road.cc live blog: How to watch the Cyclo-cross Worlds, 12 riders test positive at one race, Should drivers with points on their licence be required to have black box car insurance? + more
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Fri, Feb 02, 2018 09:00
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Tradescant 3 hours ago
@jackcycles I'm not sure my grandchildren got that memo. Cycling should not be just for hardened road warriors.
DS2025 3 hours ago
Chrisonabike There are a number of police forces in England and Wales that are using portable testing equipment already... How effective it is another matter, I haven't looked into the results of failing (I would hope they just seize and crush the motorbike without any faff but I am sure there are appeal processes, promises not to use them on public roads etc).
KiwiMike 3 hours ago
Woah there - a precision-engineered European-made product, with unparalleled adaptability, is somehow a ‘rip off’? Compared to what - Temu? As per the article, most quality through-axles go for £50-60+, but aren’t adaptable and don’t provide any stand or trailer capability. If you want to balance your £3-4-5k suspension or carbon bike, or bikepacking setup on a budget product subject to highly focused stresses, fair play. Cycling’s a broad church.
Dnnnnnn 3 hours ago
@eburtthebike I've found Spanish drivers to be almost entirely excellent around cyclists.
neilmck 4 hours ago
I agree, the study was made after cycle paths that had been introduced in Berlin during the 70’s and 80’s caused a big increase in cycling deaths. It is an interesting study for cyclists to read in order to know what dangers exist at badly designed junctions. Here in Paris we have very few bi-directional paths. The ones I have cycled on have no building entrances or courtyards (so no cars crossing the path) and every junction is traffic lights to prevent accidents.
thrawed 4 hours ago
We have enough regulation. They're running a motorbike without insurance/registration and possibly without a licence, and the punishment for being caught with all that is pretty severe already. The problem is lack of enforcement.
chrisonabike 5 hours ago
In my experience with anything less than one of those serious mid-bike two-foot kickstands, a wall / tree / hedge is the better option, or the bike will sometimes show you the alternative and lie down by itself. Maybe I've got panniers that are just too large and the wrong balance of (too much) cargo though? And of course Edinburgh streets are great at funneling gusts of wind...
chrisonabike 5 hours ago
I agree there's a clear legal line * but I do see something here. Like much tech it's entirely opaque from the outside (without even invoking things like the VW emissions cheating).** I know in NL they have trialled semi-portable "test stations" to check max motor speeds. However with the latest "but there's no money" crisis I can't see that over here. Indeed it's hard to see the police being motivated to do any more roads policing, with this even further down the priority list. Hope I'm wrong... While I guess many of us *would* be fine with EAPCs as a means to attract "non-cyclists" ... perhaps there's an "attractive nuisance" element to this? We're ushering people into an apparently effortless, easy and minimal consequence mobility mode without the "learning experience" of managing a lighter, unpowered machine on roads. And it's still (busy) *roads* where the new power-assisted riders will often find themselves. Not like in more advanced countries where people usually cycle in much safer and more controlled environments. OTOH we should always balance such concerns against "but cars and full-power ICE motorbikes now" though! Number plates, licences and insurance aren't necessarily mitigating that well... * As soon as there are laws games will be played. How long can you be above the "continuous rate power" for? Can we have *multiple* legal motors on one machine? ** Is the power / speed actually regulated by software, and how long will that keep a child armed with the internet from unlocking it?
Zazz53 5 hours ago
And maybe a planning obligation to have traffic Marshalls controlling access out of the site not obstructing the path and restricting it if cyclists are likely to be obstructed …one can hope
Bob Sprocket 6 hours ago
I'll stick to my low rider with Karrimor Kalahari dry bag panniers and Karrimor Kalahari barbag thanks.
25 thoughts on “road.cc live blog: How to watch the Cyclo-cross Worlds, 12 riders test positive at one race, Should drivers with points on their licence be required to have black box car insurance? + more”
I doubt there would be enough
I doubt there would be enough black boxes for all drivers with points, let alone engineers to fit them. Making them mandatory for any driving offence not covered by a fixed penalty notice would appear entirely reasonable though.
Grahamd wrote:
Nothing to fit, no engineers needed. One of the UK’s largest insurers, Aviva, do this through a phone app.
Quote:
Yes.
I think a better idea to the
I think a better idea to the insurance thing would be something that goes on your numberplate outlining the type of offence, eg as symbol to show you’ve been caught speeding, one for texting while driving, one for drink driving. the shame would probably be enough to stop a number of people, especially those with personalised plates, wouldnt want that ruined with something that shows you’ve been caught drinking and speeding, it’d help other motorists and the police identify who to look out for too.
RobD wrote:
You would get some people who’d make that a collectable thing, and want to get the whole set
RobD wrote:
There speaks the voice of someone who has a car for each member of the household.
For the rest of us who have several people using the one vehicle then that would not work
Given that the current system
Given that the current system clearly isn’t working, we need to look at alternatives, and this one seems quite promising. Some drivers might try using the big brother argument and privacy issues, and there is some traction in those, but I think my life and the lives of my loved ones is more important.
Until we have 100% driverless cars, human error by drivers will continue to kill thousands a year, and maim tens of thousands more. If it was any other field of human activity, it would be banned until the problems had been solved, but because we are a car-centric society, our politians are too weak to do this.
I’d suggest that this actually doesn’t go far enough, and all new cars should be fitted with the black box.
burtthebike wrote:
Be careful what you wish for, there’s plenty of reasonably founded speculation that the autonomous vehicle lobby will seek for segregated lanes, stealing valuable and ever-dwindling street space from human powered transport. And unlike us after some decent cycle lanes worth a damn, they’ve got existing funds and the elusive promise of £b for the economy to sway councils’ decisions and get protective legislation in place.
