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Comment by 1337biz | Hacker News Reader

I'm always a bit of in a risk-assessment mode when it comes to the public transport vs cycling decision. Somehow I find cycling in inner city areas incredibly dangerous. It probably depends on one's own driving style, but are there any stats on biking related accidents in London? Some time ago a cyclist in front of me was crashing incredibly bad. If you see someone "flying" of his bike and smashing into a brick wall it somewhat makes the safety aspect a more tangible issue. Ultimately I now end up cycling only in the evening hours or on distances where I can drive through relatively car-free zones (e.g. parks).

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Where did you have that experience? It's very unfortunate for sure.

I've found the drivers in London to be better in general than the rest of the country. There are cyclists EVERYWHERE. No car is surprised to share the road with one and they all know what to expect from them. I'm not saying everyone gets along, but I've never felt particularly unsafe, and I used to ride 27 miles total commute a day.

Contrast that with other cities I've lived in where cyclists are more of a rarity. The motorists simply don't expect them, so they don't factor them in to decisions like how much stopping distance they'll need, whether they'll bother to look left before turning, whether there could be something behind that bend (when you can see 1/3rd of the road and so expect to see something as wide as a car). They also expect to average a much higher speed, and so IME get aggressive much more quickly when they feel they're being held up.

Don't even get me started on countryside drivers, with their 70mph round blind bends on two way roads not wide enough for two cars...

> I've found the drivers in London to be better in general than the rest of the country. There are cyclists EVERYWHERE. No car is surprised to share the road with one and they all know what to expect from them.

I'd definitely agree with that (I commute 8 miles each way in London).

It was made very obvious to me when I had to go into the office one weekend. The standard of driving from the weekend drivers was dreadful as they seemed to spend most of their time looking at road signs and wondering if they're in the correct lane(s) rather than looking out for other road users.

I moved from Oxford to London five years ago. In comparison to Oxford (and my previous hometown of Portland, Oregon), there were hardly any cyclists and the drivers seemed outright homicidal. I didn't get onto a bike during my first few years here. But lately I've noticed that things seem to be improving tremendously. There are a lot more cyclists on the road, and driver behaviour seems distinctly less homicidal than before. I'm really encouraged by these trends.

Actually, London is improving on almost every front. My chief complaints when I moved here were the scarcity of good coffee, the total absence of burritos, and the lousy cycling conditions. Now there are "cycle highways" growing like kudzu out of the city centre, and you can't throw a rock without hitting a burrito joint or a yuppie-calibre independent coffeeshop.

Go, London!

Out of interest, where'd you recommend getting a decent burrito? I used to go to Adobo on High Holborn, but as I spend less time in central and more time in east london, it seems like a little far to go.

Freebird Burritos near Liverpool St Station aren't terrible

My absolute favourite is Picante Mexican Grill near Victoria. Unfortunately it's been knocked out of commission by a flood recently and won't be back online for a couple of weeks. Not very familiar with the East London burrito scene, although I'm about to spend a lot of time there, so I need to explore it better. I've heard good things about Daddy Donkey but can't vouch for it personally.

I used to cycle to work every day from around Mile End to Bank. Did this for 2 years. Most of the time the trip was ok but I did have a few scares:

- Transvision bus overtakes me partially and before it clears me completely it returns to the left almost pushing me against some rails on the road. Had to bang the bus with my fist to make it stop.

- Some car makes a U turn in Whitechapel road ( I think you can't do this ) and comes into my lane. Almost crashed into it.

- All of a suden lost control of the back wheel of my bike. When I turn around to check if I had a flat or something I find a cab pushing the bike from behind. I couldn't believe what the driver was doing and told him that he could have killed me. Is reply was: "get out of my way".

- Pedestrians who don't see you coming because their brain is only tuned to cars and buses and somehow you look invisible even when you are shouting expletives to warn people to get out of the road.

- Had to wear a mask to stop feeling sick.

etc...

Finally I realized I was actually getting more stressed out from the bike commute than from taking the tube, so I gave up. When I lived in Barcelona it was a real pleasure to ride my bike everywhere. In London it's a struggle, at least for that particular commute.

And on a bicycle it only takes one black swan to make some serious damage.

Those stories sound pretty terrifying and I'm impressed you continued with it!

- Pedestrians who don't see you coming

This one struck a chord with me as it's my biggest issue with cyclists (and I am one). The pedestrians have right of way, so you have to ride defensively. Also, I've nearly been in a collision with a cyclist who thought it was OK to run a red light on a pedestrian crossing.

When I'm on my bike I obey the road laws, I don't see why so many people have a hard time with this.

Running red lights and almost hitting someone is really really bad, but at the same time, pedestrians don't always have the right of way. In London everyone needs to cooperate because there's a ton of people and not much space.

The closest I ever came to hitting somebody was a middle aged man who full on stepped out into the center divider nowhere near a crosswalk without even looking right while I was bearing down on him with a string of motorcycles behind me. I had one car length to stop, endo'ed up and sort of jumped off to the side of him which I could do because I'm on a mountain bike with great brakes and I ride defensively like you say. If I hadn't been there holding the pace, those motorcycles behind me could have been going and lot faster, and frankly they would have done a lot more damage had they actually hit him. I often wonder how people get hit by buses, but cycle commuting in London has shown me: given enough people someone is guaranteed do something ridiculously stupid and suicidal.

Oh and don't get me started about the tourists at Piccadilly Circus / Trafalgar Square (they won't get hit because everyone who drives there knows the herds of pedestrians aren't paying the least bit of attention to what's going on around them).

Pedestrians do have the right of way actually in the UK.

Fat lotta good it does you if you're dead.

True, but then as a cyclist we'd go to prison for killing someone. That's why I have well maintained disc brakes and a healthy respect for traffic signals (as I'm sure you do, also).

Many people don't, unfortunately.

This is an interesting reply because it reminds me of conversations I had a few years back.

I live in a town (in the US) which is fairly bike-friendly; a lot of places have nice paved paths and trails separate from the streets, and places that don't have them often have dedicated bicycle-only lanes. But a lot of people just won't use them, so I started asking my friends who biked everywhere why that was.

The responses, almost universally, were complaints about pedestrians -- "they get in my way", "they slow me down", "I never know when one of them is going to pop out from somewhere" -- and basically boiled down to these slow annoying people, I don't want to share my path with them. Which is the exact same attitude they complain about in car drivers.

I had a similar commute - from Leytonstone down to Liverpool Street. Mile End road is horrible, especially with the huge bendy buses (the 25?) with the drivers whose mission was to flatten as many cyclists as possible.

I used to have early starts and needed to be in the office at 6:45, the adrenaline rush was very effective in going from sleepy to wide awake and terrified.

There are actually some nice commutes from East London through to the city. The best ones involve the Grand Union canal or cycling through Victoria park.

> - All of a suden lost control of the back wheel of my bike. When I turn around to check if I had a flat or something I find a cab pushing the bike from behind. I couldn't believe what the driver was doing and told him that he could have killed me. Is reply was: "get out of my way".

I hope you took his number and reported him. Both to the police, DMV and the Public Carriage Office...

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