Survey Question: As a cyclist have you ever broken the speed limit?

• Yes, I have a speed ticket for doing 68mph on a 30mph residential hill
• Rarely. I once did 32mph on a big hill with a strong tailwind behind me.
• No, my bike would probably disintegrate at speeds over 20mph.
• I didn’t know speed limits applied to cyclists.

In another survey cyclists were asked “As a cyclist, do you ever jump red lights,”

• “Yes, frequently.” 1.9%
• “Yes, sometimes,” 11.8%
• “Rarely” 19.1%
• “Never” – 42.7%

I’ve written on cycling through red lights before, and I don’t have too much more to say.

However, for me, a more important question is

• ‘Do you cycle / drive in a way that is dangerous to other road users”
• ‘Do you cycle / drive in a way that is inconsiderate to other road users.’

I have seen cyclists (and drivers) go through red lights, in a way which does cause great inconvenience, and annoyance, e.g. at a 4 four traffic light. I have also seen cyclists go through a pedestrian crossing because no-one was around.

Do I mind the first? yes. Do I mind the second? well, no not really.

When I see buses charging through the high street at 10mph above the speed limit passing too close to pedestrians and cyclists, it is a much more serious cause for concern because I know this could be fatal.

Roger Geffen, CTC’s campaigns director, said (link):

“As road users we would like to see road traffic laws be enforced for the safety of everyone, but let’s not forget that the risk imposed by cyclists is minimal when compared to red light jumping drivers.”

He added: “Of pedestrians injured in London in a collision caused by red light jumping only 4% involve cyclists, whereas 71% occur when a car driver jumps a red light and 13% when a motorcyclist does.

Surveys can create any impression you want. From a cyclists perspective, it would be interesting to ask questions like:

• Do you ever pass a cyclist too closely?
• Do you ever drive with attention distracted?
• Do you ever get annoyed because you have to slow down to overtake cyclists?

I’ve done quite a few very bad things in my life (like, once getting a free ride on train without paying, wasted one hour of my life watching the X-Factor e.t.c) but occassionally going through a red light at pedestrian crossing because no-one is there is not one of them.

When it comes to using the road, common sense and mutual consideration is the most important thing.

• Traffic lights – rules and common sense
• Cycle campaigners see red over survey - Road CC

Relieving pre-exam nerves.

The cycle basket chain gang. – Rules max speed 15mph

Could almost be across the channel in Holland.

‘It’s actually all gold coins in here, but who would think it on this MTB’

Keep smiling.

A Cyclist meets tail end of the Oxford town and gown fun run.

nice fold up.

I love those 1970s brake cables – who needs all that fancy internal cable routing?

Struggling to keep up.

A classic bike and a classic shot.

Yeah, but it’s not as cool as cycling.

Narrow vision, narrow handlebars

A headwind into town.

More Oxford Cycling Photos

It is said that it’s much easier to give advice than to take it. I thought after recent accident and blood clot, I should take it fairly easy. But, the leg seemed to have fully recovered, and you soon forget about the past and your own advice.

I was out cycling towards Brill on my best road bike, there was a tailwind, there was a favourite hill and the temptation to stretch the legs and cycle as fast as possible is hard to resist. It felt good to get back into race mode, to cycle at the limit, not having to rely on one leg or worry about taking it easy. It’s good to cycle, it’s much better to cycle fast.

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm got  the better of me on the next ride. Doing 10Km at 48Kmph per hour (with tailwind), was fun, but the leg was rebelling the next day. Not quite back to square one, but it has enforced patience into my recovery – it will be a while before getting back to full speed and racing up hills with abandon.

How Much Fitness do you lose After 4 weeks off?

Fortunately, it seems 4 weeks off doesn’t really affect you too much. I think I’ve lost more at the top end. But, the basic fitness still seems there. I’m quite surprised at how resilient the body is in keeping good form, despite being inactive for 4 weeks. After assuming there was no point in entering National 50, I might have a look at the calendar and try and test where I’m at. Though, I realised after lengthy lay off, rushing into a 50 mile TT, may not be best approach.

• Any cyclist with a better bike than you.
• Any cyclist who overtakes you on a hill and says ‘jolly nice day’ pretending not to be even out of breath.
• Any cyclist who is faster than you.
• Any cyclist who pretends to never do any training, but still manages to do a 200Km sportive in sub 6 hours.
• Anyone who starts an unofficial commuting race when I don’t want to get involved in such a petty unimportant thing.
• Anyone who beats me in an unofficial commuting race.

