road.cc live blog – Mandatory helmets and hi-vis rumour keeps on spreading + BMW e-bikes in the sky… in China
…Maybe + L-plate school cyclists update, Pro team sells bus (well it is Black Friday) and LOTS more
Fri, Nov 24, 2017 15:30
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Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn’t especially like cake.
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Latest Comments
grOg 31 minutes ago
@eburtthebike Most of the people cycling mikey confronts with his vigilante behaviour are using their phone while stationary in traffic; while illegal, conflating those offences with the murderous actions of this deviant person is patently ridiculous.
grOg 36 minutes ago
@Rendel Harris Of course it wouldn't work; the sort of person that would be banned would have plenty of mates that would fill jerry cans for him so he could fuel his car at home.
grOg 42 minutes ago
@BroomBroomBroom I cycle commuted for 30 years, with a number of close passes and a few crashes that gave me pause to consider the risks of cycling on public roads, but what made me give up was a diagnosis of osteoporosis because cycling was my exercise activity and because cycling is not weight bearing exercise, it leads to bone loss; I now mix walking and jogging to commute and have introduced a program of weight-lifting to try and reverse the osteoporosis.
chrisonabike 53 minutes ago
More on the "e-bike scourge" from the beeb: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmn068ywr9e1o OTOH well, yeah - stuff that facilitates crime (and is cheaper / easier to get than cars / ICE motorbikes) is gonna be used by criminals. Plus: Well... I'm not happy either with the lack of interest in doing something about the mass sale of things which almost all aren't going to be used legally. But ... like guns? Don't think that's a helpful analogy there.
Sniffer 2 hours ago
@Rendel Harris It should be simpler. In this case, and other cases where individuals drive while banned, there will be many people who know there is a banned driver behind the wheel and turned a blind eye. If we could find a way to make it culturally unacceptable the cases would drop. The change it attitudes around drink driving made a huge difference and it wasn't just the punishment. Unfortunately, we see the media run campaigns on the 'war on motorists' rather than try and change societal attitudes. The sequestration of vehicles as a punishment I think is an opportunity. Car removal, for many motoring offences and if you let a banned driver drive your vehicle I would include vehicles from employers and associates of a banned driver.
eburtthebike 3 hours ago
"Over the course of the evening, your friend made Gabrielle Debotte write a note on her phone with a false account that she had not seen you on the day of the collision at all." I sincerely hope that friend is in police custody awaiting trial for aiding and abetting and perverting the course of justice. And I hope he gets the same judge.
wtjs 3 hours ago
@rbrtribble All accidents including eg: a touch of a bumper should be reported to the police and an interview with a traffic cop before driving away from the scene What sort of dream world is this?! None of these fanciful wishes will happen in the car-crazed 'we'll give you a subsidy so you can drive and park everywhere with no thought to sensible fuel-conserving driving' UK. Sadly, the succession of dreadful Tory nonentity transport ministers has been followed by a succession of equally dreadful Labour ones, all desperate to avoid being accused of the 'war on the motorist'. Lilian Greenwood was charged with implementing the January 26 Government Road Safety Strategy until she was moved to be replaced by another deadbeat intent on doing nothing for fear of upsetting drivers. Labour could fight the established police strategy of ignoring and actively opposing any legislation to the benefit of cyclists, but they won't. The police are intent on protecting motorists from VED evasion, MOT offences, mobile phone offences, white line offences and most importantly cyclist-close-passing offences. I ask yet again for the evidence of effective police action against this latter offence (not the joke advice letter or joke driving course), but this evidence never appears. The obvious conclusion is that this police action does not exist.
eburtthebike 3 hours ago
@kingleo They aren't the only ones!
Rendel Harris 3 hours ago
@Sniffer This is why I would like to see every driving licence having a readable chip that showed the driver status and making it impossible to get fuel from a petrol station without presenting it at the pump as proof of validity. Of course there would be ways around it, getting mates to fill up the car etc, but with an estimated 650,000 unlicensed or licence suspended drivers in the UK restricting the fuel supply could do a lot to hamper them. The same chip could carry proof of insurance and MOT for the car, again, no proof, no fuel. Cut offenders off at source.
eburtthebike 3 hours ago
Whilst extreme cases shouldn't make law, this case does demonstrate that the justice system is failing to protect innocent road users. If people continually break the law, then either the crimes aren't being detected or the punishments are not severe enough. In the case of road law, it's both, and the chances of being caught driving dangerously are miniscule, and even if caught, the offender will at most be banned, which they can and do, ignore. So how to get dangerous drivers to reform or make sure they don't drive? 1. Police on bikes. Just look at how many criminals cycling mikey has had convicted. A real police constable could do so much more. 2. When caught, immediate impounding of vehicle, rapid review by a judge, so the punishment immediately follows the crime. 3. No points on licence, no hardship pleading, just removal of licence. Three months for a first offence, then rapidly escalating to lifetime ban for the fourth. 4. Anyone caught driving whilst banned gets an immediate three month prison sentence, second offence a year, third ten years. I'm sure there are plenty of other good ways of making our roads safer by removing the incompetent and dangerous drivers, but it's a start.
17 thoughts on “road.cc live blog – Mandatory helmets and hi-vis rumour keeps on spreading + BMW e-bikes in the sky… in China”
Times’ front cover should be
Times’ front cover should be withdrawn. Reporter likely wasn’t at conference where subject was raised. I was, and so was Mark Hookham of the Sunday Times, who asked the helmet/hi-vis question.
Full transcipt is available, as is audio.
