Daily Mail hysterical backlash quelled as tree ‘cut down’ to make way for cycle lane successfully moved to new location; Zwift Everesting; Santa Claus is cycling to town! Dan Walker spots a famous festive face using a bike lane + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
Santa Claus is cycling to town! Dan Walker spots a famous festive face using a bike lane
Found him 🎅 pic.twitter.com/xANP9vfX8E
— Dan Walker (@mrdanwalker) December 6, 2023
With the price of looking after nine reindeer it looks like the main man has opted for a simpler, economical mode of transport this Christmas. It helps burn off the mince pies too, I guess…
One commenter hoped he’s on more than £38,000 per year, while someone else questioned if the reindeer are striking over pay and conditions. ‘We do all the work and just get a few carrots chucked at us while you get drunk, eat all the good scran, and take all the glory for lobbing a few presents down chimneys…’
As a result, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is out and a HumanForest hire bike is in. Missing a trick not going for a Santa-nder Cycle, but what do I know?
Zwift Everesting
Few days late to this, but bloody hell…
My son is bonkers/awesome/crazy?! Insert own word, personally I think he is crazy sitting on Zwift for that long. He started at 5am and finished at 5pm. #cycling @UKCycleChat pic.twitter.com/OpCfePmyJR
— Leah Hunting (@whoopydeedoo) December 3, 2023
And to think I get bored usually around the six-minute mark of riding indoors…
It’s not Alec’s first live blog appearance, that came after he completed a 340km solo ride at an average speed of 27km/h around Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire (because why not?)…
GTA VI: Pro cycling edition
No need to wait until 2025 to see a Rockstar 💥 pic.twitter.com/haryJZXaee
— Soudal Quick-Step Pro Cycling Team (@soudalquickstep) December 6, 2023
Presumably rated 18+ purely for Mr Lefevere’s ‘full on’ newspaper appraisals…
And the hitman of the rival gang?
Welcome to Giro City 🌴🌆#Giro #GirodItalia #GTA pic.twitter.com/nT2rzDtcJg
— Giro d’Italia (@giroditalia) December 7, 2023
Investigation suggests workers at Shimano's supplier subjected to "slavery-like" exploitation
> Investigation suggests workers at Shimano’s supplier subjected to “slavery-like” exploitation
"Otherwise he would have already stopped": Cav's coach believes in 35th Tour stage dream
Vasilis Anastopoulos believes in Mark Cavendish. That much should already be obvious considering the Greek coach oversaw the Manx Missile’s return to the top of the sport, four-stage haul at the 2021 Tour, and has since left Soudal Quick-Step to reunite with his star pupil at Astana.
Speaking to Portuguese Cycling Magazine, Anastopoulos responded emphatically to the question of is it realistic to believe Cavendish can win a 35th Tour stage win next year and overtake Eddy Merckx’s record? “Yes,” the coach replied instantly.
“Mark is a great champion and a real fighter. If he didn’t like it anymore, he would have stopped a long time ago. That is also why we have recruited certain riders, in order to build the best sprint train. Mørkøv, Ballerini and Cees Bol are good and experienced riders, who can drop Mark in the last meters of a sprint. Then it is up to Mark to complete it.
“Mark had a very good level last year and we hope to make a little bit of progress so that it is enough. In the Tour stage in which he crossed the line in second place, he suffered a mechanical problem. Without mechanical failure he could have won, I’m sure.
“The stages in the coming Tour are very tough and it is therefore important that Mark is able to survive the longer climbs and days. And then at the end I still have the right freshness and energy to be able to sprint.”
Best Christmas gifts for cyclists under £200 — special presents for your special cyclist
> Best Christmas gifts for cyclists under £200 — special presents for your special cyclist
"Just wait until the Mail hears how many trees have to be cut down for any road junction 'improvements' let alone any new roads"
Comments section time.
ktache makes the point that it’s funny which trees being ‘cut down’ (and those not even being cut down, just relocated) attracts certain sections of the press’ attention… “Just wait until the Mail hears how many trees have to be cut down for any road junction ‘improvements’ let alone any new roads.”
