People ask us: why no coverage of RLJ-ing cyclists? Well, we generally leave that to grumpy Havana Coffe Hamid, on account of his soundtrack choices and spelling skills. But when the opportunity arises, well, we do
Today then, this fuckwit
This is filmed from St Pauls Road, leading from the dull part of town, Clifton, to the more interesting bits, albeit after a final bit of climbing and a university area inevitably full of texting students.
Approaching the lights, they're red, time to hang around for a while waiting for green. And then slowly off, in case the BMW driver is in an hurry. No problems there, except carving out from the left is someone on a road bike, looking like they are near that 20 mph limit, blowing straight through the red light to make a high speed turn into St Pauls Road.
On the shout of "fuckwit" you can see some surprise and a bit of a wobble, though delayed. Leaning into the corner like that, he was fully committed to the bend: the only two options were: carry on or come off sliding sideways exploring the concept "road rash" more fully. It'd have been interesting to see if a scream of "no brakes" would make him choose the latter,
What were the risks this fuckwit exposed themselves to?
If the car he had cut up on the inside had gone through the light themselves: crash
If the BMW turning right from Tyndall's Park Road had been in a hurry: crash
If a vehicle coming out of St Pauls road had been in a hurry, he'd have cycled into it.
And of course, if our tax-dodging reporter hadn't been so slow setting off: they'd have been in the crash too. Which is why we think this fuckwit deserves coverage.
The 20 mph zone has been up for a year now, so it's time to review it as drivers
It doesn't make things slower. Really. It's the delays at junctions & in queues that increase journey time.
It makes things calmer. There's less pressure to put your foot down when you do clear a junction.
Similarly, as you approach a junction, you can coast down more gently.
As you are going a bit slower, you can take time to look around, which gives you a better view of pedestrians. This is tangibly better at night.
It actually helps you pulling out from side roads to main roads. Why? As everyone is moving slower, the time window for you to do things like pull a right turn with cars approaching from both directions is larger.
Fuel economy? No obvious difference. The engine may be less efficient in 3rd than 4th, but you don't have to accelerate so hard, and can coast down. Of course, anyone in a hybrid car is laughing as their petrol engine can work even less, and gain more regenerative braking from the gentle slow down.
Keeping track of your speed? Third gear low RPM seems to work. If you feel the need to go to 4th, you are going too fast.
Does everyone follow 20 mph? 22-25 is more realistic daytime speed; at night the speed goes up to 30 until the minicabs come out, when it ramps up 40 mph just when the drunk people start walking home.
Increased road rage? No obvious difference. As the average commute speed is < 20 mph in Bristol (TomTom's unverified data, not ours), it's hard to see how it could be made worse.
Collapse of businesses due to increased white van journey time. Not obvious. Congestion is the limiting factor, not maximum speed.
Passing Bicycles? No harder or easier. It's still irritating to be behind someone going along at 12 mph. But the speed limit doesn't make passing harder. We just want fitter cyclists out there.
Then there's the "two shopping trolley" man wandering round the streets these days. We have no idea why he has two shopping trollies full of his entire belongings, but he does, he goes down the roads (not the pavements) at about 4 mph. Again, 20 mph doesn't make a difference.
So who loses? People who spent money on fast cars. You shell out all that cash for a nimble toy, for an extra digit or two at the end of your car brand logo —"i", "GT", etc—, tinted windows and some wheels that just scrape easily. The key "performance" benefits are tighter suspension, and most of all the ability to accelerate better.
Which is now utterly wasted, as most vehicle's 0-20 numbers are relatively similar. And pootling around at 20 mph means no need for suspension that lets you do 90 degree turns at 35 mph.
That's enough to drive you to road rage: not the fact that you are doing 20 mph, but the fact you spent a lot of money on your status toy and are doing 20 mph. Even if you want to go faster, there'll be someone in front who doesn't, who appears to drive at exactly 20 mph on a fast ratrun road like Ashley Down, Pembroke Road or Filton Ave. It's almost as if some people, on noticing an important person driving a high-end Audi or BMW SUV actually take their foot off the accelerator, dropping from 24 mph to 20. Which we consider unacceptable and strongly condemn anyone doing this.
