Devilish chicanery
Posted on 02. Mar, 2009 by DocDelete in Bicycles, Bile
Just take a look at this picture. Go on. If you’re a cyclist would you even attempt to use this micro-diversion? Okay, granted somebody on a mountain bike tootling along at 5mph might not be jostled too much, but for any other cyclist, perhaps tooling along on a road bike or racer, would look upon this with justified horror.
The camber of the pavement, and the poor quality of the kerb step-down conspire to make the ejection point a mite wobbly. A car passing at the same time would be faced with a bicycle pointing across its path. Not good.
These stupid little cycle ramps litter Dovehouse Lane in Olton, near to my house. They were tacked on after the road was pinched down into chicanes some years ago. Meet Joe Cyclist – the perennial afterthought.
Did the chicanes slow vehicular traffic? Well, judging by the fact that some of them were later scrubbed out due to being more like obstructions than traffic-calming measures, I’d hazard that the whole project was a waste of time and money.
Me? I ignore the cycle ‘path’ and treat the whole shebang as if it were a parked car. I do hope I don’t get into trouble with the police…
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Jobbies like this do nobody any good. The only possible result of using one is to create a conflict between a cyclist and a following motorist which otherwise wouldn’t have happened. I’m willing to bet that the the council’s cycling officer (assuming Solihull has such a thing) didn’t ask for them.
Daniel Cadden’s case went to a re-trial and he was acquitted. The judge who originally convicted him was the same chap who acquitted a police driver who spanged around at 160mph. I get the feeling that Judge Morgan and Shropshire Police’s grasp of road traffic law needed a bit of brush up.
Indeed. I think the fact that Daniel was prosecuted in the first place is bad enough. I find it disheartening that a copper ‘at street level’ seemed to have had a common-sense bypass, and further that the CPS didn’t tell Mr PC to ditch the case.
You’ll like this one :)
http://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=15559.msg286300#msg286300