Word on the street

[j4]

To the dippy lady in the pink skirt and implausible shoes: did you see the red light? Do you think it doesn't apply to cyclists? Do you think you're just too good for the highway code? Or do you just not want to let your pink flowery slippers touch the nasty dirty road?

To the moron in the gigantic silver dickmobile: do you really have to park right across the pavement outside Sainsburys just so that your pikey friend doesn't have to walk more than 2 metres for her fags? And, when a passer-by who is walking with her bike comments that it's a pavement, not a parking space, do you really think that slamming on the brakes, leaning out of the window and incoherently bellowing "yeah it's not fucking pushbikes on the pavement is it?" is helping your case? (Two fingers don't make a right.)

And to the people who think that walking backwards into the road to take a photo is a sensible thing to do: WHAT FUCKING PLANET ARE YOU ON?

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

I might add, to the two young men in the swimming pool, what part of 'lengths only night' suggests that you should be swimming widths, and do you think when the signs say 'please do not congregate at the ends' they also might mean do not congregate in the middle. To the two old ladies in the swimming pool, the middle lane is for overtaking, not so you can swim sedately two abreast while gossiping inanely.

[missjudas.livejournal.com]

Bravo. Sooo many times I've wanted so say those things.

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

WHAT FUCKING PLANET ARE YOU ON?

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

This has been a content free comment brought to you by Highly Amused Productions (TM)

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Word!

[j4.livejournal.com]

Sigh, I write two focussed and more thought-out rants about education and stuff and then the one thing that gets a "Top rant" commendation is the off-the-cuff whinge about Another Day In Cambridge Traffic. :-}

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

Oh, the other stuff is super top rant, too. It's just too serious for me to feel comfortable with expressed guffawing and giggling; and there are serious issues there that I don't think I feel competent to try answering. In print, anyway.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Sorry; the other too are indeed excellent, well argued and berautiofully written, and very much on the money, but I'm just to mentally raped to contribute to them.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Who's been raping your brain? :-(

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Bad Men who want project plans and delivery dates from me.

You Won't Get Them!

Look, ma, top of the world

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

But...but...I didn't think you lived in Dublin!!

(I will just so not go into all the awful things that motorists here do, but rest assured that everything you mentioned there, as well as many idiocies you do not want to imagine, are common practice in this city, and if I had a Euro for every time I shouted "use your fucking indicators, arsehole", I would be able to buy a first edition of "The Chalet School in Exile".)

[j4.livejournal.com]

Ha! Have only been to Dublin once, and the traffic looked almost as bad as Cambridge except that there weren't as many millions of bikes. Particularly noticed the lack of fleets of language-school students (you can tell, because they all have identical bikes) who clearly have no idea about the rules of the road. But maybe that was because we were there in October, so out of the tourist/language-student season...

"Use your fucking indicators" happens a lot here, too, as does the less-ranty-more-snarky "Great signal!"

Both are frequently served with a side-order of "Don't they have red lights where you come from?", "Doesn't your mum let you ride on the road?", and "IT'S A FUCKING ONE WAY STREET!" Often, though, I only manage an incoherent "OI!" as some oaf nearly runs me over / steps into the road without looking / wobbles into the middle of the road on their bike because they're on the sodding phone or smoking (and I'm not sure which annoys me more). Grahhhh.

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

With practice, smoking whilst driving/riding a car/bike doesn't need any attention at all, and is, for practical reasons, to be considered safe. As long as one doesn't mind getting ash onto ones clothing.

That practice shouldn't me gotten in Real Live Traffic, though.

[j4.livejournal.com]

So even if you've got one hand to your lips with a ciggy, you can get to the brakes just as quickly as if you have both hands on the handlebars, resting over the brakes? That's impressive.

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

No. But I'm experienced enough to let the cig between my lips and grip the handles/brakes when I'm not ABSOLUTELY FUCKING SURE I won't need them for next 20 seconds or something. Same goes for the car. And the problem that a too-burn-up cig poses is the same (or less) on a bike than in a car: at most it takes a <spit>, and then deal with it later.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Ah, fairy nuff. The ones I see smokin'-and-bikin' are usually pikey lads with one hand on the fag and the other down by the side (with knuckles trailing on the floor, natch), trying to get through crowded streets full of dozy pedestrians.

Ach, perhaps I'm just excessively ranty because I have to cycle such a crappy route into work. Most of the streets on my way into work are streets which are, for some of the time, semi-pedestrianised. Most of them are also one-way. Most of them are full of cyclists using them when they're not supposed to, people thinking the roads are pedestrians-only when they're not [and so not looking], cyclists cycling the wrong way, and taxis [which appear to be exempt from all the laws of the roads] trying to carve a way through the whole sorry mess...

[senji.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that there are more cyclists cycling the wrong way than the right, too....

[senji.livejournal.com]

you forgot "Can't you tell your left from your fucking right, mate?"

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Do ignorant people ever shout 'Use your fucking indicators' at pto452?

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

I think that in that case I could easily buy a brand-spanking-new Mercedes, and'd still have more than enough left for not-ever-working-again for a living. And that's only counting the "use your indicators, asshole", not the other common idiocies one sees in traffic every day.

[imc.livejournal.com]

Oh, but you must know that red lights don't apply to cyclists…

Incidentally, to the bloke who parked on Mansfield Road this morning: it helps if you look for passing traffic before opening your door.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Try and time your braking so that the front wheel stops right up against his bollocks as he bounds out of the car into your path. This has a wonderful effect to concentrate the mind, or whatever it is that emerges from the squeaking between his ears.

[senji.livejournal.com]

I think you mean "it is illegal to open your door without looking for passing traffic".

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Some cyclists apparently really don't believe red lights apply to them. I don't know which subset of the red-light-passing cyclists don't know and which do know and don't care though, other than that neither are 0.

There are lot of users of ever kind of vehicle who could do with learning what the amber rules are, too...