I agree with you on this one, I’ve seen it too so it’s not like you don’t have a point here. I guess they fear the cyclist will make a sudden and unpredictable move hence the urge to overtake them. That’s why for me, personally, cycling is only recreational. But to be fair I didn’t actively look to be less dependant on car or public transportation. I don’t see myself getting nicely dressed and wearing a skirt and hoping on my bicycle…for instance. I guess if you’re the sporty type always wearing casual stuff then that’s never an issue for you.
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What’s a yellow lane?
I’m not sure why you think that when a line of yellow paint is painted on the road, the need for a minimum passing distance disappears.
Does the yellow pain have magical protective properties=
If a large lorry passes to the left of the cyclist in your photo but keeps off the yellow line, he’s still just a few centimetres from the cyclist.
I hate those yellow lines: As a cyclist, you end up cycling in the gutter along with broken glass and slippery drain covers and they give drivers the idea that they can drive past cyclists without moving out at all.
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Never saw that movie and that woman is not nicely dressed! Wearing a skirt doesn’t necessarily make one look elegant or formal.
I know men want to see women’s butts and can understand to a certain extent but… 
Anyway, I can assure you I’m not that frivolous, never was.
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I think they are great and cars respect them. I don’t care much whether someone passes me with 50 or 150 cm distance as long as my space behind the line is safe. And yes, they are magic but only if you have the magic stick.
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Where did I write that?
It’s a massive stretch to extrapolate one comment about one accident that I witnessed into that.
I think you mean “drivers respect them”. People talk about cyclists. Why not drivers?
I often see headlines such as “car drives into cyclist” rather than “car drives into bike” or “Car driver drives into cyclist”.
I think it’s subconscious bias again by people to make it appear that it’s never the driver’s fault.
If a headline wasn’t “car drives into cyclist” but “Car driver scrolling Twitter drives into cyclist” it may make people think more.
This isn’t directed at you but a general comment on media bias.
Jeez, keep you hair on. I was simply trying to explain that if there are less accidents or near misses in your nieghbourhood then you are less likely to see one or be involved in one.
You really don’t need to read anything else into it than that. Actually, why are you?
Maybe a good time to follow your own advise.
This video is quite a good study into it. Warning, it starts off a bit triggering if you are an ardent cyclist but it comes good in the end…
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I thought my reply to your post was an interesting and thoughtful comment on media bias but instead of replying to that, you ignored it and chose to reply to a post I made to someone else entirely.
???
I did not ignore your “thoughtful” comment. I just thought you were splitting hairs and got hung up on semantics. But I guess when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I’m seen similar.
Some points that are relevant (in the UK):
88% of cyclists sometimes break the law.
85% of motorists sometimes break the law.
The point being made in the video is that a cyclist breaking the law is generally (and statistically) an inconvenience at most.
A motorist breaking the law can lead to death and life-changing injuries.
“Motorists see the speed limit not as a limit, but as a target”.
@Komsomolez -yellow lines are white in the UK. From the video, here is a lorry driver “respecting the line”:
A friend of mine had life-changing mental distress when he saw a lorry come too close to a girl on a bike, caught her handlebars knocked her off and drove over her head with her brain splattering everywhere.
A line painted on a road may be better than nothing but it offers NO protection.
Better laws protect cyclists more.
Real life doesn’t agree with your “Drivers respect painted lines” thinking:
Painted advisory cycle lanes increase risk of cyclist casualties, study finds
A study of cyclist casualties in London has found that painted advisory cycle lanes increase the risk of cyclist casualties, with the authors urging that highways authorities cease installing lanes of that type and convert existing ones into protected cycle lane
advisory cycle lanes – those marked with a broken white line*, and which motorists are allowed to enter – caused the odds of injury to increase by 34 per cent.
*These are similar to the yellow broken lines in Switzerland.
You can bring up as many irrelevant London examples as you like. My perception is based on my riding here in Switzerland, and I never felt unsafe when riding on such a lane. All issues I have encountered were when there was no such lane.
I have to say I agree about the pseudo-lanes, always have since these started appearing in some places in the UK >30 years ago. In town you’ve got drain covers, badly-parked cars and pedestrians getting too close, out of town it’s the broken glass and other road debris that gets piled up there.
And I certainly never found that they made car drivers keep further away - if anything the reverse because they looked at where the line was and not at the cyclist.
I’m still sceptical about the idea of a mandated minimum passing distance though, and i can see why it might not be passed - advisory distances, with campaigns to inform about them, are all well and good, but a law would be virtually unenforceable and potentially cause more resentment among motorists, and I’m not at all convinced it would have the desired effect.
Tom uses this as an example of Swiss government anti-cyling policies but it seems more likely to me that they simply don’t want to add another complexity that stands little chance of actually having a positive impact.
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When I have pointed out there are bad drivers her in Switzerland in the past, people have always made the point that Switzerland has a large foreigner population.
London has a large foreigner population too.
I’ve had many, many issues with such lanes and close passing lorries and trucks.
They are incredibly useless and offer no protection.
A law for a minimum passing distance would allow dangerous motorists to be prosecuted.
And yet most other European countries have implemented such a law.
If someone replies saying Switzerland is special, or different are they implying that it is special in that derogatory way or what?
Not a valid reason for not introducing a law. I suppose laws on child porn cause resentment amongst paedophiles too.
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