Please note our live blog can sometimes be slow to load. If it seems to be taking too long, try refreshing your browser.
Live blog: Active travel campaigners slam Budget, Italian ex-pro dies in plane crash, £330 Bournemouth prom cycling fine + more
All the news from the site and beyond as we start a new week
Mon, Oct 29, 2018 16:00
Help us to bring you the best cycling content
If you’ve enjoyed this article, then please consider subscribing to road.cc from as little as £2.49. Our mission is to bring you all the news that’s relevant to you as a cyclist, independent reviews, impartial buying advice and more. Your subscription will help us to do more.
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.
21 Comments
Read more...
Read more...
Read more...
Latest Comments
wtjs 12 hours ago
@FionaJJ These officers deployed next-level stupidity, and it must be difficult for the police to find people this dim. It doesn't even need rolling-roads or whatever, just a reputable bike computer on a quickly changed mount for the difficult cases where a proper EAPC has been modded, although you would need to look hard in Lancashire to find a police officer who knows how to make a pedal cycle go. Most illegal electric motorbikes are immediately obvious, not least because the crim is wearing a face mask. I saw an obvious one tonight coming out of Garstang Sainsbury's, not pedalling but without a face mask because everybody knows that the police only come into the town to hide away in the police station 200 yards away.
bikeman01 13 hours ago
Gustav Gullholm.. that's not a good look mate
mdavidford 15 hours ago
@Chris RideFar I think what you meant to say was "REMOVE this and put it on PODCAST CC".
jaymack 17 hours ago
As Mary Whitehouse never said - one doesn't have to read the article if one doesn't want to read about an off-road bicycle.
Rendel Harris 17 hours ago
@FionaJJ In London they're allowed to stop on single and double yellows to deliver packages or empty pillar boxes; in practice they take this as carte blanche to park wherever and whenever they want, such as this chap on the Brixton Road who pulled into the bus/cycle/motorcycle lane without indicating, as I approached at 20mph, to park on a red route, response to a remonstrance, "I suppose you never get post delivered do ya?"
FionaJJ 18 hours ago
@Rendel Harris We have a pavement parking ban, but around here at least, royal mail vans are already exempt, subject to certain caveats, such as allowing at least 1.5m, and only being stopped to do their work.
FionaJJ 18 hours ago
It was already embarrassing for the police that they made such a mess of their attempt to determine whether a bike was legal or not, but I had assumed it was a group of well intentioned, but under-trained officers acting on their own initiative, having spotted something they thought looked not quite right. I'm now discovering this was a planned activity, something sufficiently organised to have been given a name - Operation FRISLEN, designed specifically to identify and remove illegal e-bikes and scooters. It's apparent that the officers were sent out without adequate training, never mind the kind of equipment that should be used for this sort of work. I'm not saying they always need specialist equipment to spot all illegal bikes, but at least if they'd been given a demonstration with that equipment, they'd have realised why their approach was not going to end well.
Geoff Ingram 20 hours ago
Have put drop bars on a 2001 B1 mtb, a 2007 stumpy hardtail and a 2010 stumpy full suss. In all cases fairly basic conversións leaving gearing and wheels broadly the same and concentrating on correct positioning of bars and fit. Oddly, with all 3 I was happy with the result when recently done, but after a few months found that the extra speed on easy trails was more than offset by the lack of ability (probably mine) on tougher routes and finally preferred flat bar with slammed and inverted stem as best overall compromise. Good fun playing around, though.
mark1a 20 hours ago
The photos in this review look they are for a different bag?
mattw 21 hours ago
This is a strange reactionary knee jerk overall. But what is this "are essentially motorbikes in disguise" waffle? "One letter claimed that high-powered electric ‘e-bikes’ were “essentially motorbikes” in disguise, with many being used without lights, helmets, or any hi-vis clothing." Surely, they simply ARE motorbikes?
21 thoughts on “Live blog: Active travel campaigners slam Budget, Italian ex-pro dies in plane crash, £330 Bournemouth prom cycling fine + more”
Ermm – they do understand
Ermm – they do understand that “£420m for potholes in today’s Budget” is total and utter f-ing peanuts, right??
Same old shit, different day.
Same old shit, different day. So you can beat someone up, attack with your killing weapon of choice and get no charges but a cyclist on the prom gets a bigger slap than someone distracted driving or speeding.
Fucking ridiculous!
£330! Totally
£330! Totally disproportionate. This driver was under the influence of drugs, put other road users at risk but was fined about the same, even if he did have to do some community service https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/17001272.drug-swipe-on-driver-in-boscombe-gave-positive-result-for-cannabis/?ref=ar
Mind you, they did the right thing with this idiot https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/16986349.mitchell-stuart-drove-his-porsche-at-55mph-near-lilliput-c-of-e-infant-school/?ref=ar “He is one of those start-up child prodigies.” I think they meant one of those upstart children.
