The Lo Fidelity Bicycle Club have written a rather fun blog but still serious post about the highway code for cyclist.

69 You MUST obey all traffic signs and traffic light signals. That means NOT breaking red lights. The wearing of a replica professional team kit does NOT make you immune from all traffic laws. You know you are doing wrong because of the self-righteous yet furtive look you always have when you’re doing it. FAILURE to comply means ALL OTHER ROAD USERS INCLUDING LAW ABIDING CYCLISTS and SOME OTHER PEOPLE I’VE JUST THOUGHT OF have the right to abuse you. [Laws RTA 1988 sect 36 & TSRGD reg 10(1)

72 On the left. When approaching a junction on the left, vehicles will turn in front of you, out of or into the side road. Just before you turn, check for undertaking cyclists or motorcyclists. Do not ride on the inside of vehicles signalling or slowing down to turn left despite the fact they just overtook you at speed.

73 Pay particular attention to long vehicles which need a lot of room to manoeuvre at corners. Be aware that drivers may not see you. They may have to move over to the right before turning left. Wait until they have completed the manoeuvre because the rear wheels come very close to the kerb while turning. Do not be tempted to ride in the space between them and the kerb. In fact, if you see a lorry indicating or making a turn just STOP for goodness sake. The World is a brighter place with you still in it.

74 On the right. If you are turning right, check the traffic to ensure it is safe, then signal and move to the centre of the road. Allow for BMW drivers that will still overtake you even in the middle of your manoeuvre. Wait until there is a safe gap in the oncoming traffic and give a final look before completing the turn. It may be safer to wait on the left until there is a safe gap or to dismount and push your cycle across the road. No-one is going to stop as motorists are always in a terrible hurry for some reason.

Do click here to read the rest of this post over on Lo Fidelity Bicycle club, it is rather amusing but ever so correct.

LINK : Direct.gov.uk – Highwaycode – Cyclists

Related posts:

1. RLJ
2. SillyCyclist IX
3. SillyDriver III

Anywho, there I was cycling in front of my partner who is 2-3 metres behind me. We are coming to a hill where there is parked cars on the left hand side. We both started too pull out away from the door zone after we have checked that it is clear to do so. A black sedan was behind us and as we cleared of the brow of the hill and we all can see clearly down the road, the black sedan overtook us with plenty of space.

Behind my partner there is now a 4×4 driven by a lady, how do you know that I hear you ask, well I look back regularly :) I had even spotted it when I saw the black sedan. If the driver of said 4×4 had bothered to look a little bit further than the bonnet of the vehicle she is in, she would have seen …

- That the black sedan, had come to a halt at a T-junction and is getting ready to turn right into the side road.
- That the reason for it to coming to a halt is that a grey sedan is coming out of the side road and that the black sedan is waiting so that there is room for it to continue into the side road.
- That the grey sedan is turning left up the hill where we all are coming down from.

In that situation I would have hoped that she would stayed behind as there is clearly no room to overtake and that there is no benefit to do such manoeuvre. But I was wrong …

She then overtook my partner with plenty of space on the other side of the road. But as she was overtaking me she then figured out that there was no room for said manoeuvre. The silver sedan had to hold back as the 4×4 was in the wrong lane, she the driver of the 4×4 stared to pull into the left. Have a wild guess who would have been to her left at that point ?

Me, and I would have been pushed of my bicycle if I haven’t I had foreseen all this. So as she was over taking me, I hit the brakes to give her room to do her numpty manoeuvre. I said out loud “who is the numpty now” which she heard. She then pulled over to her left and stopped. We passed her again while she was trying to say something.

She then overtook us again and pulled up next to me while she was on the wrong side of the road and said “I did nothing wrong there” and continued to pull further into the left into my space as there was on coming traffic. To which I said you are doing it again …

Sorry me duck, you are still a SillyDriver.

Related posts:

1. SillyDriver II
2. SillyCyclist part II
3. The highway code

Make full Bikeability cycle training compulsory before anyone can pass their driving test.

It would need to be current, like the drivers’ theory test, which must be passed up to 3 years before the licence can be granted, so a school playground session aged 7 will not suffice.

The reasons are several:

One – if all drivers have first qualified as cyclists, they will be more aware of cyclists on the road, why they’re positioning themselves assertively, how much room to give etc and roads will be safer for all users.

