Bells on bikes
Not sure if Heaven is the right place to raise this, but in the lost days of yore, when I was young, all bicycles had to be fitted with a bell or other means of giving audible warning of approach - I think it was a legal requirement, and we had bike inspections at school to check this and general roadworthiness. It seems that with the revival of cycling this requirement has gone by the board, and I wonder why. I know it has been said that all cyclists have voices, but they rarely seem to use them to give warning, assuming they have breath to spare. I speak as an elderly gent who has twice recently nearly been run down by cycle riders approaching silently and at speed from behind on a narrrow footpath. A protest doen not elicit a civil response.
Comments
Bloody hell, yes!
Agree as this old gal has nearly been taken out on more than one occasion by a MAMIL ( middle aged man in Lycra) with an inappropriate sense of entitlement ( usually running a red light)
But, yeah, mostly they just swerve past you, swearing at you for the crime of being old, slow, carrying shopping - evil stuff like that.
Please can we not have anti-cycling bingo in Heaven? It's wearing, everyone knows what some people on bikes do, and it's thrown repeatedly at anyone who dares ride a bike as if we're somehow all responsible for what some other people using the same form of transport do. Many motorists speed but we don't hold every driver responsible for them.
I tend not to have a bell because IME two things happen when I use one:
1. Totally ignored
2. Given abuse for implying people should get out of my way by actually ringing it.
Having said that, I mostly ride dedicated MTB trails and on road. Most "shared infrastructure" in the UK is crap and invites conflict.
Sorry, Officer - s/he caught me off balance, coming up on me silently like that...
FWIW, I think this might indeed be more of a Hell thread...
A woman did something like that recently. The cyclist died and she was convicted of manslaughter.
Killing cyclists is not funny. Or perhaps you think it is?
No, indeed not, but no-one here is advocating violent actions which risk that happening.
Did you know that every year in the UK more pedestrians are killed by motor vehicles *specifically on pavements* than are killed by cyclists *in total*?
The real danger of death for both cyclists and pedestrians comes from motor vehicles
Back to bells - I actually find a vocal warning more effective - "Excuse me - on your left!" seems to be interpreted less aggressively than a bell - perhaps people associate them with the way some drivers use horns - "Mr Toad coming through! Out of the way!".
Proper segregation is the answer. Shared use can work if it's wide enough to have a pedestrian bit and a cyclist bit - but fully segregated is best. I used to advocate for vehicular cycling on the main carriageway but I've concluded that there are a significant if small minority of motorists whose hatred for cyclists will mean they will always endanger and shout abuse at us. And not a few so incompetent and distracted that they'll manage to be very nearly as dangerous without needing malice to help them along. In an ideal world both groups would lose their licences but that doesn’t happen.
Mate, if you rang a bell and cycled past me, I'd step aside, smile and say "thank you" and I'd sincerely mean it. It's what I do on the exceptionally rare occasions when someone takes the trouble to do this*. I'm sick of dark evenings where someone in dark clothing with no lights or helmets suddenly whizzes past me about 6" away on the pavement.
* 3 in 22 years of this
Which would be nice, but given the reponses I get, you might understand why I prefer to use my voice. It seems to get a better response.
Well, if you know they're on the road, clearly you can see them
(That should not be interpreted as advocating cycling at night with no lights)
I didn't believe a word of it but was just glad to have got out of there unharmed. Now I just let them go their own merry way and leave them to Fate.
I think I'd respond better to the sound of a bell than someone shouting "Excuse me" at me from behind - coming from a strange male that can be potentially scary. At least you know instantly with a bell it's about a bike passing, not a pretext to stop you for some reason.
Which makes it rather difficult - I'm not psychic so can't tell what a stranger would prefer - so have to go with whatever causes the least friction, IME.
Here the infrastructure for bikes is so poor there are few bikes - and the sound of a bike bell is rare and confusing to most.
I agree with you about the lights and reflectors, but clothing not so much - do we also criticise cars for being black?
But equally, when I visit my dad and go for a riverside walk with him, he doesn't even hear the bells. I personally think that when pedestrians are on the path, cyclists should be cycling slowly enough to easily stop, and be prepared to get off their bike and walk with it around the pedestrians if needed.
Indeed I do not, and (seriously) I wouldn't really contemplate such a stupid action. I apologise for being unnecessarily flippant.
OTOH, I do know a lot of sweary words, and I can shout VERY LOUDLY if need arises.
Nota bene: I did say I thought this thread might be better suited to Hell, but that's up to the H&As, of course.
