Richmond Park Cyclists’ co-founder responds to critics of controversial Code of Conduct

There's a few bits of this CoC which really beggar belief.

There is no single place in Richmond Park where it is safe for a car to overtake a cyclist when there is a car coming the other way. Not one.

Yet the code tells riders to single out where they can to allow overtakes. This is absolute madness. If it's not safe to overtake two riders, it's not safe to overtake one when there's a car coming the other way. Everyone knows it's easier to overtake a short line of riders two-abreast rather than a long single line.

Let alone the fact that many of these two-abreast groups are parents with kids who they ride on the outside of for protection.

RPC seem to have no interest in making the park safe for riders.

Incredibly frustrating.

Just on the "motorists can be frightened too" line... I initially thought "oh come on, bike vs 2 tons of steel" but then remembered a time when I was driving and almost had an involuntary motion.

Mine was the lead car at a traffic light on the A8 heading west out of Edinburgh. Busy road most of the time, multiple lanes but still 30 mph limit. Just as the light went green, a bloke on a BMX shot across in front of me, at right angles and about a metre from my bonnet. He'd come from the right, I guess down the road to the right of the cross roads, which is about a 4% gradient I suppose. I saw him in my peripheral vision just in time.

If I'd been slightly quicker off the line, I'd have run him down, or he'd have ploughed into the side of my car. Either would have been very shocking - the former obviously far worse than the latter. Luckily all I had to do was stay stationary.

Did this guy (not child-sized, at least mid teens skater guy) "come out of nowhere"? Well, pretty much. Should I have predicted it? He was moving pretty quickly and not in a direction I was at all anticipating a hazard to come from. Would I have reacted correctly in the millisecond I would have had if already moving? I don't really know.

So I can understand why some car drivers are spooked by some cyclists. No one wants to be part of someone else's hideous death, no matter if the personal physical danger is zero. And the fear of this may make some drivers react unpredictably - without malice, some drivers are not at all confident when under pressure. Should they be on the road? Doesn't really matter - they are on the road.

Hence when riding in traffic I try to think whether I'm in blindspots, or if my riding will seem unpredictable to an averagely rubbish driver. Just part of the defensive stuff I do, on 2 or 4 wheels.

Why can't they just stop vehicles entering the park altogether?  Why can't there just be one large open space where people can enjoy themselves without being in fear for their safety, and without pollution and noise, from motor vehicles?

Maybe just at weekends, if motorists find the prospect of being prevented from doing Important Things too terrifying.

I feel broadly similar to other comments here - there's nothing intrinsically wrong with trying to improve the behaviour of all cyclists using the park, and it's noble to attempt to challenge the unruly behaviour of some small minority of them.

But if I were to go for a ride in the park (which I haven't in years, because of the volume of traffic there now), had a lovely time abiding by this code but then got close passed by someone driving at 30mph in a 20 zone (probably a 20% chance of this happening on any given ride in the park), and then handed one of these cards at the coffee shop, I would be seriously miffed.

Like, what did I do wrong? Why am I suddenly receiving advice on what I ought to be doing?

This CoC all reads as perfectly reasonable to me and well done to the guys organising it for engaging in positive dialogue to try and improve relations. Anyone up in arms for being asked to basically to obey the highway code while practicing basic good manners needs to take their head for a wobble.

Why would anyone be frightened that a cyclist is a bit close? It's 100kg v 1500 kg where the driver is also enclosed in a safety cage and with 4 wheels

Even if the cyclists is 4m away, they will still appear large in the rear view mirror so the driver will still be frightened (although their remedy is really to hand in their licence).

I don't think your code helps me - it needs sections on the rights of cyclists and explanations of cyclists' behaviours.

Plenty of footage has been posted on this site showing the danger that vehicles pose to cyclists and the incompetence of those driving, so it is not surprising that people on this site push back against your code.

Despite the good intentions, the code is rediculous. Cyclists are not the problem, and never have been. Neither is their behaviour, while bad behaviour is antisocial, and not condoned, it doesn't really put anyone other than the individual at risk. We should not be saying sorry for the tiny minority, but fighting the elephant in the room. Traffic is the problem. Traffic is the killer. Traffic must be banned from the park (and all parks). Not just through traffic either, but the car parks in the middle need to be moved or removed. Nobody goes to the park to see cars and breath fumes, we go to parks to get away from that. Inconvenient? Tough, it's in London, with the best public transport in the country. The only possible excuse to bring a car to the park is if you are disabled or have mobility issues, or is there for work within the park

I'm torn on this one.

On the one hand, there really are some obnoxious people on bikes who frequent the park, and I get why RPC might want to distance themselves from that behaviour, and they might feel like they're not really conceding anything to motorists by publishing a fairly standard list of what they see as common sense. (You might disagree about whether all of those are common sense, or you might word some of them differently, but try and ignore the details there for a bit to focus on just the question of whether publishing a code of conduct is helpful at all.) Other sports (surfing, skiing, for example) have formal or informal codes of conduct that are helpful to encourage safe behaviour from newcomers and generally keep things amiable. E.g. give way to people down hill, don't drop in on someone else's wave (unless you're the ex-Prime Minister, etc). 

On the other hand, neither of those sports suffer from the extreme power imbalance that cyclists experience on the roads, and I worry that the code of conduct will just be used as a way to further criticise and other "cyclists" as a whole. I'm already following all of the guidelines in the code of conduct, just like I'm already following all of the MUSTs and SHOULDs in the Highway Code, and it hasn't led to any better treatment from drivers. I don't know what the solution is... but I don't think it's handing out printed copies of the code to cyclists. 

It sounds as if the people behind the code are well-intentioned. I am still concerned about it, though.

First some of the wording. Always ride on the left-hand side of the road gives people an excuse to berate anyone riding in primary or secondary, or even overtaking on the right-hand side of the road. Motorists can be frightened too and the rest of that point sound ridiculous and like victim-blaming. 

Second, the political dimension.  Who is RPC accountable to? Whom does it really represent? What are the intended and unintended outcomes of publishing a code of conduct? Politicians are frustratingly careful with words. They need to be or their words come back to haunt them. Chris Campbell says that the code shows cyclists are ordinary people. I think he is wrong.

I think that RPC have good intentions. I just hope that they can get someone politically astute on their team to position this code far better for people on bikes.