quote:

Originally posted by mad-g:

quote:

Originally posted by Matt Google:
It's hardly hard to overtake a cyclist, you don't have to go right over the road like a car, or go over for as long... and I go as far against the kerb as I can without coming off my bike.

Like drivers, some are considerate, some think they own the road.

Technically, you are correct, of course. However, I always treat cyclists like small cars and give them bags of room.

Yeah that's true, I prefer it when a driver goes right over onto the other side as opposed to over the white lines, but it's easier to overtake a bike going at 10 mph than a car going at 50.

quote:

Originally posted by b308:
And it was PB commenting and he drives a bus - slightly different to overtaking in a car, especially in towns!

Yeah I was thinking that... overtaking anything in a bus is hard, surely??

Even on ordinary main roads you will have to straddle to white line in the middle of the road to overtake a cyclist, therefore potentially heading into the path of oncoming cars. Mostly the roads are not wide enough to do this safely especially as there are often cars parked on either side narrowing the width even more. It takes a long time to overtake anything as the coach is 40ft long and 8ft 6in wide and doesn't accelerate very quickly, it can take 2 seconds just to change gear on some manual coaches. I'm not saying take cyclists off the road - i ride a bike myself sometimes - just highlighting some of the experiences i have in my field.

Do they have a right to be on the road and not pay tax and insurance.
That's a question, right?
So, where do you get off, asking if people have a right to use the road? Where should they go, through your yard, your front room? Roads were around a long time before the car was invented. It's generally how people get from one place to another unless you've got one of those Panasonic Toughbooks. Even the Romans had roads, and they wore skirts!
Tax is a red herring, lots of people in cars quite legally don't pay road tax. Insurance? Well, it's probably a good idea since the cyclist's world is full of people who wonder if cyclists have the right to be on the road.
As someone who used to cycle in the UK (as well as drive all sorts of other vehicles), I would have appreciated somewhere to cycle where I was away from those who wondered if I had a right to be there, but unfortunately I couldn't do that very often. And even more depressingly, sometimes it was more dangerous than the road itself. Perhaps I could ride through your property to save you the ethical dilemma of sharing the road with me.
In fact, why don't all the anti-cyclist brigade buy adjacent properties? Then we can all ride somewhere without going on the road.

There's no such thing as road tax anyway. That little disc in the corner of your windscreen indicates you have paid Vehicle Excise Duty (VED), which provides you a licence to use your vehicle on the public highway. Revenues from VED are allocated to central Government funds and are not set aside specifically for road-related expenditure.

So "road tax" goes to the same place as your income tax and is just as likely/unlikely to be spent on the roads themselves so by virtue of paying income tax/VAT and the like, a cyclist might validly argue they are in fact making a contribution to the upkeep of the highway.