Road Safety

There’s a reason that fewer women than men seem to ride their bikes in the UK. As explained in Beauty & The Bike , it’s the infrastructure - we’re expected to just mix in with the traffic, and it often just doesn’t feel safe, whatever the official statistics say. Warning: sweeping generalisations ahead. The thing is,...
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Big ride today - nearly 80 miles playing in the hills of County Durham, getting as far as Wolsingham & then coming home via Durham and the Angel. I had an incident at a set of lights that made me question the safety of my pedantic attitude to red lights. You see, when I...
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The papers today are full of this - a bike lane that takes up half the road: I was particularly impressed by the Daily Express’ title for the story: BIKE LANE WIDER THAN THE ROAD THIS must be Britain’s craziest cycle lane – wider than the rest of the main road. The new super-size lane...
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On the BBC’s  Jeremy Vine programme this Tuesday , there was a short piece at the end of the show about a van driver who’d been fired as a result of his inappropriate behaviour towards a cyclist. It seems that his van was wired for sound by his employer, including cameras looking forward, at...
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I got this in my email yesterday (I’ve added in some pictures here to brighten it up): The price of oil is as low as it has been for a while but the oil companies have simply jacked their prices up and the government will not do anything as they rake in extra VAT for...
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This weekend I was in That London for my oldest friend’s birthday party. An evening of booze and banging techno - I participated in the former, while enjoying observing the effects of the latter. Anyway, I took the train down, which left me with the problem of how to get from our house to Newcastle...
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So after getting myself into a bit of a mess on the bike, I decided not to go for a particularly long run - just an extended cool-down of about four miles. All was well until just after the turnaround, when I was dragged back to reality by a blast from a car horn. Looking...
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That green area behind the car is the cyclists’ waiting area, reserved for bikes, in front of the advanced stop line, where the car should have stopped? The car has stopped, blocking the pedestrian crossing? The driver made a valiant effort to beat the lights (racing past me in the filter lane), but...
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This via Tom Vanderbilt : According to the BBC , Mrs Williams’ Renault Clio was clipped by the lorry and twisted sideways, trapping it under the front bumper. The vet, who works at a practice in Garforth, was not injured in the incident …. A police spokesperson said an investigation into the incident had ...
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(n.b. this post is safe for Wife to read. I was in no danger during this incident, and merely witnessed the results) Coming home from my long ride on Sunday, I chose the route over the top of Byker and down the Foss Way to Walker. This is a great road for tired legs -...
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