ailbhe | Trike

Pedalling around Reading today, I've learned a lot about roundabouts, cyclists, and cars. Many car drivers honestly think that cyclists belong on footpaths, not roads, and drive accordingly. Many cyclists agree. Cycle tracks that go around 3/4 of a roundabout are not useful if the turning onto it from the road means turning 100 degrees up a slight bump onto the pavement and then up a hill. It's much easier, safer, and less disruptive to stick with the car traffic.

Many car drivers think the trike is great. So do many cyclists. And many pedestrians, especially those with children. Most commonly asked question: "Can you cycle it on the road?"

When navigating through traffic in a legal and safe manner, it's very irritating to be overtaken on the footpath by two cyclists cycling abreast without reflectors or helmets.

Linnea pointed out "Man no shirt, man no helmet" when she saw a man cycling without a hi-vis vest or a cycle helmet.

Cyclists assume that the trike must be very difficult to cycle. It's not. What's difficult is getting the Sam Brown Belt on around the bump. The hi-vis vest won't go on, and the belt has to sit under my bump in front. Still, I assume I'm visible from the rear, and anyway I only cycle in daylight. Perhaps I should get a hi-vis cycle helmet cover. I really do like being visible (memo to self: put hi-vis smiley face stickers on the trike box somewhere).

I still need a Trike icon.

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In my experience the trick to not getting run over by cars is to cycle confidently, fast and well into the lane. You are entitled to be there and don't let them imagine otherwise. Attempting to cycle in the gutter is daft (you probably can't on the trike) because cars think they can pass you with no clearance. Assert your right to be treated as a small car sized thing (it's in the highway code!).

Cycling on a pavement that isn't a marked cycle path is illegal. Cycling without reflectors may be illegal (but maybe only at night?). Cycling two abrest (on the road) is legal, three is not - but possibly inadviseable. Cycling without high-vis clothing/helmet is debatably dangerous and in no way illegal.

I'd be annoyed if some oik on the pavement undertook me too... but mostely because oiks ought not be able to go faster than me dammit.

I was very annoyed that they were illegally on the pavement, and that made me notice that they daftly had no reflectors and no helmets.

From http://www.highwaycode.gov.uk/03.htm -

46: At night your cycle MUST have front and rear lights lit. It MUST also be fitted with a red rear reflector (and amber pedal reflectors, if manufactured after 1/10/85). White front reflectors and spoke reflectors will also help you to be seen.
Law RVLR regs 18 & 24

It's not clear to me whether the red rear reflector thing is a legal requirement regardless of time of day, now.

I clearly don't need lights during the day (jolly good thing too as the read light died)... I'm not sure about reflectors, it would seem that they would be only needed (or usefull) at night.

Pavement cycling is annoying. But Cambridge is full of on-pavement cycle routes (also annoying but legal) so I have less of a grrrrrr pavement reaection.

Actually, visibility gear like reflectors and reflective clothing does improve visibility during the day, so it *might* be a requirement.

I've recently started getting annoyed at pavement cyclists because I think "Oh cool, a cyclepath!" and then realise it's not and I can't use it. Bah.

I'd imagine the reflectors are mandatory regarless of time of day - that's the way it works for all other vehicles.

And, speaking as a driver, anything a cyclist can do to make themselves more visible is great - the biggest problem drivers tend to have with bikes (Well - when moving) is the vast difference in speed, when the anti-collision instinct is tuned for things either much larger or much faster than a cycle.

Sam Browne's don't do that much to be honest, however even in daylight, the rapidly blinking LED lights make you much more visible simply due to the pulsing - bear in mind that you are allowed to use these day or night, but at night you must have a constant red light as well to be legal.

Odd things that make cyclists much more visible include the slap-on vis-bands that Halfords and the like sell worn as cycle clips - the movement and contrast difference you get make a real difference. Also, the reflective flags you used to get in the 80s wave around at driver eyeline and make you much easier to spot.

Hi-vis helmets are wonderful! Make cyclists very, very visible.

