Latest pics from Eurobike 2008

@lawrence18uk Sadly it is a fabula urbana, sadly because it gave rise to the great story that the design of the space shuttle boosters was down to the design of Roman carts: briefly, supposedly all Roman carts had the same width the wheels which caused the ruts in the road which meant all carts for the next 1800 years were built to fit these ruts, when Stephenson built the first railway engines he followed this size for convenience sake, ultimately the space shuttle boosters had to be redesigned so that they could fit the width of a goods train to be transported from the factory to the launch site. Unfortunately research at Pompeii and elsewhere has shown that there was no standardised Roman axle size and in any case Roman roads were continually repaired and the ruts filled in countless times over the centuries so even if there had been there was no need to follow it. Stephenson in fact chose his gauge to match that of the tracks used for pushcarts in his local mines for convenience sake, if he had lived in a different part of the country he would've chosen a different size.

@arowland Reality is an illusion caused by lack of alcohol.

How on earth a study of this nature can be published without any reference to the number of riders wearing a safety balaclava is beyond me

Except that the paper's conclusions are all about policy interventions to reduce or modify ebike use, and nothing at all about changes to practices of clinical assessment. So the 'far-fetched and invalid conclusion', which doesn't relate to the stated objective, is the authors'.

What is being criticized here was not even part of the study! The paper states clearly: "The primary objective of the study was to quantitatively assess the changing pattern of e-bike–related visits at a London District General Hospital ED by measuring the total number of visits for cycling-related injuries and the ratio of e-bikes to non-e-bikes." There is not even a word in the study about the general safety of (e-)bike use or frequency of injuries while riding. That part is a far-fetched and invalid conclusion by other parties mentioned in the Road.cc article. A doctor taking the first look at a patient must quickly recognize what kind of trauma they should look for and identifying patterns in this area helps a lot. And THAT is the practical conclusion from the study, not judging how safety cycling is. BTW it is not even a doctor's job to decide whether the e-bike was street-legal or not. That's a task of the police. And by the time that is actually determined, the doctor's job is often done, so from a clinician's perspective they often don't really care about that.

@arowland Just imagine how fast you ride to the shop when your booze has run out!

They don't have any helmets, so they have nothing to drink the alcohol out of.

"E-bike’ riders 41% more likely to suffer head injuries than other cyclists due to lack of helmets and alcohol..." Lack of alcohol causes head injuries? That explains a lot!

@Rendel Harris I'm wondering how useful the rest of their reviews are after reading this. I guess it's best to rely on your mates opinions of gear based on fact not the "20 pound hand shake"! But that's the Internet, you need to wade through 90% of the BS you read.

@stevez123 Well here's a tip, when you see "This article includes paid promotion on behalf of..." at the top of an article, don't read it. Then you won't feel your time has been wasted, road.cc still gets its few quid to help keeping on providing us with content, all good.