Interestingly, as Surreyrider points out, not so much frothing fury “about the number of trees cut down for the Wisley junction ‘improvements’ in Surrey”.
Brooksby might have predicted the next twist in the tale… how long until the ‘EXCLUSIVE’ suggests it’s actually a plastic remake? Don’t give them ideas…
Extra kudos to chrisonatrike for the reference to a very good song by a very good band. A fake Chinese rubber plant, perhaps?
Christmas shopping? Exclusive Raleigh gift sets to be sold in Boots
Not necesarily news I expected to be writing today, but here we are…
Boots and Raleigh have teamed up to sell exclusive gift sets from the iconic British bicycle brand in the run up to Christmas. Because who doesn’t want to wake up to Raleigh-branded body wash? Beats Lynx Africa every time…
They’re also selling the obligatory mug x socks combo, and a gloves gift set. That poor pedalling Santa we featured earlier is going to be rushed off his feet with all the trips to Boots required when these hit the Christmas lists. In fairness, give me anything Raleigh branded over the generic ‘I like cycling’ genre of gifts (much of which forms the backbone of inspiration for Jo’s now-famous gift guide)…
> Don’t buy me this! Gifts not to buy for cyclists this Christmas to avoid a festive faux pas
Raleigh and Boots say the sets have been “meticulously crafted to provide a combination of retro style, and practicality”. Oh, but if you want to be a really popular gift giver, skip the Boots trip and just get me one of these… anyone… please… okay, I’ll settle for the socks…
> Back to the future: Raleigh relaunches iconic Chopper (again)
Ford claims its new van can solve the issue of "cyclists getting doored" by drivers and passengers
> Ford claims its new van can solve the issue of “cyclists getting doored” by drivers and passengers
Campaigners raise £37,000 for a legal challenge to stop Tower Hamlets mayor from ripping out low-traffic neighbourhoods
Daily Mail hysterical backlash quelled as tree 'cut down' to make way for cycle lane successfully moved to new location
Who’d have guessed it?
With work starting to improve safety at the most dangerous junction in London at Lambeth Bridge, thanks to the @tfl team for successfully moving the palm tree from the roundabout to its new home in nearby Pimlico. 🌴 pic.twitter.com/kH4jA6J8TS
— Will Norman (@willnorman) December 7, 2023
Versus the way the situation was portrayed by a certain national newspaper’s website…
Right, yep. Not the hardest game of spot the difference, not that it stopped Conservative MP Nickie Aiken sharing the Mail’s story and urging Transport for London to have a “rethink”. Aiken was accused of “spreading lies” and of neglecting her “position of responsibility” by failing to focus on the safety of cyclists in the city, to “score political points”.
Thankfully, Will Norman was on hand last week too…
Think it might be high time to update our old-favourite, the ’10 of the most hysterical anti-cycling Daily Mail headlines’ feature…
7 December 2023, 09:06
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@Rendel Harris "Perhaps lethality should be measured as drivers/cyclists found guilty of causing death per chosen metric, rather than simply numbers killed?" Given the filter of the court system that would a) likely only introduce another source of bias and b) mean the cycling numbers had dubious statistical meaning relative to the motoring ones since after removing e-motorbikes (unless we didn't? But even then...) that is ... one or two in the last 5+ years?
@mdavidford You've made me curious so checked: in Devon and Torbay (in common with many councils, apparently), any project under £500,000 can be internally approved by the Corporate Director for Strategy, Performance, and Sustainability, whereas any project costing in excess of £500,000 needs a full cabinet vote. So it looks suspiciously as though there's been a bit of jiggery-pokery with the numbers to avoid full cabinet scrutiny.
