road.cc live blog: Team Sky bike build, motorist documents crap cycling with dashcam + more
Cyclists seem to be the ones likely to come off worst
Fri, Jan 05, 2018 14:45
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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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jackcycles 2 hours ago
"attributed by experts", yeah sure, ok! Citing 8 year out of date per capita figures shows the weakness of your argument. Here's a couple of reasons I believe that the Netherlands fatality rate might be higher than the UK (independent of the crappy Dutch infrastructure), none of which you and Chrisonatrike suggested or mentioned: 1) not enough people wearing helmets in Netherlands. All sane people know that wearing a cycling helmet can potentially save lives, yet the Dutch seem to think themselves too special to wear one. Despite the fact the Netherlands has a superior privatised health system compared to our rotten, inefficient NHS, post-crash options are limited for people with severe head trauma which will inevitable lead to increased fatalities in the Netherlands. 2) Risk compensation by drivers and cyclists. Cyclists are lulled into a false sense of security thinking that segregated cycle lanes are their special infrastructure which insulate them from accidents. They don't. Then, car drivers take more risks due to increased congestion caused by the same cycling infrastructure, leading to a double-whammy of risky behaviour. 3) Cultural issues. People in the UK are renowned for their stiff upper lip, stoic, courteous behaviour. They naturally protect more vulnerable road users. I, myself, had a magnificent cycling experience earlier today on the local country lanes, waving and saying hello to the locals and cyclists alike. There really isn't a place like the UK (well, outside London anyway) that matches our hospitality and camaraderie. P.s. I'm not sure who Nigel is, I assumed you meant Nigel Farage but I can assure you I'm not him and that he has more pressing things to do than write responses on a cycling website. I hope that's helped your understanding a little, and enabled you to think a little independently rather than just suck in information that self-described "experts" want you to believe. Oh and Norway et Al are terrible comparators as hardly anyone lives there (and who'd want to to be honest? Lol!)
chrisonabike 2 hours ago
Yup. The UK has latterly tried add the safety back in after it was lost for vulnerable road users. (And after giving all the direct routes / valuable space over to motoring). But it's offering a modicum more safety in return for them losing a lot more convenience - so that has been reducing the "problem" also! Plus we lean heavily on "but people can be trusted to be reasonable" and "for any misbehaviour police it better". Unfortunately those are not good assumptions or choices for safety in a motornormative environment. (And road policing isn't a priority anyway). NL isn't the only place in Europe they've realised that mass motoring the old way is unsustainable (for lots of reasons). They're just the furthest on. In NL they still have some challenges because the (larger - thanks US!) car strikes back, and there are some questions about the impact of e-things. But they're *still* investing in improvements, and proportionally significantly more than the UK, even though they're already far ahead...
This Wreckage 3 hours ago
The Stockton Hub which I used occasionally (I don't live in Stockton) was open only during standard office hours, Mondays to Fridays, rendering it useless for families and leisure cyclists. It's a standard problem for a lot of government-funded or charity-run public services which close when many people most need them, presumably because staffing costs would rise substantially. The article also mentions cycle hubs in Redcar and Darlington which, so far as I can tell, have never existed.
chrisonabike 3 hours ago
Ho ho ho! No, we need to stop these idiotic cyclists completely (or limit them to velodromes, parks and maybe "rail trails") - that way there won't be any cyclist road fatalities! Simples! Meanwhile in many parts ofEurope they're finding the benefits of making it such that lots of people don't use cars for every journey - by fixing it so it's convenient and increasingly safe - despite much larger numbers of people getting around outside of cars than in the UK...
