Is it necessary to be agressive to cycle in a city

er I thought you were trying to tell me how to cycle.

you never get angry?

i don;t need amateur psychoanalists - I'm very much in control - its you that's having all the trouble with motorists attacking you on the roads, not me, I'm about to cycle 20 miles home, which I fully expect to be a very pleasent and calm experience. If someone breaks the law and puts my life in danger I'll give them an earful, then I'll forget it.

cor 30 years of cycling and it never occured to me before

i do - and you should stop telling other how to live their lives

i expceted the abuse to start some time - it always does on these boards

Caveat: I'm a biker, not a cyclist.

Once I'm out on the open road then I may pull over and whack in the earphones, but there's NO way I'd either
a) ride in heavy traffic listening to music. or
b) go for a serious scratch listening to music.

Awareness of your surroundings isn't only via your eyes. Pretty much every sense is involved if you're really paying attention.

Every avoided an accident by hearing someone skid behind you and getting out of the way before they hit you ? I have, and there's no way I would have avoided that one if I had been listening to music at the time

where you asked for a compelling reason why cycling with headphones on was a bad move i gave one this isn't an instruction on how to do some thing it's merely an answer to the question posed...

sure but never on the road, lifes to short and tbh who the fuck knows in this day and age where that level of escalitation will end ...

nope doesn't sound like it from the tenor of your post..

point to where i have said this, i have said that you are blocking off other forms of perception other than your eyes, and in doing so cut down your abilty to react to such things... or are you trying to say that in all your time on the road you have never been involved in a near miss... if this is truely the case then i have to say that is by luck alone nothing more...

good for you ...

sorry who are oyu to take the law into your own hands, are you better than other people so you can make that judgment call, do list up your legal qualifications would you so we know who to turn to in times of legal striff that major 'morse' tom can arrest those evil doers....

it's your choice just remember that sooner or later they may well have a knife a gun or a large blunt object and when they do will you be able to get away from them? will your smugness/rightitousness/having the law on yourside shield you from the blows or the attack??

seems utterly pointless way to react to me and serves no purpose unless your ego is so fragile or you feel so powerless that you need to vent impotent rage at people...

well your attitude would appear to bear that supostition out love...

ys that's what i'm doing with my evil mind rays bwhahahahahaha see how i control you ... is this the way you respond when anyone replies to a question you pose and the answer doesn't chime well with you informed learning... must make and kind of discussion with you rather difficult if you are always that confrontational... one wonders why you resort to that aggression so readly ... funny that you seem to think that it's perfectly acceptable to vent that rage at random people... (i mean that's what bulletin boards are for after all) ... what a strange person you are...

you think that's abuse ... that you are always attack...

jesus get over your childhood trama purrrrleaseee eyou eogmainiac it's not even about you personally it's about debating a point you made and disagreeing with it... now could you attempt to be rational and adult and stop with the poor me act...

perhaps your music is blocking your perception of what it is you read too...

thank you...

jesus what a wanker

I know.

I'm an agressive cyclist. I'll cut people up, block traffic, stare menacingly, bang on car doors, give taxi drivers the finger. All while listening to loud music through my headphones. I'll ride on the pavement, jump traffic lights. and ride one handed while talking on my mobile phone.

Anything's got to be better than being forced to ride in the cycle lanes.

Oh what a wag - how you damn us with faint praise

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Just doing my bit guv'

I find it quite astonishing, having been away from this bunfight for a couple of days, that the argument has, as usual, centred in on how dangerous/irresponsible cyclists are if they wear headphones (even tho I made the point earlier that I personally don't think it is a good idea) and yet someone else can write the following:

and it passes off without comment!!!

Here is an example of a car driver saying explicitly that they don't pay attention when driving a half ton lump of metal and yet the discussion remains all about the psychotic tendencies of I-pod-loving-pedal-pushers. Jaysus.

Innit. I'm reminded of that scene in Life of Brian (I think I alluded to it upthread):

"Brothers! Brothers! Should we not be united against our common enemy?"

"The judean people's front?"
"Fucking splitters"

"No! No! The romans!"

I work on the basis that it's legal for a deaf person to ride a motorbike, it's ok for me to listen to my pod on a low volume.

Ride defensively, generally won't run reds, probably make use of the path a bit too much...but then I've only been back on a bike for a couple of weeks now...rode into work for the first time today too, tulse hill to Bermondsey...nice ride too, thru Burgess park...

Since you've pulled me up on this:

Yes, there are sometimes occasions when I'm not paying 100% attention while I'm driving.

I don't always drive around in a daze or anything. I don't speed much, except on motorways when I''ll often drive at about 80 where it's safe to do so. I'm a pretty considerate driver, happy to sit behind a cyclist if there is not space to overtake and giving plenty of room if there is. I don't cut people up or tailgate. I don't have the dreaded 'must get one car in front' attitude.

But there are times when my attention gets distracted - I might light a fag; I might change the tape; I might take a swig from a bottle of water; if I'm tired my attention may wander. It's not the normal state that I drive in, but it happens.

I think you'll find there's not many motorists who can honestly, hand-on-heart say they've never lost attention when driving. Is it bad? Yes. But is it a fact of life? Yes.

And why has the thread concentrated on agressive cyclists? Because that's the topic of the thread.

