Riding on the A428!

Monday 25th, 11:04

According to the Cambridge News,

"A 30-year-old man, from London, has also been arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving following the death of a cyclist yesterday.

It follows a collision at 7.17pm on the eastbound carriageway of the A428 between Dry Drayton and Cambourne.

The 53-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene after being involved in a collision with a white Ford Transit van.

The man arrested has been released on police bail, a spokesman for Cambridgeshire Constabulary said."

I (almost) saw this happen. :-(

The article was published on the 24th and mentions 7.17pm and indeed was referring to the evening of Saturday the 23rd.

I was driving from Cambourne to Cambridge and was approaching the Dry Drayton exit when loads of Police cars with flashing blue lights appeared going both East and West. Turns out they were coming from Cambridge and doing "U" turns at the Cambourne exit to get to the scene.

The collision appeared to have happened mere metres from the start of the Eastbound off-ramp at the Dry Drayton exit. Indeed, there were big gouged skid marks running up the embankment after the start of the off-ramp.

My heart sank when I saw the bike on the edge of the road. I have to tell you, it was pitch black and I would have thought twice before riding along the A428.

I have ridden along the A14 quite a few times, but it's always been in broad daylight and it is often the case that I'm doing so when the traffic is so heavy I'm going faster than it is. Also, I almost always only have need to go North on the A14 and that means going along the side with the lorry park / lay-by etc. I spend well over 75% of my journey physically separated from the traffic-proper.

I decided to give it a try when I saw the blue "cyclists should ride this way" sign / road map thing. I figured if there are signs saying where the cyclists should ride I have license to ride there. When I figure out what these are called / get a photo I'll update this post.

Close call with a BMW

Last night I was riding onto the dreaded Longstanton - Oakington no-vehicles road when a BMW tried to go around me whilst the driver was using his bloody iPhone (in his right hand [1])!

I (naturally) yelled at him to put the phone away and he came along side me & rolled down the passenger window. I yelled again to put his phone away (and that it was dangerous) and just as he was about to yell something back, another car came off the no-vehicles road head-on at the BMW. :-)

Of course he floored-it, rather than stopping (why that choice I wonder), & only just got out of the way of a bad collision, then he sped off, almost with his tail between his legs, point obviously conceded that he was reckless and should pay more attention the road. What a moron!

Katie Price was just fined £1,000 for swerving into the path of oncoming traffic because she was distracted whilst using her phone. I almost wish this guy had had an accident, even if it had involved me, so that he could have been fined too and taught a lesson.

4 minutes after that I was on a blind bend on the same road and a black 8th generation European-shape Honda Civic overtook me even though I waved a hand at him & yelled not to go around me on a dangerous bend.

[Addendum]: This morning (Oct 19th 2010) the very same Civic was going to overtake me in the 30mph in St. Michaels with an oncoming car. It only decided not to when I waved it back. After the oncoming traffic passed by, the Civic screamed by at well over 40mph. What a complete and total moron!

Lord! 1.5 miles, 4 minutes and two close shaves. I hate the illegal drivers who use the no-vehicles road.

[1] I mention the right hand as it's plain that were it in his left hand and he wants to change gear, he can do so with a hand still on his steering wheel, but with a phone in his right hand then changing gear definitely means he's driving with no hands on the wheel at all!

Rail Riding

I shot this whilst riding on the Cambridge Guided Bus rail, approaching the underpass of the A14 just out from the Cambridge Regional College.
The rail is baby smooth, (by definition) traffic free and apart from the breaks where there are stations & crossings of/with real roads it is really fast.
Since veering off/to either edge would mean certain injury (going as fast as I do) one has to concentrate quite hard on the rail so watching the countryside isn't possible. For me this is a commute, so I'm prepared to pay that price.
p.s. I fixed the "Private Video" mistake.

