Showing 'respect' to motorists?

Something I often encouter is claims that cyclists don't show respect on the roads. This is repeated, parrot style, over and over to the point where it sounds like it might even be true. Repeat the same fallacy often enough, people start believing.

This has got me thinking, what does it actually mean?

I've previously dealt with the 'mutual respect' fallacy, a dangerous myth perpetuated by those whose innate lack of understanding constantly leads them to the flawed concept that the correct position between 'right' and 'wrong' is somewhere in-between. Those who seek consensus between going about your business in a harmless fashion and some other fiction where to do so presents a problem.

But this is different; apparently we don't show enough respect on the roads.

The means by which we should show respect rather escapes me. Do they want us to wait in traffic with them? I mean, would we be showing respect by staying the same place in traffic rather than passing them? So, then we'd be adding to the queue of traffic, and the motorists would take longer to get through each junction, and we'd merely be slowing down our journeys for no gain, for anyone? I'm meant to stand there breathing in their traffic fumes while they wait in traffic out of respect? 

Do they want us to show respect by maybe cycling passively in the gutter? I'm meant to respect them by riding in a way that increases risk to me, again for no real gain for them? Simply put I'm getting to my destination faster than they are; I can move to the edge of the road to make their overtakes faster and closer, and then catch them up at the traffic lights anyway, but then they'll just do it again. I'm not showing disrespect by cycling safely nor am I in any way adversely affecting their journey times.

I suppose I could ride dangerously in the gutter AND wait in traffic, encouraging lots of dangerous overtaking while not getting to my destination. I could do that. Why that would be showing 'respect' I don't know.

How precisely can I ride with 'respect'? I'm not showing disrespect when I use cycle lanes, nor by using the road where the cycle lane is outright dangerous. I'm not being disrespectful when I turn right or left at a junction or pick the lane I actually need to be in. In short, nothing I'm doing is demonstrating a lack of 'respect' for other road users. I'm riding to get where I'm going, I'm not expressing an opinion about drivers as I do so.

Does 'respect' mean I have to get the hell out of your way because you're more important than me? Does 'respect' mean I should be the hell out of your way? Am I meant to show 'respect' by smiling at you? JUST TELL ME WHAT THE FECK YOU WANT WILL YOU?

Ultimately the whole 'respect' thing is a myth - borne from the weird sense of entitlement many motorists have. They want us to 'respect' them by showing subservience - the idea that we're showing disrespect by merely cycling comes from the false idea that we should at all times be beneath them. That they've got an automatic right to more than we have because they're cars and we're bikes. Everything about this tells us whats wrong with our motoring culture - its law of the wild on our roads and the way they see it there's a food chain. And we're meant to be at the bottom.

Hey, motorists, respect has to be earned. Start earning it by understanding that simple fact.

Because this needs sharing...

...I mean, this REALLY needs sharing.

As far as I can tell this guy wasn't prosecuted.

Incident reported to police

Went in to Parkside Station on Friday to report an incident. Won't talk more about said incident because I have no idea whether or not that is appropriate now. Suffice to say someone passed info about one of my youtube vids to the police and they see enough there to be worth looking in to.

I think however I'm safe making a few general reflections.

I suspect the Sergeant I was talking to knows about this blog; he's quite sensitive to the criticism that local police receive on cycling issues. I can see why. They're regularly lambasted here and elsewhere for being anti-cyclist. And he doesn't think its entirely fair. Again, I see why - he doesn't feel any animosity towards cyclist in general. I've talked to him about various things before and I think he's a decent chap. If he's reading this (I won't name him, that would seem oddly unfair on a good bloke doing a hard job) then I really hope that we're seeing a new chapter in Cambridgeshire Constabulary getting policing of cycling and related issues right. This is all good stuff. 

But lets strip out the fact that he's a decent sort (as I think are most police here) from the realities of living and cycling in Cambridge.

