Close Encounters of the Cycling Kind
Having had many chats about how bad riding a bike can be in “The Cycling Capital of the UK, and taking a cue from the grades of Alien encounters I’ve decided to rate my cycling experiences in terms of Close Encounters.
Rather than just clips when something happens I’m going to try (fingers crossed for no camera or brain fade issues) to post all my rides to and from work for a week. I’ll mark up the times in the vid description when something noteworthy happens graded as follows…
Of the First Kind…
I see someone doing something stupid, dangerous or illegal, but am not directly involved. Examples would be people running red lights, not indicating, parking dangerously.
Of the Second Kind…
Another road user performs a dangerous move near me causing me to divert or brake in an unexpected way. Examples would be close passes, left hooks, pulling out across traffic, or parking dangerously so that I’m forced into traffic..
Of the Third Kind…
I’m involved in an accident, or have to make aa significant deviation from my expected course in order to avoid an accident. But significant I mean jumping onto the pavement, emergency stops etc
I’m expecting a lot of the first, some of the second and hopefully none of the third! I’ll do some kind of scoring summary at the end of the week to see how I’ve done.
Here’s a link to the playlist that I’ll be adding the vids to.
Of course this means you can see, and comment on if you think it’s necessary, what my general riding is like and if you think I’m causing any issues.
Last update: The final ride is now live and described
– Thursday Evening and this mornings rides are now up
– My 2-part ride to get home on Wednesday evening is not live, w00t!
– Finally added the Monday Evening ride…only 3 encounters that I spotted in it too!
– Wednesday morning ride now live with description…I’ve had to re-upload Monday evening…it’s coming!
– Rides from Tuesday Morning and Evening have now been uploaded and described with timings included.
– Monday morning video posted. Evening and Tuesday morning rides are uploading
HelmetCam:1 Stupid Drivers: 0
On my way home from work on Friday last week I saw a car coming towards me along a road with a 20mph speed limit that to my eyes was doing closer to 40 than 20 so I gestured to them, politely to slow down. The car responded by deliberately, to my eyes, swerving towards me. I’ve had some debate with a couple of friends about wether what I did was provocation to the driver…frankly it doesn’t matter if it was, there was no call for that action as a response.
Luckily, actually deliberately to capture this kind of thing (although more often stupid and careless drivers and fellow cyclists than malicious ones), I have for the last couple of weeks been wearing a camera mounted on my cycle helmet. It’s a dinky little thing but it can capture full 1080p HD, slo-mo at 240 frames per second and can also live stream straight to Ustream 🙂
Anyhoo…before I go on take a look at the incident for yourself. http://youtu.be/SX6YFCGoN2I
After sending the youTube link to the Cambridge Police Twitter account I was asked to go to the Police station today to discuss the incident.
I took the full HD video with me on my iPad to show the officer who I had an appointment booked with. After viewing it a couple of times he asked if he could borrow my iPad to show a colleague because he wasn’t sure what the driver could be charged with!
Upon his return I was informed that unless they could prove who was driving they couldn’t press any charges at all but the car in question was owned by a Woman and he suspected from their age that the other driver named on the same insurance was her Son (I had told him it was a man driving). He told me he intended to speak to the registered owner of the vehicle and let them know what had happened, and if he was told that someone else was driving he’d speak to them as well. He also told me that the police would be informing the insurance company about the incident and would leave it to their discretion as to what happened next.
Overall, I think that’s a pretty fair result 😀