For those people who have spent the money, they expect something in return.
Fortunately, every so often the opportunity arises. Here is one our instrumented tax-dodgers going down Nugent Hill, Cotham, using the bike contraflow to get to the Arley Hill evening traffic jam, and so on to Stokes Croft. As they join the Arley Hill queue, you can see a green light allowing some traffic to slowly get out to places more interesting.
And here you can see the BMW 3 series YF57KTE getting some return on investment. First they can come off the speed bump while accelerating (suspension), then put their foot down to catch up with the cars in front. Those cars in front who are going through on orange we note. But as the BMW is now almost joined up with them, it can do the "part of the same group" gambit and carry on through on the red light.
That tactic has given them a bit more speed than the vehicles in front, forcing them to negotiate what is effectively a chicaned right turn fairly aggressively: that suspension at work again.
They then need to put their brakes on, not because of the speed limit but because they've caught up with the car in front.
There: 15 seconds of real driving, out of probably 30 minutes of suffering. Not much —but that's all a 20 mph zone offers, at least during the early evening commute.
There's lots of hype about "Autonomous Cars", the UAVs of the tarmac, but who in the UK has seen one? Bristol-Resident RedVee has, here in Stokes Croft
As you can see, the driver of W845PDS can safely text on their commute, safe in the knowledge that the car itself will make decisions as to when it can and cannot go.
Sadly, a small firmware error in this model means that it is "red/green colour blind", so has been known to unintentionally drive through a red light.
Google have reassured us that this will be fixed in a later software update -all the owner will to do is hook up the car's USB port to a laptop, download the 17GB firmware patch, wait for the four hour update to take place and then accept the dialogs about changes in privacy policy for the car.
We're going to credit this cyclist coming up Bath buildings and crossing Cheltenham Road for actually looking and only going out when it is clear to do so, and waiting at the traffic island for a gap in the other lane.
Again, being a bit fitter and climbing up the mild incline on Bath Buildings would have saved time, and if you can't climb that when what faces you straight ahead, Arley Hill, is going to hurt. Looks more like this RLJ-er is going to right turn onto the Gloucester Road bus lane though.
Not so suicidal to be called a ghost-rider, just, well, pointless. The taxi in the ASL isn't going to run him over when the lights change as the cars blocking the hatched junction remove the option to pull out fast. Why then?
0:01 cars coming from Bath Buildings get to go left or right onto Cheltenham Road; cyclists can also go straight on for a contraflow.
0:12 Arley Hill gets green, cars and cyclists set off
0:14, A woman on a bicycle goes straight past the camera.
We are sure the tax dodging online press will be pleased at the gender balance of our RLJ footage, but can they at least tell the cyclists to look both ways when they run a red light? If your light is red, there are two meanings
Everyone has red, it's pedestrians you are going to hit and other cyclists that will hit you.
One or more lanes are green and you will become the statistic.
Hypothesis #2 is the one they should worry about. If our van had been in the Arley Hill ASL, our "launch on warning" system would have kicked in and we'd have pulled our foot off the clutch while texting the final message to our next delivery. Anyone cycling directly across our way, 14 seconds into her red light period is someone that the post mortem would say "she chose to die".
In Germany they have the phrase "Geister Fahrer" -Ghost Driver- to describe someone who chooses to commit suicide by driving the wrong way up an Autobahn. Here in Bristol we have the less well-off doing the same, the Geister Fahrader.
We're always being accused of somehow presenting the cyclist point of view, rather than discuss the problems that RLJ-ing cyclists present. Good point. Lets run some of those videos. Before that, let's pre-empt the "when cyclists RLJ they don't endanger anyone" claim. Not so. When they run zebra crossings or pedestrian crossings they do endanger pedestrians. If they force pedestrians to hold back they may keep the pedestrians from crossing the road until the cars get a green light, so exposing them to more risk. And they completely destroy any moral high ground the tax dodgers claim to inhabit.
For the next few postings then, some RLJ-by-bike work. More than that though: some theories as to why. It can't be because they are important and in a hurry: as if they were they would be driving. There must be other reasons.
