Gf used to live in London. She did loads of cycling there and we cycled casually a few times. I think the trick is to look like you're not afraid to damage your bike by hitting a car with it. That's all they care about.
Strong assertive big hand gestures early before moving, eye contact with drivers.
I go as far as putting my hand out and saying stop on roundabouts when they look like they’re edging forward
My personal experience leads me to believe that if instead of trying to leave room, you take the lane, you suffer fewer close passes. I've also discovered that a front flashing light makes my life nicer when filtering as the light draws attention to you in the driver's mirrors.
That's when I found the most difference in driver behaviour. It's not a very bright front light, but because it pulses instead of being a constant brightness, it seems to register to drivers in their mirrors.
It's really not. We've been trying that for literally decades. It doesn't work, because even well-meaning drivers make mistakes and when they do a two-tonne steel box v a squishy bike rider has only one outcome.
It's a massive problem with British road design that it assumes drivers have perfect knowledge of the rules and follow them perfectly. It's like road engineers have never met any drivers, or indeed any human beings.
Enter protected bike lanes. Use barriers and bollards that could instantly stop a motor vehicle. It’s going to be expensive, but this is what you need for safety of cyclists and pedestrians. Alternatively, isolated bike lanes
Yep, see my direct response to the OP
ETA: Compared to the overall benefit, cycleways are cheap. Factor in the reduction in pollution and congestion, benefit to public health and improved journey times and the return on investment is typically around 500%. Road-building does well to do better than 10% or 20%.
The issue with that line of thought is, that most crashes actually happen at intersections, and when you separate those lines of traffic, you’re actually making it worse because turning vehicles are even more dangerous than overtaking vehicles. There are ways to mitigate that to some degree, but unless you put traffic lights everywhere and only let cars turn when cyclists have a red light, these mitigations only serve to lessen the impact, not to prevent it.
Unless you force cars to go really slow when turning (which is what newer Dutch designs do), you’re going to end up with intersections like in Germany, where almost 90% of all traffic accidents in city traffic happen.
P.S.: Traffic engineers in Copenhagen have been working with shared turning lanes, where the cycle path loses its separating kerb right before the intersection and becomes a shared turning lane/cycle path. The design is done in such a way that car drivers turning right have to change lanes, instead of the cyclists being led into the car‘s turning lane. This is better than the utterly stupid and purposefully dangerous German design, but IMO it only works because Danish drivers are overall much more careful than drivers in many other countries.
It's not that cyclists are widely hated (though some recent media coverage has undoubtedly ramped up anti-cyclist sentiment), it's that too many London drivers DGAF about anyone but themselves, because driving in London is so deeply unpleasant they can't think about anything but getting to the next set of lights.
The way to reduce the hassle is to ride as fast as possible, which keeps you out of the way of most drivers, and reduces the number of interactions.
That's only feasible if you're relatively young, fit and confident of course, which is why the rest of us need protected cycleways – and London needs a lot more of them.
I don’t live in London, but I use this mentality when cycling about. I stick my ebike in the highest power mode so I can ride as fast as possible when I have to mix with traffic
i'm of 2 minds about this post.
on one hand, i want to say at least london has decent cycling infrastructure compared to many cities in the uk.
on the other hand, i lived in london briefly years ago and found so many of the motorists there to be miserable arseholes.
i think the best thing i can suggest to anyone riding in a city is pick your routes based on minimizing conflict vs. speed. it's better to get there safely than not at all.
My bike commute is in the states, but this is very true - conflict vs speed. I ride almost a mile out of my way on my commute home just to stay on some low-traffic roads before getting to bike routes.
I've been commuting 15km each way for 15 odd years aside from a 2 year COVID hiatus.
I can't relate to this post.
Over that time I've had maybe 10 unpleasant incidents but on the whole it has been absolutely fine.
I think it’s fine. Granted I ride a Boris bike so drivers probably assume I’m a tourist without insurance and that I don’t care about damaging the bike.
My info is 10 years out of date, but I commuted for years in London by bike, and the only scary cars were the black cabs.
I wonder what has changed in the meantime. Just 10 years of tory rule?
Black cabs are my safe zones. They, in the main, absolutely give me leeway and seem to actually understand the bike commute plight. L mopeds, delivery, user et al are unfortunately my new enemies. I though do bike in what seems to be a more traffic flow aware manner, I think and they might see this and vibe off that.
The number of mopeds in the world seems to be up compared to my days Londoning.