I know, i know, I wasn't really asking why you hadn't been flamed as such, more pointing out that riding with headphones appears to be regarded as numero uno sin, whereas, by your own admission, the fact of wandering concentration in a car would, to my mind at least, be much more worrying, and be something that I would be happy to rant about until the end of my days....kind of thing.

It's legal for me to do a couple of laps of the M25 wearing only jocks and a lid, but I still wouldn't do it. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's sensible or desirable.

TBH I find it strange that you've accepted the validity of riding defensively but won't consider the possibility of distraction from listening to music also being hazardous to you.

That being said, I'd like to thank you for stating your position without the twattish kiddie posturing we often see on these threads from both sides !!

Yeah, I'm not really that fussed by the headphones thing. Just seemed to me a bit silly - the cons outweigh the pros for me. I'm sure it's legal for a motorcyclist to be deaf, but I'd rather ride piilion on a bike driven by someone who can hear...

Can we turn this into a "fucking stupid things you'ev seen people do" thread? Cos this morning, I saw someone come out onto the main junction infront of the bank of england, while his light was red, weaving through pedestrians then very nearly straight into the traffic coming accross, all without looking up from a spot on the ground about 3 meters infront of him. Only stopped when he heard honking. Tit.

Combination of things, but the main one is that even when I was a little nipper riding my bike I always relied more on what I saw than hear, I always keep the volume way down so can still hear car noise...but there's no way I'm riding without tunage.

I also ride without a helmet (something else I know is a subject of great debate) but this issue may change if someone can provide me with data that CLEARLY and UNAMBIGUOUSLY shows that my chance of DEATH is reduced by wearing one.

I saw FOUR cyclists using mobile phones last night! Had I seen a fifth, I'd probably have stopped them and asked if they knew how stupid they were being. And I keep meaning to pull up those annoying sods who stop their cars in the cycle lane at traffic lights. Just a knock on the window, and a polite reminder....

I didn't mean to enter into the ranting spirit of this thread, but sometimes its good to get these things off one's chest.

you are clearly nto reading the thread to make such big assed assumptions about the thread with looking at what was said...

one person mentin riding with headphones different people suggested why it was a bad idea to ride with them in one person starts thorwing teady out of the pram complaining that thye are being oppressed by people voicing their opinions against the sense of wearing headphones... that one person goes on to detail why they are fine doing so and others detail why they do not beleive it's fine....

it's a discussion, nothing more, at no point have absolute decrees been made other than your assumption of flaming by all those evil car drivers to all the poor defenceless cyclists.. your flavour, inflection, tone not the threads...

Paulie, can I just ask, do you drive a car/can you drive? If you did you'd be more than aware of the fact that as with cycling and riding a mo'bike that every now and again your concentration DOES lapse (it's a facet of human psychology that you can't keep constantly concentrating).

As someone who is all three - car driver, bike rider and pedestrian - it's possible to see that all three behave like dumb eejits from time to time (and TBH as a driver/rider AND pedestrian I see fellow peds making the most stupid decisions out of all).

citydreams rolls fags and smokes on his fucking bike

I am, however, more assertive now but I don't get aggressive. It's hard to on a 40 year old brown bike that has Claudette written on the crossbar and the one time I did give someone (well a car full of young men with blacked out windows ) the finger they tried to knock me off.

I do abuse people who don't actually look - like the blind cow that pulled out in front of me in Streatham Hill the other day.

But none of that actually keeps me safe so I just assume everyone is out to get me and that there is no reason to hurry like mad and it's all good.

What I generally do is advance onto the roundabout in the vain hope a traffic cop turns up and sees why I've done it

Just recently I've started noticing how few motorists actually put their cars in neutral at juctions - let alone know what the handbrake is for

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If there's something in the green box, then I get round in front and gently roll back until my rear wheel touches their bumper, making sure to look the driver in the eyes

You driven around London recently?

The whole clutch/brake as opposed to neutral/handbrake (as you're supposed to) is a sticky subject - if you're in a manual in London often as not going thru the whole neutral/handbrake business @ lights isn't worth the time or clutch effort.

Nowt wrong with that

I have to admit I'm a nightmare on a bike, riding no handed down A roads, wrong way up one way streets etc.

Which is why I don't drive

once around the North Circular in a 2CV at rush hour in about 1987 was quite enough for me

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I started cycling to work every day just over a year ago and I completely love it. However, I do remember when in the first few weeks feeling this overpowering sense of self-righteousness on the roads, like cyclists were the only people who knew how to travel safely and responsibly and that car drivers (and especially truck drivers) were a load of dangerous c*nts!

......I've calmed now a bit.
I also went through a phase of tut-tutting every other cyclist who ran a red...then lost count!

Still, I don't think I ride agressively, but confidently so drivers know exactly when and where I'm gonna turn (hopefully not under their wheel arches!)

just don't get me started on 4x4s. then i get REALLY FUCKING AGRESSIVE!!!

Motorists aren't the only road users whose attention wanders, surely that (or stupidity) must be the reason for the odd cycle-red-light-lapse?

Oh, and can I get a 'Grrrr' for the utterly suicidal, dressed in black, unlit, one handed steering, wrong side of the road riding, utterly unpredictably swerving, flat tyred, squeaking chained, yoot riders on Brixton high street? I havn't seen one get splatted across the front of a bus yet, but it's only a matter of time, I'm sure...

Started bloody raining an all now innit...

Means you don't have to sweat as much