Phew.

Going straight over a large fast and miraculously empty roundabout at a
brisk (~15-20 mph) pace. Three lanes on the roundabout itself (they
spiral out), and I'm going straight over, so I put myself in the central
lane. The incoming traffic on my left also has three lanes of input,
and I'm watching them to make sure they all stop. Lane 3 is empty.
Lane 2 contains a car, that approaches but the driver sees me and he
eases to a smooth crawl. Lane 1 contains a ****ing huge tanker,
approaching at speed, the driver gazing *behind* me and showing
absolutely no sign of slowing. Our courses are such that I'm going to
end up somewhere under the middle of his rig if one of us doesn't do
something.

A very loud yell from me woke him up, and I skimmed across his rapidly
braking bow with a good few feet to spare, to the sound of his tires
squealing. No harm done.

But, FFS, how much (lack of) observation does it take to miss a 6' lardy
******* in a fluorescent yellow top?!

Rant over.

R.

Richard wrote:

how much (lack of) observation does it take to miss a 6'
lardy ******* in a fluorescent yellow top?!

Huge amounts of it.

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 09:39:04 +0100, Richard wrote:



A very loud yell from me woke him up, and I skimmed across his rapidly
braking bow with a good few feet to spare, to the sound of his tires
squealing. No harm done.

You did the right thing. Don't trust other road users to see you,
or to do 'the right thing'. Applies cycling or driving.

One valuable lesson my Dad taught me when driving was,
if you are at a Give Way line on a sidestreet, if a car on the main
road is indicating left wait till it actually turns left.
Indicators may be left on by some dozy twit.

John Hearns wrote:

One valuable lesson my Dad taught me when driving was,
if you are at a Give Way line on a sidestreet, if a car on the
main road is indicating left wait till it actually turns left.
Indicators may be left on by some dozy twit.

Or he may be indicating he's about to pull up at the kerb just after
the junction. The idea they might be giving an ambiguous signal doesn't
seem to occur to some people.

--
Dave...

John Hearns wrote:
On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 09:39:04 +0100, Richard wrote:


One valuable lesson my Dad taught me when driving was,
if you are at a Give Way line on a sidestreet, if a car on the main
road is indicating left wait till it actually turns left.
Indicators may be left on by some dozy twit.

I've had car drivers wait for me when I'm indicating left - as if I'm
going to leave my arm sticking out by accident!

--
Simon M.

On 28 Apr 2005 02:21:56 -0700, "dkahn400" wrote:

John Hearns wrote:

One valuable lesson my Dad taught me when driving was,
if you are at a Give Way line on a sidestreet, if a car on the
main road is indicating left wait till it actually turns left.
Indicators may be left on by some dozy twit.

Or he may be indicating he's about to pull up at the kerb just after
the junction. The idea they might be giving an ambiguous signal doesn't
seem to occur to some people.

That's not really the fault of the driver, though, is it?

If s/he doesn't indicate when about to pull up just past the junction, following
motorists are going to get irate when s/he brakes and pulls over with no, or
very sudden, indication.

It's actually a problem with the signalling system we use.

Richard wrote:

But, FFS, how much (lack of) observation does it take to miss a 6' lardy
******* in a fluorescent yellow top?!

It's been discussed before here many times; everyone's brain processes
the signal produced by the eyeballs to make the image the brain works
with. The latter is much simpler than the inclusive, photographic-style
image the optical equipment generates. Particularly if the brain has set
priorities such as seeking information on other motor vehicles, other
information such as cyclists in the field of vision can be filtered out.
Our brains save effort by removing information from conscious
consideration that is apparently irrelevant to our current task. This is
how we all work. It is obviously normally appropriate. But it is bad
news for cyclists moving among big fast motor vehicles.

Congratulations on having dealt with it satisfactorily.

You might it interesting to watch this Java video (7MB) of a basketball
game and try to count the total number of times that the people wearing
*white* pass the basketball. Do *not* count the passes made by the
people wearing black.

http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html

Having done that *first* go to this site
http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0011a/perception.html
where the third paragraph discusses it, as does
http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/media...telegraph.html
etc.

--
Joe * If I cannot be free I'll be cheap

Paul D wrote:
On 28 Apr 2005 02:21:56 -0700, "dkahn400" wrote:


John Hearns wrote:


One valuable lesson my Dad taught me when driving was,
if you are at a Give Way line on a sidestreet, if a car on the
main road is indicating left wait till it actually turns left.
Indicators may be left on by some dozy twit.

Or he may be indicating he's about to pull up at the kerb just after
the junction. The idea they might be giving an ambiguous signal doesn't
seem to occur to some people.


That's not really the fault of the driver, though, is it?

If s/he doesn't indicate when about to pull up just past the junction, following
motorists are going to get irate when s/he brakes and pulls over with no, or
very sudden, indication.

S/he should slow down gradually. My parents have this problem, living
just after a junction. The correct method is to slow down but not signal
until after the junction.

If following motorists get irate, that's their problem.

--
Mark.
http://tranchant.plus.com/

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 09:39:04 +0100, Richard
.address.uk wrote:

Lane 1 contains a ****ing huge tanker,
approaching at speed, the driver gazing *behind* me and showing
absolutely no sign of slowing. Our courses are such that I'm going to
end up somewhere under the middle of his rig if one of us doesn't do
something.

Damn I hate that. I ride past several large distribution depots
daily, so often as I approach an entrance to a roundabout there is a
truck thundering up, and I wonder if the bugger is going to stop.
Brakes covered and stand by to bail out, is my usual approach.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

Richard wrote:

But, FFS, how much (lack of) observation does it take to miss a 6' lardy
******* in a fluorescent yellow top?!


Well you were wearing standard issue urban camouflage ;-)


--
Tony

"A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought" Lord
Peter Wimsey (Dorothy L. Sayers)