Bus Lane green light for motorcycles

On 25/12/2011 13:02, Squashme wrote:
On Dec 25, 7:21 am, wrote:
In , Beav says...



"Dave - Cyclists wrote in message
...
On 24/12/2011 15:49, Rob Morley wrote:
Vehicle excise duty is for using motor vehicles, not for using roads,

No it isn't halfwit. You can use a motor vehicle as much as you like on
private land without paying the extra tax. It's only when you use it on a
public road that you pay. Hence the generally understood term 'Road Tax'.

"Excise Duty" I believe. IIRC, it's not been called road tax for yonks.

Yebbut nobody calls it Excise Duty. Nobody pops down the Post Office
for an Excise Disc, do they? You don't re-excise your bike on the DVLA
website, do you?

Nobody refers to their Vehicle Registration Document when they can call
it a logbook, either.

Douglas Bader had a logbook, Guy Gibson had a logbook. It just
encourages the adolescent fantasies of motorists.

*I* have had more than one logbook (though not many more).

The document was officially so entitled within easy living memory and was
dealt with by the local county-level council. The logbook, as you may
remember, continued in use until it was full. Among its recorded contents
were the name and address of every previous keeper and a list of every time
that the vehicle's road tax had been paid.

It was only from the mid-1970s, when the DVLC was founded, in Outer Mongolia
or wherever it is, that this easily accessible system was abandoned in favour
of the non-continuous registration document eventually only available by post
from the nether regions, devoid as it is of all soul and romance.

But many - perhaps most - people (even many who are not old enough to
remember real motor vehicle log books) still call the document the log book.
Popular understanding and practise is an awkward bugger: it just will not
reliably kow-tow to officialdom.

On 25/12/2011 14:43, Simon Mason wrote:
On Dec 25, 2:32 pm, wrote:
Simon Mason wrote:
http://www.swldxer.co.uk/bike.wmv

The first ten seconds demonstrate exactly why I hate cyclists.

Riding on the pavement

It was a designated cycle track, not a pavement

Turn onto the road the wrong side of a traffic bollard
Didn't take one decent look to see if anything was approaching as you
moved across the road.

And you wonder why most motorists hate cyclists?

Do they?
Does that mean that I hate myself?

Help yourself:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/most

On Sun, 25 Dec 2011 07:12:13 -0800, Ivan D. Reid
wrote:

On Sun, 25 Dec 2011 11:25:40 +0000 (UTC), Joe P

wrote in :

Three motorbikes, two pushbikes, one car and a van - I think I'll take
the dog for a walk.
^^^^

*Blink!* I misread that at first...

"Wok"?

On Sun, 25 Dec 2011 08:20:15 +0000,
(The Older Gentleman) wrote:

Phil W Lee wrote:

(The Older Gentleman) considered Sat,
24 Dec 2011 13:41:15 +0000 the perfect time to write:

ogden wrote:

cyclists who wilfully forgets
that cyclists are guests in bus lanes too. Because that's what they are,
remember, bus lanes, not extra-wide cycle lanes that buses happen to
also be allowed to use.

*Ding*

Actually, it's the buses that are guests, permitted under strict
licence conditions, on the public highway, which is used by
pedestrians, equestrians and cyclists by right.

Fine. My only objection is the ****s who sail blithely through red
lights and the wrong way down one-way streets.

If I hit one of these ****s - and there are very many of them - on my
motorcycle *I* am going to get hurt. And the odds are the cyclist won't
have insurance.

There was one the other day - went through three reds in succession.
When I made the "time-honoured gesture" he merely said: "I'm not doing
any arm". ****.

Use the road freely, by all means, but your rights do not include rights
to ignore the rules of the road.

Yes, I agree. All road users should obey all the rules of the road -
that includes cyclists stopping at red traffic signals, car drivers
staying off their hand-held mobile phones (unless calling the police),
and motorcyclists keeping within the speed limit.

Of the three, I wonder which are the most frequent offenders.

On 25/12/2011 18:00, The Older Gentleman wrote:
wrote:

On Dec 25, 2:07 pm, (The Older
Gentleman) wrote:
wrote:
On Dec 25, 1:23 pm, (The Older
Gentleman) wrote:
wrote:
I agree. But just imagine why a cyclist might be daunted by the
prospect of sharing a bus lane in close proximity with the "greater
mass and speed" of some thundering highlight of Japanese engineering.

A cllue for you: bikes have less mass than buses.

The speed however can daunt one.

Just Japanese, or (say) my British bike. Or my German one?

Keep generalising, boi :-)

Any comparative production figures, boi?

Production figures mean nothing. This is a UK market, and a company can
make zillions of machines, but if they're not sold in the UK, it's
meaningless.

What you mean are UK *sales*, of course. And, in the UK, at least,
Triumph is outselling both Suzuki and Kawasaki in motorcycles. And BMW
is outselling Kawasaki in motorcycles.

This year, in the over-500cc category (Triump's smallest bike is a 675),
Triumph is the UK top seller (on figures in to date, anyway). I'm
assuming your "thundering highlight of Japanese engineering" does not
mean a moped or scooter, you see.

I *love* it when an ignoramus tries arguing points on a topic with which
I am rather better acquainted :-)

Dance, boi.