Ask the Council to fix Longstanton Road

I've just filled in the form here: http://tinyurl.com/3ae99w3 that the Council supply for reporting defective roads. It comes from one of their PDFs. :-/
It will come as no surprise to regular readers that my preferred solution to the contention over Longstanton Road is to re-surface it and then open it up fully.
Until that happens I'll happily condemn drivers who use the road, mostly because the utterly awful condition of the surface makes my bike and their car have to come together.
Once the surface is clean and I can ride on the left in comfort and safety I'd be happy to share the road, with the proviso that they stay under 40mph.
Jamie (who's brilliant blog I follow) regularly takes pictures of drivers en mass ignoring the no motor vehicles sign.
The Cambridge News has also done articles on the drivers getting Fixed Penalty Notices. This happens once every two years or thereabouts and does nothing to help the problem.
I've decided that only lobbying of councils, the Police and anyone else with influence will help.

Helmets on Handlebars.

What the hell? Why, why, why, why, why, why, why do people dangle their helmets from their handlebars instead of putting them on their heads??????

The most prolific culprits of this baffling crime are secondary school pupils. A good while back I used to work near(ish) to a secondary school and almost every child who rode a bike to it (that I saw) either wore no helmet or dangled the bloody thing from their handlebars.

Only this morning a fully grown adult (in his 30's maybe?) rode past me doing it too!

For those who don't know me, I'm an equal opportunity angry cyclist. :-)
I yell at fellow cyclists who jump red lights (I usually accuse them of making us all look bad).

I usually simply yell "helmet!" (good double entendre eh? ;-)) at people dangling the damned things instead of wearing them.

As a small follow-up to this: On Friday evening I was riding home and I overtook a guy riding without a helmet and carrying a quite large pack of nappies on his handlebars. :-O
Seems to me that a fella who has a nappy-wearing baby at home might think about sticking about a bit for the child & wear a helmet. I guess that's just how I might feel.

Trashed Bike On Guided Bus Way

This morning some time after 8am I came across this pink ladies bike, all mangled and lying in the middle of the N.W. bound lane of the Guided Bus way.

The wheels were crushed to heck, as shown in the close-ups.
I leaned it up against the fence. You can find it here:

View Larger Map

Gonna Buy One Of These

Here's a picture of a demo of the I Pay Road Tax winter jersey. Think I'm going to have to buy one. ;-)

Thank Goodness I Don't Live In Toronto

Rob Ford, City Councillor for Toronto, Ontario, says in this YouTube video that cyclists who get run down on the roads are to blame for their own accidents.
It's simply because it's obvious that as long as you ride a bike on a road that's built for cars, trucks and buses, eventually you're going to get run down.
He calls it swimming with the sharks.
Here's a great example of drivers in Toronto; seems to me that the City Council might legally be partially responsible: the more you tell drivers they exclusively own the road the more you're responsible for their actions in asserting that right, no?

The BP Petrol Station on Huntingdon Road

So I have frequent cause to ride down Huntingdon Road. I'm usually doing so at a time of day when the traffic is heavy and slow. This usually suits me fine except for when I'm passing the BP Petrol Station.
As you will note from this close-up of the exit, there are no signs warning departing customers to look out for cyclists.
The big problem comes from the slow moving traffic. Since they're moving slowly, they tend to flash cars to join the traffic. EVERY time that happens and I'm in the painted mandatory cycle lane

1. The flashing (snigger) driver doesn't look for me
2. The emerging driver doesn't look for me
3. I'm going downhill at well over 20mph
4. I have to skid or swerve to avoid the emerging car

Now I've tried yelling at the emerging driver and they ALWAYS defend themselves with "But he let me out!". Of course (as irony is everywhere) I've tried yelling at the flasher and they ALWAYS defend themselves by saying it's the emerging driver who should have looked for me.

So I did some Googling and the legality of this is astonishing. Any collision would be (mostly) my fault! There's the 1973 case of a bus who pulled over near an emerging side road (to alight passengers, I think) and the bus driver flashed a car to emerge whilst the bus was stationary. The bus driver then saw an approaching motorcycle and started flashing and beeping madly to get everyone to stop. The car carried on out and hit the motorbike. The emerging car was found to be 1/3rd to blame for pulling out but the motorbike was found to be 2/3rds to blame for not foreseeing that the car might pull out!!!

