To be done with cyclists (as a car driver).

[bluegardenflowers]

Have cycled in the past but now only drive.

I'm a considerate driver and always allow plenty of room when overtaking and am patient in following the cyclist when it's unsafe to overtake and leave a big gap. I take care when left turning. They are more vulnerable on the road.

Yet I've been sworn at be a cyclist and it's pissing me off.

Yesterday on a busy road I saw the cyclist and was busy scanning ahead to make sure I could give him half a carriageways room to overtake. I started my overtake as he was wafting his arm around and looking back. It wasn't a clear right turn signal more a 30 degree flap around before swerving into the part of the road I was on, and swearing at me.

Ffs. If you want to turn right, stick your bloody arm out fully and make a clear signal. No wonder drivers and cyclists hate each other.

Why Should she do that?

As I suggested in my own diagram - and something I have seen happen..... Something may have been approaching the junction to emerge onto the road with you and the cyclist on it. THIS vehicle may be turning left - and NOT check their own left, as sometimes happens..... You would then have had an almost head-on collision - and the cyclist could have been the meat in the sandwich.

Ergo: Why NOT to overtake near junctions.

Goodbye OP 🤣

I've lost count of the number I've seen! I saw a girl the other day riding along the road no hands, because she was texting.

@Funkykitty because she was starting to sound more and more unhinged in trying to justify herself to more and more posters piling on. Probably better to just walk away.

Looks like shes done that now.

As a cyclist An arm by the side and not holding the bar = a hand signal....

Er I hope not. I have taken my hand off the bar & had it by my side as I had lost all feeling in my hand & wrist & my shoulder was solid.

An arm signal is more like 🤳- sorry best I had but more 90 degrees from the body.

Highway Code also says.

www.highwaycodeuk.co.uk/rules-for-cyclists-road-junctions.html (74)

If you are turning right, check the traffic to ensure it is safe, then signal and move to the centre of the road. 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.

If OP had started the overtake before cyclist checked for traffic, quite entitled to continue.

And if we are on a rant about overtaking cyclists the driver that did 100% piss me off and get verbal feedback on their driving was an older (not quite elderly) man.

I was waiting to turn right, in a lane, in turn with other cars. No going up the inside or jumping the queue. It was controlled by traffic lights. Light went green, I followed the queue of cars turning right, and going downhill slightly so picking up speed.

But no. the fuckwit elderly man in a car behind me decides to overtake me, then brake to turn left in front of me, nearly taking me out to get into a car park.

That is dangerous, wanky driving. And yes, his wing mirror did get folded back in as he clearly was not using it.

I was nearly hit by one a few weeks ago. He was cycling on the pavement so he didn't have to stop at the lights that control one-way traffic on a section of very narrow road, and rounded a blind bend at speed.

As he bumped down the kerb to avoid me, he called me a cunt, presumably because he thought that me using the pavement for its intended purpose was a cuntish thing to do.

A few days later, my sympathies swung the other way though. A driver was so desperate to get past a cyclist on a winding stretch of rural road that they went so close to her that there was barely a foot between the driver's wing mirror and the cyclist's arm. The slightest wobble or bump in the road and they'd have clipped her.

I hung back and waited till we were through the bends to pass, and caught up with the driver a couple of miles up the road. A bit further on, they passed very close to 2 people on horses. Utter twat.

Whereas 40% of oil goes towards fuel, such as that powering the average car. More still will be used in the manufacture of said car, including the vast amounts of plastic contained within.

So unless you exclusively walk everywhere, wearing hand-knitted, undyed woollen garments (sheep's wool, not acrylic) then you are still a bigger problem than cyclists are.

Are you in a foreign country? Undertaking is on the left in countries where people drive on the left.

In this situation the cyclist is in front of you on the road, you are both travelling in the same direction and so the cyclist has priority over you (the same would apply if there was a car in front of you rather than a bike).

You are approaching a junction and because someone else in front of you has priority you cannot overtake because the person in front of you has priority and you might come into conflict with them (Rule 167).

You are unfortunately in the wrong here even although the cyclist may have signalled late.

My job is to teach children to cycle safely on the roads. I hope they will continue to cycle but if they don't and they go on to become drivers I hope that they are more aware of how to drive alongside cyclists and pedestrians. You wouldn't believe the examples of bad driving we have seen when out of the roads with groups of children.