Some people have better eyesight than others. My driving instructor once told me during a night-driving lesson that I'd come a bit too close to a blue car. To this day I have no memory of the car, only of a large cluster of deep dark shadows. I'm guessing the car was probably dark blue, which is easily confused with black, but anyway, I gave him a look and said, "It's dark. You can't see colours in the dark," before realizing that actually, he probably could. This sort of thing is one reason why I won't drive at night unless it's local and the route is brightly lit.
For me personally black objects are the hardest to find when I'm looking for something, especially if they're on a dark background and there isn't much light. You might instantly spot them. It will take me longer.
I mention this because people tend to assume that everyone shares their own physical perception of the world - that we will all see the same colours in the same way and at the same level of intensity. We don't. Also, we don't all hear certain frequencies in the same way either.
I should add if you're sharing with horses their riders really do appreciate a vocal indication of where you are, IME!
*there's another sound has disappeared from the world.
When cycling I tend to shout 'excuse me' instead of ringing the bell, but my bell is one of those weird modern ones and I haven't fathomed how it works. 😳
And here where it is very normal, I much prefer it (as a rider or a walker) because it tells me where you are coming from besides just "at me"
There's also the fact that people are unpredictable - kids can leap out, a person may stumble and fall. A cyclist needs to be going slow enough to brake immediately. It seems safer to me, on a very narrow path, and particularly a canal path, for a cyclist to get off their bike and walk with it when there are pedestrians around. Or at least to pass them at a very slow speed. It's bikes that whizz past you on canal paths that are most dangerous, to my mind, regardless of whether they ring a bell, because if they're going very fast, they've passed you before you've had chance to fully process the bell sound and make a decision about where to move to.
If they're not on a shared path it isn't. If they are, it is.
What you have to remember is people cycle on pedestrian facilities because they're terrified of using the road. Sort out the poor driving and attitudes (a twenty mile ride will usually involve three or four close passes and being called a bucking funt (or something - it's hard to hear)) and get better segregated infrastructure and you will lose a lot of the pedestrian/cyclist conflict.
If the crossing is controlled by lights, the cyclists are probably going through a red, anyway.
Nothing special about bikes; they’re just included in the general category of vehicles that are required to have some kind of audible warning device. There was an enforcement blitz some years ago where fines for noncompliance were known as the no-bell prize.
Etiquette around here seems to be evenly divided between ringing your bell and “on your left” if passing someone on a path. I tend to slow way down if I’m passing someone on a narrow path instead of doing either though I should really start getting into the habit of doing one or the other as well.
One of the things Ms. Marsupial found most surprising when she was learning to drive is how hard it can be to see pedestrians etc. at night.
I mean the ones who cycle across a zebra crossing to get from one side of the road to another, while you as a pedestrian are also trying to use it. As I see it they're a vehicle (it may not have an engine but it's still a form of transport) and shouldn't be doing this.
They are vehicles, but they are not motor vehicles, and there are some differences in law as a result. Being able to use public rights of way (except footpaths), cycleways, canal towpaths and shared cycle/pedestrian infrastructure for example. And a little known one - not subject to speed limits (except in Royal Parks in London which have their own specific bylaws). The laws defining speeding offences specifically target motor vehicles.
Well, they're not, except where specifically allowed by the designation of the pavement as shared infrastructure.
I personally think this should only be done where there's sufficient pavement width to segregate the pedestrians from the cyclists but councils like to be able to say they've created X miles of cycling infrastructure when all they've done is splash some paint around. What they should be doing is creating actual infrastructure - which in most cases will be a protected on-road cycle lane.
When I become PM there will be proper training, and a licensing scheme. I don't care if they don't want to wear helmets, but no lights, no riding.
I agree. It's very common here for cyclists to use the pavement, and I'm always tempted to say "that's a road - use it" whenever I have to get out of their way.
I'd also add that, especially for someone with hearing issues, it's sometimes hard to tell the exact direction a sound (of a bell, for instance) is coming from, so you're not quite sure which way you need to move.
My personal pet peeve is those walkers whose music is so loud that they don't hear me coming.
And cyclists wearing ear pods with the volume way up - well, this isn't Hell so I won't say any more about them.
All fine and dandy, but there's often simply not enough space to do this, more's the pity.
It's on a wide grass verge alongside the main road, and (perhaps ironically) the verge was once the site of a reserved-track section of tramway...in those far-off days (they scrapped the trams in 1930), no doubt cyclists had to take pot luck with the traffic on the road, which even then (long before motorways) was beginning to get quite heavy at times.
Doublethink, Admin