Safe Speed Forums

Nope, because a cyclist ought to have little/no difficulty in passing a slow/stationary vehicle in the bus lane, unlike the buses which the lanes are primarily intended to serve. If the bus lanes in your area really are that well used by cyclists, maybe the bus companies should turn the cameras on them instead...



...and I'm only half-joking here. The primary purpose of a bus lane is to provide buses with a clear route, and anything which hinders that progress on a routine basis ought to be prohibited during the operating hours of the lane. If motorists can be penalised by the local authority for entering (even briefly and with only a part of their vehicle) a bus lane without a cast-iron justification for doing so, regardless of whether or not any buses were actually affected, then should the same LA simply turn a blind eye to the genuine delays caused by buses having to find a safe spot to pass even a single cyclist in the bus lane, let alone entire flocks of them?

And yes, despite all the crap bus drivers who don't seem to give a damn about any other road users or their passengers, there are plenty of other drivers who have no intention of risking their livelihood by causing an accident trying to squeeze by a cyclist when the alternative is to simply lift off and go slow for a bit - if it's their last run of the day then they might even make a bit of overtime out of it... I'm married to a bus driver, I personally know several more, and as a daily bus user I'm familiar with the driving styles of most of the ones based at my local depot. In my experience, and from what my wife has said, most of them just want a nice simple easy life. Filling out incident occurrence forms isn't something they enjoy doing, even if it's for something they had no control over (e.g. having a window smashed by stone-throwing yobs), so they tend not to drive in a way which increases the likelihood of them having to fill one out for something they could have avoided AND which may also lead to prosecution.

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Chris

So... we know more or less where the boy racers are likely to be

We know roughly when they are driving..

We'd park up near the VAS Or around their haunts.

It's called "police intelligence"


But lot of fines tell me that these cams are not doing the job,... of slowing folks down or educating.

Static to increasing road deaths also worry me.

Here? People know where we will send our van

They also know they will run across our lads rather a lot too...

It appears to work fine

We only have one fixed cam here - - well sort of.. Our PC Gats likes to stretch his legs and have change of address.

Friday's flitting - short sitting

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

you mean the one that's just run them off the road by trying to squeeze past or the one that's swerved into the gutter to stop them getting past?



because banning bikes from the bus lanes would do wonders...


it's the buses that hold up the cyclists, not the other way around.



that little bike image on the bus lane signs says yes, they should.
What holds up buses the most is still other traffic, traffic lights and especially those who want to sit in the left of their lane in their nice big trucks with the mirrors blocking the bus.

That would be because the road actually isn't really wide enough, so the truck has a choice between blocking the oncoming traffic, which is certain to be there, or a bus that might or might not come along at all.

Not to mention bus stops. In the time it takes for a few passengers to board and pay, the bus could have travelled a mile or two.
And other buses as well. In London I've often seen buses having to wait for three or four traffic light changes, because the way ahead is blocked by, er, buses.

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

and hence the reason the buses are holding up the cyclists.

...as well as everyone else.

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

I think everyone else would be held up just a little bit more if everyone on the bus decided to drive instead.

I love bus lanes they are great! Especially the one down the M4 and on the A13. I used to love riding into london on the M4 doing a royal wave to all the cars stuck in the jams.

Seriously though riding through the traffic makes two things clear:
1: A very high proportion of car drivers do not pay much attention. Reading the newspaper, texting mates or catching up on paperwork is more important.
2: Virtually every car is only occupied by a single driver. This is hardly an efficient use of space.

Why do car drivers, the very people who create the jams, think they should get priority over buses?

I doubt it. Outside of London, at any rate, less than 10% of people travelling into the city go by bus (the figure for Bristol is around 8%) so you'd be adding less than one car for every 10, at worst. And without the bus lanes etc I reckon the traffic would flow a lot better.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not a bus hater, and I recognise that people should have the choice of travelling by bus if they need or want to.
What I take issue with is the current system of messing things up for the majority in order to pander to the minority.

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

Pete, you've perfectly defined the government's attitude in EVERY aspect of its policies with that statement. Don't do anything that will benefit the vast majority for fear of offending a tiny minority. Acquiescing to every extreme PC view held by minorities no matter how much it pisses off everyone else.

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Why can't we just use Common Sense?

So bus and car the only available options then?

I didn't imply anything of the sort. Note the words, "at worst".

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

well if that's the case then your "at worst" is actually the best case scenario.

Oh, come off it!

How many cars do you see in the morning for every bicycle?
100? 200? 500?

I see no more than a handful of bicycles on the road in an average week. And I see literally thousands of cars. So what percentage of the public actually cycles?

I haven't got anything against cyclists, before you ask. Why do you seem to want to make an issue of it?

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

a visit to London may scare you, an addiscombe club ride would definitely finish you off - 85 out last week!


but let's try for just a minute to see past the evil cyclists.

What about walking? Apparently about 10% of people walk to work every day so your numbers are already up to 1 in 9 before we even get going.
Then there's motorbikes and scooters and don't forget the train which I'm guessing would have to account for a good percentage of commuters in the cities.

So why do you think that, if all buses stopped running tomorrow, people wouldn't choose other modes of transport as well as cars? Many bus travellers (as well as train travellers, walkers, cyclists etc) use the bus because they either don't have a car or cannot drive - so they wouldn't all jump into cars.
In Leeds, more than 90% of the passengers on the supertram are those who previously travelled by bus.
BTW in Bristol, only 1.5% of people arrive in the city by train.

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

because my original argument was this

But that can't happen, can it? Even if all buses disappeared off the face of the earth, a major proportion of bus passengers would have to find an alternative mode of transport other than cars, because they're too young/too old/too poor/too sick etc etc etc.

So what was your point?

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

my point was that motorists whinging about being held up by buses or cyclists are looking in the wrong direction. They are in fact being held up by other motorists.