A Town Called Hypocrisy

When we started on this adventure into internetland with this whole blog idea, the main thought was to publicly share stories of near-misses, and bad driving on the roads of our commute. It gives me great pleasure to return to that original mission with a tale from the tarmac of North London.

I slipped past traffic to the front of the traffic light queue this morning and took up a sensible position for turning right. That is, I was at the front of the advanced-stop box and right over to the right. When the lights changed I pulled forward to the middle of the junction, still in a right-turning position. I was in the middle of the road – and therefore not somewhere you might choose to cycle if you were to go straight on.

The lady in the unexciting blue, and possibly Korean, car behind me at the lights took the opportunity as she drove straight-on past me to scream at me to “signal”.

Ok. I wasn’t signalling. I only rarely do riding in London, relying on watching other vehicles and riding sensibly and with clear intentions. I probably should signal more. I’m sure the highway code says I should. Still, I think that being on the far right at lights, and then clearly moving forward to the middle of the road was indication enough.

Setting that aside there was a definite hypocrisy to the drivers comment. She had, in fact, stopped completely in the advanced-stop box at the lights, and thus had actually jumped the red light. For her to scream at me for not signalling does seem ironic considering the fixed-penalty-and-three-points-worthy manoeuvre she had just executed. Also, had she been in the right place she would have had plenty more time to see where I was going and not be so “inconvenienced” by my right turn. I hope she also remembers to signal in her car at every turn she takes.

So, a message to drivers: By all means tell cyclists they’ve got something wrong, but maybe make sure you’re obeying the rules of the road as well. If you break them, people are going to get a lot more hurt.

Maybe she was just one of those people who hate cyclists that the Telegraph has been on about (once again please feel free to guess at how many comments get made before someone mentions cyclists jumping red lights – if you’re right you can win an enormous sense of achievement that can be yours for the rest of the day, on me.)

A