From the screenshots, the software looks very similar to the Coospo CS600. I used it for a tour in Ireland and on the first day, I realised that the map of Ireland wasn't loaded by default. I could see my route as breadcrumbs but not the road or anything else around me. It looked very similar to what you saw when you went off-route. Are you sure you had the map of Scotland in your unit? Luckily for me, at the end of the first day, after tons of searches, trials and errors, I managed to download the map of Ireland into my phone, connect the Coospo to my phone as an external drive and upload the map. Not an easy task but that solved the problem. For the next five days I had a proper map to navigate. Regardless of that, I sent it back. Loading routes into it was a real PITA, the routes the app plotted were terrible compared to Komoot's and it didn't have re-routing.
@Rendel Harris I'm not sure why trips made is a better metric than miles travelled, but yes, that does yield a 9x difference for cars vs bicycles in pedestrian deaths. The real anomaly using that basis, though, are motorcyclists, who are a staggering 72x more likely to kill a pedestrian per trip than a cyclist. That suggests that speed, more than mass, is the real danger. And that young men are the greatest danger of all.
@chrisonabike Indeed, you put your finger on another problem with the fatality statistics in that we don't know in how many of the fatal incidents the driver/cyclist was to blame. If the two cyclist-caused-pedestrian fatalities the pedestrian was drunk and fell off the pavement into the path of the cyclist that could obviously change the lethality ratio considerably if factored in. Perhaps lethality should be measured as drivers/cyclists found guilty of causing death per chosen metric, rather than simply numbers killed?
Finally (on cyclists and junctions) cyclists may not be as observant themselves there. While junctions are high-mental-workload spaces (or should be...) for all road users I suspect cyclists - mixing with the motor traffic - are going to be focusing strongly on that for obvious reasons. Which is again why in places which are more advanced in this respect not only are junctions given better designs *, but network-level thought goes in to routes for each mode, the better to minimise the need for interactions. Especially when speeds might be higher. * Separation in space and/or time when modes cross, explicit space for different modes so it's clear who goes where / what to expect...
I'm not sure about the "60% of pedestrians killed at junctions are killed by cyclists" number, but i *could* believe it's relatively high. Why? Other "qualitative differences" - "noticeability" and "expectation". In the simplest sense cyclists are smaller and quieter than motor vehicles. (There's a lot of "looking with our ears" when eg. crossing roads believe). But more: in the UK we *expect* cars. We've learned to deal with cars both by formal teaching and daily experience. We know "how drivers behave" - where to expect them. I strongly suspect it's not just drivers "only looking for the motor vehicles". We don't *expect* cyclists. And (if taken at face value) there's a lot of quote anecdata that people are genuinely surprised by them / completely unfamiliar with cyclist behaviour on roads (except "they all jump red lights"...) - "came out of nowhere" / "never saw them" / " they were down the road, then suddenly they were right there" / wasn't expecting them to"...
A key one is "speed" as obviously injury is strongly related to that, and the 20-30mph region is where IIRC "mostly injured" crosses over to "mostly killed". Cars would be expected to be at higher speeds, for more of the time. That may be reduced in some places however eg. congested rush hours, and where "mixing" may be most likely the environment may cue lower speeds (narrow streets).
Stepping back, given that humans operate both cars and bikes maybe a *qualitative* "what differs" might be instructive? (Putting to one side for a moment what may be mostly a motornormative prejudice: that drivers are in some way "more responsible". Variations "more to lose because they've paid for a car" / "but trained and licenced" / "more accountable because number plates" / "only (man)children and crims who can't afford cars cycle" etc).
@AidanR I wonder how it would change the stats if one looked at deaths per trip? According to the NTS the average person makes 15 cycle trips a year and 357 as a car driver, so 23x more driving trips than cycling ones but 182x the pedestrian deaths so by that calculation cars are 8x more lethal. Take out the 20% of car trips on motorways and you have one death per 51M trips motoring and one death per 487M trips cycling, so motoring becomes almost 10x more lethal. I know one can make statistics do anything one wishes by changing the metrics but that figure seems a more realistic approximation of relative lethality to me. All this of course is before we count all the other deaths caused by motorists that cyclists almost never cause, i.e. motorcycle riders, car passengers etc, almost five times the pedestrian numbers, cars then become 50x more lethal than bikes...