Two – the age when most children stop cycling (often due to peer pressure) is the mid-teens, and this is also the age when they start wanting to learn to drive. Making cycle training a part of this formative experience will normalise cycling and remind young people just how much they enjoyed it. Planting the seeds of healthy and environmentally-friendly travel at this age can only be a good thing.

Three – once people are trained to ride bikes easily, they will see the attraction of cycling more, they’ll be more confident and are much more likely to use their bikes on a day-to-day basis, rather than taking the car on short journeys, thus reducing traffic and pollution on local streets.

Absolutely splendid idea and spot on to the idea I had.

The chicken and egg situation is that we need to be road aware/wise before we go out on the road but we can’t become that without using the roads. But cycling is a great way as Bryony write in her post to get everyone prepared to use a bigger and more powerful vehicle. Like when you take your motorbike license you have to gain experience before you can use a higher cc’ed motorbike.

And of course if you learn to drive an motor vehicle you need to be retested every say five years. It is simply wrong that you as a 17 year old can take your driving licence but don’t need to check your skills before you are well into your 60′s. So you can not touch a car for say 20 years but you are totally legal to drive one, how much history, maths or physics can you remember from your school days ?

LINK : Idea to revolutionise cyclist/driver interaction?

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1. LGV Cycle Safety – epetition response
2. Children should be encouraged to ride to school
3. The highway code

Taking the cyclist away from the roads ain’t the way to go. A bicycle is a vehicle and if you are riding one you are a road user. Just as much as a person inside a motorised vehicle aka a car.

It would be easier and more cost effective if you build a proper road layout which is usable for all road users.

So training for all road users is the way not splitting them up.

Though don’t get me wrong, it there was one here in London I would give it a go as it does look fun in a theme park kinda way.

LINK : shweeb.com

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1. Two wheels By Buffalo
2. Creative cycling
3. A good idea, there Bryony.

I have had quick scan of these two eBook and I enjoyed then, very well written and full of useful hints, even for a long time cyclist here in London. Need to read them in full very soon. I do even think that the Guide to Cycling in London can be read by someone who don’t live here. As some of the tips can easily be applied to where you live and ride your bicycle.

The maintenance e-book, is great got some great pictures and step by step guide for anyone who fancy grabbing a allen key and do a spot of fettling. Bicycle maintenance is pretty easy and not that hard but armed with this eBook you are laughing. Just remember dear readers, is you should mess it up or think that something is broken beyond repair. Your Local Bicycle Shop is there to help you :)

LINK : Free ebook for subscribers

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1. FREE (TfL) guided cycle rides
2. How we as cyclist are seen
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I hope that you’ll sign this, if you haven’t already. We (cyclists) are only hurting ourselves if we keep red light jumping (RLJ) and breaking the Highway Code in other ways.

The more cyclists who respect the code and show courtesy towards other road users and pedestrians, the better response we will get.

Any ways, no matter how fast I try to go from A to B at rush hours, there is only a couple of minutes between the “pecking it time” and the “take it easy and pootle time”. So relax and enjoy your ride and above all respect the law and smile.

Stopatred is a campaign to improve the status of cycling in the eyes of the public and policy-makers alike, and to tackle the attitudes of those cyclists whose behaviour perpetuates the image of cyclists as a low-status social ‘out-group’ on wheels.

Its specific focus is on the disregard of traffic signals.

It also has two general aims:
To encourage cyclists to show courtesy towards other road users and pedestrians.
To encourage greater compliance with the laws of the road.

Stopatred was created by concerned cyclists, alarmed about how the cause of cycling is being undermined by the reckless actions of an unrepresentative minority.

LINK : Stop at red

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1. SillyCyclist VII
2. The highway code
3. SillyCyclist vs SillyCycleLanes

This film is Copenhagen seen through North American eyes, as they say it took a long time in CPH to get there but they did. And we (yes even London) can do it but we do not have 30-40 years to get to the same place that CPH are at right now. As the people in the films say we can do it and they are from America ( sorry just a little joke) we here in London can do it too. We just need to educate road users would that be the fella on a BSO or racer or that massive 4×4 and then the rest will come.

While Streetfilms was in Copenhagen for the Velo-City 2010 conference, of course we wanted to showcase its biking greatness. But we were also looking to take a different perspective then all the myriad other videos out there. Since there were an abundance of advocates, planners, and city transportation officials attending from the U.S. and Canada, we thought it’d be awesome to get their reactions to the city’s built environment and compare to bicycling conditions in their own cities.

