Live blog: Giro towns turn pink, South Yorkshire Police targeting close pass drivers + extreme wheelie video
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Tue, Jan 23, 2018 15:00
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Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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Latest Comments
Rendel Harris 1 hour ago
@Nigel Garage Oh yes, the defence of the country and adequate provision for the disabled are very much an either/or, we can't possibly have both. Hang on, what if we set about closing all the tax loopholes and avoidance schemes advised by greedy Essex accountants, then there might be enough to go round.
jackcycles 2 hours ago
@Rendel Harris tut tut, you obviously haven't taken your DEI course yet. You can't say "the disabled" in this day and age because it objectifies them. You're turning an adjective into a noun, very poor form by someone who self-certifies as an expert in the English language. "Disabled people" is the non-discriminatory way to describe those with disabilities. Putting aside your ridiculous and cliched comparison of my vision of an equal society with National Socialism, the last thing I'm going to say on the topic is that society has infinite number of wants on a finite number of resources. Clearly you think doling out free cycling gear to people is more important than spending those same precious resources on treating people in the NHS, educating our children, or defending our country. Well, more power to you, but I'm certain the overwhelming majority of people think otherwise.
Rendel Harris 2 hours ago
@chrisonabike Yes, of course in any march of 250,000 plus people you're going to get some nasty bits of work and idiots. The police have arrested some of these and from what I hear (friends have gone on the marches, I haven't) they are reasonably assiduous in doing so within the obvious limits of trying to identify and then isolate and arrest a person responsible for shouting stupid things in a massive crowd. However, and I'm happy to stand corrected if they should wish to make their position more clear, I assume from the tone of open_roads' remarks and his description of the marches as antisemitic that they regard any march protesting the behaviour of the Israeli government with regard to the slaughter in Gaza as being antisemitic. In any case, the point I was making still stands, as backed up by those arrest figures I quoted, which is that it is not accurate to say that the Met have a "not a priority" attitude to these marches, quite the opposite.
Rendel Harris 2 hours ago
@Ramz Not in the slightest, because the supposed wrong price isn't part of the review, so no misleading or inaccuracy there, and the shoes are available, albeit only in one colour, for £45 as stated.
Ramz 3 hours ago
@Rendel Harris Are you agreeing that the review was misleading and inaccurate?
Bungle_52 5 hours ago
@Freddy56 wrote "No ideal but it is real and now. Adapt and survive" It's a very similar situation to climate change. As a species we had a choice to reduce carbon emissions or do nothing and learn to live with consequences. We chose the latter and now we wait to see which one will kill us off first.
chrisonabike 5 hours ago
@Rendel Harris yes. Though apparent motivations of protestors have been ... mixed. And it's certainly *caused* fear and alarm to Jewish groups here. Hopefully the small numbers of Jewish folks attending some protests didn't feel threatened. I'm not sure I'd appreciate a few folks on such protests apparently randomly celebrating the sport of paragliding etc. any more than if a few of the "fair fuel" protestors had been making knowing references to "piano wire" or joking about mounting spikes on bumpers.
Rendel Harris 5 hours ago
@Nigel Garage Of course you were purporting to be speaking (admittedly totally stupidly and without any justification) for disabled people, claiming that they want to "stand on their own two feet" and that they don't want to be given assistance. It's extremely telling that you claim to be speaking for "decent law-abiding citizens", so anyone who wants the disabled to get the help they need is neither decent nor law-abiding? And these people apparently "want an inclusive society without favouring one group of people over another". You can't have an inclusive society unless you make provision for those who need more assistance than others. There was a group in Europe, just under a century ago, who were very keen to emphasise that the disabled were a financial burden on the state, indeed their first steps towards "cleansing" society were to attempt to eradicate this burden. Ever heard of them? Didn't end well.
Smiley775 6 hours ago
@tomlew A good point. This opinion piece seems to be complaining about how AI is being used to sell us stuff, rather than using humans to sell us stuff. AI has no impact on me enjoying cycling, how I ride, the people I ride with etc that the article says.
jaymack 6 hours ago
People are hard wired to be lazy. From an evolutionary perspective non-essential activity just gets in the way of our core function: reproduction. This is why people drive half a mile to a supermarket to get a few groceries rather than walk, they're not being lazy in the pejorative sense, they're being 'lazy' because that's our biological programming. This goes some way to explain why there's an obesity problem in a world where day-to-day activity levels have dropped off of a cliff edge as work has become a sedentary activity. What's this got to do with AI? If 'automation' has driven westerners into a sedentary existence - we don't dig, hunt, build or walk miles everyday just to be able to eat - with all the attendant health issues that have resulted, what's AI going to do to people's ability to think when it 'relieves' us of the need to exert some brain power to solve a problem or make a decision?
11 thoughts on “Live blog: Giro towns turn pink, South Yorkshire Police targeting close pass drivers + extreme wheelie video”
So, 2 in 3 drivers think
So, 2 in 3 drivers think they’ll get away with ‘careless’ driving.