ROOTminus1 wrote:
“… there’s plenty of reasonably founded speculation that the autonomous vehicle lobby will seek for segregated lanes…”
No there isn’t. Driverless vehicles will need less space because they will be following the lane, not weaving around like humans do, so they’ll need less space.
But please feel free to continue your scaremongering.
Telematics is interesting in
Telematics is interesting in how they incentivise good driver behaviour. A mate’s son has just passed his test, he gets extra mileage added to his allowance on a monthly basis if he scores well on speeding. Sounds great but then there’s the clause where they’ll cancel his insurance if he drives 30mph over the speed limit. Not sure if that’s a sliding scale at lower speeds but what sort of message does that send?
kil0ran wrote:
It sends the message not to speed.
rct wrote:
It sends the message not to speed.— kil0ran
It sends the message that driving 29mph over the speed limit is OK because all it means is he’ll lose mileage bonuses that he doesn’t currently need. That’s how my mate’s kid has interpreted it. Now if there was a market where he could sell earned miles that might work…
The only thing these black
The only thing these black boxes do is to control the top speed of drivers in known speed limit areas. If the speed limt has been changed temporarily (roadworks for example) it is not registered.
Also, it does not stop the ever increasing “I’ll ignore that red light because I won’t be caught” attitude!
So I don’t see how it will improve safety other than control the top speed of those who do speed and get caught. All other aspects of bad driving (aggression, middle lane hogging, jumping red lights, driving too close, parking on pavements etc etc) will simply continue to happen and get worse.
The solution is more cameras and / or more police on the roads
Marky Legs wrote:
Don’t they also use an accelerometer to measure heavy acceleration, braking, and cornering?
Perhaps they don’t solve every problem but a partial solution to any problem is usually better than no solution.
portec wrote:
I thought black boxes in cars just measured G forces. The phone apps use GPS tracking as well.
What if one circumvents this
What if one circumvents this blackbox by using a hire car? They can easily say they forgot to take the box with them when switching vehicles.
Hire companies should also up their standards and run checks on drivers
RoubaixCube wrote:
Many do, but also every check involves a charge from the DVLA and the appointed technology providors the DVLA saw fit to work with. If every customer was checked in full, that would require to pass the cost onto the customer, increasing your car rental costs, and right now the industry is being squeezed by price, so not a straight forward thing.
Technology is also going into cars that would enable a company to montior how the car is being driven, where and at what speed. it isn’t being used for those purposes but the potential is there, but you have GDPR, data protection and human rights regulations screaming out at you. It’s a much bigger topic. We can do all of this and more…..and what? End up like China where freedom & rights are a joke.
Be carefull what you wish for
Be carefull what you wish for. Only a hop skip and a jump to boxes being extended to bikes.
I am all for punishment for bad behaviour but I am also a beleaver in right to privacy.
jimt wrote:
When they fit effective black boxes to every car as a legal requirement I’ll be delighted to fit one on the road bike. By all means have privacy, but if you insist on driving a tonne or so of polluting monstrosity maybe you should have to make that sacrifice?
jimt wrote:
What’s a ‘beleaver’? Is it the opposite of a ‘remainer’ ?
Who are you going to get to
Who are you going to get to pay for the black boxes? Currently they are offered for free by insurance companies because insurance companies believe they will reduce claims or at least provide data that allows the insurer to better price insurance (i.e., insurers are willing to pay for them because they benefit the insurer). Can’t see insurers forking out for blanket installation for good of cyclists/other vulnerable road users. Good luck trying to convince the govt to add them to all vehicles (queue outrage from motorists about added cost of motoring in times of austerity). In August last year the FT reported that “[telematics boxes]can cost as little as £50 to buy now, and less than that to install” so maybe the solution will ultimately be that they get so cheap it stops being an issue. The other problem about blanket installation (before you get to privacy concerns) is that it will make some people economically uninsurable. There’s an argument these people shouldn’t be driving anyway. But tey probably will and they probably will continue to do so, just on an uninsured basis, which may not be a great outcome as they are more likely to have collisions.
surly_by_name wrote:
Many, if not most late model cars (post 2012?) have this installed already. Car makers install it as part of the airbag and crash prevention systems, it stores data for the last 2 minutes. The data from these has been used in a number of court cases here down under to establish the behaviour of the driver immediately prior to the accident. The technology is already there.
Arguably making on board
Arguably making on board camera’s a legal requirement. If you know you are on film it will have an impact on a lot of bad driving. it won’t stop the narsacistic idiots and illegal drivers who just don’t care but it could provide a cultural change
the down side is you need resource to review, laws to support, police to action and something to protect all those genuine mistakes and edge cases……and it is very 1984……so it won’t happen…maybe.
Simmo72 wrote:
Personally, I think this is a great idea, and make a non functioning camera an mot fail. In most cases I suspect evidence would be captured on 3rd party vehicles, rather than the offending vehicle, but that’s ok. I have always thought plod had a bias towards catching speeders as opposed to other traffic offences because it is easy, and conclusive, to read a number from a display, compared for example to arguing that somebody jumped the lights. Cameras would give plod the evidence they need. But as you say, there are too many PC people in the UK who would argue infringement of civil liberties. Presumably meaning spouses could check up on where cheating partners had been while supposedly working late!
1) This reinforces the common
1) This reinforces the common misconception that it is always safe to drive at the speed limit, rather than educating drivers to judge what is safe.
2) Speeding is only one form of dangerous driving, and a black box does nothing to stop tailgating, poor discipline at junctions, blind overtaking, and so on.