I have had good and bad experiences of local police. All of the good experiences I've had relate to being a resident in a community which isn't bad but which has had its problem families. I'd say that they didn't get everything right with those issues (I'm sure they'd agree), but they regularly handle monstrously difficult, complex situations and you'll never get everything right. All in all I'd say that the Police have never been the weak link in the chain when handling such issues - I'm pretty much happy with them.

Lets think through the bad experiences now.

I've gone to the police with eye-witness reports of a motorist getting out of their car and assaulting me. I was told that it wasn't an incident because I wasn't hurt.

I've gone to the police twice with reports that taxis had intentionally nudged me from behind. Was told on the first occasion that if there is no damage there is no incident, on the second I was taken aside by a sergeant and told that I was viewed as an eccentric.

I've had the lady on the desk at Parkside take down the details of a collision until such a time as I added the fact that I was a cyclist, then she entirely lost interest. 

I've phoned 999 because a guy was actually threatening me with violence after hopping his bike off the road in front of mine; I was told that its not an RTA if its between two bicycles.

I've stopped at light changing to amber to let two PCSO's across; rather than just cross they chose to be sarcastic at me about cyclists stopping at lights.

I've had an argument with a PCSO who was telling a child little older than a toddler that they should be riding on the road. Yes, to paraphrase, go and play in the traffic.

I have, twice, been stopped by Police constables for riding entirely legally on streets where they are unaware that two way cycling is permitted. 

I have reported cars parked in cycle lanes to the Police only to be told they don't deal with this, the City Council do - said body told me that the County Council should deal with it, and naturally enough they direct me to the Police. It transpires that NONE of them give a crap, nor do they respect citizens who do sufficiently to just come out and say that they'll each do nothing about it.

I have taken video footage to the police, of motorists intentionally swerving in to the space I'm using. And they haven't been in the least interested.

I'm critical of how our local police handle cycling. I'm openly and unashamedly critical. And I think I've had good reason to be. Some of the policing choices made here have been barking mad - operation Pedalo for example completely failed to deal with the major hazards to our safety - it was just the annual publicity-stunt crackdown given a funky name. And staking out places where there is no reason to believe that the cycle lane has ended should be treated as a national scandal. Our Conservative Police Commissioner is quite obviously a rabid cyclist hater with no concept that policing FOR cyclists might yield as great or greater gains than policing OF cyclists.

The evidence, to me at least, is clear enough. It may be the case that a lot of Cambridgeshire Constabulary are not opposed to cycling. It may even be true that many of them ride to work (as I was told on Friday). But I should think its also obvious to anyone paying attention that @cambscops are institutionally anti-cyclist. While I wholeheartedly welcome any suggestion that things are getting better, a decade of negativity can't be overcome with one event.

But I'm not one to wallow in negativity. No, really, I'm not. I'll view this as a new beginning - the years I've now spent saying 'Don't bother reporting that to Cambridge Police, you're a cyclist, my experience is they don't give a damn' are behind me, for now. Welcome to a world of actually reporting the criminals who endanger me. 

How do you think things will go?

The OTHER rules of the road

I was looking at the lady driving a beamer stopped behind me. I was waiting on my bicycle behind another car that was, like the beamer, illegally in the bus and cycle lane. She liesurely got out her phone to check her texts, carelessly inching forward, before looking up at me and angrily shouting "WHAT?". I got to pondering that there is too little acknowledgement that there are other 'rules' for using our roads that are simply not normally recorded in the normal way. They aren't written down in law, they're not even in the highway code - they're assumed by a minority to be 'consensus' view, i.e. 'everybody knows that'. And where it is observed by this minority that others are breaking those rules, they're all too ready to enforce them.

So, for example, speed limits. Motorists, for the most part, don't believe that speed limits apply to them. You can go further and find many examples of motorists who believe that you should "do the speed limit" or you are somehow breaking the rules - if you're not doing 30mph (or more) then you're 'holding up the traffic' and you're in the wrong somehow. 20mph doesn't apply at all. Heck, speed cameras? They're just for taxing you mate, they're just a con to get money out of us honest otherwise law abiding speeders.

