Photo: Cycle A 2 B
Hundreds of cyclists are set to get free training to help them get on the road.
[ Because it takes real skill to hold handlebars, move forwards, and roll your bike on to the carriageway.]
Britain’s largest cycle training company – Manchester-based BikeRight! – is offering the free training to adults in the city.
[ Cycling culture in Britain is burdened and suffocated with sectional vested interests which have no impact whatever on this country’s pitiful rate of cycling and which exist only to perpetuate their own self-interested existence. They are irrelevant to creating mass cycling and are frequently both a diversion from it and an obstacle to achieving it.]
It is working with Manchester council and local NHS chiefs to help people learn how to negotiate the city’s traffic.
[ Because Manchester council isn’t interested in building safe and convenient cycling infrastructure and neither is the NHS, which has a national chain of car parks with hospitals and surgeries attached, and which is run and staffed by sick, fossil fuel addicts in the grip of extreme car dependency. ]
Transport chiefs aim to make Manchester the capital of commuter cycling after the Manchester-based GB cycling team won seven gold medals at the Olympics.
[ A fatuous and meaningless target which will never be remotely achieved in the absence of Dutch-style cycling infrastructure is stupidly linked to sports cycling which is completely irrelevant to utility cycling. ]
BikeRight! spokesman Andy Tucker said: “Lots of people who want to give it a go are put off by busy roads or worried about accidents.
[ BikeRight! regards such well-founded and perfectly rational beliefs as an individual behavioural problem which needs addressing through the irrelevant and futile quack therapy supplied by BikeRight! ]
BikeRight! trains more than 20,000 people a year. The company is accredited by the Department for Transport.
[ The Department for Motor Vehicles is always keen to support collaborationist outfits which collude with the hegemony of the motor vehicle. ]
The training courses will teach people how to cycle safely, how to position themselves in the road and how to be seen by other traffic.
[ None of this crap would be seen as necessary if we had good Dutch-style cycling infrastructure. And remember that positioning yourself correctly in a British road will often lead to verbal abuse and sometimes physical violence from aggressive and impatient drivers who perceive you to be wilfully delaying them. Here's an example from Manchester. And it is not the duty of a cyclist to wear special clothing in order to be seen by inattentive drivers using mobile phones etc but rather the duty of a driver to concentrate and pay close attention to the road ahead. Outfits like BikeRight! are in complete denial of the existing condition of reckless and dangerous driving on Britain’s roads and, lethally, endeavour to adjust cyclists to it through good, sensible behaviour. ]
It will also show them how to find good cycling routes
[ These do not exist in Manchester. ]
how to cycle at night
[ Cycle at night in Manchester? Are you kidding? Cycling at night is best avoided if you wish to remain uninjured and alive. ]
or in bad weather, what equipment they will need
[ Because novices are baffled and confused by rain and will not have heard of raincoats etc ]
plus some tips on how to maintain their bike.
[ Maintain a bike? Who wants to maintain a bike? Fiddling around with a bike gets your fingers dirty and may result in damaged fingernails or grease marks on your clothes. Either get some rugged bloke of your acquaintance to do it or take it to a bike shop. Best of all, don’t bother maintaining it. A dirty, rusting bike is far less attractive to a bike thief than a nice shiny well-maintained one. ]
BUT PLEASE REMEMBER
There is one aspect of cycling where expert training and advice is invaluable.
Inflating a bicycle tyre in the correct manner involves special skill and experience, as helpfully demonstrated here.