Let's start with this video at the Muller Road/Shaldon Road junction.
0:00 Filming begins on Station Lane, there are two tax dodgers here, cyclist #1 is female and in front of the filming one.
0:08 The woman on the bicycle (henceforth "cyclist #1") crosses Muller Road while the right hand approach lanes have green for both turning and going straight on. This is the 3rd or 4th set of red lights since the M32, and cars are still in speed mode and not used to red themselves. Yet she sets off, wobbling a bit, as she tries to get up the hill.
0:09-0:21 she's now got a line of cars going up the hill beside her, as she approaches a parked car she's going to have to pull out on.
0:22: now as she reaches the pullout point there's a supermarket delivery van to deal with.
0:28 Shaldon road gets its green for traffic going straight on or right (left turn has been green since 0:06)
0:40 Station Lane gets green, the other cyclist (henceforth "tax dodger #2") sets off
1:03 the woman who sets off at 0:08 gets passed by tax dodger #2.
Let's look at cyclist's #1's actions then. She set off through a red light, exposing her to risk to crossing traffic, reinforcing (clearly valid) perceptions about RLJing cyclists, and then making it harder to get up the hill because of the passing cars then the van making the pull-out that much harder.
And for what? Because tax dodger #2 reeled her in about 20 seconds. At that rate, if she was going up the hill towards UWE, what would be for tax dodger #2 a 15 minute hill climb will, for cyclist #1, be something more like a 45 minute crawl. At which rate the saving of 40s is absolutely negligible. Maybe running a red would make sense if it would save you time, but in this case it offered increase risk for no real benefit.
Why do it then? Why not just wait for green and pedal a bit harder when it arrives?
While the lights are red, an opportunity arises to take a photo of the Seahorse Pub, a pub that used to be part of the Smiles brewery chain, but had two features that distinguished from the Brewery tap across the road: a choice of non-Smiles beers and the Smiles Exhibition didn't run out as often
Sadly, someone cycling through a red light ruins the shot. Why is he doing it.
It starts to make sense: by cruising through early he avoids the problem of getting from the left hand lane to the right hand lane while two lanes of vehicles are trying to push through.
Of course, that leaves the problem of waiting at the bottom of St Michael's hill for the lights to change. Clipped in to the pedals, he either has to unclip and put a foot down, or do a track stand.
Or there's option three: lie down and take a rest. This provides an opportunity to give his cardiovascular system and his legs the rest they need before commencing the St Michael's Hill climb
The rule of junctions is that if you don't acknowledge the other people on the road, they aren't there, so you have done nothing wrong.
Usually its done when you block a junction or a roundabout. Today, something different: a cyclist RLJ-ing the Cheltenham Road/Bath Buildings Junction.
For some reason, the camera crew aren't impressed by this and not only shout to get their attention, they are mildly abusive -which the tax dodger in the viewfinder ignores.
Next they will be writing in to the Evening Post to complain.
As to why the cyclist jumped the red light, some possibilities spring to mind:
they were in too much of a hurry.
their visibility of Arley Hill was restricted due to the large lorry blocking the pedestrian crossing.
their life is empty and meaningless and a bit of danger makes it more precious.
their brakes don't work and the way they came off the pavement forced them into this action.
they're an idiot
all of the above.
Well, they are now famous. Purple-topped mountain bike rider: welcome to Bristol Traffic!
There's a lot of complaint from the bicycle-troublemakers, the vocal ones, about vehicles stopping in ASLs. We think that it's exaggerated. Here is our proof.
[update]: It's apparently a Wessex Connect Bus. We praise them for their consideration.
It's a video from (an expendable) cyclist. As we've stated before, we don't video our own driving in case it is used in evidence against us. Even the soundtrack of us trying to touch-type facebook updates on the phone could cause legal issues. Hence we give these tax dodgers cameras "as gifts" and collect the output. Today we see the output from a shinier camera, which is helmet mounted for a bit more stability.
This video was shot going down Shaldon Road, meeting the lights at Muller road. As you can see the bus has its wheels behind the ASL, but the front of the vehicle is in the ASL. This is for everyone's own good -nobody should go into this ASL.
