Commuter diaries – the worlds largest rim brake

@capedcrusader It's actually pretty simple - sex (or to more precise: attractive appearance) sells. It works exactly the same way with cars. Making the final product look better often costs next to nothing, but it does add value and thus allows the manufacturer to charge more for the same product.

It does mean something: f*** off you lycra-clad car-botherers.

It might mean that, if it was red. But since it's blue it doesn't mean anything.

YMMV. To my eye, while the 'ruby', only available for SRAM S-Works is the clear standout, the rest of the options on the top two tiers (including the single option for Shimano S-Works) are either really boring or, in the case of the two-tone efforts, actively rubbish, while the solid blue that's only available on the bottom two tiers is easily the second best.

@jackcycles It would certainly be interesting to know the prevalence of general cycling amongst children then vs now because its probably pretty unlikely that children who don't cycle much day to day are going to cycle to school.

Why do bike companies insist on differentiating their top tier and lower tier offerings by producing shockingly bad colours for the lower tier bikes? Sucks big time if you ask me.

Setting aside the tedious and untrue "extreme heatwaves" quote from the article, I've never understood why cyclists and cars alike aren't compelled to be brightly coloured. Not only would this create a highly visible scene, naturally reducing the number of accidents in the road, wearing light colours and having white cars would naturally reflect heat and sun back into the atmosphere, lowering ambient temperatures, creating less need for air conditioning or hydration. Win-win. Domestic car journeys create 16% of UK CO2 emissions, and the UK itself creates less than 1% of global totals. With the increasing proportion of electric vehicle journeys, that figure will only shrink in future. So framing this as some kind of existential argument is alarmist, short-sighted and false.

@mdavidford That's quite the marquee of someone with tunnel mindedness. I'm not sure I want to know the inner thoughts that have led you to this camp. I shall be poleite though, there are some guys patrolling on this site who are very tightly strung and all it takes some bell to get under their dome and teepee them into a right Mess. Not that I'd peg you as one of them, you seem quite grounded.

Arguments over niceties like that won't fly, and anyway, I wasn't canvassing opinions - if they want to pitch things like this they should do it somewhere else.

Maybe - but this is a little tent.