(He wasn't dead - he just smelt funny)
Moving Target,
Issue #4, Summer 1989
I deny everything ......I never did it ever. Not even once....... ahaha I'm back. You all thought I was gone. Well, you were all wrong. The cherubs came and showed me a copy of the L.C.C. courier "manifesto" and it made me turn over and rise from my grave. May the fleas of a thousand motorcyclists infest their chamois forever. If it was not such an obvious blooper from a patently flock-like confederation of well-intentioned wool-heads, it would be insulting to the intelligence of all urban cyclists everywhere. However, it is plain that they really don't know what goes on down in the street. Anyone who puts in ten-plus hours a day, 4 to 5 days a week, in and out of the saddle, knows that "anti-social " stunts don't impress anyone, especially not the doctors who have to stick the results back together .
"...giant coffee cup!,"
It is partly a question of perceived margins of safety. The average person's eye to hand reaction time is 0.5 secs ( this being the time that it takes for you to react to seeing an on coming hazard such as a 12-ton tipper truck, kamikaze ped, traffic sign, brick wall, giant coffee cup etc by pulling the brakes). Mine was tested, under lab conditions, at a mean 0.12 after 15 months on the streets over a year ago. At, say, 20 mph this means pulling the brakes after travelling 0.9 metres as opposed to 4 metres .In terms of gaps, most pedallers consider about 3/4 of an inch either side of the bars ample room . This, coupled with the fact that the majority of courier cycles are vastly superior in terms of maintenance and performance than the average bicycle, allows pedallers to execute manoeuvres that the ordinary, sane cyclist would consider suicidal in comparative safety. This doesn't make us invulnerable supermen/women, it just makes us good at our job which is to penetrate the crowded city centre quickly and efficiently.
In my experience (estimated 25,000 miles around town) it is nearly always unwary and unprepared commuters who, stampeded by herds of marauding motor-vehicles, find themselves forced into ill-advised moves in front of traffic.
"...drug-crazed cyclists! "
Any pedaller knows that it is just dumb-riding to cut cars up and generally hack about, kerbside, reds, peds and all. Who but a fool would willingly put himself in the path of a snorting, bellowing, 1/2 ton monster of iron and steel with a vision-impaired moron at the wheel protected only by lycra, cotton and a pair of Ray-bans? The pedallers way is to go for the gaps, to sneak thru blind-side, minimum of fuss, hassle and risk, never letting the wind-screened maniacs get a clear sight of the target. As for the peds, I think the "drug-crazed cyclists mow down shoppers in High Street shocker" scenario is a non-starter. When a cyclist is in collision with a pedestrian, the pedestrian will nearly always escape without a bruise; the cyclist, on the other hand, will sustain at least one bruise, gravel rash and suffer muscular pain for the following couple of days. So, clearly, a working cyclist cannot afford to ride thru town like Tony Doyle in a hurry. Who wants an enforced holiday, in hospital or worse, for the price of a couple of pints? Sure there are a few looped-out Max Speed cases on circuit, but we're talking handfuls here, not a major public menace on two wheels .
splattered!
I would like to see the L.C.C. address themselves to the ludicrous legal standing of bicycles in road traffic law. The difference between road-legal and road-safe is great and getting greater. I got splattered pulling away from a green light by a car burning a red. I was legal but not safe. If instead of toeing the stop-line like a good boy, I had crept on the red and stuck my bonce into the junction I would have seen that lunatic coming and been safe but not legal. I would not expect members of Her Majesty's constabulary to sympathize with this interpretation, after all, the law is there to protect us all from each other, but the same law stipulates that a pedal cycle is in fact a motor-vehicle. Road traffic legislation merely reflects Peter Bottomley's boys' lack of coherent, imaginative transport policy.
sophisticated traffic jams
Anybody with eyes in their head instead of their wallet can foresee, without a tremendous leap of imagination that £12 billion spent on widening and lengthening the U.K.’s major road network is going to lead to bigger, better, more sophisticated traffic jams, increased pollution and road traffic casualties (and we all know who features near the top of those pops The only way to get these motorised simpletons to take notice of our needs is to shove cycling down their throats. High profile, mass civil disobedience by cyclists will strengthen our hand by publicising our stance. Most non-bikers think that L.C.C. stands for London County Council.
Only by bringing the bicycle bit into the public realm will the absurdity and outrage of road traffic legislation be exposed. I call on the L.C.C. as the spokespeople of all urban cycling tribes to stop collaborating with the forces of inertia that keep rolling evermore cars into our crowded city space and to produce a campaign that we can all support without reservation. Where were you on the 21st? Take care.
Buffalo would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who sent flowers after his recent involuntary 'leg-clamping'. However nobody did so fuck off you uncaring bastards.
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