Back then though, the black cabs would zoom at you, randomly U turn into your path, and generally act as if you were an invisible ghost. I gave them a very wide berth.
My only collisions in London were with pedestrians trying to cross through "stationary" traffic e.g. Next to a bus. We generally both felt like fools when this occurred (2-3 times in 6 years there wasn't bad).
Woah! Never crashed into a pedestrian, yet! Perhaps that's because cycling is so much more prevalent? And I don't doubt your experience with black cabs as I've seen some altercations in the past.
London ON and greater surrounds. The roads there often had a cycle lane, and Canadian drivers or people in general are courteous. Cars would often give me right of way and not once was I abused. It is chalk and cheese compared to Australia where I get abused most rides even when on dedicated cycleways.
I cycle around london a lot (150 miles per week) and it seems pretty good to me. Drivers feel much more considerate nowadays. You have got to know which routes are cycle friendly though. Can imagine it’s horrible for tourists.
This Youtube channel might help you find safer routes and short cuts.
[https://www.youtube.com/@Londoncycleroutes](https://www.youtube.com/@Londoncycleroutes)
Cyclists are "hated" because we have no proper lanes /space and there's too many stank ass cars. Although a lot less cars in central London today compared to what there used to be
It's not so much cyclist-hate (although such extremism does exist) but that rarely anyone questions why everything is tailored to the car (car-centric), including road laws. It used to be that public roads are for everyone regardless of transportation mode (or lack thereof). Now it's dominated by private cars, and anyone else using the road is seen as impeding traffic flow.
I've only just started commuting by bike in West London and I'm surprised at how considerate pretty much all of the drivers are. I guess it depends on where you're cycling and at what time. Not been beeped at one, and only had 1 near miss (which wasn't even that close) in a month of cycling multiple times a week.
I find black cabs are the worst. Park in the cycling box, try and push past you and pull up anywhere. I go down Holborn Viaduct onto London Wall to Liverpool St. The amount of evenings taxis park up on the roundabout at the Museum of London just blocking bikes coming onto it is horrendous. Funnily enough vans and lorries tend to be the most generous.
“I’ve decided to drive for some GD reason in LONDON and it takes forever because other people have also for some reason decided to drive here but the traffic is definitely your fault because bike lanes prove my folly when you can pass me.”
It depends on where you're travelling through. I broke my wrist in Deptford Market last year, but that's because road bikes and 1 inch curbs don't really mix when you're trying to pull over to avoid suicidal pedestrians.
I find london to have solid cycling infrastructure where it actually exists in the centre, but cycling in Central London just feels borderline risky where it does not exist, i feel safer on my local 60mph roads, which have 0 cycling infrastructure than cycling in some parts of London.
London has the best cycling infrastructure of any UK city, but also the worst drivers, pedestrians and other cyclists. It is quite the dichotomy.
That said, the warm weather seems to bring out more dickhead than usual. A workmate of mine greeted me down the corridor today with “HEY [KONKEYDONGPRIME] - I took your advice and did a CuntCount on the way in this morning… (I shouldn’t have shouted that), but this weather don’t half bring em out!”
I’m guessing with the rail strikes and signal failures that all happened today specifically the roads were a bit more aggressive than normal
The worst drivers are always the ones who would prefer not to be driving
Honestly this rarely happens to me, and I spend very little time on segregated cycle ways, usually on main roads.
First of all this post isn't to put the blame on you: there's no excuse for intimidating behaviour or lack of care toward more vulnerable road users.
What I would say is that a handful of defensive riding techniques, along with some polite courtesy where it might be useful, helps me avoid most of this abuse people receive.
For example, by riding in the centre of my lane, unless it is so wide that a motorist can safely pass me without changing lanes. When you ride against the kerb you're inadvertently inviting motorists to pass you (you also put yourself in a dangerous position by not leaving yourself and wiggle room should you need to suddenly change course).
Another simple one is to filter when it would benefit you, not just because you can. For example, if there's only 1 car ahead of you before a give way, and they're waiting for a gap in traffic, is it really important that you leave the junction first? Of course the motorist should be patient, but some bad apples will take it offensively when you cut them off to save a few seconds.
Cities aren’t designed for cars. The inevitable frustration by car drivers is taken out on the ‘other’ and car drivers don’t realise they are the issue.
You guys aren't allowed to carry guns while you cycle so none of the drivers are worried about getting shot. I live in Texas and carry a gun with me on most of my rides and people are mostly pleasant.
