Home of the bin chicken. Visit our friends:
Sent home at 11 am yesterday. Drove home of course and then I promptly had a nap for an hour.
Strong winds for today apparently. I can't recall if I already bought Lotto tickets for tonight and Thursday. I should knock it back to just Thursdays I reckon.
Edit. Oops I. Bought tickets for tonight and Thursday, only to look at my emails stating that I have already bought some for those two days. So I've doubled up. So it's probably "see you later suckers" as of tonight......
Second comment because I just remembered. On my way home yesterday in the rain I got stuck behind one of those three wheel post trike machines. He simply sat in the middle of the road going through Wynumm. No riding into the side part where cars were occasionally parked so I could pass which frustrated me a little. I have done that often way back when I rode a 50 cc Vespa. Now maybe it's policy to simply ride along in the middle of the road giving motorists no chance to overtake, I really don't know. But as I said it was frustrating. Well all of a sudden he erratically steered towards the centre line then bang hit hit a pot hole pretty hard. Maybe he was trying to avoid it but failed miserably. If he had stuck to the far left of the lane in the first place he would have avoided it. Well anyway he severely then veered to the left and pulled over. I think he may have damaged his rig. I felt somewhat smug driving off into the distance watching him stop in the lane to the left where cars occasionally park.
( Yes I know I'm not being pleasant, so try not to beat me too much. )
No riding into the side part where cars were occasionally parked
This is extremely good riding practice. Porpoising in and out of parked cars is exceptionally dangerous for a cyclist, because you have no idea if a car coming up behind you is going to let you back into the lane when you approach the next car. Or even if they'll see you there. Drivers are exceptionally good at SMIDSYing cyclists. The safest, smartest thing for a cyclist to do when on the road is ride right in the centre of the lane and stay there, except when there is a dedicated bike lane that:
I wouldn't recommend leaving the road for a bike lane unless it meets all of those conditions for at least a good 30 seconds, and that's in ideal conditions where you can easily shoulder check and see that only one or two cars are waiting to pass. The more cars there are, and the more adverse other conditions (including weather, hills, bends, etc.), the longer you need to do it safely.
If you were frustrated, I would strongly encourage you to advocate loudly and clearly for better cycling infrastructure. The bare minimum should be that the Queensland state government should not allow councils or themselves to pat themselves on the back for "X kilometres of bike lanes!" if those bike lanes also allow parking. Other states don't allow it, and neither should we. Call or write to your state MP and tell them that. They like to claim things like "oh, but that would mean we wouldn't have nearly as much safe cycling infrastructure", to which the obvious response is "no, it would mean your stats would reflect the reality of what safe infrastructure you actually have."
You could also call or write to your local councillor (or state MP, depending on who owns the road where this occurred) to tell them that specific spot needs better cycling infrastructure, and explain the incident with the pothole and how the lack of cycling infrastructure and pothole combined to create a dangerous situation.
As for what you should have done in the circumstances. Well, I don't know what road you were on, but the most straightforward answer is "go into the right lane and overtake there". So insanely few roads in Brisbane aren't at least two lanes each way. It really should be more common, for a variety of reasons. But for now that's not the case, and it fixes this situation entirely. If it was one lane each way, remember: you are allowed to cross a solid white line, even a solid double line, if safe to do so, in order to overtake a cyclist while giving the required 1/1.5 m. If it's not safe to do so, just be patient. Everyone is just trying to get safely to their destination. Your desire to get their faster is far, far less important than their need to get there safely.
Thank you for this explanation. I'm a cyclist and a car driver and appreciate you explaining this properly.
Its so much safer to take the lane, or someone will always think they can 'just squeeze past' because the sky will fall in if they have to wait another three seconds.
I see they do it to buses too.
I hear everything you said and fully understand. In this case he could easily have at least gone close to the white line on the left giving me ample opportunity to pass safely. But no he remained dead centre of the lane. I could have overtaken by going into the other side of the road, but the wet conditions made me think better of it. I mean he could've just pulled over to let cars pass. That wouldn't be too difficult as he was going very very slow. As I said maybe that's what their protocol is. They usually travel along the pavement, if he wanted he could have done that. Hey I'm not losing sleep over it, I was just telling a story.
he could easily have at least gone close to the white line on the left
Even worse than going into the parking lane entirely. Not only does this put you in the door zone of all those parked cars you're passing, it also encourages dangerous overtakes. To overtake a cyclist safely, you need to be able to safely go into the next lane. Whether that's another lane in the same direction, or an oncoming traffic lane. Because a standard 3.5 m lane, with a cyclist riding 30 cm from the left edge, is going to put the cyclist's right handlebar at least 0.7 m into the lane (my smallest bike has 42 cm handlebars—any mountain bike or casual city bike is going to be bigger, and frankly so are most racing road bikes—so I've rounded down here). Add one metre to overtake (if the speed limit is 60 km/h or less), and that means the leftmost edge of a car's wing mirror needs to be at least 1.7 metres away from the left edge of the lane. Add the width of a small car (remembering to include the mirrors—the width you usually find on a basic spec sheet ignores them) at 1.9 m, and you're now 10 cm into the oncoming traffic lane. And that's using the very best case scenario. Talk about larger cars, non-racing bikes, and allow for a little wiggle room because no cyclist is riding a dead straight line, and neither is the driver, and you realistically need to be going half a metre or more into the oncoming lane.
By riding on the left edge, what actually ends up happening is a cyclist is encouraging drivers to ignore all of that, and to just try to "squeeze past". Forget that 1 metre minimum passing distance, and you can probably fit just fine without going into the other lane. But doing that means you're now endangering the cyclist's life. Inexperienced cyclists often do this, because they think they're being courteous. But the smart, safe thing to do, is to take the centre of the lane. Because if a car has to go into the next lane to pass you safely anyway, might as well make it very clear to them that "hey, you have to go all the way into the next lane to overtake me: no overtaking if there's oncoming traffic." In Australia we usually call this "taking the lane". Overseas some people also call it "riding in the primary position".
But I reiterate: contact your state MP and councillors. Do it today, while it's fresh in your mind. Make sure they know that even as a driver, you want to see them ban parking in bike lanes (or ban designating something a "bike lane" if parking is going to be allowed there) and you want more separated cycling infrastructure. That's what we really need to get rid of the need for this entire conversation.