44 thoughts on “Daily Mail hysterical backlash quelled as tree ‘cut down’ to make way for cycle lane successfully moved to new location; Zwift Everesting; Santa Claus is cycling to town! Dan Walker spots a famous festive face using a bike lane + more on the live blog”
Why is it that when you
Why is it that when you notice your brakes (rim brakes, V-brakes) are getting a bit sloppy so you tighten up the barrel adjuster to eke through to the weekend when you can replace the pads in daylight, that they dissolve overnight and the brakes are completely unsafe to ride into work the next morning??
brooksby wrote:
The brake pads dissolve? I’ve never encountered that – my usual method is to keep using them until there’s a horrible gritty/metallic rubbing on the rim when you brake, but they still work.
hawkinspeter wrote:
OK, dissolve is probably hyperbole, but they were fine (well, not fine, but usable) on the journey home and the next day the rubber has basically gone and if I try to use them I’ve got metal-on-metal. Either the rat in the shed has eaten them, or they’ve dissolved.
My shed doesn’t have a light and I’m not allowed to bring the bikes into the house, so I either veeery carefully ride into work and fix them outside (no bike shed at work) at lunchtime, or wait until the weekend 🙁
I recommend a petzl headtorch
I recommend a petzl headtorch and more regular checking in the winter.
Have you got those ones where you slide in a new shoe and then put in the retainer? Then you just have the barrel to adjust so it’s quite quick.
Hirsute wrote:
When I tried using them, the rubber was more or less seized into the holder, so it took much longer and involved sheering off one of the retaining screws too. I prefer just using the standard brake shoes now.
Mine is just a pin and I used
Mine is just a pin and I used a bradawl once to remove the old shoe.
Hirsute wrote:
I have two pairs of those on my wardrobe but I’ve never quite got around to putting them on the bike. Also have two pairs of el cheapo ones without a ‘new shoe’ fitting, same as the ones that have just worn out. May try out the ‘new shoe’ ones, which were more expensive…
It’s a lash-up but LED strip
It’s a lash-up but LED strip lights on the shed ceiling powered from an extension cable from the house / outdoor socket is my solution.
David9694 wrote:
There used to be a strip light in there which was powered by a cable hanging across the yard and wired into the house circuit. By my predecessors in the house, which was bad as it didn’t have a protective fused connection. Which caused slight problems when I accidentally ran a hedge trimmer through the cable…
Is this related to your news
Is this related to your news story?
Were you the friend with a “rust bucket” bike?
HoldingOn wrote:
Winter pad choice is critical
Winter pad choice is critical. I use SwissStop BXP (Flash Pro for Shimano/Sram/Tektro shoes, Race Pro for Campagnolo shoes) and the non-abraisive nature of the pads have meant top braking performance with a reduced wear rate on both rims and pads. I used to use cheap ones from Madison which chewed up easily and destroyed rims in a single winter. Unfortunately they don’t do BXP material in longer pads for hybrid/off-road bikes although the RX plus V-brake pads are also non-abraisive. They just aren’t as powerful as BXP.
