Today's headline is "Fears over cyclists speeding down hill". The story quotes people as mentioning that the young lads involved in the incident were travelling at about twenty miles per hour. So, not speeding then!?

I see no headlines when cars drive down this road in excess of 30mph, so why a headline about cyclists who are not breaking the law? This is just typical of the attitude of the general public towards the minority group that is cyclists.

I regularly ride down this hill at speeds up to 30mph, the biggest danger to me is drivers who are not paying attention and might pull out in front of me. They wouldn't do it if I was driving a car, but they are happy to do this in front of a bicycle, why?

I am allowed to ride down this hill at 30mph, if you don't like it...tough! I try not to get into this type of debate, but that story has got my back up!

As some sort of balance, here's what happened to me during my commute home on Friday from the centre of Poole to Hengistbury Head: Approaching a mini roundabout, I am intending to turn left, but have yet to indicate. A car pulls up to my right with his left wing mirror folded flat and his left indicator on. I brake to avoid being crushed by the car.

In the next 100 metres a car pulls out from a side road forcing me to brake sharply in order to avoid riding into the side of him.

Having gone past the same car in traffic he then proceeds to execute a classic "left hook" manoeuvre and nearly crushing me whilst overtaking and turning left at the same time.

Another half mile and a car pulls out in front of me to join the queue of traffic. This manoeuvre blocks the cycle lane and forces me to swerve around the car to avoid an accident.

Westbourne, a group of what appear to be foreign students, step off the kerb and into my path despite looking straight at me. I am again forced to take evasive action to avoid a collision.

Fortunately the remainder of my journey was away from traffic and so incident free, but this is typical of what cyclists face on a daily basis.

The following sums up the attitude perfectly, the article last week "Wessex Way 40mph speed limit to stay" had this comment left by Jetwasher - "I, Like most other people take no notice of this speed limit , and do what everyone else does, slow down to 40 for the cameras then speed up to 50 to go with the flow of the traffic.”

I guess this means that I am not "most other people" as I obey the 40mph limit along here and am fully in favour of it staying. Until we get people like Jetwasher to abide by the law, then we've got no chance of cyclists or anyone different from "most other people" getting any respect.

I've ranted enough for a couple of weeks, which is good as I'm on holiday next week so won't be blogging. I shall try to end with a couple of more positive things this week.

Sunday July 24th is the date for Bournemouth's SkyRide - http://www.goskyride.com/ - this is a mass participation event and hopefully will prove to be good fun.

Did you know that you can report potholes, problems with cycle lanes etc directly to your local council using their website? Both Bournemouth and Poole have "report it" sections on their websites to log these issues and get them sorted.

See you in August!

Based on information supplied by David Brown.