Twitter

Yesterday morning, as Mayor of London Boris Johnson announced his new Cycle Safety Accident Plan, news broke that a 21-year-old male cyclist had been killed after being hit by an HGV at the junction of Weston Street and Snowfields in Southwark. A 30-year-old man was arrested and has been bailed while police carry out their investigations.

Condor Cycles is entering into the Christmas spirit with a 12 Days of Condor game that starts today – and if you follow them on Twitter, you’re in with a chance of winning, too.

Over the next 12 days, Condor will post a Christmas gift idea each day on its website, featuring products from brands such as Rapha, Mavic, and Giro. Lights – well, it is Christmas, although we assume these are destined for the bike, not the tree – and signed books will also be among the suggestions.

We haven't done a Schwag Grab for a while but now it's back - albeit in a slightly different format. Up for grabs is a Muc-Off goody bag containing a double pack of Bike Cleaner, some Bike Spray and some Wet and Dry Lube. Hell, you can even have some Disc Brake Cleaner too if you think it'll come in handy. And some road.cc stickers. All for free!

“I pay road tax. Cyclists don’t.” It’s a phrase often trotted out by certain motorists when trying to back up their opinion that bicycles have no business sharing the road with cars.

But it ignores several uncomfortable facts. One, most adult cyclists are motorists themselves. Two, upkeep of highways is funded through general taxation, not road tax, or Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) as it’s properly termed. Not to mention the positive health and environmental effects of cycling.

It’s a given that cyclists feel threatened by the behaviour of some drivers – understandably so, given their vulnerability when faced with half a tonne of metal box being driven by someone who may not even have registered their presence – but it seems that pedestrians increasingly feel the same way about those of us on two wheels.

Those of you who use the social networking site, Twitter – and if you do, we hope you follow @roadcc – will be aware of hashtags.

For those of you who aren’t yet ‘tweeting’ – using Twitter to send messages of 140 characters or fewer – hashtags help Twitter users track trends, and aid them in keeping track of posts on specific subjects.

In what is proving a regular tweet, seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong was at it again on social network site Twitter as he invited riders out to join him for an informal ride in Los Angeles yesterday.

On Wednesday afternoon, Armstrong posted the following tweet invitation on his Twitter page: "Hey LA - get out of your cars and get on your bikes. Time to ride. 7:30 tomorrow am. Griffith Park, LA Zoo parking lot. See you there.."

Lance Armstrong was joined by more than 1,000 Irish cyclists – many in work suits - in Dublin yesterday after he once again used Twitter to invite them for a ride in the city.

The ride brought Dublin’s rush hour traffic to a halt when we took a ride through Phoenix Park, the biggest urban enclosed park in Europe.

Lance Armstrong has been at it again, tweeting himself up some ride partners – this time in Dublin. Traffic police and rush hour drivers in the Irish capital, not exactly noted for its free-flowing traffic, will be on high alert especially as this time Lance has given potential rider partners a whole day to get organised for it.

Yesterday it was Glasgow, (well Paisley) today the world as Globe Cyclist, James Bowthorpe felt the Lance effect. No sooner had Lance alerted his 1.7m followers to James' quest to ride around the world in record time and raise money for Parkinson's in the process than the Globe Cycle website experienced a surge in traffic and his following on Twitter trebled within hours – with hundreds of people re-tweeting messages about him.