Panic at the Disco

Re "mayor Rapinese who ... announced a ban on all bicycles in the historic centre of Como, after he was hit by the rider of an ‘electric bike’ ". We must remember that it is people being hit or fearing being hit by cars that caused them to call for banning them from many town centres. We can understand this fear and therefore, responding to this particular excessive reaction, we must understand its cause.

Re Seixas at Lombardy. It was an absolutely brilliant performance by the young man! He seized his opportunity to make the break and never looked like getting caught. A brilliant talent and an hopefully lots of exciting racing to come from him in the future as he develops.

@Dodonline Hard to say without seeing the crash but it looks most likely that the wheels have not had any undo force applied to them. From the way the forks have bent and one leg has broken I'd guess that the motorcycle went over a point higher up in the frame around the fork crown, so the only pressure on the wheels would have been around the thru-axle as a pivot point; thru-axles are deigned to withstand around a tonne of force before failure, whereas I believe (willing to stand corrected of course) carbon forks can't withstand that level of force, particularly when experiencing aside impact, so they would be most likely to snap before the axle did.

Those must be strong wheels to have not broken before the frame!

@markvr Are you going to ban large people on bikes? An 18 stone person is 115kg plus 20-30kg of e-bike. Is 140kg too much when it hits you? And stopping, are you going to ban rod brakes, cable brakes, rim brakes, coaster brakes as they're inefficient? What about mobility scooters? Slow, unwieldy, with infirm users. Are they ok?

@Rendel Harris TBF if commercial interests thought there was benefit in sending 500kg of goods down a cycle path at say 15.5mph+ (and figure out a way) no doubt some would because "free resource". (Food delivery firms *cough*). Get something free/cheap, make money out of it - it's just "buy cheap, sell dear". That would be worse since most place in the UK are barely at the start of providing any infra, never mind adequate stuff. The flip side is that currently if kids want to get about they'll often be on streets / roads ... with multi-ton trucks, currently many with acknowledged limitations on viewing angle. Which have been comprehensively fatal to people going under them at any speed. Or the great number of vans with drivers highly incentivised to maximise deliveries. And while not a complete replacement, smaller vehicles and especially cargo bikes can (and do in other countries) pick up a lot of that, with (AFAIK) a good safety record...

@Mat Brett ah, thanks Mat. In the picture it looks like it's made from wood, which I thought was unlikely...

@henryb It's a carbon bar from Darimo. I think it's the Nexum Drag. https://r2-bike.com/DARIMO-stem-handlebar-unit-Nexum-Drag-Carbon-Road-UD-matte-6-400-mm-6-Flare-100-mm

@markvr would 100kg of bricks hurt more or less than 100kg of person though? Of course me plus bike weighs more than me. And I often carry shopping. And I've moved house with the aid of a trailer. Would you suggest banning tandems? What's your criteria for safe use, or do you not think it exists?

@vw_mtbiker I get some people rave about 'the incredible supple riding experience of handmade open tubular tyres'. I would suggest these tyres will have an incredible supple ride that is 99.9% due to them being 50mm and 0.01% due to being open tubular. I used to run Open Corsa CX back in the day and they felt amazing at the time but ride them back to back with a modern 30mm tubeless GP5000 on a wide rim and you'll see what I mean. Also - check Bicycle Rolling Resistance.com - there is basically no performance advantage from open tubular style tyres (yeah the Corsa Speeds are the fastest, but that has much more to do with the uber thin rubber than the way they are made). They do look amazing though....