Nuxx:4e372507$0$2945$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!goblin3!goblin2!goblin.stu.neva.ru!news.stack.nl!dedekind.zen.co.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!reader02.news.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <4e372507$0$2945$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Taking the lane in London Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2011 23:13:27 +0100 References:  Lines: 53 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:5.0) Gecko/20110624 Thunderbird/5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To:  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: 5f342996.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=PD=HkH_<[O2ZSa:@4h=j4:YjZGX^207P;`Wd^]94M2?73 X-Complaints-To: abuse@zen.co.uk Bytes: 4208 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:848324

On 01/08/2011 16:15, Simon Mason wrote: > I never seem to get into any bother when I take the primary position > when it is necessary, so this article was a bit of an eye opener. > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/bike-blog/2011/aug/01/cyclist-take-the-lane

"The Highway Code, however, doesn't mention primary position at all." This is significant: the Highway Code's writers have (as recently discussed) pandered to cyclists and ignored motorists in recent years, yet still there is no mention of this so-called "position".

Whatever the rights and the wrongs of the issue, there is no doubt that some cyclists (or rather psycholists) take "primary position" all the time, whether or not it's "necessary", in order to belligerently obstruct motorists. They're the same "people" who constantly try to give drivers a hard time whenever they're cycling anywhere...provoking drivers into a reaction and then filming and reporting that reaction (but conveniently "failing" to film the initial provocation) is, as extensively discussed here lately, just one other ploy that these psycholists use to attempt to force their wacky ideals onto others.

Sadly, many psycholists will take "primary position" when it's obviously completely unnecessary, leave less space to overtake as a result, and then have the cheek to bang on (and so vandalise) any cars which then try to get past. If they are truly worried about the cars being "too close" (doubtful) then they should get the hell over to the left since it's safe. Any cyclist who is seen displaying such bloody-minded obstructive behaviour should be banned from cycling altogether (although obviously we need to instigate a mechanism to do that first). It is simply not remotely reasonable to automatically resent *every* car overtaking you when you're cycling, and to try to physically prevent it as a result.

All cyclists should live and let live, and mind their own business: only use "primary position" when it's truly necessary, which isn't often. "If in doubt, use primary position" seems like (and is probably meant to be) an open invitation for psycholists to play dumb and pretend to be "in doubt" all the time just so they can constantly use "primary position"; such dubious advice should be replaced with "If in doubt, then at the earliest opportunity, find out from a non-anti-motorist source on the Internet whether primary position was genuinely necessary, and apply that new knowledge when next in a similar situation".

Someone in the comments even says "The primary position is deemed to be the safest position for cyclists under conditions where they need to 'control' the other vehicles in the lane". The word "control" there is telling, and if you replace "safest" with "most effective" and "need" with "want" then you're pretty close to the truth in many cases. Where "primary position" is used maliciously and obstructively by a psycholist who knows perfectly well that it's not necessary from a safety point of view, it should be called something like "obstructive, going-to-get-your-head-kicked-in-if-you-carry-on-like-this position" instead.