Cyclists have made my home city too stressful to live in any more

[valianttortoise]

Cycling on the pavement (on e-bikes, racing bikes, whatever) at speed, silently, no lights often, no pausing for pedestrians to cross at zebra crossings or even green men. An e-bike nearly hit me yesterday while a policeman was literally standing there watching (outside a government building in case you're wondering where on earth I saw a live one) and he did nothing, just looked at me like "wow that was close!"

I can't handle it any more it's miserable. I can't drive so it's not a car thing it's a pedestrian safety thing.

I also think seeing that it's fine to do this, in balaclavas often, is sending a message that crime and bad behaviour in general are ok. No one will stop you.

Some men (boys? hard to tell in balaclavas) on e-bikes provided by the council took an angle grinder into a busy central square last week and just calmly cut out bicycles from stands to steal them (obviously a crime I feel conflicted about in itself but how long until they realise they can just mug pedestrians at knifepoint? It was 3pm, bright sunshine).

I find it kind of hard to believe what we're just supposed to live with now. No safe spaces for walking - forget about it if you're visually impaired.

If you live somewhere with no antisocial cyclists where is it please as I'd like to join you.

Your issue with people breaking the law.

Possibly also with poor active travel infrastructure and poor planning.

Not cyclists as a whole

I absolutely loathe all the cycling on the pavement and in my local park now, by these motorised hire bikes. It’s hard to believe it’s legal, it’s so dangerous, so stressful. There’s no peace from traffic, when they zoom through the park , between 5. 30 and 6.30 it’s rush hour and it’s hellish, they are so rude. I hate it so much.

How many minutes of an average day (16 hours awake) are actually affected by cyclists?

If you live somewhere with no antisocial drivers, please let me know

Do you live in Cambridge?

You take your life in your hands just crossing the main shopping street there.🚲

Was just thinking this- Cambridge? I used to live in Suffolk as does my brother still who has to commute to Cambridge and his hatred of cyclists is family legend 🙈

This seems like a good way to measure stress. Measure it in minutes. Not in Adrenalin or cortisol or theft of peace or erosion of safety. Excellent.
Are you yourself a motorised being?

Your city sounds like mine. The issue isn’t cyclists, or cycle lanes. It’s rampant anti-social, and often criminal, behaviour from youths.

It’s a massive societal problem, and it’s lowering quality of life in my city. Imposing any restrictions on all cyclists isn’t going to help, because the issue is poverty, toxic masculinity, poor parenting, lack of youth services, inability of police to issue consequences…

Bizarrely I was also thinking Cambridge. DH and I couldn’t believe how bad it was, when we visited in the summer.

YANBU. Electric bikes and scooters are an absolute menace. They are silent and can reach very high speeds. They can cause serious injury if they hit a pedestrian. I’m completely against cycling on pavements and paths unless (toddlers/young kids ok of course).

There needs to be some control over these bikes because they pose a serious threat to pedestrians. They’re also a complete menace on the roads, but that’s a whole other thread.

I'm 50 with a disability. I'm looking to try out my 75 year old Mum's electric bike (!) Will I be cycling on the pavement? For one route, hell yes as the driving is atrocious, an accident blackspot... Will I feel bad doing it? Yes of course, but I did my cycling profiency test over 40 years ago. I rode on the road as a child without thought of a helmet.
There were fewer cars!

I couldn't cope on a couple of the busy roads here, yet I want to be able to leave the house more - I can't drive due to peripheral neuropathy (I can't feel my feet!).

I know you can't excuse me and I'm lumped in with all others. Voi scooters round here are rampant. I see your point but they just tend to whizz by with me calling them a wanker - they need a beep or something!

I don't know what the youths hoped to achieve cutting through the bike chains as surely they need logging on and paying for. You certainly can't use ours without.

I’m a cyclist, a driver, and a pedestrian.

In each group there are some arseholes who behave anti-socially and dangerously and I absolutely do judge them.

I’mnot going to go around saying “drivers are ruining my life” and trying to whip up anger against drivers because I’ve seen two young men decide to race each other at 50 down our residential side street and recently someone else mounted the pavement and nearly hit my 6 year old. Those were awful irresponsible drivers but that doesn’t mean that most drivers are like that. Nor will I say I’m in two minds about people stealing or vandalising cars because of the bad drivers in our town (whereas you clearly are quite glad that all cyclists are being punished by bike theft - as long as they don’t mug pedestrians).

