Recent comments

not totally, but it has been reduced to a detail. road.cc, on the other hand, will be keeping the faith.

I've just ridden the Cambridge to Histon 6miler commute. -4 on Treacherous A road swathed in ice, and Peppered with crater like potholes. For a good 4 miles I was surrounded by Ravenous Volvo's and snarly 4 wheel drives driven by Coffee drinking Mobile phone users. At one point an impreza tried to pounce on me from a side street! All on an old Flat bar marin roadbike with gator skins 23's. And I'm going to do it all again later, in the dark.

I'd piss this Alaska trail.

a little bit Renaulty?

This new kit is soooo much better than the last two years, which I thought was a bit of a mess. The blue top + black shorts of Columbia three years ago was even better. I hope they wear black shorts.

yeah, it wasn't a great decade for nice kit...

The Vanmoof No.6 looks just what a friend is after...

Well it's different from 'I was distracted by a spider.' Even though one suspects the spiders normally blamed were crawling across the driver's phone keypad.

Suing pedestrians is a complete non-starter.

I hit a couple of peds years ago in my car. I had almost stopped at the point of collision. It was the woman's fault, I had four witnesses. The idiot woman didn't look and dragged her little boy out from in-front of a line of cars waiting to turn right at traffic lights which were green for me to proceed. It took hours for the Police to get statements.

I still had to pay for their treatment. They damaged my car. I was advised it wasn't worth suing them.

Eek!

Somewhat similar conditions may face those racing the Iditarod Trail - 350 or 1100 miles. Bristol based endurance MTB racer John Ross has entered again. He provided Singletrack mag with a report on last year's edition of this gruelling event. Here is his kit list for the 2009 event. In the same issue Kiwi racer Jenn Hopkins gave an account of racing The Great Divide - 2,500 miles of the Rockies from Canada to Mexico - on a singlespeed.

Essentially, it’s down to greed. We all want cheap goods; cheap food etc. But that cheapness is illusory, it has a very real cost – in human lives. At the moment, it’s mostly cyclists and pedestrians paying that price.

In the real world there are places where pedestrians and cyclists aren't treated as obstacles to be crushed in the furtherance of bigger profits, but not in the UK.

2008 DfT figures
LGVs killed 27 and HGVs killed 62 pedestrians.
LGVs killed 5 and HGVs killed 24 cyclists.

While cars kill many more they are far more numerous, the danger of LGVs & HGVs is due to their enormous weight.

The deaths of cyclists and pedestrians have a very real cost that at the very minimum should be born by those parts of the economy that cause them. If those parts of the economy can't 'afford' to pay those costs, then why should those parts of the economy be permitted to continue in their present form?

Cities should be largely HGV free with distribution from hubs.
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The penalties for causing death by motor-vehicles are substantially less than for causing death by any other means.

Kill someone in your car and there's a jolly good chance you'll get off with a fine, sometimes not even that and your licence will probably remain intact. A popular excuse is to say you were distracted by a spider, even if you noticed it on your mobile phone while you're texting and driving.

Kill someone with a bicycle, you'll instantly be a national pariah and vilified repeatedly by the Daily Rant and the often anti-cyclist media.

Google: A Critical Review of the Legal Penalties for Drivers Who Kill Cyclists or Pedestrians

that's just up the road, i could ride there, race............. and get a lift back

or get one of these, http://surlybikes.com/bikes/pugsley_complete/

(must say i'm tempted looks like a right barrel of fun)