Sheffield. Riding against the flow of traffic

No thanks and especially not on either of those two stretches of road. I do cut down the one way road behind Ponds Forge on my commute to work but that’s not really comparable. In fact pretty sure a cyclist was seriously injured in a collision only a few weeks ago in Rivelin.

It's probably someone emphasising their right to cycle there and that they don't need a license to use the roads.

I was visiting a few weeks back, waiting in the car at the front of a traffic lights queue - on red. A car appeared from behind and pulled in front. Cheeky, I thought. Then they proceeded to dodge the traffic and carry straight on - still red. Maybe an emergency, maybe Sheffield roads a law unto themselves.

Is it technically legal ?

Always strikes me as stupid tho'

In fact pretty sure a cyclist was seriously injured in a collision only a few weeks ago in Rivelin.

Not surprised sadly - certainly the outer stretches of it (away from town) are quite fast and traffic gets impatient and there's not *quite* enough room to safely overtake but there is *just about* enough room to tempt drivers into squeezing past. If it was a foot or two wider, no issues. A foot or two narrower and people would be more inclined to wait. But that width is horrible, it's about 2 cars plus 0.75 of a bike.

Going into town, the gradient means cyclists can go fast enough to minimise the impatience; going out of town it's mostly just about uphill enough to drop the average roadie speed down to low double digits, that exact speed that motorists can't stand and will try to overtake at the first opportunity, no matter how slight.

As to why someone would be riding on the wrong side of it... 🤯

Yep, it’s a nasty stretch of road. Even though none of the trails by the river are technically legal I’d always use them and avoid the road all the way to the junction with the A57 when I lived locally. Article here about the cyclist.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-66970912

I once came up on someone doing this while I was riding.

As we came face to face I slower down as I wasn't sure which side we'd pass each other on.

"Other side mate" I said, the response came "any f****** side you c*"

Sheffield's roads are some of the most dangerous in the country... The most dangerous for child fatalities. We've just been given over a million to sort out safety on Eccy road and we've had councillors reopening roads, going against the recommendation of their own officers and 1500 page reports because they've had a few negative letters. A councillor in Crookes said we'd have to wait 10-20 years or till someone dies before getting dangerous junctions (for both drivers and people) updated. The newest cycle lane in the city, all 15m of it is 100% into incoming traffic & at a point where the road layout has changed so drivers aren't sure what they are doing. It's a total shitshow that the mainly Labour half of the council are pushing into Tory culture war territory.

I've been told the speed cameras on Rivelin were taken out because they weren't catching anyone 🤦

A councillor in Crookes said we’d have to wait 10-20 years or till someone dies

I was told the same here in Totley. In fact, there’s a new signalled crossing which was installed a couple of years ago next to the primary school on the main road directly as a consequence of a pupil being killed. I find it astonishing the policy is to only react when there’s evidence of deaths or serious injuries instead of preventative interventions.

A friend knows the poor sod in the above accident. Apparently he was just cycling normally when the car came across his side of the road and took him out. No other vehicles around. So it's not just bikes that choose to use the wrong side of the road 

Is it legal? Seems ludicrous if so.

I find it astonishing the policy is to only react when there’s evidence of deaths or serious injuries instead of preventative interventions.

Yep, it's completely the opposite way round to any other service or industry.
You don't wait for a kid to drown at the swimming pool before thinking about employing a lifeguard. But in driving, it seems perfectly normal to wait until there are x serious injuries before actually bothering to do anything at all. And even then, the intervention is usually the most minor one possible, either because it's the cheapest or more often because anything that might cause even the slightest delay to a Very Important Driver is thrown out immediately.

What's the betting that the pedestrian crossing that @tuboflard refers to ^^ only changes to green for pedestrians once all the Very Important Cars have passed and the road is empty anyway?! Can't possibly cause delay to a driver but it's fine to allow pedestrians to stand there in the rain for 90 seconds before the lights actually change....

You’re clearly a regular user of the crossing @crazy-legs, it does exactly that.

@turboflard.

Their argument was they don't have enough money to make all roads safe so give priority to proven dangerous roads but this is obviously bs, if you overlay a map of incidents and fatalities over road changes there's very little correlation. They also omitted the fact that at every opportunity they have refused to increase the highways budget and that they've been happy to refinance the world student games four times to a total of £670 million and have either demolished, replaced of made plans to replace most of its legacy before full payment has finished and to refinance the Streets ahead contract which is another total shitshow which children not even born yet will end up having to pay for in their council tax despite significant parts of the 25 year upgrade needing redoing less than 10 years in. The money is there when they want to spend it, they just don't want to spend it on road safety. Sorry, got a bit ranty there.

In relation to crossings, most are on 30+mph roads so if you wait just one minute then you're also waiting for every car on that road for at least half a mile to pass through before it changes.

I tried cycling on the right once when out in my unicycle on a country road. As luck would have it, the first vehicle coming towards me arrived at just the same time as one coming the opposite way.

No one knew what to do and everyone just came to a stop. Gave it up after that experiment.