I rode my bike for about two and a half hours today. Much of that time was spent practising the key skills of Sustrans cycleway use: dismounting and mounting; lifting my bike over obstacles; dodging glass, potholes and dog muck; cycling whilst holding my nose; repeatedly referring to maps on my phone; and finally giving up and finding the best way home on main roads.
However, that’s not what this quick post is about. Unfortunately my video camera has a battery life of only about 2 hours, so it was completely flat before I got to the last part of the ride on Blackburn Road. That was unfortunate and frustrating because I’m sure I nearly died exactly here:
but have absolutely no evidence of it.
Oh yes, it’s the same old place, about which I wrote a very long time ago in this article. In that, I explained the choice of road position and line I was taking at the time, which was this one:
I later started holding the main traffic lane much further on than this, which was extremely fortunate given what happened today.
As I was passing the point where the left turn lane starts, I was overtaken on the left side very closely by a driver moving into that lane. This happens quite a lot and whilst I might curse a bit I’ve sort of got used to it.
What happened next, though, was bloody frightening. Another driver came up extremely fast from behind me, overtook on my left, about 6 inches away, straddling the cycle lane between the left turn and straight ahead lanes and cut me up from the left to move into my lane. I’d say they were doing well in excess of the 30mph speed limit. This happened at exactly the point where I would, at one time, have moved into the cycle lane as shown in the diagram. I am convinced that, had I done that, I would have been hit and sent flying for some considerable distance.
What I would like to know is when will GM Police start taking their responsibilities seriously and do something about selfish, insane, murderous drivers like this one. So far, they have proved to be completely bloody useless!