There are good cyclists, bad cyclists and disrespectful/unlawful cyclists just like there are good drivers, bad drivers and disrespectful/unlawful drivers. Road users all need to cooperate. A new system of heirarchy of road users came into force at the start of the year. Cyclists are more likely to come off worse if they are hit by a large junk of metal so they sit higher up the chain than a car. Likewise pedestrians sit above cyclists.

I'm a driver (cars and vans), pedestrian, cyclist, occasional horse rider and I'd just like to complete my journey safely. This thread is a reminder that anyone can make mistakes/bad decisions on the road and we all need to think a bit more about how we interact on the road with other users so that everyone is safe. It shouldn't be a battle between one group of road users against another.

DdraigGoch So no lycra clad fools are not only a danger to our roads but a danger to our planet!

I'm interested in what people like you actually wear when you are exercising? Jeans? Cotton? Pantaloons? What on earth do you actually wear, if you eschew modern breathable stretchy fabrics?

I'm not a fool, but a hard working tax paying professional, and it will cost you quite a lot in compensation if you choose to drive carefully and hit me when I'm cycling to work. I often work in the courts too, and I've heard it all before.

Everything would be much better for everyone if we actually had universal segregated cycle paths in this country. Most Northern European countries manage to have them. Here, we don't even have footpaths along many roads and you regularly see people out walking leaping on and off the grass verge trying to dice with traffic. And I don't mean those idiotic cycle paths you get for a couple of miles covered in glass and with cyclists dismount signs at every junction, but proper ones like in Holland, Belgium, Northern Germany and Denmark.

Tomorrow we should all post about every driving misdemeanour we observe, ranging from lack of indicating, not understanding road signs, speeding, not adhering to stopping distances, aggression, brake lights not working etc. etc.

I wonder how many threads they’d be - my guess is thousands. The need to highlight cyclists is a boring MN obsession.

I see all that every day on my cycle commute. 12 miles each way. See some cyclists being stupid but how motorists make it home free of death and injury astonishes me. 99% are alright but the others seem to have a deathwish.

how motorists make it home free of death and injury astonishes me
Airbags, seatbelts, crumple zones...

Everything would be much better for everyone if we actually had universal segregated cycle paths in this country. Most Northern European countries manage to have them

Yes they would, but ultimately, there will always be cars and cyclists on the same road, as there are in Europe, its not practical to have total segregation.

I think the biggest thing we could do to improve general driving standards in this country would be re tests for drivers, introduce a cycling element to the driving test and the presumption of guilt for any driver involved in an accident with a pedestrian or cyclist.

Hopefully, unless the target is dropped, the move to ban the sale of fossil fueled cars in 2030 will lead to less vehicles on the road... though how that will work in car obsessed UK i do not know.

I’m fairness, there are a huge amount of car drivers who don’t signal and seem to be completely confused by roundabouts. I find electric scooter riders the absolute worst. I guess idiots are not limited to one mode of transport

I find electric scooter riders the absolute worst.

Agreed. I was turning right at a mini roundabout this morning and an idiot on a scooter shot straight across. Obviously I was going slowly and stopped (and yelled abuse at the twat) but he's asking to be in an accident

I live in rural Surrey. MAMIL / Family Dodger heaven. Majority drive to get here. The car parks are full of them getting changed out of the boot of their Audis and Porsche Cayennes. Our hedgerows and gardens are full of their rubbish. They travel long distances to get to races here and overseas. There is nothing environmentally friendly about being a MAMIL.

I should imagine in leafy Surrey most cyclists are car drivers as well?

They also have little to do with advocacy for cycling for environmental reasons.

If more people replaced short car journeys with short cycle journeys there would be less emissions.

Going on about the small percentage that wrap themselves in plastic to do it, as a kind of gotcha from a user of any other type of vehicle is ridiculous.

But plenty of people drive to park runs, walking, taking the dog out.. endless reasons to drive somewhere nice BUT apparently cyclists can't do that?

People also go overseas to lazy by a pool, surf, paraglide, walk hike etc etc but cyclists can't do that either?

Plenty of people litter and its a filthy thing to do and yes cyclists do often throw gel wrappers into hedgerows, just as users of Macdonalds do or heaven forbid, dog owners and bags of shit....

Maybe a bit more tolerance is required on all sides.

This. He was signalling and you ignored it. Yabu.

It's lucky for the cyclist that because you're a safe and considerate driver who follows the rules you didn't overtake at a junction, so their ambiguous signal (if that's what it was) didn't turn out to be a problem, because you weren't overtaking in a dangerous place anyway.

Oh......