This may not be the best bike for sale on ebay, but it is certainly the best bike description, in fact it’s probably the best product descrption bar none. Worth hitting the link and reading the "Ask the seller" questions and answers too… Sadly though, this item has ended – isn’t that just always the way.
Sickest item on ebay… probably
Tue, Mar 03, 2009 17:10
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road.cc’s founder and first editor, nowadays to be found riding a spreadsheet. Tony’s journey in cycling media started in 1997 as production editor and then deputy editor of Total Bike, acting editor of Total Mountain Bike and then seven years as editor of Cycling Plus. He launched his first cycling website – the Cycling Plus Forum at the turn of the century. In 2006 he left C+ to head up the launch team for Bike Radar which he edited until 2008, when he co-launched the multi-award winning road.cc – finally handing on the reins in 2021 to Jack Sexty. His favourite ride is his ‘commute’ – which he does most days inc weekends and he’s been cycle-commuting since 1994. His favourite bikes are titanium and have disc brakes, though he’d like to own a carbon bike one day.
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mdavidford 21 minutes ago
@Rendel Harris Without disputing the broader point that horizontal speeds matter in an impact, I'm not sure your cricket ball example really works. When a ball is bowled at 90mph it's not released horizontally - if it was it would end up a beamer and you'd be no balled. It's thrown down as well as along, so its vertical speed is significantly higher to start with than a ball simply dropped from the same height.
Rendel Harris 28 minutes ago
Physics would appear to disagree with you:
Rendel Harris 1 hour ago
It's astonishing that without knowing anything about me beyond our interactions on here you know the exact circumstances of the incident described and, presumably psychically, my state of mind at the time as regards my willingness to take risks. I wasn't taking risks, I was taking a long sweeping bend on an NSL road that I had taken many times before, with all due caution, but unfortunately hit a diesel spill on the apex. So you admit that motorcycle helmets can reduce damage. Good, because it did. For a clearly intelligent man you don't half come out with some nonsense sometimes. Marquez was thrown forward from his bike at a speed that I would estimate as being somewhere between 80 to 100 mph and came down on his head, and you are claiming that the only force acting upon his head/helmet is the gravitational force of dropping from 1.5 m? The fact that his head was moving forward at 80mph plus at the time would have exerted no influence on the level of force experienced? That is patently absurd. Consider a cricket ball bowled at 90 mph. If you drop a cricket ball from 2.5 m it will experience a force sufficient to make it bounce about 10cm, and yet somehow, even though according to you horizontal speed is irrelevant to the force of impact, a ball bowled at 90 mph manages to bounce up to head height or higher. How does it do that if "the horizontal speed is irrelevant to the impact"? If I hold you upside down out of the window of a train going at 100 mph and drop you 1.5 m to the ground, will your head only experience the same level of impact force that it would if I had dropped you 1.5 m from the ground when the train was stationary? Seriously?
slc 7 hours ago
@chrisonabike Ah yes, the Monmouth Pl pump track. Apparently there is a bingo card of annoying bike infra features and someone was keen to get a full house. The good planners of Bristol were clearly envious and copied the design on Whiteladies Road this year
chrisonabike 8 hours ago
Also "if there is going to be cycle infra anywhere, it should be in the park". Having cycled in Bath a couple of times I can see where he's coming from (thinking about child and elderly relatives). I understand this as "this town's motor traffic is so out of control that even proper cycle infra (the whole raison d'être of which is 'motor traffic') doesn't make me think my relatives would be safe". That's pretty sad.
chrisonabike 8 hours ago
@slc when I last visited, it was more like humps - for the cyclists that is! Up and down at the "creative" bus stop "bypasses" (eg. on Monmouth Place). Edinburgh might be jealous with their "trap you in a "protected" bike lane when the bus pulls into it" efforts. Both are pretty hopeless.
chrisonabike 8 hours ago
Even Uk efforts to *improve* safety for all vulnerable road users neatly feed back to also dissuade vulnerable road users. Again improves those safety numbers... This happens because these are never allowed to "inconvenience" motoring (or - can't allocate too many thousands for that because this big road already costs millions). So rather than reduce and/or move the motor traffic, the "safer infra" becomes uninviting and inconvenient (see "wait 5 minutes at the lights", "dodgy underpass" and "concrete trenches in the sky" overpasses).