Thanks for this – I had
Thanks for this – I had worked under the (mis) apprehension that all brake shoes are made alike. May have to try out more expensive ones during the winter (wetter?) months…
Kool Stop salmons. SJS do a
Kool Stop salmons. SJS do a full range. My Getting to Work Bike prefers the low profile canti version on the front and the MTB cantis on the rear.
ktache wrote:
Yes. They are so, so good compared to e.g. the black Shimano ones. The stock pads on my Brompton do appear to be quite good, though.
https://www.somersetlive.co
https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/mum-tells-parents-buy-kids-8950443
Mum tells parents to buy kids a helmet for Christmas after bike crash leaves son in coma
I (really) don’t want to start the usual war, but “Buy your kid a helmet” probably isn’t the lesson that I would take away from this incident…
brooksby wrote:
Yeah, I’d be more inclined to send a message to maintain kids’ bikes and ensure that they have brakes on them. I suppose it takes a bit more care and attention for parents to examine the bike rather than just buying a bit of plastic/polystyrene, but it could be a useful lesson to show kids how to maintain a safe bike.
Four bike rides, four years
Four bike rides, four years in the life of Black Britain: ‘On the road, we found ourselves again’:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/dec/07/four-bike-rides-four-years-in-the-life-of-black-britain-on-the-road-we-found-ourselves-again
It’s great to see more people
It’s great to see more people cycling but I’m not sure why they need their own network. Why not just cycle with others, irrespective of skin colour?
MichaelWinnerRIP wrote:
Possibly because they want to cycle with their friends and neighbours and they don’t want the police continually stopping them for made up reasons.
Ethnic minorities tend to be under-represented amongst cyclists and so there should be extra effort spent to encourage them to cycle.
Exactly. Road riding is a
Exactly. Road riding is a white male dominated sport so the BCN are an advocacy group to try and change that. There are a number of barriers (and a lack of role models) that prevent ethnic minorities from choosing road cycling and the BCN are a great way to break some of those barriers down. Their founder was regularly stopped on solo rides by police because they didn’t think his bike (which was I believe an S-Works model, possibly a Tarmac SL3 which was not that old at the time) was actually his. As top of the range bikes have gotten comparitively more expensive than their budget counterparts in recent years, it’s possible such a type of incident could get worse.
There’s no denying, it is irksome to think that a POC are all too often randomly stopped for such a reason based on their ethnicity, and there is the concern that the BCN club jersey is the reason that they might not get stopped.
The Black Cyclists Network is not aimed at me and I have no problem with it existing despite that fact, because its existence is not detrimental to anyone else.
Matthew Acton-Varian wrote:
He (Mani Arthur) was also infamously stopped and searched by a
pig’s bladder on a stick in uniformofficer who decided, after Mani refused to put himself in danger by retreating behind a stop line to put himself alongside an HGV, that he smelled of marijuana. Mani was in full cycle race kit and was made to remove his helmet and shoes to prove he had nothing on him… https://road.cc/content/news/268777-metropolitan-police-officer-does-stop-and-search-black-cyclists-network-founderIt’s not aimed at me either but they’re very welcoming, a black friend gifted me one of their jerseys a couple of years ago (which is a fabulously cool design) but I was a bit uneasy so I got in touch and asked what they felt about a white guy wearing it – “We welcome everyone, the more supporters the better, happy for you to wear our colours” was their attitude.
It’s clearly not the same
It’s clearly not the same tree – if you zoom in close, it’s obviously made of plastic 😉
We know a song about that!
We know a song about that!
Just wait until the mail
Just wait until the mail hears how many trees have to be cut down for any road junction “improvements” let alone any new roads.
Ah – but they have to be cut
Ah – but they have to be cut down. It’s the two which need addressing for footway / cycle path (out of say the 5 which are left…) which it’s then “insane” to move to make space “for some MAMILs’ hobby”.
Interesting to see how the other half live. Much of what happens in NL doesn’t seem particularly “green” to me (building on stuff is a feature…) but they’re now trying to narrow / remove some roads and partly replace with green space [1] [2] [3].
I’m shocked that they haven’t
I’m shocked that they haven’t lost the plot in rage about the number of trees cut down for the Wisley junction ‘improvements’ in Surrey.
Don’t worry, Susan hall will
Don’t worry, Susan hall will fix it as long as she doesn’t lose it ( I mean as long as it’s not stolen).