1. The Winter Racer

It’s the middle of winter and most of your clubmates are happy to settle for some steady winter miles with the odd teashop. However, the winter racer will turn up on his £3,000 carbon fibre mike (sans mudguards of course) and insist on sprinting for every road sign. The winter racer then tries to drop everyone from an imaginary road race. The funny thing about the winter racer is that when the real racing starts in the middle of summer, they tend to evaporate or fail to race very quickly.

2. The Tester with encyclopaedic memory of his pb’s.

(Tester = time triallist). Time trialling tends to encourage a sort of obsessive behaviour. In particular, some testers will take any opportunity to regale you with their long history of their personal bests.

“…I set a 52:03 on the H25/8. Of course, if I’d had a 54 * 11 sprocket I’m sure I would have got a 51….”

If the tester ever manages to get off his personal bests, he will probably delve into the great fixed vs gears debate which has been ongoing since the second world war. The fact that pros hardly ever used fixed for individual time trials doesn’t change the fact that riding fixed must be much quicker than gears.

3. The Urban Warrior.

Maybe it is not fair to call these class of people cyclists. They treat the road as an obstacle course. Red lights and one way signs are only part of the street furniture – something to be admired for their aesthetic beauty rather than being signals of when to stop. The urban warrior will charge along pavements and shout at anyone with the audacity to suggest he might have been in the wrong to knock down that old lady.

4. Mr Excuses.

It was the headwind, sidewind, wrong bike, wrong choice of gears, too hilly, too early in the season, too late in the season, too hot, too cold, old war wound…. No matter what happens, Mr Excuses will always come up with a long list of excuses for why he didn’t do better / ride further. After listening to Mr Excuses, you really feel he could win the Tour de France, if only he wasn’t so cursed with bad luck and unfortunate mishaps.

5. The Stereotype Triathlete.

The ‘super cool roadies’ (see below) love to make fun of  triathletes. The ‘stereotyped triathlete’ will turn up on a ride of road racers only to make several mortal sins.

• - Turning up with tri bars. Tri bars are the quickest way to lose any self respect you may have with a roadie crowd. I mean real cyclists don’t make life easy for themselves….
• - Not holding your line on a descent. (Unfortunately, the triathlete will not what is meant when everyone shouts ‘hold your line’)
• - Not riding in a straight line.
• - Falling off.
• - Turning up with trainers not cycling shoes.
• - Turning up in kit which exposes 85% flesh. Road cyclists just don’t wear those G string shorts and vests.
• - Inability to move through properly on a chain gang.

6. The Super Cool Roadie

Road racing is the ultimate pinnacle of cycling sport, so any other discipline is to be looked down on. The super cool roadie particularly enjoys sneering at testers / triathletes / audax riders. The super cool roadie is usually a 3rd or 2nd Cat who can’t quite make it in road racing but at least knows his branch of cycling is the most prestigious. The super cool roadie may well have retro cycling tops from the 60s and 70s.

7. The Talker and Buyer

The talker never actually rides his bike. He spends hours reading through cycling magazines finding ways to reduce the weight on his bike worth £3,000. He knows more about cycling than anyone else; his bike is immaculate and the envy of many. But, the problem is he spends so long improving his bike and talking about cycling, he never actually gets round to riding. If he ever does ride, he will come to the conclusion that to go faster he just needs to buy the latest campagnolo 11 speed groupset, and this is where he has been going wrong.

8. The Helmet Advocate.

The helmet advocate is either passionately for or against. Whatever you talk about related to cycling, they will somehow bring it back to the helmet issue.

• The pro helmet advocate will always tell you, on every ride, the 4 times their life has been saved because they were wearing a helmet.
• The anti helmet lobby will try to tell you that wearing a helmet is actually very dangerous and if people didn’t wear helmets there would be a lot less fatalities in cycling.

9. The Old Timer

“Ay, lad, things were better in my day.”

The old timer will never fail to mention how much better things were in the ‘old days’. No matter that bikes weighed 15 kilos and punctured twice as often. Things were much better in the old days, not least because everything was in black and white. (old photos)

10. My Wife Is on an Intensive EPO course

We know that some pro cyclists take dope, but, what really gets me is the most pathetic excuses they come out with when caught. The classic was Rumsas who claimed the boxes of pills “were for my wife” -  Rumsas let his wife spend several weeks in prison when she was caught with a car full of performance enhancing drugs.