Wonderful film isn’t it ? So lets us get out there on our bicycles and make this happen, it can only become a win win for us all.

EDIT : Was just shown this this tourist information film (TravelTalks) from 1937, nothing much have changed since eh :)

LINK : Velo-City 2010
LINK : Cycling in Copenhagen – through North American eyes

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1. VELO-CITY GLOBAL 2010
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1/ They do invite you as a cyclist to move into the door zone. Please don’t as when you do so you invite other road users to over take you. Not a safe or comfortable place to be, squeezed in between a parked car on your left, which door could fly open at any time, with another speeding past you on your right in a narrow space.

Taking the right position on the road as a cyclist it will take you right over these things, which I know is quite annoying and it will ruin a good ride. But the discomfort from doing so is nothing to the discomfort of being doored.

2/ And then there is the name of these thing – Sleeping police men. I mean who in their right mind would go out unto a road and sleep? Dear officer of the law you will not have a great night sleep out there and you will soon cease to be a sleeping police man you will be a …. police man.

So can we go back to call them speed humps.

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World bicycle relief

They are training people how to fix a bicycle in a place where there isn’t a bicycle shop that can service your bicycle for 400 km. The bicycles they are building are simple, not light weight since they are build to take up to 100Kg. Using a bicycle riding a bicycle increases one’s capacity to carry by 5 times. And you can easy do a journey on your bicycle where it would take up to four times longer on foot.

World Bicycle Relief was founded in 2005 by SRAM Corporation and Trek Bicycle in response to the December 2004 tsunami that swept the Indian Ocean, and now they are doing Project Zambia.

World Bicycle Relief has partnered with a USAID-funded, World Vision-led coalition of relief organizations to address the HIV/AIDS crisis in Zambia. We will provide 23,000 bicycles to community home-based care volunteers, disease prevention educators and vulnerable households. We are also training and equipping more than 400 bicycle mechanics in the field. The program will reach more than 500,000 adults, orphans and vulnerable children.

Tendai’s Dream, is a great story how a bicycle helped her to get to and from her school 5 miles away. If a bicycle can help her and make her life better, think what it could do to you here in London, where I’m sure that you are living much closer.

LINK : velonews : world bicycle project zambia
LINK : world bicycle relief

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Half of all children want to cycle to school but just two per cent do. A third of children are now driven to school, many for journeys of less than one mile.

Quite a sad quote, ain’t it ?

I have often talked to children at the schools where I train Bikeability and they are simply shocked that I cycled there. And then I find out that they live pretty much down the road, no more than a mile and a half away. They know it is not that far away because it only takes 5min in a car to drive. Knowing the area they live, many children could cycle safely to school on the road. And even on the journeys where they have to cross a busy road, there are pedestrian crossings for them to use.

Just a little training is needed. E.g. walk with the child the journey a few times and talk them through the route, junctions etc, and then let them walk ahead of you a few times so that they are doing the crossings by themselves, with you supervising from a distance. I bet you that within a week little Jr. is walking to school just fine alone. With some cycle training that many schools are doing or through companies like cycletraining.co.uk your child will get to know all there is to know about cycling on the road. Then with some support from you, the parent, they will be cycling to school in no time.

The more kids that cycle to school, the fewer cars doing the rat run there will be and therefore quieter roads to cycle on. A “win win” I would say.

In the time that I have lived over here, I have only seen three families teach their young ones how to cross the roads. One of them was a German family who clearly spend time explaining how the little green man works. The most popular ways I see people train their little loved ones are either …

1/ Dragging the little loved one across a dual carriageway where there was no pedestrian crossing. Well there is, but it’s about 25m down the road. These things are magical: other road users will stop and give way for you while you are crossing. You do not have to play dodge ball with the other road users.

2/ Throw little Jr. into the Chelsea tractor and drive less than a mile to the school. I was at a junction doing some training and a lady and her daughter across the way climbed into the car and drove away only to arrive two and a half minutes later without her daughter. That distance you would be able to walk in ten minutes and it would be good for you.

LINK : Sustrans children should be encouraged to ride to school not prohibited
LINK : Couple warned over allowing children to cycle to school alone

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1. A good idea, there Bryony.
2. Reclaim the Road women’s bike ride
3. Creative cycling