Then there's traffic lights. If you go through amber thats okay - I mean, yes, the highway code says stop if its safe, but I mean if you have to accelerate hard to get through thats fine. And then if the light changes red you're already going fast so thats fine, you can go through after red as long as its only been a couple of seconds and you're going fast. So long as you don't go through slowly and carefully overtaking cars, thats okay. Bloody cyclist stopping at that amber light held be up. And then they've all got the audacity to go through at red.

Mobile phone use? Well if you're only going slowly. Or stopped at the lights. Or just using it for a minute. Whats your problem? Excuse me I'm on the bloody phone, shut up and stop banging on the underside of my car.

The unwritten rules of the road are the ones that don't work when you've got more than one type of road user. The slightly less assertive older driver is the object of scorn, even hate. A cyclist unable to maintain 30mph is seen as the problem, rather than those impatiently refusing to obey the law as it relates to their interraction with vulnerable road users. The driver parking wholly on the road so as not to obstruct the pavement (do any of them actually exist?). The irony of these 'unwritten' rules is that if you're obeying the actual rules to the letter you can still be viewed to be in violation - and worthy of contempt, hatred, scorn or even amateur enforcement by use of the car.

But it doesn't end there - the highway code is littered with things that just aren't real. Did you know according to the highway code you're not meant to go into a bus lane or a cycle lane if you need to overtake/undertake traffic that has stopped to turn? Thats not a real rule though. It doesn't apply to ME. And you can't form a queue in a bus lane just because you really want to turn left into the shopping centre ahead. Well you can, just because its illegal doesn't make it wrong.

Now the problem with this attitude, the fundamental problem with it, is that its bollocks.

These colloquial rules, these assumed shared beliefs, are nothing of the sort. They're fine if everyone is driving a similarly powered vehicle with a similar degree of competence and confidence. But that isn't reality. Even if everyone was in a car, in the same sort of car, it wouldn't work. What we're really saying with these 'rules', what we actually accomplish when the Police simply ignore rule breaking when its endemic rule breaking like this, is that law of the jungle should operate. That those who don't like this systemic 'within our agreed rules' bullying (and it IS bullying) should just get the hell off our roads - its hardly surprising that the UK lags so far behind for walking and cycling.

Crudely speaking, if you don't abide by the unwritten rules of a bullying large minority, and if those rules are not in any way challenged by law enforcers, then you're nobody. Or, legally speaking, you may as well be. Cyclists can obey the written rules of the road or not, it doesn't matter. Lights, red lights, riding on the pavement, none of this makes the slightest difference really - we're not hated for any of those things. We're hated because we break the rules of the road that no one bothered to write down.

And why did no one bother to write them down? Because you, dear moton, dreamed them up.

A funny thing happened...

...on the way home from work yesterday.

I got to this junction here:


View Larger Map

I was on the road (avoiding an utterly awful shared use facility which randomly ends after the junction with no sign, which is why the police stake it out to catch you - there is no possible way you can know that you can't legally ride from a random undrawn line on the pavement). You'll see a hedge in front of the house in the image above - in front of that the shared use path continues until just around the corner where it mysteriously ends - there is no sign, the path doesn't get narrower, before and after its unlabeled end the quality of riding on it is exactly the same. It is a wide, sweeping corner with pretty good visibility.

As I approached there was a cyclist going not very fast on the shared use lane - as I saw him he was half way across the road to the left (Highworth Avenue). A woman was walking in the opposite direction - past the hedge you can see in the image.

Plenty of room for both to pass each other. Heading straight towards each other. No need for confrontation or any kind of grief. Cyclist looking where he was going, as far as I could see. Younger chap, typical hybrid bike. Woman didn't look like there should be any problem for her - maybe in her 50s, walking comfortably.

I couldn't immediately explain what happened next. 