What about this excuse from Adri van der Poel the Dutch world cyclocross champion and Tour de France stage winner who tested positive for Strychnine. – He said that his father-in-law, had served a pigeon pie for Sunday lunch, and only when he tested positive did he realise that the pigeons had been doped with strychnine.

I don’t know which was worse the – industrial quantities of drugs Richard Virenque took or his tearful protestations that he never took dope and was a clean rider.
Any types of cyclists you would like to add to the list?

Related:

• Things people say about Cycling

thanks to comments, post originally published Aug 6, 2008.

A year ago, I wrote and published a book “Happiness Will Follow You” It is a collection of articles on meditation and ‘self-improvement’

I guess I could have included an article on ‘How to cycle on British roads and without getting mad at inconsiderate motorists‘ But, essentially it has nothing to do with cycling. Anyway, if you can stomach the kind of book which tells you how to eat garlic bread for breakfast with a smile on your face, you might possibly like this.

Amazon UK

• Happiness Will Follow You at Amazon.co.uk – £10.95 hardback – £5.95 kindle.

• Happiness Will Follow You – at Amazon.com – hardback $17.95

Some interesting comments from recent post – People hitting cyclists However, I hope it doesn’t put people off cycling, e.g. comment

I suppose I should not be reading these events prior to my cycling lesson tomorrow but one has to learn of the experiences.
Hmm I think I would change my cycling route in the same way one does when driving. But then wha t do I know. 

Firstly it is quite rare. Most of the time you can cycle without incident. Despite it being very rare, the chances of having things thrown at you are higher if:

• You are wearing lycra.
• You cycle fast
• You cycle on busy roads / dual carriageways.

If you dress in normal clothes, if you cycle slowly, I would be very surprised if anyone leaned out of the window to spray a water pistol in your face. It’s no guarantee of course, but there is an element that if you look like a proper cyclist, you’re more likely to attract attention. I might speculate that if you are a racing cyclist, cycling along at 20mph, it’s more inconvenient for a motorist to pass you. If you’re doing 10mph, it’s easier.

We are always judging people on their appearance, so it’s nothing new if motorists judge cyclists by the way you look. There is anecdotal evidence that motorists give some types of cyclist more room. i.e. if you don’t look like a cyclist, motorists pass with a little more care. If you look like an old lady wobbling around on a 3spd, cars may give you more space as they go past. A humorous blog from: Telegraph

…On the way to work I sometimes pass the same lady cyclist. She looks as though she’s pedalling through treacle on a ladies sit-up-and-beg bicycle.

She struggles along wearing a rainjacket over a pleated skirt, and she wears a white helmet which looks like half a large billiard ball attached to the back of her head.

I’ve always thought she was in the wrong gear – mechanically and sartorially – but thinking about it more carefully, she justifies No 1 son’s theory.

Unlike the other cyclists in their helmets, rucksacks and leggings who look the part and merge with other road users in morning traffic at comparable speeds, this lady’s very obvious because she’s slow, looks a bit inept and quite vulnerable. As I pass, I do give her an extra-wide berth so she must have The Look just right.

Now, if you happent to be old lady on a Vintage 3 speed, you’ve probably got lots of experience to tell me otherwise. And I’m not going to start getting a blue rinse hairdry, just to see whether motorists give me a little more space.

Also, going back to recent post – Cycling a question of perspective there is always a choice how we respond to sharing the road. If we become fearful of bad incidents, we can easily put ourselves off. On the other hand, we can remember that mostly cycling is fun and safe.

So there you go, cycling is less dangerous than walking, and when you walk around town, you don’t feel obliged to wear a pink wig, wicker shopping basket or helmet, in the hope a bus won’t drive on to the kerb and knock you over.

Related

• Cycle safety
• Death rates by mode of transport
• Cycle stats

However, some areas have been able to tackle the problem by directly targeting bike thieves.

Stolen bikes recovered from one house in Cambridge. (Didn’t the neighbours ever think something fishy was going on?)

25% of all crime in Cambridge is related to bike theft. Bike theft soared in Cambridge so police started sting operations using GPS devices to find where stolen bikes went. As a result bike theft fell 25% in 2011.

As a result of these sting operations, known as Operation Northwood, the major crackdown in bike theft and burglary led to 20 thieves being locked up for a total of more than 47 years after a year-long blitz.

It’s great to see the effort put in by the police has paid for itself. This kind of heightened conviction will act as a deterrent and prevent future crime. I only wish these schemes were rolled out across the country.

