path designed for them, and to keep them safe. The A82 between Fort William and Inverness is a prime example, a road with loads of blind corners and huge caterpillars of fluorescent lycra clad wankers asking to be killed, with a brilliant and safe cycle route ignored because they might have to climb the odd hill.

*Like many people, I am worried that too few cyclists are being killed on our roads each year. While the number of cycling journeys undertaken in the UK has risen enormously since 2006, and exponentially since the exciting, hirsute Sir Bradley Wiggins won a bicycle race in France in 2012, the official statistics show only a moderate rise in fatalities. This suggests to me that car drivers have become more accommodating in their behaviour towards these people and have lost their radical anti-cycling zeal. They have been bullied out of it, one suspects, by official propaganda that insists that knocking cyclists over, deliberately or otherwise, is somehow ‘antisocial’, and by the effusions of lionised celebrity cyclists like Wiggins, and that also ennobled Scottish man who cycles round and round a track very quickly indeed, like a sort of thin-lipped ginger hamster with outsized calf muscles.

Wiggins and the Scottish man are both militant campaigners against the killing of cyclists, and they are also in favour of more cycle lanes (which cyclists like to see built, but never use) and further speed restrictions on the people who actually pay for the roads (car drivers), but the government is on board too. My concern is that if killing cyclists is no longer allowable in a free country, then it is the thin end of the wedge and it may be that down the line cycling will become an ‘acceptable’ pursuit for normal people. We have seen this happen before with homosexuals, single mothers and some foreigners; one moment we are enjoined not to victimise them, the next they are clamouring for equality. Somewhere, surely, we have to draw the line.

Well, ok, I jest, in predictably bad taste. And you were probably aware that I was joking, unless you are a committed cyclist who is determined to be outraged. By ‘committed’ I do not mean that you are the recipient of state protection in a secure asylum, but rather that you are one of those people with an expensive bicycle, a lot of Lycra, a pompous little pointy plastic hat, hilarious goggles, a fatuous water bottle and the fervent conviction that you are a Victim as a consequence of your Vulnerability. And that in being a Victim as a consequence of being Vulnerable you are somehow empowered to take it out on everybody else you see on the public highways, especially car drivers and pedestrians. There is nothing quite like considering yourself a Victim to bolster the self-esteem, nothing like resentment to make the hours go by a little quicker. Not all cyclists fall into this category of course, far from it. But plenty do. Dare to disparage the cycling fraternity and all hell will break loose; when you are a certified Victim all sense of proportion — and humour — departs.

I discovered this when I mentioned in a blog recently that I was not sure why I had to pay, through my taxes, for my friend to have a new bicycle — there’s a government scheme on offer which effectively gives you a bike on tick, interest-free. Ooh, the fury. But it was nothing compared to the opprobrium heaped upon the head of my colleague Matthew Parris who jokingly suggested that life in his village would be improved by piano wire strung across the roads to decapitate the hugely annoying cyclists

Cyclists — or some of them, a lot of them — have become, these last few years, full of themselves, puffed-up with righteous anger. Part of this has been encouraged by the success of Wiggins and the Scottish hamster-man. But part of it too is because these people don’t think they’re simply pedalling from High Holborn to Paddington; they think they’re saving the bloody planet. And they think that the rest of us are destroying it. As the anonymous blogger put it in that quote at the top of the page, they think that they are different. No — you’re not. You just can’t afford a car or are deluded about the impact cycling a few miles makes to the environment. And you can’t be bothered to walk.

Cyclists are another one of those things about which the government and establishment are of one mind and the general public another. There is absolutely no doubt that the behaviour of some cyclists, the militant lot, enrages both pedestrians and car users — i.e. the vast majority of the British public. I had always thought, when I saw two cyclists riding abreast on a narrowish road, holding up the traffic, that they were unaware of the annoyance they were causing. That maybe they didn’t know there was a car behind, and another 50 cars behind that car.