Last year a random person on the street spat at me and called me a stupid cow because I was cycling my kids on a clearly marked cycle path. Should I start posting about how pedestrians are ruining our town?

I wondered this too!

It sounds like anti-social/ criminal gang issues rather than a "cyclist" issue.

Sounds like Amsterdam.

Agree with all of this.

It's not an increase in cycling or an improved cycling culture that causes issues for pedestrians at all.

Look at places like Denmark and The Netherlands, where the vast majority of short and routine journeys are made on bikes by people of all ages. Their quality of life and their shared spaces are actively enhanced by increased bike traffic.

It sounds like criminals are the issue, I doubt the people stealing bikes with balaclavas on are your traditional cyclists

Cambridge is really not that bad. When it's raining and all those cyclists chose to drive the roads are absolute hell on earth.

Cyclists are not the issue, people who don’t care about laws, rules, community etc are the issue.

It’s not even cities where this is happening. I live in a small town and the e cyclists are everywhere, as are the scooters, weaving in and out of traffic, bloody headache. But tractors ( totally expected where I live) they are a menace to society. Cant overtake as they place themselves in the middle of the road, doing 5 mph. They do so sometimes pull over to allow drivers to pass. Sigh!

That’s nothing to do with cyclists, in the main. That’s criminals and weak policing.

This:

You don’t mention if there are any cycle routes that are separate from both pedestrians or cyclists. If you don’t have these then that’s a problem with your local council’s transport lead and department. Look up Local Transport Note 1/20 which has design standards for cycle routes - if your council isn’t providing these you need to complain to your ward councillors as inevitably when engineers don’t design for cycling, cyclists will end up on pavements where roads are dangerous, which normalises the behaviour.

Re the e-bikes - some of these may actually be sufficiently powerful to be classed as motorbikes so rider should have a licence and should be wearing a helmet. It’s difficult for the police to deal with as riders can be hurt in any chase, but some forces are doing things such as using drones to track them. You need to speak to your local councillor to ask them to find out from your police liaison what is actually happening in your area.

Cyclists are the victim of bike thefts - they are not the perpetrator but everyone can help with this by only buying second hand bikes from bicycle recycling orgs or trusted sellers.

YABVU because although what you describe is a real problem, you are simply blaming cyclists rather than thinking about the true cause. As a cyclist I am no more responsible for this type of behaviour in the same way that as a driver I hold no responsibility for the actions of the driver that I saw on Friday who drove down a busy shopping street blatantly on his phone. This matters because road safety in this country is poor and if we are going to improve it we need an educated debate about approaches like Vision Zero or the Dutch approach of Sustainable Safety, which separate pedestrians, bicycles, cars and HGVs to cut out the type of conflict you describe. I live in an area where there are regular collisions (including with child victims) - yet whenever my council tries to do anything to improve safety inevitably there are loads of objections based on whataboutery re cyclists or painting motorists as victims or “we’re not Holland”. The massive irony is that if my council actually ignored the objectors and applied Dutch standards it would make both driving and cycling a lot easier (as the Dutch have very high standards of driver satisfaction).

If e-bikes reach very high speeds they actually class as motorcycles so riders should be wearing helmets and have a licence and follow other rules about motorcycling. Privately owned electric scooters are illegal to use in public. The control over these forms of transport exists - the question is whether it’s been used by your local police. Neither of these issues are cycling ones.

I walk about ten miles a day. I am not sure why being angry that this is now a scary experience when previously it wasn't could be interpreted as "a problem with active travel".

E-bikes are legal. The ones provided by my local council go at up to 15.5mph. They're heavy and the brain damage they can inflict if they strike someone from behind is horrendous. Yet they're still backed by the council.

It's mostly deliveroo/ just eat riders.
The second biggest problem is twenty and thirty something commuters who mow through pedestrian crossings on their way to and from work.
Third is the balaclava boys.

It's a general culture of lawlessness. You see them and you know there's no point in expecting anyone to follow these rules or any others. They're selfish, thoughtless people and sure not ALL cyclists but enough that there's this behaviour multiple times every time you leave the house