While the cyclist was still at good 10 meters away, the woman threw herself in to the hedge. The cyclist was over on the right side of the path already, to give her ample room, she was over on the left, the probability of any collision at this location where the cyclist could legally ride his bike was approaching zero - one of them would have had to intentionally gone at the other. It was safe, with a wide margin of error and complete comfort.

He looked quizzically at her in passing, I was a little behind and stopped to see what was wrong with her - was she having some kind of 'turn'? 

She went on to rant at me about ****ing cyclists running her off the path, we're all ****ing ****s who should be on the ****ing road... You get the message.

I guess this is an example of a freakishly unpleasant human being who is willing to inconvenience herself such that she's got some kind of story to tell about ****ing cyclists. Its part of joining in with the herd-mentality - I felt like my IQ was dropping every moment I spent there so I told her I'd seen everything and before considering sharing her tale with the media or police my own account of the event would also be online for anyone to read within 24 hours - I was the only witness to the event and my interpretation was that she's an ignorant bastard trying to exploit an unfair stigma against cyclists to get a rider who was doing nothing wrong into serious trouble, and as there was no way she was hurt from this or any way blame could be attributed to the cyclist she was only doing it for her own twisted amusement.

There is no moral to this tale - other than the fact that if anyone tells you there is no war on cycling they're missing the point. There is - folk like this deranged, sociopathic woman are fighting it. And you know what the bitch of it is? Despite the fact that her claim that a cyclist riding at her to run her into the hedge is flat out absurd, she'll go and whine at her mates all about it and they'll believe her - the demonisation of an outlier social group is simply part of how morons like that operate.

Cyclists, look out for each other. Times like this, it really matters.

Interesting Cambridge Constabulary FOI...

I see that plod here don't even bother to record how many times cyclists complain of being intimidated on the roads.

They also don't have much data on clear-up rate for cycle theft, which I suspect is shockingly low.

They can however rapidly tell us how many car drivers have had things thrown at them.

Bottom line? Policing in Cambridgeshire isn't FOR cyclists. They don't even bother to record how rubbish they've been on our behalf. Policing in Cambridgeshire is purely OF cyclists.

Cambridgeshire Constabulary: Proudly supporting the motoring lobby.

Cambridge Cycling Campaign - Why are they shy of the County Council?

UPDATE: Cambridge Cycling Campaign published their bi-monthly newsletter recently, which included some good stuff on the Catholic Church Junction, and some not so good stuff on their relationship with the media and the County. I've added comments thereon to the bottom of this post.

I don't lie awake at night wondering how I can wail on Cambridge Cycling Campaign. But sometimes they do try to prod me into it.

I don't dislike them. There are good, well meaning folk there, and some of their recent statements have been spot on. A good example would be their response to this woeful proposal for the Catholic Church Junction - I thought that their comments were very good. A little less forceful than I'd be where our lives are at risk (and lets be clear - cyclists WILL suffer serious injury and/or death as a result of our County Council refusing to prioritise us in any meaningful way at this junction), but the Campaign have covered the facts well there I think.

And there are things only a group like Cambridge Cycling Campaign can do - they get to planning meetings and council meetings and report back what happens that is of relevance to cyclists - they go through planning applications presented and put forward what they see as a cyclists set of priorities. The time and, crucially, person-power they can bring to bear on these areas is invaluable. I want to make it absolutely clear that I'm not anti-Cambridge Cycling Campaign. But there are times when I can't help but wonder what the hell is going on with them and why they're so wedded to holding out the bike cap and begging like some Dickensian pity figure.

Take this example here showing a not atypical response from the Campaign. The County Council do not give give a flying feck for the lives of cyclists - the very best facilities we get out of them are demonstrably not good enough. This is a bunch of social and economic extremist councillors who don't understand that being pro-bike is not being anti-car - for whom victim blame is the normal way of dealing with cyclists, hiding behind the 'mutual respect' fallacy and crying foul when exposed as speaking complete crap. Cambridgeshire County Council is an entirely car-centric organisation with no interest in cycling or cyclists, made up of councillors who want to fob us off with sub-standard or non-existent infrastructure while directing the police to target us for merely trying to stay alive.