Note on GPS and Theft

One note about GPS. It can be useful for police to recover stolen bikes, but be careful about using GPS tools like Strava. This can show thieves where your best bike is kept. They could use this to target your house / shed and steal your bike. If you login to Srava and click on privacy settings, you can hide 100 metres around your house – so theives won’t be able to pin point exactly where you live. This option is not enabled by default, but should be. (hat tip Cycling Weekly)

Many stolen bikes never get reclaimed.

Related

• How To Prevent Bike Theft 
• New York Kryptonite lock

It all depends on the beholder. You can look at any situation, and come to so many different conclusions. I found this first picture on flickr, which got me thinking, then I looked at several other photos, and saw how differently people will judge them. What do you make of these photos?

_{photo, Bichxa, CC}

Struggling with load or showing the dynamism of cycling?

_{photo, Bichxa, CC}

Fun in the rain or a fool to get wet?

Stop having too much fun.

Helping the environment or pavement menace?

Should be cycling nearer the gutter | If only more places encouraged cycling.

What a loverly car free road!  | Are they riding 2 abreast!?

Other Random Photos and Comments

Who Stands out from the crowd?

Which side of road do we cycle on?

Family carrier?

scrapheap or recycling yard?

This hi Riser is very low down

Look Mum, no hands

Easy as hopping on or off – or a struggle with flat tyre?

Turning your back on ‘finger lick in good’ multinationals

_{photo, Bichxa, CC}

Anyway, it’s good to be making progress. Two weeks ago, I could only stand on one leg, so it’s nice to be already cycling 15 miles – nice and slow. Yesterday was 30 miles. And no longer do I have to experience the indignity of being passed on my commuting bike by old ladies with sit up and beg bikes. (not that that bothered me at all.)

When the weather is so wet, you need to be fairly motivated to go out on the bike training. The problem is that with bad leg, the motivation is not there as much. But, that’s probably a good thing, it will make me more likely to listen to my own advice and ease myself back in gently. Perhaps as my leg gets better, the weather will also improve….

After a break from the sport where he become world champion (4Km pursuit), Obree talks about his motivation for coming back and attempting to  go for this unique record and new challenge:

“So I thought to myself, what was my passion before? What were my strengths? I thought bike design, bike building, and pumping out a lot of energy from my legs. I thought the human powered land speed record is the perfect solution to all those three things. It is actually the complete embodiment of what I am as a human being. No rules and regulations, and it is about pure speed and how fast a human can go – it doesn’t get more exciting than that for me. Flying up a road at 85 MPH! I thought, oh yeah, I am going for that.”

Obree has always been an innovator. His bikes revolutionised track cycling and time trials (his designs also led to a rash of UCI regulations and restrictions on bike design, but that’s another story). Clearly to Obree building and designing the bike is part of the attraction of this record.

When he set the world hour record, it was perhaps over-documented that he use a part from his washing machine (a small bearing) and also a part from a bmx. This sometimes  overshadow his great athletic ability.

But, this time he seems quite happy to explain how he will be recycling different spare pieces to build his bike For example,ehe will be using an old frying pan, that was sitting around his kitchen. He will use it to rest on when in his supreme aerodynamic position. Obree told the Daily Record.

“I used an old pot that I had burned so I won’t miss it – it was ideal for what I needed.”

Obree speaks about the process of bike building.

Well, I am building my bike in my kitchen. That is the first difference. The reason being, despite people offering me advice and help, I do things my way. I enjoy the thought process. I like to think, ‘I want that like this’, and then to challenge myself and say, but is that right? Should it actually be like this? I enjoy using my logic.

And also for me, all the pleasure would be taken away if it was manufactured and cut and dried. For me this is a form of artistic expression. It isn’t just about the human land speed record.

“The main thing is about designing the bike yourself and using the components yourself, and then testing yourself as an engineer. I knew roughly what I wanted in terms of the gears and the step up, but building this bike and then riding it is for me the purest form of artistic expression. It is like singing and writing your own songs, no hold on… it is like choreographing your own dance moves to your own music.”

Obree is unfazed by his age (46). He is a real believer in the art of the possible. Racing at 90mph may leave many fearful of skin loss, but Obree says his main concern is getting to 90 years old and regretting not doing more.

Obree is definitely one of the great characters of cycling. It would be great to see Obree achieve it. He will be attempting record in September in Nevada this year.

- Quotes from  return of the flying Scotsman

Video of Graeme Obree Talking about Record

• Graeme Obree Page
• Photo credits Obree’s Facebook page