road.cc recap: ten of our favourite stories this week

@Astralstroll The hierarchy of road users does not mean priority of road users except in certain circumstances, e.g. stopping to let pedestrians cross junctions before turning. It doesn't mean that cyclists have priority over motor vehicles at all times any more than the pedestrians have priority over cyclists at all times. It certainly doesn't mean that you have priority in the circumstances you describe; personally, unless the driver is being a complete dick, on a narrow country lane I accept that it is easier for me to turn around and go back to the nearest passing place, which is never that far if you're on a bike, than for a tractor or other large vehicle to reverse back down the road for my benefit.

If you were spending that much money on the device the obvious thing to do is to book a couple of hours in a velodrome for testing in a stable environment, I can't understand why Road.cc tried to do it outdoors.

@chrisonabike 'Minimisation' please!

@Astralstroll The Hierarchy of Road Users, announced with great fanfares in 2022, has been rendered into complete fiction by the attitude of the police: there is this hierarchy/ priority list but we don't take it seriously and if drivers ignore it we don't care! The same applies to the ludicrous notice of close-passing - No KSI'd cyclist = No Offence ttps://upride.cc/incident/lwa190_minicooper_hierarchy/

Hope Barcelona keep the transport improvements (they've been making for a while) coming! Better streets, more infra to help active travel where necessary. And while it's a major investment (though can be lower operating cost than busses) maybe more trams where they can. That may be more effective in making places active travel friendly and replacing taxis than mass public bike hire. They've a good start with 6 lines already.

I think this is a positive story. They're not getting rid of public hire bikes - they're expanding their in-house one. They're merely kicking out cowboys who've shown they've a lack of interest in the game they claim to be playing. It seems logical that companies whose business model is to extract (venture capital) money by invading public space are even less likely to make the efforts to keep things in order than a local "in house" scheme. (After all the "bikes and riding" part of these schemes always *costs* money, they don't generate it.) So not surprising their experience shows those firms are not particularly motivated to follow the rules - especially when scrapping for "market share". It's nice the European Cyclists’ Federation is thinking about tourists also (i hesitate to say "follow the money...") - as they note, where it's safe to cycle locals will largely get their own bikes. Tourists aren't going to stop coming because lack of public bike share - I think this is mostly a "nice to have" ("hey - why don't we go on one of those bikes there? ").

Harm minimization - at least they're not driving...

I'll counter that by saying the Bryton 750se I have drives me nuts at times. Inconsistantly picks up on routes created on Komoot and the app re-syncs every few seconds when trying to set up the device and sends me back to the home screen. The most infuriating one is that I turned live track on. Once. It now won't turn off and repeatedly flags up the live track is starting, and then disconnecting every few seconds whilst riding. I haven't timed it but it wouldn't suprise me if 10-20% of the time the the screen is covered with an error message. That's been about 6 weeks now. Other than that it's great :/

RE: Police launch road safety operation... by clamping down on cyclists using footbridge Meanwhile in Glasgow, Police Scotland are riding their motorbikes over the pedestrian and cyclists only bridge. https://x.com/FietserGlasgow/status/2065106152917012523?s=20

@Paul J Van Schip certainly seems a bit of a dick, but he's a European and multiple World Champion on the track, pretty sure you don't get there without having some talent in your legs.