No matter what form of vehicle I'm using for transport all the other forms of transports are clearly being used by idiots.

- When walking, the bloody cars, cycles, motorcycles, and even other walkers seem to go out of there way to annoy me. Did you ever try and look in the non-existant rear view mirror while walking? Have you ever bumped into someone who started walking backwards or just stopped for no obvious reason?

- When I'm cycling or motorcycling, the pedestrians seem to have a death wish, while the car drivers are all out to kill me or just plain get in the way. Why is it that Vans, 4*4s and especially the biggest Mercedes ae incapable of positioning themselves in the middle of their lane?

- When I'm driving, the damn motorcyclists scare the hell out of me, appearing out of nowhere and then cutting across me with inches to spare. And the cyclists are just plain invisible.

Seriously though as a cyclist the one thing that really winds me up is the car that accelerates to get past me before immediately braking hard to take a left hand turn.

And as for horses, we don't ride or drive on the fields, what the hell are they doing on the road? And the same goes for pedestrians. I don't ride on the pavement, what are they doing in the road?

The one that used to really excite me when commuting was people who play Frogger. Imagine the scene, It's the depth of winter, it's cold and wet and dark. The street lights are not all working. I'm coming down the outside of the traffic on my MegaScooter trying to peer between the raindrops on the visor and the flare from the badly adjusted headlights of the cars coming towards me. Standing in the middle of the road is a person of colour wearing a black coat, black jeans and a black bobble hat looking the other way waiting for the gap to appear in the traffic on the other half of the road so they can run across. This used to happen to me at least once a day in Stoke Newington when commuting from the City to the A10. If you routinely walk in London, please look both ways each time you walk into the gap between cars. That's next to each pavement AND the gap between lanes.

The other wind up is people who start walking before you get to them as they judge the gap to end up just behind you as they pass. On a motorcycle they represent an obstacle to avoid so you pull away from them, so now they can walk faster, so you pull across a bit more, so they can walk faster, so you're now on the wrong side of the road with cars coming towards you.

Having said all that, I really like riding cycles because you are almost completely anonymous, invisible and outside the law. You really have to wind up the police to ever get stopped and even then you'll only get a caution as prosecuting is just too much hassle. And I've only ever once been so under the influence that I couldn't ride a bike. Anything motorised and they have systems to deal with you. And as a pedestrian, you're at risk of the half hour stop and search or an overnight stay on sus. As good middle class citizens this probably no longer affects any of us, but it affects our teenage children and it's one to remember if you ever go on a march or decide to go somewhere vaguely illegal like Stonehenge at midsummer. Or Brixton/Toxteth/Handsworth.

<victor meldrew>And there's another thing... </victor meldrew>


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[ 19-May-05 12:19pm ] [ , , ]