I have cameras built into the lights on my bike, front and rear plus a second light with radar on the back.
When I told my family this my, normally quite friendly, brother-in-law asked why.
I told him that it's not unusual to be threatened by drivers when cycling. Anything from close passes that make you jump to a passenger leaning out trying to put a plastic bag over my head.
He got quite angry and proceeded to tell me that cyclists "bring it on themselves and deserve what's coming to them" ...and we get on.
If I suggested waving a baseball bat at strangers on the street he'd rightly think I was mental but apparently if you're on a bike you're fair game.
It's not that unusual for randos I meet socially to say something like "lycra-clad MEN!, it's always men![1], need to get off the road and pay road tax![2], and stop riding through red lights[3] and wear NORMAL clothes![4]"
I could argue with all of that or call them an asshole but what's the point? It's best not to say anything.
It's not about truth or statistics it's about othering an out-group, cyclists and not feeling bad when you scare or hurt them.
1. I ride with lots of women in my bike club. They get just as much hassle but there's generally less kudos at parties in bragging that you tailgated the shit out of a lone woman because she was wearing tight clothes.
2. Road tax in the UK was abolished in 1937. No one here has to pay it and like most cyclists I also have a car.
3. As a point of pride I never ride through a red light but I do see drivers tailgate through red lights or on the wrong side of the road every single day.
4. If I'm going to get sweaty why wouldn't I wear comfortable kit? It's not like I wear a pair of jeans and a t-shirt to go swimming either.
As a cyclist in Scotland who's never had any trouble on the road, I was going to sympathise with your having to put up with a toxic culture in your country. But then I saw your in the UK!
Also in the UK - I've noticed a gradient in "aggression around cyclists", i.e. it's most awful in the south and gets progressively better the further north you go.
(I've never had issues when cycle touring in Scotland)
That goes for any "unconventional" outdoor sports really (i.e. anything that's not footy or horses). North is always up for crazy random shit, but good luck explaining paddleboarding or mountainbiking to someone in Cambridgeshire.
I can’t speak to Cambridge specifically but there are 4 B1KE mountain bike parks alone in the south of England (Wind hill, Rogate, Tidworth and S4P) so I’m not convinced of this north/south divide. There are others than just B1KE mountain bike parks too.
It's a problem pretty much everywhere I guess. I've been almost killed 3 times in the last two years, and every time it was a car driver breaking a law.
From what I've gathered it seems car drivers are annoyed because overtaking cyclists requires more thinking than following the white line, and envious because cyclists don't have parking space problems and can just get off the bike and switch to the sidewalk.
Some people feel entitled to more rights on the road because they paid more for their vehicle.
Uh, in fact, British and American natives are the worst, when it comes to homophonic errors. Your/you're, its/it's, their/there/they're - unless they're well educated (and often even if they are), chances are that the natives will get them wrong whereas foreigners won't. That's because they think of the language in terms of sounds first (as they learnt it before they could read), whereas foreigners are forced to think about it in logical terms first.
There's some cheaper ones around but with varying quality. I use Cycliq front and back and they're not perfect (the app is rubbish and it's surprisingly difficult to get both cams showing the same time), but they're currently the best for ease of use (e.g. overwriting old recordings automatically on the microSD card).
Yeah they're pretty good on balance. I've not seen anything else that gets the core features so right.
The only thing that really drives me nuts about them is that they have a tendency to come out of Airplane mode by themselves. Bluetooth gradually drains them flat if I don't keep them constantly plugged in.
Since I've never really got the Ant+ networking to work reliably either I could probably do without any wireless features.
Oh and I got mine on sale for about half what they normally go for
...and put the savings towards another bike obvs. (n+1) (s-1), etc :D
For a while a long time ago I used the monoprice action cam (discontinued). It looked like a bike light, didn’t have stabilization but had an easy to use big switch on the top. Worked well enough but along with my bike light it was another thing to charge and I didn’t have time to go through all my footage.
Recently I’ve attached my go pro and it being much newer is better and digital stabilization but the battery life isn’t great.
So I usually ride without. But I have a cell phone in my pocket..
When I told my family this my, normally quite friendly, brother-in-law asked why.
I told him that it's not unusual to be threatened by drivers when cycling. Anything from close passes that make you jump to a passenger leaning out trying to put a plastic bag over my head.
He got quite angry and proceeded to tell me that cyclists "bring it on themselves and deserve what's coming to them" ...and we get on.
If I suggested waving a baseball bat at strangers on the street he'd rightly think I was mental but apparently if you're on a bike you're fair game.
It's not that unusual for randos I meet socially to say something like "lycra-clad MEN!, it's always men![1], need to get off the road and pay road tax![2], and stop riding through red lights[3] and wear NORMAL clothes![4]"
I could argue with all of that or call them an asshole but what's the point? It's best not to say anything.
It's not about truth or statistics it's about othering an out-group, cyclists and not feeling bad when you scare or hurt them.
1. I ride with lots of women in my bike club. They get just as much hassle but there's generally less kudos at parties in bragging that you tailgated the shit out of a lone woman because she was wearing tight clothes.
2. Road tax in the UK was abolished in 1937. No one here has to pay it and like most cyclists I also have a car.
3. As a point of pride I never ride through a red light but I do see drivers tailgate through red lights or on the wrong side of the road every single day.
4. If I'm going to get sweaty why wouldn't I wear comfortable kit? It's not like I wear a pair of jeans and a t-shirt to go swimming either.