The Cycling Debate!

Recently there has been heated debate about the cycleway being a waste of money.

IMO it is awesome and I would love to be able to one day cycle the length of the long white cloud without the fear of dying.

On my days off work I try to bike to as many places as possible.

My hairdresser now asks if she should bother styling my locks before I leave or will I just be squashing her hard work with my helmet, the staff at the pet shop help me squash the dog biscuits into my bag and I can always get straight into it at the gym as I have already warmed up by biking 3km to get there.

I drive to another town not quite 20km from where I live for work so am also a motorist and yes I too get pissed off at how some people ride. There's the biking in the middle of winter at dusk guy who wears his helmet on his handle bars and has no lights dressed in his dark overalls topped only by the serious cyclists riding two abreast on the far side of a blind bend in the road where anyone with common sense would not even go on a bike let alone risking a rear ending at 100KPH.

As a cyclist the thing that grates me the most is the behaviour of motorists at intersections and round-a bouts. I am careful at intersections as waiting a bit longer is not really going to make much difference to my day, but I get really peeved about people who feel the need to try and overtake just so they can turn left in front of me, or those who think that they can beat me when they should give-way to the left, they are idling and I'm doing close to 40kph. Thank god I have done a cycle safety course and know how to stop in a safe manner when at speed!

Thankfully for me I like my life and want to make it home every time I go out on my bike just as any motorist does so I try to make sure I pay close attention and am aware of and can hopefully avoid dangerous situations but for many people every-year getting home doesn't happen and that makes me sad!

I for one would be happy to pay a toll to use a cycle lane if it meant I could be safe away from traffic and able to get to my destination not having to worry about high speed collisions. I would even cycle the 35km round trip to work everyday if I had a safe alternative to biking on the open road. I would think that people who hate cyclists (as many claim in their comments) would be happy to see us off the road as it is now and far away from any  possibility of being an accident waiting to happen.

My husband recently got us some new bike lights called Monkey Lights

they are super bright and there is no way a motorist would be able to say they did not see us on the road although I do think there might be a possibility of it causing a few crashes due to rubber necking drivers trying to catch a glimpse of our cycling coolness!

follow the link below to watch a video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OptX6mYjONY