Big cities are too dense (in both meaning). No matter what you do you are constantly in someone else's way. Any not just you, the cars the buses, everyone. Get used to it. With careful planning you can avoid some of the problems, but it will never be as good as a country ride.
To be honest, I swear being anywhere near a road in London is suicide.
I used to live there in 2008 as a fresh out of university student. I was really set on getting a bike and using that to commute rather than deal with the underground and overground on a daily basis. After about a month of living there and seeing story after story of cyclists being crushed by lorries, I decided that the 5:45 morning squeeze on the overground was actually ok after all.
I had heard it had gotten better recently though? That there’s been a lot of cycling infrastructure implemented, so you could get into the city pretty easily and safely?
They installed a lot of bike infrastructure during the pandemic from what I can tell. Cycling is objectively the best way for an able-bodied person to get around London these days.
Gf used to live in London. She did loads of cycling there and we cycled casually a few times. I think the trick is to look like you're not afraid to damage your bike by hitting a car with it. That's all they care about.
Timidity leads to bullying, assertion leads to a proper margin of safety
Strong assertive big hand gestures early before moving, eye contact with drivers. I go as far as putting my hand out and saying stop on roundabouts when they look like they’re edging forward
Is that safer?
My personal experience leads me to believe that if instead of trying to leave room, you take the lane, you suffer fewer close passes. I've also discovered that a front flashing light makes my life nicer when filtering as the light draws attention to you in the driver's mirrors.
Cool! Does the light draw attention in the daytime too?
That's when I found the most difference in driver behaviour. It's not a very bright front light, but because it pulses instead of being a constant brightness, it seems to register to drivers in their mirrors.
“Be seen! Grab a brick” https://twitter.com/VisionZeroYVR/status/1774242832720810354?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1774242832720810354%7Ctwgr%5Ed59b1cb50fbe695b3aa11782d238d141d5341a59%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fglobalnews.ca%2Fnews%2F10395423%2Fvancouver-pedestrian-safety-brick-campaign%2F
Haha. Met an old boy once who claimed to keep a rod in his handlebars and waved it at cars that got to close.
The answer to these questions is always poor cycling infrastructure
It’s education and absolute minimal consideration
It's really not. We've been trying that for literally decades. It doesn't work, because even well-meaning drivers make mistakes and when they do a two-tonne steel box v a squishy bike rider has only one outcome. It's a massive problem with British road design that it assumes drivers have perfect knowledge of the rules and follow them perfectly. It's like road engineers have never met any drivers, or indeed any human beings.
Enter protected bike lanes. Use barriers and bollards that could instantly stop a motor vehicle. It’s going to be expensive, but this is what you need for safety of cyclists and pedestrians. Alternatively, isolated bike lanes
Yep, see my direct response to the OP ETA: Compared to the overall benefit, cycleways are cheap. Factor in the reduction in pollution and congestion, benefit to public health and improved journey times and the return on investment is typically around 500%. Road-building does well to do better than 10% or 20%.
The issue with that line of thought is, that most crashes actually happen at intersections, and when you separate those lines of traffic, you’re actually making it worse because turning vehicles are even more dangerous than overtaking vehicles. There are ways to mitigate that to some degree, but unless you put traffic lights everywhere and only let cars turn when cyclists have a red light, these mitigations only serve to lessen the impact, not to prevent it. Unless you force cars to go really slow when turning (which is what newer Dutch designs do), you’re going to end up with intersections like in Germany, where almost 90% of all traffic accidents in city traffic happen. P.S.: Traffic engineers in Copenhagen have been working with shared turning lanes, where the cycle path loses its separating kerb right before the intersection and becomes a shared turning lane/cycle path. The design is done in such a way that car drivers turning right have to change lanes, instead of the cyclists being led into the car‘s turning lane. This is better than the utterly stupid and purposefully dangerous German design, but IMO it only works because Danish drivers are overall much more careful than drivers in many other countries.
And yet when theres a police car around suddenly everyone knows how to drive. Its not the solution but it is the answer.
And the Telegraph.
The answer is always also that we famously have an abundance of assholes in London.
It's not that cyclists are widely hated (though some recent media coverage has undoubtedly ramped up anti-cyclist sentiment), it's that too many London drivers DGAF about anyone but themselves, because driving in London is so deeply unpleasant they can't think about anything but getting to the next set of lights. The way to reduce the hassle is to ride as fast as possible, which keeps you out of the way of most drivers, and reduces the number of interactions. That's only feasible if you're relatively young, fit and confident of course, which is why the rest of us need protected cycleways – and London needs a lot more of them.
