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news
Motorway Sign.jpgCyclist spotted speeding up M56 hard shoulder with hands off the bars
A young cyclist was spotted speeding past gridlocked traffic on the M56 this week with his hands off the bars - sparking a fruitless police hunt.
The young man was photographed riding casually - without a helmet - along the hard shoulder at around 5pm on Monday.
Paul Monks, a passenger who saw him near junction three of the M56 where it meets the M60, said he believed he joined the motorway at Wythenshawe.
Paul told the Manchester Evening News: “We were in traffic and he was moving faster than us. I saw him coming up in the wing mirror. I had to take a picture of it. He didn’t even have his hands on the handlebars. He was messing about with his earphones and changing the song from what it looked like to me.
“I thought he was really taking a gamble. He just shot past us. It’s obviously a bit dangerous.”
A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police confirmed motorists had reported a cyclist ‘pedalling like crazy’ on the hard shoulder.
Earlier this month we reported how A family of four, who are believed to be from outside of the UK, were escorted from the hard shoulder of the A74(M) motorway in Scotland.
Police received reports from drivers that two adults and two children were cycling on the hard shoulder of the Scottish motorway in Dumfries and Galloway.
The family were found by police near the town of Beattock on the motorway - which stretches 48 miles from Gretna in the south all the way up to Abington in South Lanarkshire - before being escorted off.
The police reports say that the family were traveling southbound near Beattock, which would suggest that the family were helped off the road at junction 15.
If that was the case, and the family were escorted off the road at junction 15 near Beattock, speculation suggests that they may have joined the motorway at junction 14 - which is 14 miles away.
Whether or not the family spent 14 miles on the hard shoulder is unknown at this point, fortunately though there have been no reports of the family coming to any harm. The police have also reported that no further action will be taken.
In February of this year a 12-year old boy was found by Greater Manchester Police cycling on the M60 near Barton Bridge.
The police said he was escorted from the motorway, taken home, and "strongly advised" against cycling on the motorway in front of his parents.
Cycling on motorways is not permitted in the UK.
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27 comments
never mind that the arsehole stole my M56 KOM !!!
@STiG911
I might be getting this wrong, but I think Bezs point is not that cycling on the hard-shoulder of a motorway is safe or legal (in fact he says "Cycling on motorways is not only illegal, it’s dangerous") - it's rather the insanity that there is actual dedicated provision for cycling, explicitly designed and constructed, which is significantly more dangerous. Which is bonkers...
There is clearly a sub-set of people who are, as he puts it, 'ultra-vehicularist cycling enthusiasts for whom the “right to ride” mantra has become dogma which has expunged from them any form of sense whatsoever' - a sub-set not entirely missing from road.cc comment sections - but Bez really doesn't come across as a member.
I'd far rather cycle on the hard shoulder of a motorway (currently illegal), than on a busy dual carriageway with virtually no hard shoulder, and vehicles doing 70mph+.
The headline is "Cyclist spotted speeding up M56 hard shoulder with hands off the bars"
'speeding' almost always in this context means travelling faster than the speed limit.....
The crime here wasn't cycling on the hard shoulder but cycling faster than the traffic on the motorway. Nothing winds em up more.
We are so far down the pecking order it almost defies belief and it's been going on so long I don't even think about it now, I've become immune to the idiocy of road planners and the lunatic behaviour of drivers. It is a fact, plain and simple, that each of us knows a dozen examples of unsafe or dangerous roads.
Let's think about this particular motorway cyclist for a minute. I know from bitter experience that he is much safer here than riding along the A27 out of Portsmouth. On that 'A' road he would be mixing it with 80 mph trucks and cars whereas on the M-way he is a comfortable 3 metres away from danger.
So we have here a situation where he is allowed, expected even, to ride where the danger is greater than in a place where it is so dangerous it is against the law.
You couldn't make it up.
> So you actually think cycling on the hard shoulder of a Motorway is safe????
Well Highways England does, so what's the problem? /s
http://singletrackworld.com/columns/2016/07/how-to-design-a-death/
You beat me to it - I was going to post that link!
A) Thats a slip road, not a Hard Shoulder
B) Doesn't change the fact that cycling on a Motorway is illegal
No, it doesn't change anything, but if you actually read the whole article, you'll see it highlights how nonsensical it is that Highways England infrastructure positively encourages cycling on a narrow shoulder of a 70mph dual carriageway, but that it is illegal to ride on the hard shoulder on a motorway. There is nothing that makes the dual carriageway any safer than a motorway.
Did you read the article?
Did you not spot that "unsafe" and "illegal" are different words?
No-one's disputing that it's illegal, obviously. The point was that whilst riding on the hard shoulder of a motorway is illegal and unsafe, it provides a useful reference point: it's illegal because it's dangerous, but—even without the traffic queuing at below cycling speed—it's less dangerous than using certain specifically-provided cycling infrastructure.
Yep - I read the article. The first picture shown is clearly a slip road, not a Hard Shoulder. The picture you posted isn't a hard Shoulder either, it's a pointless cycle lane on a dual carriageway. Which, frankly I wouldn't use no matter how big it was. I'd rather be safer on a quieter alternative route, thanks. (Although I would point out the masses of room there is to the left for a segregated lane, which would be nice - there's several in my area)
I don't care how 'safe' you think it is, cycling on a Motorway is illegal. Whining about the amount of unsafe or downright stupid infrastructure for cyclists isn't going to change that, nor give you the right to do it regardless of how slow the sodding traffic is.
