Recent comments

Strewth, a good effort.

But don't exaggerate in the headline - taking 58 thousanths of a second off a previous record hardly warrants "smashes", but I do understand it reads better than "Jack Bobridge shaves a tiny bit off Boardman's record".

I've used a helemt camera for over a year, partly in case of an accident or near miss, but partly to capture some of the good stuff on a bike. I would recomend one.

One thing is that if you know you are filming youself, you are less likely to behave badly as you don't want to see that when you play back the footage.
Using it when reporting driving to Roadsafe is good as you don't have to remember the numberplate, or spend ages describing what happened.
I have had an occurance where a driver had commented on a YouTube video of their driving and argued that despite the what was clearly shown, her driving was safe.

The comments below the BBC story are mostly the ill-informed, vitriolic rubbish worthy of a Radio 5 phone-in.

personally i'm with surreyxc here: it seems like an awful lot of work to implement a system that seems to have some fairly fundamental flaws. surely the cost of adding some kind of basic roof with solar panels would be less? the panels are out of the way, you can angle them at the sun and the cyclists don't get rained on.

Where do you think the electricity in your house comes from? A big cable buried under the ground.

I actually think this is a pretty good idea if implemented properly - one of the biggest costs of lighting routes comes from the exorbitant fees charged by statutory operators for connections to their cable network. Generally about a third of the cost of providing street lighting can come from paying for the connections - this could obviate the need for connections, although there would still be an issue surrounding storing the energy created.

hmm, not ideal. back it goes then

Yep, can't fault Mule bars...I got through God knows how many boxes on our LEJOG last year (Pina Collada mmmmm). And those nice people at Mule gave me a good deal as I was buying in bulk for all nine LEJOGers.

If you get through them quickly, this Wiggle deal might be of interest: http://www.wiggle.co.uk/mulebar-box-of-24-bars-short-date/

I've had my brushes with the driver in the white van as well. He's also got a BMW.

Thank you very much , I appreciate that.

Gaz

Maybe if all the white vans were painted pink or chroma-key green, the drivers' attitude would change. Yes; singular use of 'attitude'---I swear I've talked to the driver featured in the BBC report ... three or four times, since Christmas, in Cambridge.

Why doesn't the article on the BBC web site embed or link to the videos shown on "Breakfast" this morning? I saw the report, and was stuck by the thought that, although these videos don't always lead to prosecutions, as Martin Porter and the bloke almost killed by the lorry at the roundabout in one of the clips have found out, they do render the typical "well, but cyclists run red lights" response utterly untenable. The web site article, lacking this, of course has attracted hundreds of such comments.

Part of the report can be found here. Probably the reason this particular video did lead to a conviction, unlike many others, was because the driver got out of his vehicle and approached the camera. There is nothing like a point-of-view shot, especially of someone who clearly has rage-issues, to elicit sympathy from a judge or jury. It is filmmaking 101. Suddenly the driver becomes the member of an out-group - specifically the troglodytes-with-spanners tribe - not the cyclist. Plus, the moment he stepped out of his vehicle, he ceased to contribute to overall economic activity - commuting or delivering or on his way to consume something - so the cyclist could no longer be perceived as an obstruction to capitalism and thus deserving of scorn, as many people seem to believe.

Of course, the report was by Richard Westcott, the programme's go-to man for human interest dross (his previous two reports were, according to the BBC News search engine, on a school for novice pig farmers, and a visit to the London Ice Sculpting Festival.) So, despite the best efforts of the CTC guy who was interviewed, it didn't exactly probe the issue with getting cases to court, or obtaining satisfactory verdicts or punishments, camera or no camera.

Morons.

I went for the Allez 16 in the end, it turned up today with a chunk out of the fork. To say I'm not happy is an understatement!