GTR1400MAN wrote:Mr Cholmondeley-Warner wrote:... and I assume you tell your associates not to overtake in the zigzag area? (otherwise it would imply that you think there's a different law for bikers - which I'm sure you don't)
No we discuss the issue and that it is NOT ilegal to overtake/filter in the zigzags.
The solution in all cases is not to pass the last vehicle before the crossing, moving or stationary, unless the last stationary one is stationary due to a queue in front of it across the crossing. And in the later case to only do so very carefully.
I think you may have misunderstood my original comment (although I'd agree it is poorly worded). The point I was making is that the last car before the crossing is usually the one controlling the speed of all behind it, NOT that you can overtake it. If you do as I say in the paragraph above you can still pass the queue up to the last vehicle. This means you must be going faster than the queue.
The reason filtering in zigzags comes up so often is that most people think you can't based on the HWC wording.
Some years back, riding a motorcycle around Wandsworth one way system (wow! that was some years back
), the lane to the left of me was stationary with a police traffic vehicle (as I said, some years back!) the last car by the zebra. His lane was blocked beyond the crossing, my lane was clear; I checked there were no pedestrians on the crossing (or about to cross, I'm kind like that) and proceeded past him. Cue blue flashing and whoo-whoo noises. The overtake didn't allow me to make much progress that day.
Triquet wrote:I have to stop at a pedestrian crossing (of whatever flavour) maybe once a day on average. I'm not going to lose sleep over this issue. I just stop. Have patience my brethren and admire the scenery.
Agreed
. Pedestrian crossings tend (on the whole) to be where there are lots of pedestrians. Since pedestrians are frequently unpredictable, I turn down the 'make progress' circuit and tune up the 'stay calm, keep safe and outguess them' circuits. Expecting pedestrians to obey rules which many will never have learned (there are fortunately, no exams to pass to be allowed to walk our streets), risks too much IMO.