I got a ping­back from Adrian Trenholm who has writ­ten a great piece, 10 tips for safe cyc­ling, partly inspired by my recent acci­dent. He lists

1. Wear a helmet.
2. Know the rules of the road and stick to them
3. Con­cen­trate.

and more, each with a good explan­a­tion why. I’d like to add a couple more points:

Look after your bike. In the past I have found that a com­bin­a­tion of worn brake blocks, stretched cables, and wet rims meant that I sud­denly found noth­ing was going to slow me down!

Don’t run red lights. This is really part of Adrian’s num­ber two item, but I sus­pect the single most annoy­ing thing cyc­lists do to city motor­ists is ignore red lights. Or rather, not ignore them, but go through them any­way. I know it annoys me when I’m driv­ing, and I never do it when I’m cyc­ling. Just remem­ber that those drivers you’ve just left at the lights will be passing you in a minute. Only now they’re annoyed with you. When you need to swerve to avoid that pothole, they’ll be much less inclined to give you the room you need.

Adrian also has a great dis­cus­sion, “Never, ever get into a fight with a ‘bike-hater.’” in the same post. I couldn’t agree more. I some­times shock myself when I react badly to a car ‘buzz­ing’ me, or to a beeped horn because someone thinks I shouldn’t be on the road. It’s easy to want to be aggress­ive when you are ‘bul­lied’ by a car, but as Adrian says…

Let’s be clear about this: you might be in the right, but your ant­ag­on­ist has over a ton of metal at his dis­posal. When a cyc­list mixes it up with a motor­ist, the cyc­list will always lose. Just let the motor­ist go.

Don’t let us put you off though. Cyc­ling to and from work is a great way to get fit. My trip home takes pretty much the same time as pub­lic trans­port, so I’m not tak­ing more time out of my day. Because it serves a pur­pose (get­ting me home) it’s much easier to stick with it than, say, going to the gym. When I had a gym mem­ber­ship it was easy to say to myself “I’ll leave it tonight and go tomor­row… or next week”.

Give it a try. Get that bike out of the shed and try rid­ing to work a couple of days a week.