The Institute for Advanced Motoring (IAM) has recently published its book, How to be a better cyclist.

Promising to be a practical guide to cycling, the book is more than that. Written by John Franklin, cycle skills consultant and author of Cyclecraft, it is, in fact, one of the most comprehensive and common sense guides to cycling available.

Concentrating mainly on city and town riding, where roads can be at their most congested and with all types of vehicle on the road, the book gives simple and practical advice on how to cope and how to handle yourself in various scenarios.

The good thing about the book is that, whilst it advocates being assertive and relaxed whilst cycling, it also makes you think about and consider other road users’ point of view. As well as making you consider how you should anticipate events and react on the bike it anticipates the likely reactions of other road users because how you react may not be how they react.

Another point of note about the book is that it gives various techniques on how to integrate yourself with other road traffic and not be afraid to assert your presence on the road. There are plenty of useful diagrams detailing how you should behave on the bike at various junctions. Even though every road situation has its own air of individual unpredictability, the advice the book gives helps to make the unpredictable a little more predictable.

This book can be used in conjunction with training to the National Cycle Training standard but it should be brought regardless because this is an important book in its own right, being easy to understand and quite rational in its language. If you think you know how to ride a bike, this book might make you think again.

How to be a better cyclist can be ordered on the IAM website, www.iam.org.uk, priced at £9.99 plus postage and packaging.