0:13. The bus gets a green light to turn left, taking up most of the lane as it swings round. A cyclist may have survived if far enough to the right, but the turning car would have dealt with that.
0:22 The cyclist gets a green light and starts to head through while a car coming from the M32 runs the recently-red at speed.
If the cyclist had been using the ASL for its planned purpose "getting out early", they'd have been hit by that car. The FirstBus WessexConnect vehicle's positioning not only protected the cyclists from it's own left turn, it saved ithem from other road vehicles.
We think this is one of the cycle facilities which even the militant cyclists would be campaigning to remove.
We feel betrayed. Why? Cllr Gollop was the leading quote for the Bristol Bikelash. How can he rightfully take our side by denouncing the painting over of some parking spaces with bike lanes, then turn around and say "it's OK for people to cycle here". It's just hypocrisy. We know he's going to drive there, obviously, but will he stand up and say the truth -that he and his party are the only people prepared to stand up against cycling and public transport in this city, because they are the only form of transport for poor people, and we are not poor. Well, not poor yet, though his colleagues in Westminster have plans for that. But don't worry: the unemployed don't commute.
We feel really sorry for the Bristol Evening Post. Most of the real journalists have moved on, leaving only a few people who are actually valued for their knowledge of the area and their willingness to type what senior management want them to write (Ian Onion), and, to replace the others, some unpaid interns trying to learn how to write HTML content to put local journalism as an item on their resume.
In the latter category, then, can we welcome Laura Local, who is now our favourite third-tier reporter for the Redland People subsidiary web site of the Evening Post. We think "redland people" is a bit overambitious, as it implies all the residents check it every morning saying "what's happened in our part of the city?", but that doesn't happen. Nothing much happens there except when some drunk students put some traffic cones on some cars, or the helicopter over stokes croft keeps people awake. Even then, reading about in the Redland People site isn't the way most people discuss some items. In fact, given their readership count, we believe the site would be called "Redland Eight People"; the eight being friends and family of the authors.
Laura, we are pleased to see, is trying hard to get the audience into double digits by printing an anti-cyclist rant. We do that ourselves, which is why our daily audience is in the high double digits, and we can see why a commercial site that tries to make money through advertising revenue would aspire to be as successful. Hence this lovely article, Redland cyclists among the worst in the Bristol? Here's the opening paragraph
I was turning right out of North Road by the Arches when a cyclist, who wasn't wearing a helmet I hasten to add, whizzed by in the middle of the road heading the direction I wanted to go - towards Gloucester Road. I pulled out behind him, as I would have done had he been a car and he stopped in front of me all of a sudden and started mouthing off before jumping the red light.
Maybe I was a little too close to him when I pulled out but I felt any criticism was rich coming from a guy who was bombing down the centre of the road without a helmet and straight through a red light!
We aren't going to defend the tax-dodger, but we will provide some constructive feedback to the author
It's not actually a legal requirement to wear a helmet. The only time you should criticise them for not wearing a helmet is when someone gets run over by an HGV driver on the phone, then you can say in the daily mail comments section "were they wearing a helmet" and so absolve the whole of society for their death. We do.
It's not illegal to cycle down the middle of a lane. Yes, it annoys us as it stops us driving above 25 mph, but for the troublemakers, it gives them more options avoiding being hit by redland residents who are too lazy to drive to the gloucester road shops, and who open their doors without looking or pull out without indicating.
If you were the first vehicle to pull out, and you were parked in the ASL under the arch itself, the cyclist may have crossed the traffic light while it was still green, then if you pulled out aggressively he may have had some reason to express concern.
Don't ever admit in print something like "Maybe I was a little too close to him when I pulled out." It removes your ability to take the moral high ground. We never discuss our own driving actions for this reason, or make videos from our van -the police might want them.
