Hurtling down the bus lane, the often misleading bicycle lane or simply the gutter, making excellent time compared to all the couch potatoes lounging in their jalopies and getting high blood pressure, is obviously very tempting. I've seen a good few cyclists come to grief that way. Trouble is they get used to it and start to abandon caution even when it is clearly indicated.
Saw an urban cyclist hammering down the gutter in Goswell Road once, just opposite the Grauniad building (as was perhaps?). There's a dogleg off to the left there, round a sort of flatiron building with a pub at its prow. A car that hadn't checked its nearside mirror started to turn into the dogleg at exactly the wrong moment deflecting the cyclist onto the quite high pavement. By a miracle he didn't go through the plateglass window into the pub but just missed it down the Goswell Road pavement and crashed into the pub's tables and chairs there. He was bruised, shaken and slightly abraded but not seriously injured. Sat down there and pulled out his mobile to say the bike was a bit foxed (front wheel bent all over the place). 70% the car's fault I thought. Perhaps 60% because the cyclist's first responsibility is to himself and his steed.
I love drinking outside Metropolitan main road pubs. Never a dull moment.
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