This County Council is not about to have a Road to Damascus change of heart and start treating cyclists like human beings. They aren't going to invest in safe roads for us, they're going to continue fannying on wasting money on changes that don't much help us. So why is it Cambridge Cycling Campaign are so afraid of treating the County Council as what it is - the enemy not merely of cyclists but of anyone who wouldn't render down their first born child to extract another couple of litres of diesel?

Possibly they think they've got more influence by being chummy - the Catholic Church debacle clearly shows that isn't the case. Yeah, we get the odd improvement, but are we getting what we need? No, we clearly aren't. Seriously guys, are you actually afraid that these minor improvements aren't going to happen because you speak out against what is otherwise an anti-cyclist regime? Are you that afraid of what happens if you're seen to publicly tear shreds out of people who hold cyclists in contempt anyway?

Lets compare Cambridge, supposedly cycling capital of Britain, with our actual capital London. In London 10,000 cyclists got together in a well organised demo. Then the flashrides have made headlines. In fact London cyclists, through tireless direct demonstrations, have achieved the greatest pledge for a cycling infrastructure package in the history of the UK. And in Cambridge? We get a trivially less shit junction at monumental cost to the road safety budget and cut-through routes that help us make journeys we wouldn't make because they fail to grant safe access to the roads we actually need to use.

What works best, direct activism or quietly chipping away? Cambridge Cycling Campaign, I want to love you, but you are being left behind. And therefore cyclists in Cambridge are being left behind - your presence makes getting County to take anyone else seriously basically impossible, they routinely and uniformly refer to you as THE cyclist group -  and, frankly, bizarre twitter outbursts don't endear you to anyone.

Can we call it quits? Do you want to start again and tell us all why you don't see the County Council as what they clearly are - an institutionally car-centric, anti-environment, anti-cyclist bunch of crazy ass nutters? Or, at the risk of using an emotive term, are you going to continue on your softly-softly collaborationist path?

UPDATE: It seems that not all are happy at the Cambridge Cycling Campaign. I'm going to quote from their newsletter, a passage from here, by Martin Lucas-Smith.

As explained in the next article, Cambridgeshire County Council has decided to prioritise car traffic over cycle safety at the Catholic Church, the site of many collisions in recent years. Cyclists will remain unsafely squeezed in, and the opportunity to increase levels of cycling has been rejected.

The junction designs attracted an unprecedented amount of debate within the Cambridge Cycling Campaign committee. Some of us (myself included) argued for a complete, outright rejection of the plans in their entirety. The compromise reached was to state very clearly that the plans do not go far enough – and that we expect the County to do much more. The scheme is better than the current junction design. It will slightly improve things for those cycling towards the junction from Hills Road.

You don't have to be an expert at reading between the lines to see that there are factions at Cambridge Cycling Campaign - one is clearly in favour of holding out for good infrastructure and rejecting idiotic wastes of money by bike hating councillors who resent us for scratching the undersides of 'road tax' paying Tory-mobiles. The other faction fear that standing up to this crap will lead to us being left with less than the scraps on offer, and they will boast quite literally for years on end about past triumphs such as all the other crap facilities we've wasted public money on.

I can't see how it isn't clear to everyone at the Campaign - when the maximum on offer is less than the minimum we should reasonably accept, its time to change your strategy to extract more from your enemy - and if the County wasting half a million quid of cycling safety money on a couple of tins of paint to put another bad cycle lane on a killer junction while spending the rest of it on faster access for motorists doesn't show that they are our enemy, I can't think what would.

I doubt whether Martin reads this, but if you do, can I just point out that while you see it as a good working relationship with the County, they've just f***ed us. Again. Time to change strategy. What worked in London will work here. Up for it?