Gloucester Road isn't Redland. It's Bishopston, on one side, St Andrews on the other. When when it becomes Cheltenham Road it's called "the arches" until you end up on the disputed Cotham/Montpelier/Stokes Croft region where the new Tesco is. Not Redland. If you have to drive outside your own reporting area just to get content to rant about, well, that may show some weaknesses in the "Redland cyclists amongst the worst in Bristol" story. We recommend spending some time in Cotham Hill, which, while again not quite Redland, is full of pedestrians, cyclists, school-run parents and us vans, so creating a lovely mix for new articles, such as "Redland Van drivers amongst the worst in Bristol?", "Redland students amongst the worst pedestrians in Bristol", and of course "Redland school-run parents amongst the worst in Bristol". Together this will keep your article quota fulfilled for a month with only one morning's worth of research. Or you could walk along Chandos Road and have a geographically correct region for the "Redland parkers amongst the worst in Bristol" article.
Do try and back up your articles with photos other than faded bike path signs that may convince everyone, motorist and cyclists alike, that Bristol's cycling facilities are dire.
If you do want to get a video of someone cycling through the red lights on that stretch of Gloucester Road, stand there with a camera on a weekday evening and wait for one lights cycle: it's not hard.
Anyway, Laura -welcome to the tier-3 anti cycling rant pages of Bristol. Those of us already in the business welcome new competitors, as it keeps us on our toes. Just try a bit harder and we might even feel slightly threatened.
Lovely video of W987MNT with a schoolkids poster in the back drifting through the red light on Stokes Croft a good three seconds after the light goes red.
If you notice, all the locals expect it and nobody begins to cross the lights until all the vehicles have actually stopped moving.
The BBC has finally covered this alarming trend of cyclists to video their commutes then complain about them. Unlike most BBC new articles, where Adam Rayner gets paid to laugh at the cyclists, this article seems come out in favour of the cyclists, rather than say they deserved to get beaten up for being in the way and not paying road tax.
Fortunately, the commenters noticed this, and corrected the bias. Hopefully they will be writing in to the BBC to complain about a lack of balance too. We'll quote a select few
177. anjuna
We have cycle lanes all over Rutland, which are regularly ignored by cyclists. Instead the choose to ride 2 abreast on the road, causing hold ups and hazards. I think cameras in cars to capture bad cyclists would be a good thing. How about "identifiers" on cycles, so the police can prosecute bad cyclists?
Problem: it's not currently illegal for bicycles to cycle in our roads and hold up traffic behind. We understand why it makes you want to kill them, but then you not only lose the moral high ground, you have to stop the email you are composing on your phone.
208. Flaunder
When are cyclists going to have to pay to use the road? why shouldn't they have a registration plate on the back, or a speed metre when they are going at super speeds down a pedestrian footpath! Some cyclists don't even wear a high vis vest or have lights! Why shouldn't they be fined on the spot! Most cyclists have no regard for cars on the road! maybe we should film them!
Problem: we just checked the highway code and nowhere does it say "cyclists MUST wear hi-viz clothing". This makes it hard for police or PCSOs to fine them on the spot for non compliance. Now, you could push for it to be a law, but really that doesn't address the true problem, which is they shouldn't be there in the first place.
226. Barton71
Obviously the van driver in this story was out of order and his reaction was way over the top, but as a van driver myself, I understand the frustration cyclists can cause. There is nothing worse than having to slow down to 10mph every few hundred yards, because a group of cyclists have all bunched up or because there is no room to pass a single cyclist who is struggling to get up a hill.
This identifies one of the real issues. It's not just that these unpaid criminals are on our roads -they are in our way on the roads. They slow us down, then whine when we sound our horn, or criticise them in the local or national press.
One thing we do have to fault some of these community reporters for is making unsubstantiated claims. We like defensible data, yet people were saying "all cyclists run red lights", which isn't true. You only see the ones running the red lights, so end up self selecting. It's disappointing to see such use of inadequate datasets, and with defensible photographic data being key aim for our site, it's time to look at the issue in more detail.
First, Whiteladies Gate/Whiteladies Road pedestrian crossings. Our unsuspecting cyclist reporter dismounts with their small child and walks over a zebra crossing and then the whiteladies pedestrian crossings.
Note how the white van waiting to turn gives way to the pedestrians.
At the pelican crossing, the family waits for their turn to get across. The lights change frequently here, giving them 15s to sprint across.