Not sure if you're trying hard to do something clever with the word
'sales'. What's the source of your data? Does this have any validity:

http://www.mcia.co.uk/Press-and-Stat...tatistics.aspx

You seem to suggest scooters don't count in your argument. Not sure if
you've ever used a cycle - maybe 20kg, max. A scooter is 10x + a cycle's
weight etc.

Rob

On 25/12/2011 20:12, ogden wrote:
wrote:

wrote:

On Dec 25, 10:11 am, (Andy B) wrote:

I'm fine with cyclists riding on towpaths (I wish I could ride my off
road bike on them) and I don't even mind them blowing a whistle but if
they did it as they approached me from behind and startled me I'd
probably stun the ****er and put them in the water.

Or:-

"I'm fine with cyclists riding on towpaths (I wish I could ride my off
road bike on them) and I don't even mind them cycling along silently
but if
they did it as they approached me from behind and startled me I'd
probably stun the ****er and put them in the water."

Choice of two weevils?

Not at all.

In the case which started this sub-thread the whistleblower was riding
against the flow of pedestrians and the whistle meant "get the **** out
of the way, I'm coming through".

When I'm out riding with the doris, along a designated cycle trail
shared with pedestrians, I always feel slightly mortified when she uses
her bell. I know bicycles are rather quiet, and it's all too easy to
sneak up behind people, but I much prefer to creep up on them, cough
quietly, wait for them to look round, give me a hugely apologetic look
and get out of the way, than to ring a bell or honk a horn and barge my
way past.

I guess it all comes down to that good old sense of entitlement. I
prefer to assume we're at best equal, at worst I'm on the back foot.
It's nice when the other party does the same.


+1. I spent 15 years commuting by bike on London canal paths - far and
away the best approach IME.

Rob

Rob wrote:

You seem to suggest scooters don't count in your argument.

Scooters don't "thunder". He chose to use the word, not I. So,
basically, he was referring to big bikes.

Also, I don't really GAF how many Jap, Brit, Italian or German bikes
were sold - he just seemed to think everything is Japanese. And it
isn't.

God, you pedal-pushers are crap at arguing :-)


--
BMW K1100LT Honda CB400 Four Triumph Street Triple
Yamaha Tenere Suzuki GN250, TS250ERx2
So many bikes, so little garage space....
chateau dot murray at idnet dot com

JNugent wrote:

But many - perhaps most - people (even many who are not old enough to
remember real motor vehicle log books) still call the document the log book.
Popular understanding and practise is an awkward bugger: it just will not
reliably kow-tow to officialdom.

Absolutely. Witness the MoT test, still named after the long-defunct
Ministry of Transport.



--
BMW K1100LT Honda CB400 Four Triumph Street Triple
Yamaha Tenere Suzuki GN250, TS250ERx2
So many bikes, so little garage space....
chateau dot murray at idnet dot com

Phil W Lee wrote:

(The Older Gentleman) considered Sun,
25 Dec 2011 08:20:16 +0000 the perfect time to write:

Phil W Lee wrote:

You might be surprised how many people choose not to use forms of
transport subsidised out of general taxation.

Ahem. What are those government shemes to get people to buy and use
bicycles, then?

No money is "invested" in those.
All that is done is to reduce taxation by a small amount, and by much
less than the amount that is saved by the taxpayer by having people
cycle instead of drive.

It's still a subsidy.


--
BMW K1100LT Honda CB400 Four Triumph Street Triple
Yamaha Tenere Suzuki GN250, TS250ERx2
So many bikes, so little garage space....
chateau dot murray at idnet dot com

On Dec 25, 10:17*pm, "Lozzo" wrote:
tim wrote:
On 25/12/2011 15:05, Simon Mason wrote:
On Dec 25, 3:00 pm, *wrote:
On Dec 25, 2:54 pm, Simon *wrote:

On Dec 25, 2:45 pm, *wrote:

Simon Mason wrote:
On Dec 25, 2:32 pm, *wrote:

That was a pit-bike ridden by a chav. I'm really sure the
police were able to track it down, if they could even be
bothered, given there was no number plate and you didn't
get a good look at the rider

They tracked down all five of them and had their three
bikes crushed. *They rang up to thank me for my efforts.

Oh well done you, bet you had a right wankathon after that
phone call, if it ever happened.

I sent the video to the police on an old 2gig SD card I had
lying around.
My public duty and all that :-)

In the two months since, there have been no knobs dicking
around on illegal bikes putting people in danger at all.

That Lozzo does seem to have a problem about obeying the law in
some cases, doesn't he?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I like the way he tries to pin me for pavement cycling and then puts
the blinkers on when some idiot on an illegal bike hurtles past
toddlers and dogs at 40mph. Says it all really.

While not defending the chavs on pit bikes, you have no proof of any
speed that they may have been doing. So were the pedestrians on a
pavement or cyclepath? One lot were in the wrong.

One of them was on a deserted industrial estate with absolutely no
other ****er around, the other on a virtually empty footpath


Virtually empty?
Apart from those toddlers and dog that is.
If they were messing about on some nearby spare land I'd have turned a
blind eye, but they were putting children and animals in danger.
I am surprised you are defending them at all.
--
Simon Mason