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
mitsky 12 minutes ago
@Mr Anderson Agreed. Perfect example is this parent doing an, approximately, 700 METRE school run. I worked t out by finding where the vehicle was parked on the residential road when I first encountered it. Whilst I can't be 100% sure, I am certain the children had no physical disability that would prevent them walking. https://youtu.be/R-dp-G6W8Jk
quiff 15 minutes ago
"Old Man Mountain kit is built tough, and comes with a lifetime warranty – which really matters, when it may well be subject to being battered over many tens of thousands of miles of awful terrain, carrying the equivalent weight of a small-ish child." Obviously it depends how the manufacturer applies its warranty, and OMM might be great - but worth noting that "lifetime warranty" is often less generous than it initially sounds - it's the reasonable lifetime of the product, and only warrants against manufacturing defects. So being battered over tens of thousands of miles is not necessarily going to be covered.
mdavidford 35 minutes ago
0.8m of cycleway does seem an extremely selective focus. Do we know which side of the junction those 80cm fall on?
bikercub 1 hour ago
I'd like to see some reviews of the IGPSport cycle computers & smart lights which are available on Amazon in the UK. They appear to be well equipped with GPS models in the £150 - £200 price bracket offering great features and very good value for money. If they are good enough to be supporting the Groupama-FDJ United World TourCycling team, we should be looking at them as a contender. It would be interesting how these compare to the Garmin and Wahoo models that are considered the industry standard.
mdavidford 1 hour ago
Happens on a regular basis - seems to be one of the many exciting new 'features' of the new platform.
kinderje 1 hour ago
@Rendel Harris Thanks for that - every day's a school day. I had actually put 'Pedant mode off' under my comment but it didn't post and then as we all know, and are frustrated with, we can't edit posts any more. I will not correct anyone again - however, -ize still looks too American English for me. Cheers
HarrogateSpa 1 hour ago
We also have a greater volume of traffic, including on residential roads which were once quiet. Spending billions on infrastructure such as protected cycle tracks and modal filters is the only thing that will lead to mass cycling. Look at London. Why is there mass cycling there? Infrastructure. The Netherlands? The same reason. And often the only way to achieve meaningful change is reallocating some space and priority from motor vehicles, which is why the government's 'don't scare the horses' attitude is concerning.
Rendel Harris 1 hour ago
You think there might be a clue to that in the name "City Light Set"? Marking it down because it's no good for fast riding on unlit roads seems somewhat akin to buying a micro-hatchback and then complaining that it's rubbish at pulling a plough.
quiff 2 hours ago
This is like something from a kids' activity book. "The editor has a bit of a hangover this morning. Can you help him match the headline to the correct story?"
Rendel Harris 2 hours ago
@kinderje Are you aware that -ise endings are actually the newer form, having supplanted -ize (as used by Shakespeare, the King James Bible and Jane Austen, amongst many others) in the mid 19th century? Etymologically there is a far better argument for -ize endings for words with Greek and Latin roots than the -ise ending which arose from Victorian publishers imitating French verb endings. Both endings are now regarded as acceptable in British English, although the Oxford style guide recommends -ize. It is most certainly not incorrect.
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.