Except what happens today? Someone on a bicycle just rides up through the crossing. Yes, he does have hi-viz and a helmet on, so commenter Flander will be happy -no need to fine him- but he does cycle straight through the red light that is being used by pedestrians including parents with children.
There we have it then, 100% of cars, following the law, 100% of cyclists: criminals.
Now, the cycling campaigners will say "But what about cars that...", but that is only a subset of cars. We know this, again from our defensible datasets -such as on Marlborough Hill last week:
See? Four cars drive up the hill, before one car, BP52XAR, drives down past the no-entry signs and the big paintwork saying no-entry.
Five cars, only one completely ignoring the signs. That means the number of cars choosing to break the law this weekday morning is 20%, compared to 100% of cycles in our previous survey.
There you have it then. All cyclists are criminals who should be fined on the spot, while only some drivers are a bit naughty. And when drivers do something to get round this anti-car city, they get videoed and their actions appear on web sites like Fight bad driving -with their registration numbers. Whereas when the cyclists appear, all that can happen is people who know them will say "hey, you made Bristol Traffic!" and they can snicker amongst themselves.
Because of this clear evidence, we, the drivers, can retain the moral high ground.
We are secretly recording cyclists through the city, then buying them beers and finding out how their day was -as a result, we are starting to understand their (invalid) reasoning better.
Here is Stokes Croft of a morning, the cyclist is waiting to turn right, and watching the two incoming lanes.
Note how two cars get their lane choice wrong and decide to go straight on in defiance of left-turn signs for that lane. Yet still some tax-dodger decides to RLJ their left turn onto Stokes Croft.
At 1:00, the cyclist gets their turn in, skids left onto picton street, passing a van on the pavement to their left. Some people think parking blocking the pavement is wrong, but in this part of the city it is that or block the road entirely. At 1:14 you see someone doing that, and you see the bicycle proceeding to the left of the van, despite the fact that in our post-mortem we can see the door opening, and the passenger forced to retreat by the passing bicycle.
We understand why you wouldn't wait for the van; in monty that could be a few hours waiting. But why not go up on the pavement, the way most tax-dodgers would do.
The answer to that becomes clear on a later video. You can be sure that a van isn't going to veer into the parked cars, but you can't be sure that they aren't going to swerve up onto the pavement and drive along for a bit. We see this hear on the "Richmond Road shared space", an area to the side of roads that would elsewhere be called by its old name, "the pavement"
The van graciously waits for the parent and pushchair blocking this pavement, and once gone gets up on it and carries on, before eventually parking. The cyclist then passes them, continues down to Bath Buildings and Cheltenham Road, where we can watch the chaos with bemusement. The first cyclist, the BMX-er dodging a turning car probably just ran orange, or was past on red but, well, slow. The second one, the one that nearly takes our our tax-dodger as they ride across the road, he has had 10 seconds of red before he goes. That's three cyclists and three vans in our camera. All three vans are trying to find somewhere safe to park, which anti-car montpelier makes excessively hard. Of the three cyclists in the video, two of them seem blatantly oblivious to red.
We're gathering data on Whiteladies Road, especially the various pedestrian and zebra crossings. Obviously, we don't walk or cycle ourselves, but we are paying a student to be a cycle courier for us. They think they are carrying blood plasma which has to be rushed across the city -in reality it's just water which we fill up their panniers before sending them to sprint up the hills. We are buying their suffering, while they film for us.
This morning, here is the Whiteladies Gate pelican crossing, on a weekday.
Notice how at 08:15 the pedestrian traffic includes schoolkids getting off the buses (or the train which arrives in a few minutes) who then walk up the infamous Cotham Hill to school. Note also the bicycle which slows down a bit and then rides straight through the pedestrian crossing.
Clearly this cyclist is exceedingly fit, as he does not even need to stop for a rest when presented with an opportunity.
Note also, before the lights change, the vehicles heading down the hill. Less than 25% of the inbound vehicles are turning left into Cotham Hill, and bicycles can travel down the wide road alongside the cars.
We hear of some plans to redesign this junction, along with others, which is why we are collecting our own data on how this junction gets used.
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