I have cameras built into the lights on my bike, front and rear plus a second light with radar on the back.

When I told my family this my, normally quite friendly, brother-in-law asked why.

I told him that it's not unusual to be threatened by drivers when cycling. Anything from close passes that make you jump to a passenger leaning out trying to put a plastic bag over my head.

He got quite angry and proceeded to tell me that cyclists "bring it on themselves and deserve what's coming to them" ...and we get on.

If I suggested waving a baseball bat at strangers on the street he'd rightly think I was mental but apparently if you're on a bike you're fair game.

It's not that unusual for randos I meet socially to say something like "lycra-clad MEN!, it's always men![1], need to get off the road and pay road tax![2], and stop riding through red lights[3] and wear NORMAL clothes![4]"

I could argue with all of that or call them an asshole but what's the point? It's best not to say anything.

It's not about truth or statistics it's about othering an out-group, cyclists and not feeling bad when you scare or hurt them.

1. I ride with lots of women in my bike club. They get just as much hassle but there's generally less kudos at parties in bragging that you tailgated the shit out of a lone woman because she was wearing tight clothes.

2. Road tax in the UK was abolished in 1937. No one here has to pay it and like most cyclists I also have a car.

3. As a point of pride I never ride through a red light but I do see drivers tailgate through red lights or on the wrong side of the road every single day.

4. If I'm going to get sweaty why wouldn't I wear comfortable kit? It's not like I wear a pair of jeans and a t-shirt to go swimming either.

As a cyclist in Scotland who's never had any trouble on the road, I was going to sympathise with your having to put up with a toxic culture in your country. But then I saw your in the UK!

Also in the UK - I've noticed a gradient in "aggression around cyclists", i.e. it's most awful in the south and gets progressively better the further north you go.

(I've never had issues when cycle touring in Scotland)

That goes for any "unconventional" outdoor sports really (i.e. anything that's not footy or horses). North is always up for crazy random shit, but good luck explaining paddleboarding or mountainbiking to someone in Cambridgeshire.

I can’t speak to Cambridge specifically but there are 4 B1KE mountain bike parks alone in the south of England (Wind hill, Rogate, Tidworth and S4P) so I’m not convinced of this north/south divide. There are others than just B1KE mountain bike parks too.

To be fair, you'll have a hard time explaining anything involving mountains to someone in Cambridgeshire.

...Suffolk Mountain Rescue has been established with the aim of rescuing a neglected mountain and bringing it back to safety.

I personally know from a charity Lands End to John O'Groats ride a few years ago that drivers in Scotland can be really lovely people.

I specifically remember truck drivers cheering us on in the highlands. Magic! :D

Sadly I've seen reports in the news of people in Scotland getting rough treatment there too.

Luckily, it's just a minority though. Most drivers, like everywhere, are just normal decent people.

It's a problem pretty much everywhere I guess. I've been almost killed 3 times in the last two years, and every time it was a car driver breaking a law.

From what I've gathered it seems car drivers are annoyed because overtaking cyclists requires more thinking than following the white line, and envious because cyclists don't have parking space problems and can just get off the bike and switch to the sidewalk.

Some people feel entitled to more rights on the road because they paid more for their vehicle.

Not really surprising when we have Clarkson leading the hate brigade.

No true scotsman would confuse “your” and “you’re”.

Uh, in fact, British and American natives are the worst, when it comes to homophonic errors. Your/you're, its/it's, their/there/they're - unless they're well educated (and often even if they are), chances are that the natives will get them wrong whereas foreigners won't. That's because they think of the language in terms of sounds first (as they learnt it before they could read), whereas foreigners are forced to think about it in logical terms first.

I know, it was a joke: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

I'm not a grammarian but "your" sure seems less wrong than "you're" in that sentence.

"I was going to sympathise with you are having to put up with [stuff]" - doesn't work.

> I'm not a grammarian but "your" sure seems less wrong than "you're" in that sentence.

This might have been a hint that you were looking at the wrong "your".

Oh, right you are, didn't spot the obvious one! Apologies.

In general I think it has got better. Thirty years ago it was really common to get deliberate abuse when out riding, now it's relatively rare.

I think this is mostly down to having more cyclists on the road.

There is still a long way to go though.

>He got quite angry and proceeded to tell me that cyclists "bring it on themselves and deserve what's coming to them" ...and we get on.

I even get it from my own parents when they know I ride pretty much everywhere.

What the fuck?

I often cycle near Paris and I never got this amount of crap, not from random people, and certainly not from my colleagues. This is surreal.

Where did you get your cameras? Would you recommend them to a fellow cyclist?

I use https://cycliq.com/

I think I would recommend them but they're definitely not perfect.

I have had some (rare) reliability issues and I really wish they had removable 18650 batteries for long night rides.

The radar is a https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/p/698001 which is useful to let you see and know the speed of cars approaching from behind.

These are great. Simple bit of kit that works well.

Cycliq looks amazing, but buying both a front and rear cam/light would cost more than my bike! Any clones or alternatives out there?

There's some cheaper ones around but with varying quality. I use Cycliq front and back and they're not perfect (the app is rubbish and it's surprisingly difficult to get both cams showing the same time), but they're currently the best for ease of use (e.g. overwriting old recordings automatically on the microSD card).

Yeah they're pretty good on balance. I've not seen anything else that gets the core features so right.

The only thing that really drives me nuts about them is that they have a tendency to come out of Airplane mode by themselves. Bluetooth gradually drains them flat if I don't keep them constantly plugged in.

Since I've never really got the Ant+ networking to work reliably either I could probably do without any wireless features.

Oh and I got mine on sale for about half what they normally go for

...and put the savings towards another bike obvs. (n+1) (s-1), etc :D

For a while a long time ago I used the monoprice action cam (discontinued). It looked like a bike light, didn’t have stabilization but had an easy to use big switch on the top. Worked well enough but along with my bike light it was another thing to charge and I didn’t have time to go through all my footage.

Recently I’ve attached my go pro and it being much newer is better and digital stabilization but the battery life isn’t great.

So I usually ride without. But I have a cell phone in my pocket..

Upgrading your bike seems like the most obvious move ;)

Not really :-/. I suppose you could rig a cheap dash cam with a battery, but you lose out on the headlight, which I use all the time.

> Any clones or alternatives out there?

Cheap chinese action cams without integrated tail light.

Your coworkers were too stupid to realize that everyone on a bike or on the bus is one less ass'ole in car between them and where they want to go.

True, but in their mind that would be even better if I were dead.