Cycle Lanes are a Bad Thing.

One of the studies made an interesting observation that I can confirm is very true: Cars give you less room when you are in a cycle lane - drivers tend to look at the white line and ignore the fact that you are in the lane. Where no cycle lane exists most cars make the effort to pull out and give you room before overtaking.

This was demonstrated this morning whilst I was riding up Evening Hill in the cycle lane at the top and rounding the left hand bend, a car came past me on the white line giving me about an inch of clear air, it then proceeded to cross over the line and into the lane as soon as it had passed me. I don't know why as there was nothing coming the other way!!

I did contemplate asking the driver whether he realised how close he had come to hitting me as he had pulled in at the shops a couple of minutes later, but I felt that discretion was the better part of valour and just tried to forget about it. I have found that no matter how polite you are, you generally get verbally and sometimes physically abused in these circumstances.

The study also suggested that if you wear a cycle helmet you tend to be given less room and that male cyclists are given less room than female cyclists. I can't really comment on this as I have no experience of being a woman and I always wear a helmet.

Also this week I noticed that there was a report of a collision between two cyclists that resulted in a fractured arm for a young boy, whilst that the other cyclist rode away. The report was appealing for the other rider to come forward as it seems that he rode off without first checking whether the other rider was ok. I can only assume that the person who rode off didn't realise that the other rider was injured It’s a shame that this story, which should be a plea for the missing cyclist to come forward has the usual anti-cycling comments against it. Especially when those people commenting are unlikely to have any clue as to the circumstances of either the collision or the events that followed.