With Landis still in trouble, and whether guilty or not (and I think probably not, actually), pro-cycling is on the ropes – but are people taking it out on the common man?

This is so utterly ridiculous it really does annoy me. So here is a cyclist who, depending on your perspective, obstructs a following car or is the vehicle in front, and who is prosecuted for not using a separate cycle path (which is not an offence). Obstructing the highway should require you to be wilfully doing so – he was cycling fast, down a hill, doesn’t sound wilful to me. If he’d been a milk float, would he have been going any slower or subsequently prosecuted?

How can you actually be forced across the white line? Surely braking, waiting a moment and then continuing on your way is the safest course.

Also, it suggests one of the reasons for being further out was that he was cycling fast – perhaps had he been going slower, he could have been more safely in toward the kerb? As we know, cyclists do not have to obey normal speed limits, so perhaps this was the copper’s way of getting the cyclist for something else? He was perceived as cycling dangerously, but obstructing the highway is possibly easier to prove than cycling dangerously?

Cycling quickly is easy, even in town and you don’t have to break any laws to do it – despite the fact that many wheeled brethren do, and I shall not condone their actions. The trouble now seems to be that while we’re in constant danger, we might also be breaking laws we had no conceivable reason to be concerned about.

And this is a nation with a new found sporting prowess and a huge traffic problem. Oh yes, we’re happy to watch sport but we don’t want to actively support those amongst us happier to be exercising our own bodies rather than sitting in a car or an armchair.

technorati tags:cycling, law, transport, rant

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