Pip Ryder wrote:

If you want to record your journeys for your own interest,
then of course you may

Yes, that's precisely what I want to do. I'm always on the look out for
ways to improve my cycling. In cases where a hazardous situation has
arisen, I try and think back to what I could have done to make myself
safer or give myself more options for an escape.

It'd be nice to have a video that I could look at to study. It'd also
give me opportunity to show the video to other people and ask them wat
they think I could have done in that situation.

Every now and then as an exercise I try to cycle with the attitude
that concealed somewhere in the traffic stream is a gang of assassins
who at any moment may mount a co-ordinated attempt to kill me which
would appear to be a simple accident which could be blamed on not
having seen me. The important thing is to have escape routes available
and the time to use them. Mostly there are, and often when there
aren't simple changes in position and speed by me can create the
needed space and time.

I find it difficult, exhausting, but very educational.

I also note that my last car-cycle accident, which damaged my bike
severely but luckily not me, was actually foreseen by me as a
possibility as I approached the car with with its nose sticking out of
the side road into the traffic stream, and into my path. I also
noticed that if I passed in front of it I wouldn't have time to avoid
being rammed. As I have trained myself to do, I quickly realised that
there was a safe way of foiling the assassination -- by turning into
the same side street in order to go round the back of the car with
plenty of time and space for avoidance.

But I was feeling tired and lazy and in no mood to take such an
extreme precaution against such an unlikely accident. So I simply told
myself not be silly and paranoid and just cycle past.

The car suddenly shot forwards and rammed me broadside. My bike ended
up under its wheels, but I luckily I bounced off the bonnet instead.

First car-cycle accident I've had in decades. Obviously I need to take
my own advice more seriously.

--
Chris Malcolm