Oh, but they do, they do. Check out the cycling websites and you will learn that they ride two abreast precisely to stop cars overtaking them, because on narrow roads they are convinced that car drivers will cut in too close to them as they pass. So they block the entire road and feel good about it, because they are Victims. The law states that they are allowed to ride two abreast on a big, wide, straight road, no bends and curves, where there is plenty of opportunity and width for cars to pass by in comfort; but a hefty majority of the posts I saw on several websites revealed very different strategies. Their view is that unless a car has room to pass two cyclists, it shouldn’t be trying to pass one. And with that they wrap themselves in self-righteousness as the queues of traffic tail back further and further.

Likewise, riding on the pavements and thus maiming pensioners. The law is clear about this, for a change. They should never do it. But they do it because they feel safer there, of course. Listen, you plastic-hatted ninny: if you don’t have the balls to cycle in the road, then ditch the bike. It is still the case that, mile for mile, pedestrians are far more ‘vulnerable’ than cyclists. Mile for mile, more pedestrians are killed. They — we — are the real victims, even if we do not whine about it continuously. And the number of pedestrians maimed by cyclists is also rising by the year, to the extent that legislation has been proposed to ensure that cyclists respect the laws of the land the same as everyone else.

And of course, there are other irritations and dangers. I get infuriated by the cyclists tearing past me on the rural footpath where I live, scattering dogs and kids like confetti, believing that because they are allowed on the path, they are under no obligation to consider anyone else who might be using it. I am thinking of training my dog to attack cyclists who behave like this, catch up with them on the uphill stretch and chew their tyres off. I think I will use, as a signal to the animal to launch its attack, the word ‘Hoy!’

And of course there is the running of red lights, a continual complaint from car users, and the weaving in and out of traffic with an expression of rectitude on their faces. And while it is true that by far the greatest number of pedestrian injuries and deaths are caused by car drivers, as a pedestrian you always have the sneaking suspicion that, in general, car drivers will try their best to avoid hitting you, while cyclists not only don’t care but will happily blame you for any injury which occurs.

It is the last point which is the crucial one. It is about attitude. For a long time car drivers have had it drummed into them that what they are doing is antisocial and undesirable and have been subjected to ever greater strictures about what they can and can’t do in their cars, how fast they should travel and why they should leave the car in the garage to ease congestion and save the planet. As a consequence, they have become mindful and cowed. By contrast the cyclists have been told that they are doing a Good Thing, that it would be better if we all cycled (it wouldn’t — it would be better if we all walked) and so believe they can do no wrong. They have the moral high ground, which includes the pavement, since you asked.

I think we need a bit of legislation to sort them out, to penalise adult cyclists who ride on pavements, to book them for dangerous driving when they’re cutting lights or riding two abreast on unsuitable roads. And either to make it compulsory for cyclists to use cycle lanes or for local authorities to stop providing them (and turn the existing ones back into normal roads). Then the cyclists will feel an even greater sense of victimhood, and thus be happier.

[Unleash The Nade]

2 abreast? I'm afraid the Highway Code says "NO". See Rule 66.

Typical f*cking cyclist- doesn't know the laws of the road!

Tam the Bam, proud owner of a Lothian and Borders Police Cycling Proficiency Certificate, 1984

Erm, suggest you read it again

It says cyclists should never ride MORE than 2 abreast.

In my book that means riding 2 abreast is legal

http://ukcyclelaws.blogspot.co.uk/p/the-laws-according-to-highway-code.html?m=1

[123]

Cyclists are absolute fucking dickheads. They're not so common where I live, although this morning I passed 4 in the space of 1.8 miles (my house to the football stadium). 1 of them was fine (as far as cyclists go), 2 of them were too far off the kerb, with one practically being in the centre of the road, and the final one wasn't even wearing a helmet and was riding at around 3MPH - he was also far too close to the centre of the road, and spraying about like a drunken streak of piss. There's a cycle lane in my neighbouring town centre, and because of this I nearly failed my driving test - there's never any c***s in the b*****d thing - just a complete waste of road space, and the cost of paint is a complete waste of tax payers money.

Cyclists should be made to use the pavement, and politely ring their little bell if pedestrians are in the way.