Suppose the Emergency Services need to reach an accident scene using the Hard Shoulder but can't because they have to keep slowing down to pass cyclists? Genius.
Yes or a bus lane in town. If cyclists used these imagine the amount of deaths they'd cause by slowing down the emergency services.
When your views start to sound like Katie Hopkins, you need to take a step back:
http://www.lbc.co.uk/katie-hopkins-fumes-at-ride-london-cycling-event--1...
I think the point of that when not taking to the Katie Hopkins extreme is emergency vehicles on the hard shoulder are not travelling at 30-40mph, but 70-80mph plus. It's not particularly safe anyway, add the danger of cyclists and having to slow down considerably to get to an emergency to avoid that danger is counter productive.
I don't think anyone at all is arguing that it's safe or wise to cycle on a hrad shoulder, because it's neither.
The point, really, is that the best we can salvage from this site's habit of posting articles that basically amount to media trolling is to ignore that trolling and instead use the subject to frame a more useful discussion. In this case, that's about putting some perspective around the lamentable provision on arterial routes in general.
Frankly, I wish road.cc would do that rather than leaving its readers to do it in the comments, but as far as the news section is concerned they seem to value clicks over constructive output.
I get buzzed 50 to 60mph on my rides in and out of Edinburgh to my regular spots every weekend. Talking like 2 meters and drafts from trucks. Used to it now but its definitely a lottery out there. Wonder how many riders get hit on my regular route, love to know. Wonder what the absolute closest I've ever been buzzed is. Sub-1m? Best not to think about it.
Getting hit at 50 to 60mph on my A roads, or 70+ on a hardshoulder is the same deal to me. Instant death.
Less chance of getting hit on a hard shoulder I reckon though. Funny when you see the trajectory of passing cars. Quite a few buzz you - then begin to move into the next lane - as if overtaking an invisible cyclist 10 meters in front! Those guys are comedy.
I prefer the 'won't overtake' types. Usually in a Honda Jazz and unless they have 400m of clear road, prefer to sit uncomfortably behind, meanwhile also building up a nice queue of people who probably then believe it's your fault somehow.
At least these people understand that
I would prefer to see more of these people and less of the idiots that overtake dangerously.
Just to add to this - you obviously think 400m visibility for an overtake is excessive. Research suggests otherwise:
http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/ddc/c8cxpa/further/CR_mater...
"It is also interesting to note that Hills (1980) believes that for overtaking and oncoming vehicle speeds of 50 mph, the total overtaking distance required is of the order of 500 yards, twice that recommended by Crawford (1963)." 500 yards = 457m.
Hills paper is here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7375327
Thats not relivant for slow moving or stationary vehicals.
I also agree about small car drivers being poor drivers in general.
Ah, you have a Proper Car and are god's gift to driving.
My only concern is the drafting from large HGV's etc. Having attended to rtc's and broken down vehicles on the hard shoulder it can be quite unnerving and the draft effect can be felt.
Mind you its something that you dont notice when driving past but the hard shoulder is littered with debris which brings its own problems.
Each to their own but I'll take an empty b road or lesser any time.
I've ridden the A1 up in Norn' Irn.
The section where it is effectively motorway - a 70 mph A-road dual carriageway with near motorway-standard barriers and hard-shoulders _feels_ very safe generally, bar taking care about crossing turn-offs slip roads (in worst case, stay left and go with the slip-road, and go back down the joining slip road). The hard shoulder gives you you own your lane away from the traffic - feels great!
Once the A1 changes from 'motorway' to 'bog standard dual-carriageway and the hard-shoulder disappears, it becomes _horrifically_ *frightening* to cycle on. I had to get off it ASAP, take the next junction and go down a warren of country lanes.
I would be happy to cycle on a motorway hard-shoulder. Indeed, that first section of 'motorway' A1, the hard shoulder actually felt *safer* and more pleasant than most 60 mph single-carriageway A-roads I have to cycle on.
It is one of the dark ironies of the "safety" culture in Britain that cycling in a dedicated lane 3+ metres away from 70 to 80 mph traffic is "OMG!!! DanGEROUS!! WHat aRE THEy THINKING!!!" and that such cyclist may well be escorted off to cycle on roads sharing lanes (often only tens of centimetres away from) 60 to 80mph traffic... Yay, safety.
"The young man was photographed riding casually - without a helmet-......"
Of what possible relevance is the fact that he wasn't wearing a helmet to this story? Are you going to blame him for not wearing a helmet if he has a collision? Come on road.cc, stop promoting helmets as if they are the magic solution to cycle safety, when they don't make any difference.
It sounds to me as if what he was doing was actually incredibly safe, passing stationary traffic. Not sure about wearing headphones though, as he might not hear an emergency vehicle using the hard shoulder.
So you actually think cycling on the hard shoulder of a Motorway is safe????
As has been said many times before, it's almost certainly safer than riding on many A-roads...