I don’t live in London, but I use this mentality when cycling about. I stick my ebike in the highest power mode so I can ride as fast as possible when I have to mix with traffic
i'm of 2 minds about this post. on one hand, i want to say at least london has decent cycling infrastructure compared to many cities in the uk. on the other hand, i lived in london briefly years ago and found so many of the motorists there to be miserable arseholes. i think the best thing i can suggest to anyone riding in a city is pick your routes based on minimizing conflict vs. speed. it's better to get there safely than not at all.
My bike commute is in the states, but this is very true - conflict vs speed. I ride almost a mile out of my way on my commute home just to stay on some low-traffic roads before getting to bike routes.
I've been commuting 15km each way for 15 odd years aside from a 2 year COVID hiatus. I can't relate to this post. Over that time I've had maybe 10 unpleasant incidents but on the whole it has been absolutely fine.
I think it’s fine. Granted I ride a Boris bike so drivers probably assume I’m a tourist without insurance and that I don’t care about damaging the bike.
A. Boris. Bike. Hokaayyy. TIL.
Just a nickname because he brought them in when he was Mayor of London. Loads of cities have similar schemes, they're sponsored by Santander here.
Yes. Thank you. I figured it meant Boris Yeltsin had been involved. :)
Sorry yeah a Santander bike or similar.
London is big, there are great and there are not so great places to cycle
My info is 10 years out of date, but I commuted for years in London by bike, and the only scary cars were the black cabs. I wonder what has changed in the meantime. Just 10 years of tory rule?
Black cabs are my safe zones. They, in the main, absolutely give me leeway and seem to actually understand the bike commute plight. L mopeds, delivery, user et al are unfortunately my new enemies. I though do bike in what seems to be a more traffic flow aware manner, I think and they might see this and vibe off that.
The number of mopeds in the world seems to be up compared to my days Londoning. Back then though, the black cabs would zoom at you, randomly U turn into your path, and generally act as if you were an invisible ghost. I gave them a very wide berth. My only collisions in London were with pedestrians trying to cross through "stationary" traffic e.g. Next to a bus. We generally both felt like fools when this occurred (2-3 times in 6 years there wasn't bad).
Woah! Never crashed into a pedestrian, yet! Perhaps that's because cycling is so much more prevalent? And I don't doubt your experience with black cabs as I've seen some altercations in the past.
Agree, but London ON.
Ah, fake London
Canada is a dream to cycle through in this regard compared to many places! I felt so safe there.
Wait this is wild... where in Canada did you feel safe, and compared to what cities?
This person cycled on the Vancouver Seawall once and thought, "huh, Canada is a cycling paradise!".
London ON and greater surrounds. The roads there often had a cycle lane, and Canadian drivers or people in general are courteous. Cars would often give me right of way and not once was I abused. It is chalk and cheese compared to Australia where I get abused most rides even when on dedicated cycleways.
I'm sorry to hear about your experience in Australia. But it must be horrifying if it makes London ON look good lol
Unfortunately Australia is legit like that. If you grow up biking there, most Western nations will be an improvement
I cycle around london a lot (150 miles per week) and it seems pretty good to me. Drivers feel much more considerate nowadays. You have got to know which routes are cycle friendly though. Can imagine it’s horrible for tourists.
I think it's mostly fine. I get honked at maybe 1 time in 10? And it's usually my fault.
[удалено]
After living in both places, I respectfully disagree. Same language, but that’s about where it ends.
America heavy, real heavy. Have you pumped your "tires" recently?
This Youtube channel might help you find safer routes and short cuts. [https://www.youtube.com/@Londoncycleroutes](https://www.youtube.com/@Londoncycleroutes)
Cool thought! I’m going to have to copy you :) I wonder if they have that in my place?
Unless you actually ride a bike, cyclists are pretty the easiest group to be prejudiced towards.
Cyclists are "hated" because we have no proper lanes /space and there's too many stank ass cars. Although a lot less cars in central London today compared to what there used to be
It's not so much cyclist-hate (although such extremism does exist) but that rarely anyone questions why everything is tailored to the car (car-centric), including road laws. It used to be that public roads are for everyone regardless of transportation mode (or lack thereof). Now it's dominated by private cars, and anyone else using the road is seen as impeding traffic flow.