Well since I cant get the cars to either notice or yield to my right of way, I thought I'd try & get BP to at least help by putting up a sign. Firstly BP told me that they don't actually own that station,someone else does and licenses the BP petrol sale rights & livery. So they passed on my request to the legal owners / managers. They declined my request saying

• It's the County Council who should put up signs
• A sign would cause a hazard & block the emerging drivers view of the road
• Shan't! No, no, no, I don't wanna, go away nasty cyclist!

Now Prosecute the Taxi Driver, Right?

On Tuesday March 9th, at around 5.30pm, in London this guy was cut up but a taxi so badly that he collided with the back of the cab. Sounds nasty.

During the ensuing conversation, where the taxi driver issued racial insults, the cabbie strangled the cyclist to unconsciousness with the cyclists scarf. When the cyclist came round, he was arrested for assaulting the taxi driver!!!

A witness who saw the cyclist being arrested tried to tell the arresting Police officer that he'd be a witness for the cyclist but was shooed away by the copper. :-(

Then the cyclist has to appear in court and defend himself against the egregious false allegation. It's only because the first witness went to a Police station and gave testimony that the cyclist's name was cleared.

I've got to say I truly hope the taxi driver is charged. Not only did he violently assault the cyclist and incorrectly call him a 'paki' (he's of mixed Irish, Scottish and English heritage :-D), so it was a racially motivated assault, but he wasted Police time and probably either gave false testimony or committed perjury.

The story in the London Evening Standard.

Morning from hell.

So this morning, I had a really rough ride in.

It was spitting and I figured the rain would get worse so I put my lights on, only to find after a few hundred metres that the batteries were flat in my headlight. So I dutifully turned round, went home and changed them: perhaps I'll carry some spares from now on?

Time passes, the road whizzes by and eventually, after some calm, I enter the airfield road.

As I was entering the infamous "S" bend a Ford Focus screeches up behind me and beeps angrily. He goes round me & I confess I shouted at him, so he does a 4-wheel skid to a halt & this is him just before getting out to shout back at me. I'm upset that my picture is blurred, but at least you can tell it's a blue-ish Focus.

OK, then, after this guy drives off and I'm 75% through the airfield road a Citroën C3 Picasso AJ59FHF pulling a trailer carrying an Alko lawnmower hurtles past me in the opposite direction. Well I was already angry & he was going very fast and was well into the middle of the road, so I shook my fist at him. He does a "U" turn, follows me into the next village, goes on, turns round again and comes back and then drives into me, knocking me down (I won't overstate it: I was standing still (on the bike) & he bumped hard into me bending my mudguard, but I did fall off the bike)! Another sodding blurred picture. :-( We had a few angry words a) the guy was well over 50 and should know better, b) He asked why I was angry & in reply to my telling him he was driving illegally on a No Vehicles road he actually pointed at the No Vehicles sign and shouted "Except for Access!" :-O

It stuns me the amount of morons who think that "Except For Access" means ignore this sign & drive all the way through.

As I'm picking up my bike, a white Escort van pulls up to me allegedly to ask if I need help but he actually hits my front wheel again!!!! It was slight and in hindsight I reckon it was accidental, but give a guy a break will you?

So he pissed off back onto the airfield road (for the second time!) and as I had his license plate in my photo I declined the offers of help from three cars who watched it all happen. Behind them was an 80 seater coach - great big purple thing - and several other cars: a regular traffic jam on a road where vehicles are banned! This guy rammed a stationary cyclist with over 6 cars and a coach all watching him. Incredible.

You know: I fully recognise that my shouting a bad drivers and shaking my fist at them makes things worse. I really should stop, simply out of self preservation, if nothing else. It's just that the bastards beep at me & drive like bloody lunatics all illegally on a road that's basically a glorified tractor, taxi and bike lane. The injustice lights my blue touch-paper.