Matthew's Journal

I sometimes have to take a deep breath on single carriage way roads with the national speed limit, on the occasions when I find myself behind an HGV whose driver has remembered that he's not supposed to go above 40mph.

It's a very useful skill to learn, as a driver, to relax and not let this make you feel aggressive.

I find it helps to calculate how few minutes this slows me down, even over quite long stretches of road.

"difficult or dangerous to overtake" .. hmm. i have a problem with car drivers on my commute who think that if i'm in the gutter, passing close is fine - no matter what's comming.. but actually having to plan an execute an overtaking maneuver is unacceptable.

this is particularly annoying on the narrow road out of the village which is barely wide enough for two cars - no matter where i cycle, they need to overtake .. but i get beeped at if i'm not in the gutter.

it's a very wide road where it's safe to pass a cyclist without crossing the central line, particularly at speed.

Odds are the drivers don't know the research that suggests cyclists are safer on the road

*nods* This. With a side order, I'd guess, of assumption that if the people who designed the road built a path specifically marked for cycles then surely that must be where cyclists were intended to be, and surely (assuming the road designers thought everything through carefully as is their job) there's a reason for that.

I can't help but feel some sympathy. If there's a specifically marked cycle path which it turns out that it's better if cyclists don't use, I find it hard to blame everyday road-users for finding that state of affairs unexpected, counterintuitive and difficult to believe. Surely the primary blame should lie with whoever built a cycle path which was more dangerous than not using it, or with whoever hasn't come and changed the road markings after the research showed they were a bad idea after all? (Assuming, that is, that the research is unambiguous and generally accepted.) It doesn't excuse the rudeness, of course, but it makes it easy to understand the frustration which gives rise to the rudeness.

As for what the drivers are trying to achieve, I would naturally assume that they're primarily giving vent to that frustration, and perhaps also hoping that the combined social opprobrium of their collective yelling might persuade you to do what they see as the right thing. (You might see that as the same as "intimidate the pesky cyclists off their roads", but I think I'd reserve "intimidate" for intent to make you feel physically threatened, whereas I'd guess that at least some of them merely intend to make you feel disapproved of, and it's just that in this situation that has to be done at shouting volume.)

The dangers of such paths (beyond collisions with pedestrians) include: poor surfaces that aren't gritted (the ones here ice regularly, and are currently covered in very slippery leaf mulch), drive-ways, and side-roads (where visibility is poor, and car-drivers tend not to expect cyclists).

There also much slower (because you have to slow down for all of the above), but maybe car drivers think that's not important.

I only ever hit cars if I think they've really not seen me and are about to side-swipe me - otherwise it's too dangerous, I think.

What's more according to the Cardiff Council Cycle Map, even in the case of split paths pedestrians aren't committing an offence if they walk on the cycle side.

I vary considerably as to whether or not I use cycle paths. Sometimes according to how I'm feeling (like on my old route to work I'd use the path when I was tired and not up to quick cycling) but more generally on how useful the path is. My current route to work includes quite a lot of split paths, one stretch along a dual carriageway which is up and down (it feels like a bridge but it doesn't seem to go over anything) with roundabouts at both ends which connects to an off road path I use in the morning. I can go at speed on this path though I do have to mind read at the roundabouts as most cars don't understand signalling. However, in the evening I tend to chose the road route not the off road path at which point I do the first roundabout on road because that's easier than the mind read, but then onto the path for the uphill stretch and left turn at the end (which could be better designed). At the end of my route I use the split path because it avoids 3 sets of traffic lights so my speed is better. Similarly in the evening, I use the path to get back as it avoids 4 sets of lights one of which takes an age to change and quite a bit of lateral movement (path is on the right in that direction).

In Cambridge, I use the split path from Trumpington to Cambridge (and bus lane back) but stay on road on Milton Road (except when my lights were failing). I had the interesting experience one Sunday morning of a posse of serious looking cyclists passing the end of Ansty Way as I turned out of it (so they were ahead). They stayed on road (partly I suspect as there were 4 of them) but I in fact overtook them because of the traffic lights. I can pelt down that path and there's only a couple of junctions and they're very minor. Milton Road otoh is a nightmare because there are so many side streets and the surface isn't nice. Also, the traffic is such that often you can be doing about traffic speed.