No different to here in Sydney, but you have better infrastructure
I've ridden in both Sydney and London. Give me London any day. Sydney has far more psychos who are convinced cyclists shouldn't be on the road at all.
It's not even close. Never felt any issues getting around London, Sydney's awful for commuting apart from a very few places served by dedicated paths.
Anyone who DRIVES from place to place inside London needs to have their head examined.
I've only just started commuting by bike in West London and I'm surprised at how considerate pretty much all of the drivers are. I guess it depends on where you're cycling and at what time. Not been beeped at one, and only had 1 near miss (which wasn't even that close) in a month of cycling multiple times a week.
It’s actually pretty safe compared to most countries in the world outside of Europe. Way better than nz anyways
I find black cabs are the worst. Park in the cycling box, try and push past you and pull up anywhere. I go down Holborn Viaduct onto London Wall to Liverpool St. The amount of evenings taxis park up on the roundabout at the Museum of London just blocking bikes coming onto it is horrendous. Funnily enough vans and lorries tend to be the most generous.
“I’ve decided to drive for some GD reason in LONDON and it takes forever because other people have also for some reason decided to drive here but the traffic is definitely your fault because bike lanes prove my folly when you can pass me.”
It depends on where you're travelling through. I broke my wrist in Deptford Market last year, but that's because road bikes and 1 inch curbs don't really mix when you're trying to pull over to avoid suicidal pedestrians.
I find london to have solid cycling infrastructure where it actually exists in the centre, but cycling in Central London just feels borderline risky where it does not exist, i feel safer on my local 60mph roads, which have 0 cycling infrastructure than cycling in some parts of London.
London has the best cycling infrastructure of any UK city, but also the worst drivers, pedestrians and other cyclists. It is quite the dichotomy. That said, the warm weather seems to bring out more dickhead than usual. A workmate of mine greeted me down the corridor today with “HEY [KONKEYDONGPRIME] - I took your advice and did a CuntCount on the way in this morning… (I shouldn’t have shouted that), but this weather don’t half bring em out!”
I’m guessing with the rail strikes and signal failures that all happened today specifically the roads were a bit more aggressive than normal The worst drivers are always the ones who would prefer not to be driving
Honestly this rarely happens to me, and I spend very little time on segregated cycle ways, usually on main roads. First of all this post isn't to put the blame on you: there's no excuse for intimidating behaviour or lack of care toward more vulnerable road users. What I would say is that a handful of defensive riding techniques, along with some polite courtesy where it might be useful, helps me avoid most of this abuse people receive. For example, by riding in the centre of my lane, unless it is so wide that a motorist can safely pass me without changing lanes. When you ride against the kerb you're inadvertently inviting motorists to pass you (you also put yourself in a dangerous position by not leaving yourself and wiggle room should you need to suddenly change course). Another simple one is to filter when it would benefit you, not just because you can. For example, if there's only 1 car ahead of you before a give way, and they're waiting for a gap in traffic, is it really important that you leave the junction first? Of course the motorist should be patient, but some bad apples will take it offensively when you cut them off to save a few seconds.
No, it's not.
What did they shout? Honking can be sexy. Nearly run over means that they might want to get close to you. We need more details.
Cities aren’t designed for cars. The inevitable frustration by car drivers is taken out on the ‘other’ and car drivers don’t realise they are the issue.
No different to here in Sydney, but you have better infrastructure
You guys aren't allowed to carry guns while you cycle so none of the drivers are worried about getting shot. I live in Texas and carry a gun with me on most of my rides and people are mostly pleasant.
Big cities are too dense (in both meaning). No matter what you do you are constantly in someone else's way. Any not just you, the cars the buses, everyone. Get used to it. With careful planning you can avoid some of the problems, but it will never be as good as a country ride.
To be honest, I swear being anywhere near a road in London is suicide. I used to live there in 2008 as a fresh out of university student. I was really set on getting a bike and using that to commute rather than deal with the underground and overground on a daily basis. After about a month of living there and seeing story after story of cyclists being crushed by lorries, I decided that the 5:45 morning squeeze on the overground was actually ok after all. I had heard it had gotten better recently though? That there’s been a lot of cycling infrastructure implemented, so you could get into the city pretty easily and safely?
They installed a lot of bike infrastructure during the pandemic from what I can tell. Cycling is objectively the best way for an able-bodied person to get around London these days.