£330 fine is rediculous when
£330 fine is rediculous when compared with what drivers get for more dangerous offences, however, the cyclist was stupid to get back on his bike after being informed of the ban. When taking into account the situation and that he was let off and then decided to try and take advantage he probably deserved a good chunk of what he got.
ClubSmed wrote:
Fixed that
ClubSmed wrote:
Such as running over an elederly man who’d fallen into the road, despite the car 100m ahead managing to swerve around him, while driving your car with a defective headlamp, on the (handsfree) phone to your boyfriend arranging to meet up (presumably for some rumpy pumpy), failing to stop, turning around, coming back, and then skulking away when spotting it was in fact a person she’d hit (as she suspected, despite having said she thought it was rubbinh but suspected it was a person – go figure that out).
Depriving a family of a family member and she’s fined 500 for leaving the scene, not for the intial accident, or the defective lights.
Random thought in response to
Random thought in response to the Bournemouth article; does dabbing count as cycling? That somewhat archaic practice of having one foot on a pedal and using the other to scoot along like a scooter user?
kil0ran wrote:
Given that even pushing a bike down the pavement is technically illegal – you should carry it – I would imagine “dabbing” would also fall foul of this.
vonhelmet wrote:
I don’t believe that pushing a bike is technically illegal – got any references for that?
From this article http://www.bikehub.co.uk/featured-articles/cycling-and-the-law/ :
Scooting on a bike (I’m pretty sure that dabbing is something entirely different in modern vernacular) would thus be considered to be riding it.
vonhelmet wrote:
Not true https://www.cyclinguk.org/cycle/scooting-cycling
kil0ran wrote:
Scooting, or dabbing as you call it, is as far as I know, technically legal as you aren’t riding the bike. I’m sue I’ve read legal opinion about this, but perhaps someone with more knowledge than me could elucidate?
Found this, https://www.cyclinguk.org/cycle/scooting-cycling which makes it clear that pushing your bike with both feet on the ground is definitely legal.
Cycling back towards
Cycling back towards Greenwich from Bethnal Green the other night, 11.30pm, going through Greenwich foot-tunnel I got an earful from a drunk woman walking the opposite way to me because I was cycling through. She stepped out in front of me to stop me, shouting at me to get off my bike. OK, strictly speaking, the rules say don’t cycle (they also state you’re meant to walk on the left, and she wasn’t, but I digress). There needs to be some kind of proportion (as I tried to explain to her). It was an empty tunnel, apart from her. At 11.30pm I’m not causing anyone any harm by cycling. “What about small children walking in here” she ranted. I looked up and down the deserted tunnel and looked bemused. At busy times, during the day I’ll always get off the bike and walk. That evening I’d come across so much agressive driving on the streets of east london, I couldn’t help thinking, as this angry woman ranted at me, we have our perspectives all messed up.
£330 is too lenient.
£330 is too lenient.
People who think they are above the law should, and will, be made to pay, entitled cyclists are no exception.
A440 wrote:
I’d be happy to agree if the same standards were applied to motorists as well.
A440 wrote:
Ooh, Charles Bronson! Go on, baby, make me pay! Make me pay ’til I beg for more! Wear your superhero mask for me, big boy!
The full Herald on Sunday
The full Herald on Sunday piece is truly appalling. (They don’t appear to have made it available online.)
“…cyclists are allowed to run riot on our roads, never signalling, rarely obeying traffic lights or pedestrian crossings, and often exceeding 20mph speed limits in towns or wobbling along on 60mph country roads, causing drivers on blind bends to have heart attacks.”
“They cause cars to overtake into oncoming traffic, but don’t give a damn as long as they get to practise their smug hobby and display their disturblingly distended calf muscles.”
“Humour” indeed…
PS – sad farwell to Norman Sheil – Class rider – brilliant coach – nice guy who had little time for the UK “blazer brigade”
JohnnyRemo wrote:
Oh how I love this one: a clear confession that the driver is not in control of their car and hence had no way of preventing it from swerving into the oncoming traffic.
rkemb wrote:
It’s the sense of entitlement that does it. “The speed limit is 30mph, therefore I am entitled to travel at 30mph no matter what.” Well, no, that’s not how it works.
rkemb wrote:
I think we’d always assumed motor vehicles were like bicycles (short of a mechanical failure, the rider is completely in control of them) when clearly they’re actually more like horses (and horsists are constantly reminding us that they have very little control over their two tonnes of very nervous and jumpy still-almost-wild animal).
Cycling UK and Sustrans are
Cycling UK and Sustrans are right, and this budget is yet another disaster for active travel and sustainable travel. £30bn for roads and £650m for alternatives to driving, which is exactly the inverse of what it should have been. This government has gone way beyond hopeless, hurtled past totally incompetent and is currently at abysmal.
I stand corrected – I was
I stand corrected – I was misinformed.