[email protected] wrote:
> The man's a bit of a pillock, if you ask me.
Yer not wrong there. The same pillock wrote this week that he wouldn't
want to have a bell on his bike /for aesthetic reasons/.
I actually have a bell on my bike - I even use it sometimes. Indeed, I
have it through choice, for the simple reason that it /can/ sometimes
be useful when riding on shared paths, to warn people that I am coming
up behind them - usually it takes several rings before they acknowledge
it, but most of the time they cotton on eventually.
However, I would seriously question the usefulness of a bell for road
cycling - especially since most of the so-called bells sold in bike
shops make a barely audible 'ping' at best. It took me ages of
searching to find a bell that made a half-decent 'ding-a-ling' - and
it's still somewhat quieter than I would like.
That said, I recently acquired an Air Zound - my brother was given it
free and didn't want it for himself - but I haven't used it yet. I must
give it a go - it would have been handy this morning to use on the
large group of tourists going through Kensington Gardens, who refused
to acknowledge my bell however many times I rang it.
I had to resort to bellowing "excuse me" in the end, which just got me
dirty looks. I have no problem with slowing down and giving pedestrians
priority on shared paths, but hogging the whole path and refusing to
make way for other path users is just downright rude.
So, license plates and bells for cyclists by all means, but only if we
can also introduce mandatory indicators and rear-view mirrors for
pedestrians.
d.