cyclist nicked 343

Adrian wrote in

replying to " I have driven..." Why? Do you think that traffic lights only apply to motorised vehicles? If you can do it on a bicycle, providing you keep a good look-out for cars that have priority over you, perhaps you think other vehicles such as cars and lorries should be allowed to do likewise? The "wasted energy due to braking and then accelerating" argument applies equally to them - and is an equally poor excuse.

Any vehicle, powered or un-powered, which is on the road must obey the rules of the road. And cyclists aren't allowed on the pavement. So if you want to bypbutt traffic lights, the *only* way to do it is to dismount, walk the bike on the pavement across the side road hat you are crossing, and remount on the far side. Not worth the hbuttle, is it? Better to be patient and law-abiding like everyone else.

The other year I witnessed a cyclist do this on a zebra crossing that was crowded with a large party of tourists where the Woodstock and Banbury Roads diverge at the top of St Giles in Oxford. I was cycling towards it and slowing down gently to stop at the crossing, when I was overtaken by a cyclist - a middle-aged man dressed in lurid lycra - who was pedalling like fury at the crossing. He yelled something unprintable at the tourists, forcing them to scatter, and wobbled and skidded through the throng before racing away into the distance. Why is there never a policeman around when you want one?

Many years ago, at the bottom of Blackboy Hill in Bristol, I witnessed a cyclist overtake a car that was stopping at a zebra crossing and try to swerve between the pedestrian refuge bollard and a woman who was pushing a pram across the crossing. He came off the bike and nearly went straight under an oncoming car. He was livid - yelling at the "stupid cow" for "daring" to cross the road on a zebra crossing and the driver whom he'd overtaken for stopping at the crossing. I thought he was going to attack the woman. Fortunuately my mate, a big burly guy built like a brick poohouse, "persuaded" him not to do so, and held onto him until the police arrived. I hope the police threw the book at him: overtaking within the zig-zags, failing to stop at a zebra crossing, "riding furiously" (I believe this is the cyclist equivalent of dangerous driving), threatening behaviour etc. Given his age and the direction that he was cycling from, I hope he wasn't one of my fellow students from the halls of residence on the other side of the Downs.

It's the minority of cyclists who wilfully disregard zebra crossings and traffic lights (maybe because they think they can get away with it since they cannot be identified by number-plates) who get the majority of law-abiding cyclists such as myself a bad reputation.