This rather gives the lie to a lot of what is seen as (and comes before the courts as) so called careless driving.
How can you premeditate a ‘lack of care’ and make a judgement about the likelihood of getting caught?
As I, and I’m sure a lot of readers, have long suspected, ‘careless’ driving is often calculated and deliberate risk taking, conscious omission (E.g. indicating), plain old ignorance, impatience and bad manners and a perfectly predictable endangerment of other road users.
Driving above the speed limit
Driving above the speed limit, driving through a red light, driving whilst under the influence of drink or drugs, using a mobile phone whilst driving – all these are against the law.
I could (I wouldn’t however) drive around my local area, North Somerset, whilst on my mobile phone and speeding and I am very confident wouldn’t get caught.
Why? Because I can’t remember the last time I saw a police car patrolling here. There is very little, if any, enforcement for most traffic offences.
I do hope most drivers think
I do hope most drivers think the way I do and the survey has picked that up. I too think it would be unlikely that I got caught doing some of thes things, I still never would think of doing them :-/
Having driven and ridden
Having driven and ridden bikes and cars since the early 80’s I think it’s pretty much always been the case that the odds were low that you’d get caught. What has changed is the nature of the stupidity.
We have less drink driving https://www.drinkdriving.org/drink_driving_statistics_uk.php but we now have the curse of the mobile phone (which may actually be worse http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1885775.stm). I also suspect that the problem of exceeding speed limits in urban areas https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/623261/vehicle-speed-compliance-statistics-2016.pdf is now worse than it used be because of traffic volume, cameras and the cars being much faster.
Overall, as someone who is a “techie” I find it hard to understand why we do not automate compliance. Why on earth do we still allow new cars to be sold that are capable of exceeding speed limits on our roads and people to use mobile phones whilst driving. Both are (and have been for a number of years) very very fixable problems e.g. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/5300462/Speed-restricted-car-a-review.html, https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208090 It’d be a prime opportunity for a government to grab a technical world lead in such systems, we just need one to show a bit of leadership and care more about its citizens than pleasing the automotive lobby.
shufflingb wrote:
I can’t remember which manufacturer it was, but one of the interviewees on Radio 5 this morning said they had a car that detected they had a mobile phone and automatically placed it into “Do not disturb” mode as soon as they got in.
As for auto-compliance on speed, I agree in principle but … in some circumstances it is safer to accelerate out of trouble rather than brake and it would be foolish to remove that option from drivers because they were already at the speed limit.
And, even if manufacturers were only permitted to sell cars that couldn’t exceed 70mph, they could still wreak havoc in a 20/30/40mph zone.
The only way to make enforced speed limits work would be to build electronic speed controls into our roads that limited the top speed of the cars driving along it. Installing that across the whole road network would be a nightmare.
Whilst I am sure there are some theoretical circumstances where a burst of acceleration might avoid an accident, I have never experienced such a thing in 50+ years on the road in almost all categories of vehicle. I have however, permanently etched on my memory, several horrific collisions where excess speed was a major factor.
I would actually go further than a speed limit and I’d also support an acceleration limit that removed the temptation to outsprint the other driver to the next set of lights. If all cars could only manage 0 – 60 in, for example, 20 seconds what a relaxed world it could be.
mike the bike wrote:
Whilst I am sure there are some theoretical circumstances where a burst of acceleration might avoid an accident, I have never experienced such a thing in 50+ years on the road in almost all categories of vehicle. I have however, permanently etched on my memory, several horrific collisions where excess speed was a major factor.
I would actually go further than a speed limit and I’d also support an acceleration limit that removed the temptation to outsprint the other driver to the next set of lights. If all cars could only manage 0 – 60 in, for example, 20 seconds what a relaxed world it could be.— shufflingb
I agree. The only situation I can think of where a burst of acceleration might avoid an accident is during a misjudged over-taking manoeuvre. In which case if the driver hadn’t f****d it up in the first place it would not be necessary.
Jetmans Dad wrote:
Excuse me, I have something called a sat nav in my car and it displays the local speed limit. Link that to the car computery thing and tell it not to speed whatever the limit.
Electronic speed controls in the road………. what?
Just had a thought though, it would be brilliant, the day it came into force there would be zero car sales and dealers would be falling over themselves to sell cars.
grumpyoldcyclist wrote:
May sat nav displays the wrong speed limit on some roads, but compliance woukd rise to 98% instead of probably about 50% at the moment.
On the contrary, only today I
On the contrary, only today I was driving along to find red and white barriers and “BRIDGE OUT!” blocking the road. Fortunately I was able to accelerate out of trouble, and I cleared the creek and made it to the County Line.
50%, a bit optimistic. Drive
50%, a bit optimistic. Drive at the speed limit, see how many overtake or the large queue that will form behind.