Also, you said that the visvest doesn't fit - can you wear it as a waistcoat, unfastened? If so then you're immediately a lot more visible from the rear which is probably your biggest issue - anything coming near you from the front is on the wrong side of the road.

May also be worth your while getting some day-glo reflective tape to mark the outlines of your trike sideon (I'll send you some if you want) so you're visible when turning - it may sound silly, as you're at your broadest when turning, but contrast differences are a lot more important than simply surface area when it comes to most drivers seeing you - they look for change of contrast, not shapes.

I can't wear the hivis vest open because it falls off in the wind, or at least tangles around my arms, which isn't useful. I probably have some of that reflective tape somewhere, actually, because I used it a lot on buggies when I did a lot of evening / dusk walking with buggies.

One difference with visibility on the trike is that I'm much, much higher than most cyclists - it's a very upright posture, because it'sa town bike, not a sports bike, such as are not sold in many UK or Irish cycle shops any more. Think "sit up and beg" bikes. This means that the entire back of the Sam Brown belt is actually visible, not sloped over a vanishing back as I lean over the handlebars.

I probably will get a helmet cover. We're due to go to the Good Cycle Shop soon for accessories. The good one in town, where I got the hivis tape etc before, has closed - but the lousy one is still open :(

Halfords has loads of camoflage gloves, cycling shorts, and drinks bottles, but not a lot of hivis stuff.

I still need a Trike icon.

Me too.

Lately I have started to get really damned annoyed with two classes of cyclists:

1. The ones who point and laugh at me for riding a tricycle on the road while they're riding on the pavement without lights, helmet or visibility clothing. Some of them are not even wearing sensible clothing for cycling, yet they think they can comment about me. Well, whatever.

2. The parents who go cycling with their kids, and put the kids in helmets and hi-vis vests, while not wearing them themselves. I think this is irresponsible, because it gives the kids the unconscious idea that helmets and visibility clothing are things that you grow out of, like training wheels. "We don't need to wear helmets because we're adults and we know how to be careful", or some such bollocks. Gah.

I don't wear a helmet because I'm an adult and have read the various research on both sides of the argument and concluded that the benefits of a helmet to an adult with road sense are marginal; and also because I cycle more and more carefully if I don't "have to" wear a helmet.

My children are damn well wearing helmets until they're in their mid-teens and can convince me that they have the necessary road sense and have understood the cost-benefit analysis of helmets.

I wear hi-vis velcro straps to hold my trousers in and never cycle at night without lights, but that's about it for visibility efforts. I do cycle assertively and on the assumption no-one else around me is paying attention to me, so I can get out of their way if this proves to be true. Since I got pregnant I've found I treat parked cars with even greater suspicion than usual, because the consequences of riding into a suddenly-opening door are that much worse now. Cars generally treat me with more respect when I cycle a meter out from the pavement than when I'm in the gutter, so I tend to do the former. It also gives me somewhere to go if a git decides to overtake me too closely.

Mind you, Cambridge is probably safer than most towns to cycle in, because of the high volume of cyclists, and simply by having reflective straps and lights I'm more visible than a significant minority (*sigh* not that I'm pleased about this).

AAAAHHH, this drives me around the bend. Cyclists belong NEITHER on the road NOR on the pavement: in a well-managed city which treats them as cyclists rather than as pretend cars, they will sometimes be moving with the traffic and other times with pedestrians. It's much, much safer for everyone for a bike to cross a major junction with pedestrians in two goes than to wobble across to the middle of it and pretend to be a car.

On a wobbly bike, I'd agree with you.

When I grow up there will be proper cyclepaths with no signposts in the middles of them and no cars parked across them and no 3" steps up to them from the road when they begin. And they'll all be at least a meter wide, none of this 80cm if you measure all the way to the kerb nonsense so popular around here.

There's a cycle path round a roundabout on my commute - what it does is turn a simple roundabout into four dangerous junctions. As an experienced urban cyclist, you're much much better off with the traffic than on it.

If they'd made it 'go round' the other way, so that people on it were facing the traffic more, it'd be almost ok for the less confident.

Trike

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