Bike immunity

[j4]

Well, I haven't done a poll for a while. Why now? Why not? I could point out that since moving to Zone 7 I've had a longer cycle ride into work, which has given me more opportunities to observe the behaviour of the Cambridge cyclist in its natural habitat (a dishonourable mention should go to the flock of language students who tried to turn right from the wrong side of Gonville Place into the wrong side of Mill Road at the Parkside junction the other morning -- judging from their screeches of laughter they thought it was the height of hilarity that they nearly caused a multi-vehicle pile-up) but really the main reason for this poll is curiosity. I'm interested to know about people's cycling habits, and their reasons for doing the things they do. (For what it's worth, my own answers should make it clear that I don't have any kind of moral high ground here!)

Please do fill in the poll if you cycle at all, however rarely. I can't promise I'll be able to produce any kind of useful write-up of the results, but if you'll all just humour me and my insatiable curiosity, I'll see what I can do.



Edit: I can't edit the actual poll, but damerell and mobbsy have pointed out a couple of areas of fuzziness in the questions. So, just to clarify the questions about cycling on pavements:

- by "pavements" I mean those which are not explicitly marked as shared-use
- accessing property from the nearest dropped kerb doesn't count, because you can do that in a car as well.

[Poll #593054]

Comments

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

My answers are untruths in the following respects:

I've cycled twice on the pavement accompanying L. to school; many parents do this along the relevant stretch. I then decided this wasn't a reasonable thing to do, and now regret having done so.

Apart from that, I'll occasionally cycle at walking pace on a pavement to get round an obstruction in the road, for instance on Trinity Street in the morning (but not if it's going to put me in near conflict with a pedestrian).

All of my other "never" answers are I think reasonable descriptions of current behaviour, but don't reflect my behaviour in the (now quite distant) past.

There's a (literal) grey area around the first early dusk of each year, when I invariably get caught out without lights in the rather ambiguous time before the street-lights come on, but after many car drivers have started switching their lights on ...

Another question that would have been interesting would have concerned cycling while unfit through consumption of alcohol or drugs ...