The Daily Mail did not claim
..
No, you’ve got that the wrong
No, you’ve got that the wrong way round, I won’t link to a Daily Mail article but you can see from road.cc’s article: https://road.cc/content/news/will-norman-hits-back-mp-duped-mail-bike-lane-article-305391 that Aiken shared the DM article and made an attack on Khan with it, the original lie came from the Mail and the story didn’t mention Aiken at all.
https://www.itv.com/news
https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2023-12-06/man-who-murdered-cyclist-in-targeted-attack-jailed
Promote that judge!
Promote that judge!
I wonder what the rumour was
I wonder what the rumour was that was spread about the victim to make the killer think he was justified enough in his actions to publicly laugh about it.
“Without slowing in any way,
“Without slowing in any way, he drove straight through the deceased, who was still sitting astride his bicycle. The massive impact propelled Reece onto the bonnet and the windscreen of the car, and then into the road.”
Boydell drove away at speed and made no attempt to stop or give any assistance. He later accepted that he intended to cause harm.
Boydell had previous convictions for aggravated vehicle taking, threatening behaviour, assault and possessing drugs.
Mitigating, Peter Moulson KC, said that Boydell did not intend to kill Mr Braithwaite
The laughing emoji was posted when Boydell did not know the extent of the injuries but it was an “isolated” incident of its type and he bitterly regretted it. He had written a letter of apology.
Judge Thackray said that he was satisfied that Boydell did not intend to kill Mr Braithwaite…..
No, the judge shouldn’t be promoted, and although I’m generally against long prison sentences, I can’t quibble with that one.
I didn’t know that you could
I didn’t know that you could get banned from cycling (in public, rather than the sporting side)…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-67639649
But it wasn’t for dangerous cycling etc, but assault whilst on the bike.
“This order was given to keep the wider public safe from Carter’s actions and limit his ability to cause further distress to the public.”
So I’m not sure how the ban would actually prevent it from committing future assaults…
Ok so assault someone from a
Ok so assault someone from a vehicle and it’s assault; assault someone with a vehicle and it’s a ‘traffic accident?’
Tabloids don’t lose anything
Tabloids don’t lose anything by being wrong, they have already got their outrage clicks and the outraged people aren’t going to go to another source to find out they were wrong. They are just going to continue to hate the people Rupert Murdoch tells them to hate.
The damage is done, no matter how many gotchas people post on twitter.
There should be a law that
There should be a law that all retractions must be published at the same level of visibility as the original story. i.e. If you lie on the front page headline, you have to retract on the front page headline, if you post a fake story on your website that stays on the main page for 3 days, you have to have a retraction on the main page for 3 days. It would make editors think twice before publishing something which wasn’t properly verified!
Patrick9-32 wrote:
Depressingly, I don’t think it would.
Patrick9-32 wrote:
Good luck with getting that law through when the lawmakers do the same thing. The government lies to the house of commons live on TV, then goes back and ‘corrects the record’ in Hansard and calls it job done.
The old Yes Minister sketch of making the minutes of the meeting reflect what should have been said in the meeting is now the official procedure!
Journalists seem to think
Journalists seem to think that there job is to inform the public. In reality their job is basically the same as everyone else’s, it is to make money for someone else. They do this by telling a story that may or may not be linked to reality that people pay to read. When we were children we bought comics for entertainment, as adults we buy newspapers.
On the car culture in
On the car culture in Liverpool
We have a similar thing in Wrexham with people trying to queue jump in the NHS
NewsWrexham Maelor Hospital: One injured as car crashes through doors – BBC News
To be fair, the move of the
To be fair, the move of the tree can not yet said to be successful. You need to wait to see if the tree survives at the new location. Moving a tree can damage it, or it may not take in the new location.
That Boots gift set is worth
That Boots gift set is worth it for the tin alone. Maybe use the products on the bike though.
Good to see two fine Nottingham institutions collab on something.