Hard to steer with a phone in your hand.

A lot of cyclists complain about cars passing them too closely on narrow roads, how they get in our way (technical term "the primary position") to stop the vehicle behind doing this.

The problem with this approach is that it assumes that the road is wide enough for oncoming vehicles to get past, an assumption invalid for most of the best rat-runs in the city.

Here our secretly-filmed cyclist causes delays for a driver who is not only paying road tax and fuel tax, they are paying VAT on the telephone call, plus of course the telcos paid lots of money for the 3G networks that modern smart phones like the iPhone seen here needs.




Sadly, by driving one handed without proper driving gloves, the driver cannot navigate the gap between the parked cars without potentially clipping the wing mirror. If the bicycle had correctly deferred to the more important driver, this would not have been an issue. Instead she is forced to back off, here on effingham road, though this doesn't appear to interrupt the conversation, except she may have been swearing more than normal in the call.

People complaining about drivers making and taking calls on the road do not realise that we are forced to do it because of the congestion. If the council re-instated the lost inner city motorway plans of the 1970s, we wouldn't be stuck in traffic, we wouldn't need to phone or text. It is not our fault.