road.cc live blog: Terpstra takes E3 Harelbeke, buy Lance’s house, limited edition Cannondale Supersix, bicycle-to-vehicle beacons proposed + more
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Fri, Mar 23, 2018 09:00
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Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn’t especially like cake.
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Latest Comments
ktache 3 hours ago
@Mr Blackbird It's quite a skill.
chrisonabike 4 hours ago
@Terry Hutt good point, although while doing testing without a helmet I broke my shoulder and have suffered various other contusions. So I suggest the control should not be "no helmet" as in my experience that adds the confounding variable of your other limbs and appendages as (for some) instinct will mean you sacrifice them to protect your head...
chrisonabike 4 hours ago
@mdavidford or the highly skilled cycle football / radball players...
chrisonabike 4 hours ago
@No Reply dunno about childish, but I haven't heard that one since the 90s. Can't say I miss it.
mdavidford 4 hours ago
Bit harsh on the BMXers.
mdavidford 5 hours ago
@No Reply Er, nope - there are no age restrictions on the site. As previously noted, though, if it were restricted to adults, your choice of language would seem to mark you out as someone who shouldn't be on it.
No Reply 5 hours ago
@Mr Blackbird This is an adult forum. If adults are getting so worked up over the term bum chum, then they need to get a grip. People have a right to be offended, people have a right to offend. But if someone finds offence in something, it doesn’t mean its offensive. It means they are offended. Two different things. I am as free to offend as you are to feel offended. Freedom of speech. Do you want to silence freedom of speech? Or just silence things you don’t like?
Mr Blackbird 5 hours ago
@No Reply You obviously have a lot of knowledge of cyclo cross and make a valid point, but why detract from your comment by using a phrase that is probably offensive to the majority of readers?
Terry Hutt 6 hours ago
@chrisonabike I think the important message here is that your head will fly 20% further if you are wearing a collapsible helmet. Has anyone researched how far your head will fly if you're not wearing a helmet at all? Seems worthy of a research grant.
Mr Blackbird 6 hours ago
Any cyclist caught cycling backwards (on a non-fixed wheel bike) should be jailed for at least 2 years and have their bike confiscated. Such a despicable manoeuvre is dangerously confusing to motorists and pedestrians.
19 thoughts on “road.cc live blog: Terpstra takes E3 Harelbeke, buy Lance’s house, limited edition Cannondale Supersix, bicycle-to-vehicle beacons proposed + more”
Okay, I’ll bite…
Okay, I’ll bite…
Who will have to pay to retro-fit beacons to existing bikes?
Who will pay to retro-fit the detection and collision avoidance technology to all the existing cars trucks, vans, lorries, buses and taxis out there?
Who will be judged at fault in a collision between a beaconless bike and a sensor equipped vehicle?
I’d like to have device on my
I’d like to have a device on my bike that sent an electric shock to the bollocks of the driver of a car detected within a metre of my bike. Said shock to increase the closer the vehicle gets. I’d happily pay for that, in fact.
Eton Rifle wrote:
Not a bad idea, but being run over by a woman is going to be just as annoying and painful.
And yet, a car supposedly
And yet, a car supposedly dripping with the latest detection technology and fail safe automated braking systems ploughs into and kills a pedestrian crossing the road in Arizona. ?
ermmm… bicycles already
ermmm… bicycles already have retro-reflectors mounted on them… perhaps these vehicle systems ‘experts’ should consider devising some device which scans the field of view and detects reflected ‘light’… sort of like a radar does but with an infra red low power eyesafe laser?
I’m calling bullshit on the
I’m calling bullshit on the bike detection technology. Half the time, drivers can see the bike perfectly well, but will still insist on overtaking at inappropriate times/places and without any due consideration. How will a detection system improve that?
Why do we keep trying to
Why do we keep trying to invent things that dull the attention of road users? It’s bad enough that most cars resemble starship command inside now. The last thing we need is going from SMIDSY to sorry my detection system didn’t see you mate and besides I was looking at facebook anyway.
My brother recently moved to Australia and said the driving standard is dire over there and reckons part of it is everyone driving automatics. It’s just a another level of disconnect from driving.
Sensors to also measure
Sensors to also measure passing distance and batch report anything too close?
Seems to me that that whole
Seems to me that that whole thing would be monumentally hackable. The beacon will need to be small and low-powered so they’ll be really easy to hide. IBM announced tech this week smaller than a grain of rice that could be used for this.
What’s to stop you, for example, hiding one in a manhole cover or on a bollard and bringing traffic to a halt?
Or taking primary and riding at 5mph preventing the vehicle from overtaking?
Its all completely unworkable and the logical extrapolation will be to ban pedestrians and cycles (and motorcycles and horses) from areas where driverless vehicles operate.
And then we get to my neck of the woods where there are unfenced roads and livestock roaming about – I guess that means they’ll all need to be tagged too.
kil0ran wrote:
And this is exactly what we’ll get if this technology becomes mainstream. There’ll be places you can buy them in bulk from Chinese wholesalers, and they will be laid in weird patterns across the road to ‘assist’ motorists into a ditch. I could even lay them on the pavement in front of my house to stop people parking there!
Re ‘Ouch’.
Re ‘Ouch’.
A Darwin Award must be in the post – especially if next time he smashes his bollocks into that wall!
This appears to be a new
This appears to be a new version of victim blaming; it’ll be the cyclists fault for not fitting the latest gadget.
It is the responsibility of the people causing the danger to prevent/reduce that danger, not for cyclists and pedestrians to have to take actions to avoid being run over. Make the vehicle technology safe or keep it off the road.
Car detects bike with chip,
Car detects bike with chip, driver ignores the warning, status quo.
It will not work in
It will not work in Colchester.
On the subject of bicycle /
On the subject of bicycle / car sensors.
Lets go a step further so the software in the car can detect dangerous overtaking distances between the two sensors, then feed this back directly to the driver’s insurance provider, who can then increase their insurance premiums accordingly.
The government can offer a free standard version of the bike beacon, paid for by also offering a super-lightweight carbon fibre version for ‘proper’ cyclists who wouldn’t be able to resist the marginal gains.
Kojima wrote:
Better still, switch the car to limp home mode with a max speed of 15 mph so that affected cyclist can taunt them for miles and miles and ….
Most people probably already
Most people probably already have a highly detectable beacon – their phone. It’s likely squawking out all sort of radio signals (WiFi, Bluetooth, ANT+, 3g/4g etc.) right now.
It’s not “victim blaming” to envisage a future where road users are sharing speed, direction and position information in an effort to avoid hitting each other. It’s already used extensively in the air and at sea (AIS). At sea it’s mandatory for big heavy stuff to have AIS (>300t I think). E.g. http://shipfinder.co/ – and an awful lot of smaller craft use it as well along with sonar, radar and, yes, eyeballs.
Maybe Garmin will bake their LiveTrack system into all their devices in future and build automotive versions…maybe they have already.
“It is not easy for human
“It is not easy for human drivers to see cyclists on the roads” Manuel Marsilio – general manager of the Confederation for the European Bicycle Industry
Yes, actually it is QUITE easy to see cyclists on the roads IF you are paying attention & looking where you are pointing your two tonne lump of steel. With ‘friends’ like this in the industry, who needs enemies…
That Cannondale looks great.
That Cannondale looks great. You don’t often see British Racing Green on a bike.