Rendel Harris 3 hours ago
The fatality rate in the UK has fallen five years in a row during a period, starting with the Covid years, in which building of "idiotic Dutch roundabouts and segregated cycling infrastructure" has massively increased, so in fact using your own benchmark the statistics clearly show the benefits of increased cycling infrastructure. Not quite the gotcha you seem to think when viewed through non-troll lenses, Nige. The stupidity of your "argument" is further clearly illustrated by the fact that the list-topping Norway, Sweden and Denmark all have massive segregated cycling networks. The Dutch model used to demonstrate clearly the safer nature of the Dutch system, e.g. in 2018 the Netherlands had 8 fatalities per billion kms ridden compared to 21 in the UK; the primary reason for the increased fatality rates in the Netherlands has been attributed by experts to the massive uptake in ebikes (47% of new bikes sold in NL are now ebikes compared to 10% in the UK), particularly amongst the older population, nothing to do with the infrastructure.
leedorney 3 hours ago
It used to be great price this, but they played the ace marketing card and got the popularity and now...
jackcycles 5 hours ago
Many thanks for posting these statistics and showing the downward trend in fatalities. One thing that stood out for me when clicking through to the government statistics page is the UK's exemplary record on this Vs other European countries, especially the much-vaunted record of The Netherlands, which actually shows twice as many fatalities as the UK per million of the population. The question that arises is therefore: why are the greens and other left-wing parties so keen to adopt an inferior and more dangerous road system when ours is obviously working well? It smacks of a need to regulate people's lives and curtail freedom. We need to stop these idiotic Dutch roundabouts and segregated cycling infrastructure, and get people sharing the road in a fair and equal manner, when the statistics show it's safer to do so. (Chart shows road fatalities per million population)
ChasP 5 hours ago
That's where the convertible aspect comes in. I've got a gravel bike but the canal I sometimes commute on has roots under the tarmac and barriers. The mtb with 'drops' is more comfortable for this and fits through the barriers. If I want to do something more technical I can put the flat bars on.
wtjs 20 hours ago
@FionaJJ These officers deployed next-level stupidity, and it must be difficult for the police to find people this dim. It doesn't even need rolling-roads or whatever, just a reputable bike computer on a quickly changed mount for the difficult cases where a proper EAPC has been modded, although you would need to look hard in Lancashire to find a police officer who knows how to make a pedal cycle go. Most illegal electric motorbikes are immediately obvious, not least because the crim is wearing a face mask. I saw an obvious one tonight coming out of Garstang Sainsbury's, not pedalling but without a face mask because everybody knows that the police only come into the town to hide away in the police station 200 yards away.
14 thoughts on “road.cc live blog: Team Sky bike build, motorist documents crap cycling with dashcam + more”
What a massive compilation…
What a massive compilation…..a number of incidents that could be counted on one hand.
Clearly this person needs needs to type in UK dashcams into YouTube for some real stupidity.
It does surprise me the
It does surprise me the number of people who have crap / no lights.
The last clip was a ‘yoof’ in a hoody – a user of a bicycle rather than a cyclist. But we’re all tarred with one brush!
J886atv wrote:
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/cyclist
cyclist (or cycler) [sahy-klist]
noun 1. a person who rides or travels by bicycle, motorcycle, etc.
Origin of cyclist
First recorded in 1880-85; cycle + -ist
If there’s a more narrow definition, then please do expand on it – does it depend on particular clothing, or particular type of bicycle, or is it just on whether the person is doing something you approve of?
brooksby wrote:
Exactly, how many comments here on sh#t drivers & driving, when not all of them are terrible?
Many sporting cyclist also don’t like to stop for red traffic lights, & if they do, will stop past the cycle box etc. So maybe it’s just anybody slower than them at the time?
I love my bike wrote:
……..
The last clip was a ‘yoof’ in a hoody – a user of a bicycle rather than a cyclist. But we’re all tarred with one brush!
— I love my bike
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/cyclist
cyclist (or cycler) [sahy-klist]
noun 1. a person who rides or travels by bicycle, motorcycle, etc.
……
If there’s a more narrow definition, then please do expand on it – does it depend on particular clothing, or particular type of bicycle, or is it just on whether the person is doing something you approve of?
— brooksby
Exactly, how many comments here on sh#t drivers & driving, when not all of them are terrible?
…….