chrisonabike 8 hours ago
@belugabob seems the threads have got out of sync (as my browser shows 'em), but yes. A great way to improve the cycling KSI stats is to have no cyclists. Guaranteed zero cyclist KSIs! The UK hasn't got there (yet) of course, but along with reducing cyclist numbers another proven way is to reduce the interactions between cyclists and motorists. That has happened both in NL and also in most of the UK - but ... a bit differently here. The roads have become so uninviting to most that what cycling there is increasingly takes place in parks, along canals, or in people's garages. Good for those road safety figures though. And as long as we keep pointing at them (to the exclusion of anything else), we could keep "winning the argument"... all the way to having nobody travelling outside a motor vehicle - or outside at all. And think how many lives will be saved!
eburtthebike 9 hours ago
@wtjs "My only objection to the anti-helmet propaganda involves the notion that wearing a helmet makes the wearer more likely to suffer a collision and consequent head injury." I've never heard anyone claim this, perhaps you could post a few examples? What is demonstrably true, is that cyclists who wear helmets have more collisions, but no-one claims that they always involve the head. Given the levels of pro-helmet propaganda over the last thirty years, your claims of anti-helmet propaganda are risible. And I'm being very, very polite. "I resort to common sense to dispute this." No you don't. You merely assert something without evidence, and anyone resorting to the 'it's common sense' argument has already lost.
eburtthebike 10 hours ago
@Rendel Harris "I do try not to enter into discussion with you on this Bert, because I know you will never change your stance one iota, but I’ve crashed a motorcycle at around 35 mph and hit my head on the kerb hard enough to compress discs in my spine and tear neck ligaments but above the neck I came away with nothing worse than a mild concussion." That's BURT not Bert, and as for someone who will never change their stance, kettle, meet pot. Thanks for your anecdote, but as I'm sure you're aware, anecdotal evidence is evidence of absolutely nothing. That's the same as all those hundreds, if not thousands, of cyclists holding up a broken helmet claiming that it saved their life, when the death rate of cyclists does not fall with increased helmet wearing. "If you’re going to tell me that I could’ve done the same thing without a helmet on and walked away with the same injuries I’m going to have to say that’s nonsense." As you ought to know by now, wearing protective equipment influences behaviour. If you weren't wearing a helmet, would you have taken such risks? The answer, as I'm sure you know, is no. The evidence you provide does not prove that motorcycle helmets are effective in a direct impact at more than 16mph, it shows that helmets can reduce damage by being a sacrificial layer, not an impact absorber. You might be interested in the evidence about when helmets were made obligatory for motorcyclists in the UK: the deaths of motorcyclists fell immediately. But someone did a rather more rigorous analysis, and found that the helmets became magically effective between 10pm and 2am. Clearly they weren't magic, so something else was more likely to be the cause of reduced motorcyclist deaths, so what happened at the same time? The breathalyser. So motorcyclists and drivers weren't driving drunk, and the reduced deaths were nothing to do with helmets. The same effect has been observed in USA states, which were obliged to bring in motorcycle helmet laws or lose federal funding. The death rate didn't drop. Some of those states then withdrew the helmet law, amidst predictions of dead motorcyclists piled up on every corner, but the death rate in those states didn't rise. PPE for victims in a road scenario is largely irrelevant, as shown by the data, because those with more protection take more risks, and drivers take more risks around those perceived to be wearing protection. What really works is reducing risk, by segregation and making those posing the danger take more care. That is what has been shown to work, not more protection. Perhaps Rendel, we should all drive tanks? EDIT "Again, it’s clearly nonsense to say the helmet hasn’t worked when someone’s walked away from coming down headfirst on the tarmac from a height at high speed." I've just watched the video, and the vertical drop appears to be about 1.5m, so well within the capabilities of the helmet in a direct collision. The horizontal speed is irrelevant to the impact.
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