Cyclists bite the dust

[Jantar]

BUT....being assertive about giving yourself room on the road is what a cyclist needs to do. I'm sure lots of us do it on our motorcycles too. It's called riding defensively.

You may call it what you like, but what you describe is NOT riding defensively, its riding dangerously.

[bell]

Being assertive,when vehicles may round a corner at 90 km faster than you are cycling and run into you,makes as much sense as being assertive in a lion's cage

You may call it what you like, but what you describe is NOT riding defensively, its riding dangerously.

Dangerous riding is riding 2, 3, 4 abreast - anywhere, except perhaps in a marshalled race situation. Or riding along without a good awarenes of what the cars around you are doing/could do. And so on.

Defensive riding is doing things like giving the line of parked cars on the left a bit more than 10cms between your handlebars and their mirrors, anticipating people turning across you because you're not doing 10km/h but maybe more like 30+km/h, getting off the bike if there's not enough room on the road for you and the vehicles that are about to sandwich you between them, and so on.

If you don't allow yourself a bit of room to move back to the left when some twat comes too close to you then that's pretty dangerous for the cyclist. Perhaps there's a large number of drivers out there who are not fully aware of the dimesions of their vehicles as they don't appreciate that a cyclist needs more than 30cms between them and the bike to be safe. Maybe that helps to illustrate my point? I'm fairly confident that a lot of motorcyclists would NOT appreciate a vehicle passing them and leaving 30cms between them and their elbow/handlebar/boot/whatever is out the widest.

[Lou Girardin]

Dangerous riding is riding 2, 3, 4 abreast - anywhere, except perhaps in a marshalled race situation.

Yeah right, I've seen your "marshalled situation' and if I didn't have my wife on the back I would have started kicking the arses of the inconsiderate wankers using nearly all the road.

[Jantar]

Dangerous riding is riding 2, 3, 4 abreast - anywhere, except perhaps in a marshalled race situation. .

Riding 3 or 4 abreast is still illegal and dangerous, even in a marshalled race situation. Riding 2 abreast is dangerous and illegal if it obstructs other traffic. Riding single file is dangerous, but not illegal if the rider is taking up the whole lane.

I sometimes ride from home to Clyde by bike. Its on a open 100 kmh stretch the whole way, and I have never yet been abused or intimidated by other road users, but that may be because I stick hard left and give everyone plenty of room.

[Milky]

http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/roadcode/oth...cyclists1.html

It seems to suggest that riding 2 abreast is legal. Amazing thing this road code. There are rules and shit in it. Rules that you can actually look up and learn.
oooh. How about this quote from the same site?

Motorists and cyclists both have a right to use our roads, and both share a responsibility to understand and respect each other's needs.

Of course we can't practice that because we as humans are arrogant stuck up cunts who would rather enforce our own point of view than think about safety

[jrandom]

if I didn't have my wife on the back...

(and wasn't a wheezy old geezer faced with a large group of athletes in a hurry)

... I would have started kicking the arses of the inconsiderate wankers using nearly all the road.

I have a fantasy life, too. It tends to involve leggy blondes with spiky hairdos.

[Bend-it]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3799812a11,00.html

So it's big fish eat small fish then... Trucks smash cars, cars smash bikes, bikes smash pushbikes, pushbikes smash old ladies...

You humans are wretched things... just wait till the mothership gets here...

[Lou Girardin]

I have a fantasy life, too. It tends to involve leggy blondes with spiky hairdos.

My fantasies also involve things I'll never have.