More or less anyone who has ridden a bike, particularly in a town or city, has a mental list of the types of road users or situations you really need to look out for. The more you cycle, the longer and more entrenched this list becomes, to the extent that you can almost sense a familiar peril lurking a good minute or two’s pedalling distance away.
Below are some examples from my list, the product of years cycling around several cities; London more than most. I’d say at least four are nonetheless fairly universal, at least to urban areas lacking proper cycling infrastructure. But there are others – do tell us yours below.
The ‘just one more’
This is an iron-clad rule illustrated recently in a video by Jeremy Vine, that tireless modern chronicler of the urban cyclist. He was riding along a bike lane on a main road and one driver made a right turn across it. This was fine – there was enough space. The problem came when the driver waiting behind did exactly the same. They would potentially have driven into Vine if he had not sounded his horn.
This is something I have observed wearily for decades: if a driver observes someone just ahead of them undertaking a manoeuvre, it appears to be impossible for them not to do exactly the same. This happens most often with right-turning vehicles but there are other varieties, perhaps most worryingly the drivers who seem to assume that if they are directly behind another car tearing across the lights when they have just turned red, they are somehow invisible doing the same.
The ‘rules don’t apply now’
Are there some people who, when learning to drive, are told repeatedly that road rules are only in force between 7am and 10pm? That’s often how it feels.
The potential risks of cycling around urban streets late at night, when revellers might be driving themselves home, are well-known, even if drunk driving is much less prevalent than it once was. But it’s a wider phenomenon. Late at night, and all the more so very early in the morning, the roads are clear, the natural taming effect of traffic is gone, and so all bets are seemingly off.
Do you enjoy being close-passed at 45mph on a 20mph-limit main road, not only by cars but by taxis and sometimes even buses? Well, this is your chance.
The MGIF
For those unfamiliar with this eloquent piece of urban road lore, it stands for, “must get in front” – the weird and unsettling compulsion for getting ahead of a cyclist no matter the risk, and despite the fact that in about 95% of cases it brings them no benefit at all.
The warning signs are unmistakable and deeply ominous. As you cycle down a residential street with two sides of parked cars and no space to safely overtake, you hear the hiss of tyres fast approaching your back wheel, the impatient thrum of a revved engine.
All too often this is followed by a rapid and unnecessarily close pass, followed seconds later by the same vehicle stopping for a red light or behind traffic. Equally inevitably, even a mild indication of reproach brings a sweary tirade about “cycling in the middle of the road” (yes, it’s the middle of the lane, but such people neither know or care about this vital distinction).
The corner cutter
This phenomenon is perhaps less noted, but I’d say it’s the example which most often changes my behaviour: more or less every time I approach a T-junction, particularly on small streets, I slow down before reaching it to make sure I am not about to be swiped by a driver turning right who hasn’t bothered to stay on their side of the road.
After you notice this it’s almost impossible to not see the manoeuvre everywhere. Sometimes it can be the merest nibble into the other lane, but too often it involves veering almost all the way across it. What’s going on? How hard can it be to steer? Even in a vast four-wheel-drive, it’s not hard to turn corners properly.
The hire e-bike dabbler
Let me introduce you to Josh. You’d like him. Well, maybe you wouldn’t. Josh is 29 and has a job in social media that his parents (and half his friends) don’t completely understand. He usually gets the bus, but every Thursday after five-a-side football he uses a rental e-bike to return to his flatshare in Balham. It only takes 15 minutes, especially as he sails across every red light in his path. And why not? All his mates do the same.
An immediate caveat is that unlike the 6am close passer or the corner cutter, Josh is very, very unlikely to kill me or anyone else. But he could hurt me, and is an utter pain in the arse either way. There are endless and tedious debates about red-light jumping on a bike, but it ultimately boils down to one thing: people believing (consciously or not) that their journey is more important than others’ welfare.
The hire e-bike paradox is that while they are ultimately a good thing, they allow people without the experience or skills to cycle through a complex urban landscape at a steady 15mph to do just that. Last week, I was turning right into a one-way street and was very nearly flattened by a Josh-a-like riding at speed the wrong way, without a care in the world. Just grow up, the lot of you.