— J886atv
What’s this? Fellows denying the fundamentalist Blighters’ right to stereotype others on the basis of one example of the lowest demeanour!!? One feels that such denialists of this Basic Freedom To Be An Intolerant And Unthinking British Pillock should be reported to The Daily Mail, so that the denialist too can be villified with a handy Mail Hate-Them label.
Everyone knows that all teenagers, cyclists, motorists and women are Very Bad Indeed, as my Great Uncle Barmpot pointed out years ago, just before he had his apoplexy. He had other lists of Vey Bad Types, which included Those Who Begin At Calais, People From Not-Here & Anyone Disagreeing With Me. Also Wives, Neighbours and even Cats & Dogs (and Horses).
If Uncle Barmpot was alive today, he would be pleased to see that his notion is gaining ascendency, perhaps stimulating him to poop his horn gleefully whilst running over a child, a cyclist and a horse all on the same day, as that would teach them.
Cugel, sterotypically compromised in several fashions.
Cugel wrote:
Are you sure he’s actually dead, he may just be hiding in a garden shed commenting on road cc under then name Valbrona…
brooksby wrote:
Yes, I guess by definition, an irresponsible twat on a bike is still a cyclist. Just as a drunk car thief, high on drugs, driving the wrong way on a one-way street is still a motorist.
I’m just hopeful that the above descriptions do not apply to the vast majority of RoadCC readers!
J886atv wrote:
I assume by your comment that in your oppinion a cyclist is only a cyclist when they wear racing type lycra? Why have you not pulled up the articles classification of the person capturing the video as a “motorist” as he is unlikely to be wearing motor racing type gear?
J886atv wrote:
When you ride with bicycle lights you are just making drivers complacent and it makes it less safe for everyone else.
For greater safety of the cycling population you should ride without lights, in dark clothing and preferably doing a wheelie for 50% of the journey (at least)
I make no apologies for the
I make no apologies for the cyclists without lights on….but the “Cycling” infrastructure in St Neots and the county of Cambridgeshire is ….well….. Crap… if you look at the shot of the St Neots Bridge…you’ll see the painted cycle symbol in th road…. great huh….
The driver also never slowed on the last clip where the Danger triangle with cycle in it was positioned well before the bend….. when the hooded chap on the bike “rode” out in front of him, the biker should also have looked in the drivers defence…
This cycling is normal for these parts as many don’t care because they can get away with it as the Police don’t give a sh*t …I don’t condone their behaivour…and I’d sell loads more lights if they took responsibility for themselves and other road users…… Clearly too….the driver is like most of them a “Guardian of the road”….
Its worth repeating that it
Its worth repeating that it is nothing like the amount of idiots you can watch on Youtube care of dashcams, in fact I subscribe to a few channels simply because they are so entertaining both for the car drivers and bicycle riders.
On the other hand – since Christmas and every evening that I have cycled home on my regular commute I have passed by what I can only assume is someone who recently got banned from driving and thinks he’s found the perfect way to get to work – wearing a black suit and black full length raincoat and black wooly hat with his briefcase strapped onto his black bike and with no lights and what I suspect is ye olde rod brakes and down twisting country lanes that have no lighting… I wonder what he plans to do when the M6 is closed down and car rivers use the same roads as a shortcut/ratrun doing 60 odd MPH, which they regularly do despite the fact there are dire warning signs about horses and livestock dotted all over the place that they completely ignore.
That last example, I have to
That last example, I have to say that I thought the driver was travelling at a speed excessive for the roads he was driving on. This was demonstrated when we narrowly avoided an accident with teh cyclist.
The cyclist was also conducting himself in a less than exemplary manner, but that last one was a solid 50/50 IMO.
As for red light jumping, I see it all the time… mainly by car drivers who seem to believe that if a light has only just turned red, it isn’t as red as a proper red. I genuinely see little red light jumping from cyclists and those that do, generally do it a lot more safely than the car drivers I see blindly accelerating through a red light.
I have to say though, i can see no reason why you wouldn’t have lights on your bike.
Err, where’s the video?
Err, where’s the video?
Bout half way down, unless
Bout half way down, unless you’ve got an ad blocker on, then it may not be there…