dkohara

Have just read your post. Thanks for submitting it for comment. The reply seems to be assuming a single parked car, when in fact the parked cars were in a line 150-200 yards long, so my pull out was way back, and the car that knocked me off wasn't there then. No other cars overtook me whilst I was passing, he caught me up as we were approaching the junction ahead and squeezed me left into the parked cars. I had braked by this point (because I knew I wasn't going to get through the ever decreasing gap he was leaving), so was travelling relatively slowly, but it still hurts when you hit the road!

I've been talking via email with Steve, who tells me that my battery has been irreparably damaged by leaving it uncharged over the winter. There is nothing about this in the Wisper 905se City manual under 'Battery Care', other than to offer guidance for keeping it in 'top condition'. A new battery is £530.

OK, thanks David.

Hi, hope you don't mind me joining this thread, but I have a battery problem. It's the same high capacity battery for the Wisper 905 City, but have found that it will no longer charge with the supplied charger. The battery is completely flat, as I haven't run it over the winter. Was charging fine up until October last year. What I see is the charger dispalys an orange light, the fan flicks over, then the light turns green and no charging occurs. Is the fault with the battery, or the charger?

One of things i've learned over the years of posting on bulletin boards is that no matter how hard you try, and no matter how patient you are, you just can't educate Pork.

If you didn't want to talk about the original post, why didn't you start your own thread, rather than confusing things by starting another conversation about another topic on this thread?

Sounds like Total Nirvana.

Yes, anticipation always tends to work in your favour, and prime riding position is great, but when the guy commits himself to get past you by driving on the opposite side of the road, then moves back to squeeze your pips, there's not a lot of 'road command' you can do without making yourself even more vulnerable. Pushing him further onto the wrong side of the road would have just resulted in a more violent side swipe as he tried to avoid the oncoming car. I had slowed down anyway because I had a junction coming up behind a white van parked on my left, and I couldn't see beyond the van. I was braking to try to get him past me, but he decelerated at the same rate and moved across into me. Thankfully, speeds were low, but he could easily have run over my arm or something as I came off. Once I knew the collision was inevitable, reducing the speed of it was the only thing I could do.

Now there's an idea. What about a cycle helmet with a blue light on the top? onmebike seems to referring to a completely different set of circumstances to mine. Wasn't on a dual carriageway (never ever said I was), there was a car parked on the other side of the street (not that cars were parked in parallel on both sides of the street). Assumed i'd pulled out in front of someone (when i'd been on the same lateral for 200yds). Said I should give way to a faster outside lane (there wasn't one, up here in North East England we call it 'the other side of the road'). You say we should anticipate the hazard ahead. There wasn't a hazard ahead in my case, the hazard approached from the rear, then the side. Please ask in future onmebike, before assuming things and condemning without the full facts.

Yes, that's the very same road, although not at the point the accident happened. Houses on the right have drives, houses on the left mostly do not, so typically park in the street. I included the car to show how much of the road a parked car takes up, and also to give an indication of where a car overtaking me must have been relative to the rest of the road. In short, he'd be on the wrong side of the road. When a junction is 50 yards ahead, this is not a clever place to be, especially when he notices oncoming traffic, so he pulled over left, sandwiching me into an ever decreasing gap. He slowed as I slowed, so we stayed alongside one another, then he clipped me.

Err, I didn't. Read the rest of my posts. I was already overtaking cars and had 'stayed out' for these two. No pulling out in front of faster vehicles or anything like that.

Pic of the road Here's a view of a section of the lateral road repairs. They're deteriorated a lot over the winter since this Google Maps pic was taken. To cycle through here safely, you really need to be in the middle of the road!

Seems a slightly bruised thumb is the only real damage. I'll monitor my physical state for the next week or so to make sure I don't suffer anything untoward. I'm back on the road today.

That's maybe because I didn't report the full situation. Some people will still have a go at pitching blame though, even without the full facts. There were no dodgy manouevres by me, no pullouts without looking, or anything like that, just a driver who saw me from 200 yards away and incorrectly judged a gap and tried to squeeze through at my expense.

I agree about the 'nearness to home' thing. As a cyclist though I have to really concentrate on that road, although it's straight, the road surface is broken in places, and badly subsided patch-ups exist right on the riding line. Sometimes you can't take the exact line you want, for fear of being pitched off by the state of it. It's appalling really, a real wrist breaker. Maybe I can post some pictures later?