See: http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/the-times-leads-with-false-story-about-helmet-compulsion/022270
If this is the sort of misleading reporting that politicians have to deal with on a daily basis I feel very sorry for politicians, and rather ashamed at fellow journalists who’ve got this story so about-face it’s shocking.
Hm, could a newspaper with an
Hm, could a newspaper with an ageing tory readership possibly have an agenda?
Daily Wail running it now…
Daily Wail running it now… apparently due to be introduced in the new year!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5113697/Cyclists-wear-helmets-high-viz-vests.html
edit to add DONT read the comments below their article. You will dispair.
Zero sympathy for Norman: he
Zero sympathy for Norman: he needs to get a straighter bat and a better grasp of his subject matter.
@CygnusX1 – I like your
@CygnusX1 – I like your thinking.
@Carlton,
@Carlton,
Your article makes for interesting reading – particularly the last paragraph with the various headlines used by various rags. The Daily Mail’s is a SHOCKER of a headline, but what we’ve come to expect. Click bait indeed.
Let’s hope none of the anti-cycling lobbies realise they need to submit as a suggestion to the review (maybe these headlines may actually help – they may think its already on the table).
Shhh! don’t tell!
I’ll agree to helmets and hi
I’ll agree to helmets and hi-viz if, and only if, the Daily Mail readership agrees to wear LGBT-rainbow-coloured burqas whenever they leave the house .
ConcordeCX wrote:
Or, if all dark/dull coloured cars vehicles have to be painted in high viz (white vans included as they blend into the sky if it’s a bright day).
ConcordeCX wrote:
Just make them wear LGBT colours with reflective strips so they will be visible while walking and driving should be sufficient.
The Daily Mails is a horrible
The Daily Mails is a horrible rag posing as a newspaper. It’s be better suited as toilet paper except that the ink leaves marks.
I mean, compulsory helmet use has had such a beneficial effect in reducing deaths and injuries for cyclsits in NZ hasn’t it?
OldRidgeback wrote:
If the goal is actually to reduce KSI rates then the answer is indeed clesr. If the true goal is to reduce cycling rates then the answer is also clear.
Nice Helmet Row jpeg but I
Nice Helmet Row jpeg but I think mine’s better (had to check it was a real street on Google Maps, and saw this):
Those old CRT TVs in the bus,
Those old CRT TVs in the bus, just lol, what is this back to the future to the olden days!
I always figured if this
I always figured if this country made helmets compulsory I’d move aboard. Not because it’d be such a terrible imposition in itself, but because it would be a sign that pandering to irrational groupthink had reached a level that threatened individual freedom. However, that was before legions of idiotic gargoyles, who’d never previously given enough of a toss about anything to schlep to the polling station, decided their lives would seem less pathetic if they voted to strip the rest of us of our right to live in Europe. Being stuck on this island with that bunch is one thing, having to do so while forced to dress like a Belisha beacon, so drivers can feel like they’ve taken back control of the roads as well as the country, is another.
handlebarcam wrote:
Thats it: it’s not wearing a helmet that’s so objectionable, if you decide to wear one, but the *compulsion* to wear a helmet. No choice in the matter, no attempts to make the road environment better or safer; just make everyone wear a styrofoam hat because that will protect them from everything ever (honest!). Like rear lights in the 30s, make the cyclists dress in hi-viz so it is *their* problem and not the problem of the motorist who should be looking where they’re going. Hell, I could go further and invoke Godwins in this, but I shall restrain myself 😉
handlebarcam wrote:
I hear you. I’d be tempted to move overseas, too.
I think the hills of Afghanistan might be better suited to your level of mindless prejudice of people you’ve never met, based on what box they ticked in a democratic process.
I didn’t think the Daily Mail
I didn’t think the Daily Mail piece was that bad. Presumably the improvement to American football players’ safety from helmets was in relation to…playing American football? that kind-of makes sense in a bears/woods kind of way.
BY LAW – like mobile phones while driving, MOTS, speed limits, not getting the red mist* and just generally looking where you’re going – you mean those laws, right? I could just about, just about suffer new laws about cycling if the other lot played fair and did their bit.
The helmet law thing if it came to pass for adults, would surely mean pretty much the end of the city cycle hire schemes? Acquiring still more armour plating for road users (of all types) is NOT the answer!
This is the government that flunked the whole healthy eating thing a few months back – maybe that’s because of food industry pressures, maybe because they don’t see themselves as regulating people’s lives in this much detail?
There is a curtain-twitching segment of our society that believes that if you’re out late/after dark and a bad thing happens to you then, that it’s your own silly fault. It probably isn’t a good idea to leave your laptop on view, it probably is a good idea to lock your house when you go out, in line with police advice. But let’s not forget that the factors that lead us this way are a bad thing and in an ideal world it wouldn’t be like that. I think it’s in those terms that non cycling people see hi viz and helmets.
i don’t think anyone (usual exceptions: Audi, etc) actively hates cyclists and cycling – we’re more of an irritation, an annoyance, shaving vital nanoseconds off important car journeys, that somehow I remember used to be quicker (yes – less cars).
It’s a slightly strange thing to be defending the ongoing use of mixed use highways (against the “push” referred to in the Mail story, what with us cyclists being so darned numerous and all) but that’s what we now need to do.
When this wretched review was announced, many of us had a good rant about it – now we need to get our shit together and present our arguments around the many benefits and freedoms of cycling. We should expect something to replace “furious riding”, I think, but let’s make sure it’s proportionate/ reasonable and also keep other road users’ behaviour in the conversation.
*By the way, red mist drivers, I notice that somehow you’re allowed to barge your way past me, but the moment I pass you when you get stuck, it becomes a matter to be avenged – how does that work, exactly?