Ponder's Blog

Well this turned out to be longer than I expected and this was mostly due to something supposedly designed to keep cyclists safe: cycle lanes! More on this shortly.

The “new” Highway Code rules, which seem to have cycle haters chomping at the bit but which are actually clarifications and not new are having little affect in driving behaviour. It’s even possibly making things worse as the aforementioned cycle haters now go out of their way to make it worse for us, yet the biggest and most confusing rules (granting pedestrians priority to cross at junctions) seems to be getting ignored and is going to kill someone one day.

We do have a sort of comical moment when a bus driver I “scolded” for passing me to pull into a bus stop ended up using his washers as he passed… bloody child!

We also have a very scary moment when an artic passes when there’s no room! That has been reported and acknowledged; no need to keep video so it’s going to be a warning and thus it’s included in this video. If I had kept going and he would have pulled back in I wouldn’t be typing this now.

Now back to the cycle lanes: people often complain about cyclists not using cycle lanes and I often reply that they’re just not safe. It’s safer to use the roads (even though that takes some confidence these days). Now these new lanes have completely screwed up the traffic around Cardiff centre so I tried a different route home which meant almost compulsory use of these new lanes. The latter part of this video shows how bloody dangerous they actually are! They’re supposed to help yet have made things so much worse that it’s only a matter of time before injuries are caused due to this poorly planned and implemented mess!

I almost ran out of music for this one it’s so long (ooer missus).

A fairly quiet period that took a while to collate enough for this video.

There’s still a lot of impatience going on though, including an emergency stop for someone who didn’t even see me at a roundabout and of all things a police car stopped on a box junction! With that example being set it’s hardly surprising they’re so widely ignored.

It’s nice to finally see some changes to acknowledge cyclists (and other vulnerable road users) in the Highway Code but I’ll be very surprised if I see any changes to the way we’re actually treated by the small but highly significant proportion of motor vehicle drivers who actively hate us. We shall see but I’m not holding my breath.

This was surprisingly quiet for a December! This doesn’t mean I didn’t have to put up with the normal impatience but not much in the way of Christmas madness.

The danger I mention in one of the clips was nothing to do with road safety. I was talking to myself in anticipation of the next day’s shopping trip putting me at danger from Whamageddon ? I didn’t go out on that trip but did go out on the 11th putting the bins out while someone was playing the accursed tune in a car!

So many close passes and so much impatience in this video. There were some deliberate dangerous passes too, but they’re unlisted on YouTube only and are after the main video on this post.

The Psychic School of Motoring makes a comeback too, and are even showing they now have an advanced course!

Now onwards to the most dangerous month of the year: December. The next video will be for the whole month and posted on New Years Eve. Stay safe everyone!

Now for the two I’ve actually successfully reported. The first one has been dealt with by both police and the bus company. I used to be a bus driver so thought very hard before reporting but his two fingers pretty much sealed it for me. It told be he didn’t care one bit about my safety.

The second one has been acknowledged by the police and they’re taking positive action; they also want me to hold on to the original footage. This was bad enough just by the close pass but the passenger flicking ash over me as they passed told me that once again this was very deliberate. Had I been a less experienced cyclist I could have swerved here and who knows what the outcome of that would have been.

Due to my crazy shifts lately I’ve been cycling when there’s little else around, so it took a bit longer than usual to get enough together to make publishing worthwhile. I left it the extra 7 days and got more than enough!

The average standard of driving continues to plummet and we see a possible reason why: driving schools seem to be teaching arseholy driving! I’ve also been faced with a number of close calls and my grumpiness is off the scale.

Also here are quite a few red light jumpers in motorised vehicles (never forget it’s not just bikes that jump reds) and a suicidal scooter rider. Through a lot of this I’ve felt like I’m invisible much of the time with absolutely no consideration for my safety given by far too many drivers. The new cycle lanes won’t help one little bit either, they just seem to be box ticking exercises that are actually more dangerous than the roads they replace. I’ve been wondering more often lately how much longer I’ll continue cycling because if standards continue to drop I’m going to become more fearful for my life. We shall see.

I’ll be interested on what you think after watching this video. Please leave comments here or in either video. I’ll answer every one.

There’s more than a bit of twattery in this edition, once again people show that patience is an alien concept to some. Lots of the usual and one particular car, the driver of which had better hope he doesn’t see the police! Red lights do NOT belong at the front of a moving vehicle, it’s a recipe for disaster!

There’s a bonus clip at the end. I was ready to give help if it was needed but as he got up and started running again there was no need. Just a bit worse for wear regarding alcohol consumption it would seem!

Music: “Sommarfågel” with end clip “Tornado” by Wintergatan
These tracks can be downloaded for free at https://www.wintergatan.net
Free License to use these tracks in your video can be downloaded at https://www.wintergatan.net

Quite a bit of impatience in this video, even more than usual! A lot of total lack of consideration, dive bombed by a herring gull and someone being really naughty by either modifying their car illegally or just using fake plates to avoid ANPR pinging. Which is it? I don’t know, I’ll let you make up your own minds.

Best of all though, amongst all this impatience and poor driving are two occasions where I was given consideration. I honestly prefer this behaviour and to be frank, I wouldn’t be upset if I didn’t get enough to make these videos worthwhile. If fact if that ever happened I’d consider it a success! After all, even though these videos highlight bad driving I hope it shows people what their driving can look like to others and to help them improve. This is another reason I don’t report; education beats discipline.

Some things I want to draw attention to in this video.

In the very first clip (I’m on my foldable bike) the cars just barged through using their weight to force me to stop even though (as I didn’t have to cross the centre line) I had right of way. I call it bullying when any driver uses the weight of the vehicle to force their way through. The only comeback will involve damage or injury and you can bet they they’d get really upset if the same was done to them! On this occasion I was on my way home after dropping off a Transit sized car I’d had for 3 days. At no time did I behave impatiently during this time and I managed to get to my destination every time without stress!

Bus drivers passing when there’s a stop just ahead really get by back up. The one seen here does it at a stop which effectively blocks my safe path through the double set of traffic lights, thus my outburst. I manage to squeeze though this time but it’s a bloody arrogant thing to do!

Now for these new cycle lanes. They are a good thing but as you can see here they bring other challenges to experienced riders. There’s a reason I avoid shared cycle paths / pedestrian walkways and that’s because I tend to ride at an average speed of around 12mph (19km.h) and pedestrians tend to move around without much warning. We see the same here with the children (no faces shown). As you see I didn’t rush it and never will but it is something we’re going to have to adapt to. Safer yes, but in some cases slower.

The last thing I want to bring attention to is the woman on her phone still in dressing gown and slippers. This isn’t the issue though, even though the van driver thought he was being nice he was actually being potentially very dangerous. He only has control of his own vehicle and has no say in any other vehicle on the road. The same applies to those on 2 lane roads that stop to let a vehicle turn right across their path without noticing the other vehicle passing at 30mph in the other lane. Bear this in mine, it’s not courteous, it’s bloody dangerous!