road.cc live blog: Terpstra takes E3 Harelbeke, buy Lance’s house, limited edition Cannondale Supersix, bicycle-to-vehicle beacons proposed + more
All the news from this site and beyond
Fri, Mar 23, 2018 09:00
Help us to bring you the best cycling content
If you’ve enjoyed this article, then please consider subscribing to road.cc from as little as £2.49. Our mission is to bring you all the news that’s relevant to you as a cyclist, independent reviews, impartial buying advice and more. Your subscription will help us to do more.
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.
19 Comments
Read more...
Read more...
Read more...
Latest Comments
chrisonabike 1 minute ago
I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work: AFAICS anti-social consequences are inherent in the business model. Models which seem to work better: advertising (Santander cycles), using bikes to make using another service which is more profitable (or less unprofitable) easier (Dutch OV Fiets). After that it's "local authority subsidises it" and then you're down to "flogging customer data"...
Destroyer666 4 minutes ago
Back in the day square taper bb's rolled on bearings that were considerably larger than inside these Maxhit ones. The ball bearings in these fully serviceable models cost a couple of euros. Don't get me wrong, they had their issues, like poor sealing. But those days, servicing bearings was the norm. The current state seems to be something of an attempt at non-serviceability, where efforts made at making products that you DO NOT have to service are accompanied with products that you CANNOT service. And those two things are mixed in different ways. For example with this Maxhit bearing you pay a crazy amount of money for supposed durability - that you are nonetheless expected to service once a year. And once these bearings wear enough, there is no way to service them anymore - no cups, cones, ball bearings to replace, unlike with the old bb's (sure, it was not THAT easy even with them to e.g. find just cups in bike shop). I guess my point is that while I applaud e.g. Enduro for making "bike specific" bearings, I nonetheless long for products that are just easy to service - that is the key to durability. And that does not have to mean it costs a lot. To prove my point: There is absolutely no reason why Shimano could not manufacture it's ubiquitous 20eur BB-MT501 with easily replaceable industrial standard 6805 bearings (where SKF quality bearings cost about 20eur), for the same cost they manufacture the BB in it's current form. They just chose not to. And I would choose that over crazy expensive bb's with marketing schpiel and small print regarding warranty any day.
chrisonabike 12 minutes ago
He's wildly over the top / backwards about what is a risk to the hard-pressed motorist and local places: those are "other motorists" and "mass motoring" respectively. He's almost right though in that many places - even in the UK - are gradually realising that a great way to save themselves money, improve their places and aid their chances of hitting targets on health, obesity, climate etc. is indeed to slow down motorists, restrict parking and deter (not prevent...) much *private motor* travel.
chrisonabike 24 minutes ago
RIP. According to the president of the Cyclistes Professionnels Associes the first thing they need to look at is ... helmets? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/articles/czxqqlpnx98o Of course this could make perfect sense for a professional sport, perhaps standards haven't kept pace etc. It's certainly a rarefied extremely fast and hazard-rich environment, compared with my experience of normally <20mph utility-and-leisure cycling. But since the main factor seems to have been an uninvolved vehicle on the course this does sound like a convergence with the standard "cycling safety" narrative? ("Can't fix anything else, so what we *can* do is...")
Matt Page 42 minutes ago
@jaymack Praxis bottom brackets have Enduro steel bearings fitted through most of the range.
60somethingcyclist 4 hours ago
Re. Pro-car campaigner slams “hidden agenda” to “slow down motorists, restrict parking, and deter travel” this is just another right-wing conspiracy loon spouting off their usual rubbish. Why give him publicity? Like the sad people who walk through our town centres ranting on about anything and anyone they're best ignored.
60somethingcyclist 4 hours ago
Been a cyclist since I was 5 (63 soon), but I can't support this kind of behaviour. Just dumping bikes like this isn't on. Lime should have been made to provide enough designated pick up points before they were allowed to operate the scheme.
AlanMyles 4 hours ago
It is easier to trace fatalities and match them with the news story. In 2018 for instance, the only reported death where a "cyclist" was the other party, was the death of Sakhine Cikan, who was killed by someone riding an illegally modified machine. I have done a bit of research for other years and found similar. Injuries are going to be harder.
IanMK 5 hours ago
It's quite important if it's an illegal motorbike, you could claim against the MIB for damages etc. How will you (or the MIB) know if it's not recorded properly.
Mr Blackbird 5 hours ago
I agree that all steps should be taken to avoid death or serious injury in sport. However, things can go wrong. Neck injuries in rugby, cardiac arrest in football, high speed crashes on descents in cycling etc. I don't know whether this was a case of a driver disobeying instructions and barriers etc, or something in the stage organisation got missed ; after all, ensuring that a longish cycling stage remains traffic free must be an absolute logistical nightmare. The main thing to take away is that whenever a tragic death etc occurs, it always leads to improvements in organisation, equipment etc to reduce the chances of a repeat. Examples are Casartelli's death in the TDF in 1995 playing a part in making cycling helmets mandatory, collisions and injuries caused by vehicles pulling out in front of amateur time triallers led to the making front lights compulsory in recent years. I do hope that any failings identified in this case will be acted on so that Tarling's tragic death was not a total waste of a young life.
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.