I heard from my friend Pete, a Brit, who tells me that whoever told me that Great Britain is similar to the Netherlands in that the motorist is always at fault in car/bike "accidents" is fulla BS. That is NOT the case, he says, and moreover, there is a tonne (yes, that's how they spell it) of motorist hostility there that of course I did not see from my safe perch on the pavement (sidewalk).
So can you trust the rest of my observations? I hope so.
If I misinform you, I will hear from Pete and he will gently correct me...and then I will correct myself on this page. Pete also had a memorably bad experience at Condor Cycles years ago. I enjoyed my hour there, half upstairs in the bike shop section, half downstairs where they sell bikes and frames.
More about Condor Cycles later.
I believe I brought my respiratory distress down on myself while Tamar and I were away. I use a steroid nasal spray. As you know, when you pack to fly, you put all the liquids in a plastic bag and set that bag apart from the rest of your gear as you go through security.
Somehow the spray got lost during that process and I did not use it for the two weeks we were away. Just before we left London my nasal passages rebelled and I felt awful for several days. When I found the bottle and started using the spray again, I started to feel better.
I will not make that same mistake again. I guess I am dependent on that med, correct? If you have had a similar experience, let me know in the comments or via email, please.
Filtering, or lane-splitting as we call it here in the States, has just become legal here in Colorado. The state is sponsoring ads on TV to inform motorists that it is legal. I feel sure that the state is doing that to avoid the mayhem that might ensue when drivers see motorcyclists take advantage of the narrowness of their vehicles to move ahead in stopped traffic, and the drivers turn into vigilantes.
In London traffic, scooter riders and motorcyclists ride through traffic between the cars, around the cars, across the gaps between the cars, any way they can. No one minds. The cars can't move anyway. Not an inch of forward progress is lost. It's no skin off their noses. No horns sound.
The cyclists ride anywhere there is room for them. They are alert, they seem to understand the rhythm of the moving traffic, they are NOT riding slowly, they are (as John Forester would've said) part of traffic.
As I watched, I felt that they had better, more aware drivers to ride six inches from than we do. I am sure that UK drivers are just as preoccupied and distracted as our drivers but just observing the apparent trust shown by urban cyclists in London traffic had to mean SOMEthing. Didn't it?