Extras waiting to take part in a film set.
The thing with Oxford is that nearly every British film, tv series seems to want to take some shots in the famous city. There have been so many murders in Inspector Morse, you must wonder if there’s any academics left…. I remember once watching a film set in Cambridge, and they cheated and got a sequence of the Radcliffe Camera in because it looked like Cambridge. I felt a suitable degree of self-righteous indignation. I think the film, was the young Sherlock. but, it didn’t fool me with my detective skills.
This scene above could have been an advert or a remake of Brideshead Revisited – who knows?
Entertainment for the morning commuters. A violinist plays Bach.
Have you ever been in a traffic jam on the motorway and you wonder why traffic came to a standstill? Then after 20 minutes of traffic jam, you realise there was no blockage in the road, but simply all the motorists slow down to have a look at the accident on the hard shoulder?
cones
that bike is very small, but everyone’s looking at the violinist.
If you get any closer, I’m going to hit you with this cardboard tube. A bus demonstrating how not to overtake a cyclist. Maybe this is the solution to enforce proper overtaking procedures – ride around with cardboard tube to enforce a suitably wide overtaking manoeuvre?
The double overtake. Mr TP Hire demonstrating how to pass a cyclist with 5cm to spare. Mr TP Hire also demonstrated the philosophy – ‘thou must never in any circumstances slow down or wait for safe moment to overtake.’
Play it again Sam, the lament of the short-distance commuter.
it’s an advantage to be able to cycle at 20mph in a 20mph zone, in theory, you can take the whole lane.
Looking across the road.
Related
Why not create your own bike lane? I’m not sure if these will catch on, but it’s quite an interesting rear light idea:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/bike-blog/2012/oct/22/red-laser-light-bike-lane
These photos illustrate an interesting point about on-street cycle lanes, particularly “advisory” cycle lanes as shown.
I’m sure you’re aware that rule 163 of the highway code states that motor vehicles should “give motorcyclists, cyclists and horse riders at least as much room as you would when overtaking a car”.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Highwaycode/DG_070314
This wording is obviously horribly ambiguous, but fortunately the text is accompanied by an illustration clearly showing a car passing roughly a car’s width away from a cyclist.
However, the cycle lane clearly gives the impression that as long as the motor vehicle does not cross the dashed line, they are OK, despite the fact this allows them to come much closer than rule 163 would suggest is acceptable.
Of course, in practice many drivers ignore rule 163 anyway, and no-one ever enforces it, so you have to wonder what the point is – it makes rather a mockery of the highway code – but if drivers did take notice of the rule, the cycle lane would potentially make cycling more dangerous by making it acceptable for drivers to pass more closely (as your photos show) especially since in fact drivers are officially allowed to both drive and park in the advisory cycle lane if they consider it “unavoidable”, whatever that means.
Obviously there is huge potential for misunderstandings here, and therefore conflict, and that’s why I’d much prefer the following:
Roads of 20mph or slower – don’t bother with on-street cycle lanes.
Faster roads – good quality segregated cycle paths.
I know this may sound naively optimistic of me, but we are all allowed to dream.