This news article annoys me.

The headline reads:
Drivers slow to adjust to Dunsmuir Street bike lane; often break the rules

Yet further down the page we get:
Two vehicles illegally turned right at the corner in only 15 minutes.

Followed by:
The Sun saw 30 cyclists ride by in 15 minutes. While seven were required to stop at a red light, four didn’t bother

So according to the article, it's the cyclists who are breaking the rules more often than the car users. The self righteous ones are a law unto themselves.

Harumph

Bicyclists in Toronto routinely ignore the laws. A person on a bike is a vehicle when it suits and a pedestrian when that suits. Generally, I say, "good luck to them", we're all breaking some law whenever we're awake and sometimes when sleeping. They lose my support immedidately however if they wear helmets and especially if they're clad in lycra, it's not the Tour de Bloody France. Poseurs!

I will confess to wearing padded lycra shorts (only padded on the arse, I hasten to add).

Is there text across the bum?

I always stop at reds, obey the laws etc....otherwise how can I expect motorists to obey the rules?

simples

I used to walk about a mile through London from the station to my office and I was regularly nearly mowed down by cyclists going through red lights at pedestrian crossings.

Cyclists rarely obey the rules. Of course when I was a cyclist I was very obedient and everyone else was at fault.

Do other areas have cyclists cycling on the left side, so towards the traffic? I can almost understand this especially when it's children at least they see the car before it knocks them down.

When it happens in the town though there's a problem with passing them if the road isn't wide enough to move out. When you are following a cyclist and can't pass at least you can slow to their speed if the twit is approaching you then what? You have to stop or risk pass with narrow clearance??

pah

It seems to be a bit different in my neck of the woods. It is very geared up to cyclists. There are, apparently, 170km of cycle lanes and paths in Ottineau. It's roughly six miles from my place to downtown Ottawa. I can do all but a few hundred yards of that without sharing the road with cars. Pedestrians are not an issue. People here do not walk.

We did a 3-hour trip around Gatineau yesterday, along rivers, through parks etc. All very nice, and very little of it on roads. Cycling is hugely popular here; I wonder why?

We tried walking round Ottawa one Sunday morning and were almost knocked over by a group of runners. About 40 of them were running towards us and it was as if they hadn't seen us. They should have runner's lanes too.

Yes. Born-again runners can be a bit selfish.

Oh dear goodness, what a mental picture to conjure so early on a Monday morning.

Ditto except that it was in Oxford back in the early 80's - there was no signage that a race was going on and it was only by the grace of god that we didn't get flattened. One of them kicked my son's pushchair out of the way and nearly toppled it over. In retrospect it was quite funny but at the time :curse:

J

Yes I got my OH some of those but he wears them under his trousers

J

Exactly. They should especially leave middle-aged-women-with-hangovers alone.

Yep, we tell the story as a funny one but it was a little scary when we realised that the runners at the back couldn't see short fat me.

Was it Hash House Harriers? I wondered if they were in Ottawa too.