road.cc live blog: Terpstra takes E3 Harelbeke, buy Lance’s house, limited edition Cannondale Supersix, bicycle-to-vehicle beacons proposed + more
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Fri, Mar 23, 2018 09:00
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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
quiff 41 minutes ago
@mdavidford Nah, only a human could have written this, whatever it means: "Cycling is inherently about people, so I think stuff created by AI shouldn’t mix it, or sports in general."
mattw 1 hour ago
@chrisonabike For the unbundling we need to start looking seriously at improving and joining up say 10-20% of our public footpath network. We have the bones of a 3rd "Mobility" network from everywhere to everywhere already in place, but no one has noticed, and landowners want to steal it and police often want to block it off. Since my LHA (ie Highways) are now Reform UK controlled, and they just want to live in an episode of Terry and June whilst the world goes to hell in a handcart, improving this is my current activism focus with stuff that I can legally enforce.
mattw 1 hour ago
@chrisonabike I have found the "look at he untouched snow" point to be a useful tool to illustrate the issue to a general audience, who are not anti-cycling but have been put on alert by culture war rhetoric. I might then say "that means we can have a build-out to make the crossing distance for pedestrians shorter (without extending the motorist red or taking away road space they use) and we can put some bike parking on the build our without taking away parking spaces". It's not what we need, but it's a non-confrontational step in the right direction, which gives a 1+1=3 .
mdavidford 1 hour ago
Really? I thought it just got you a CHF500 fine and a yellow card.
eburtthebike 2 hours ago
"Nevertheless, following the much-delayed consultation, in July Devon County councillors voted to revoke the ban on motor vehicles. They also agreed to extend the area’s 20mph zone and develop “traffic calming and safer walking and cycling measures”." Cognitive dissonance at its finest. On one hand they're taking measures to calm traffic, and then opening a very calm road to motor vehicles. "In January, Exeter’s Highways and Traffic Orders Committee confirmed that £55,000 of Active Travel England funding had been allocated to support public consultation activities and any ongoing work. It is expected that the total cost of the work will come to £650,000." I suggest that ATE prohibit the use of their funds for removing AT infrastructure. Devon CC is in debt to the tune of £500m, and Exeter city owe £165m, but they can waste £650k on this? Incredible. "According to the council, creating a protected bike route on the road, while retaining two-way traffic, would be “prohibitively expensive, impractical, and unviable”" So don't do it, leave it as it is and save £650k. Unfortunately, the crowdfunder appears to have finished, otherwise I'd be donating.
BroomBroomBroom 2 hours ago
@open_roads Don't forget throwing a bottle – 2 years' bird.
mdavidford 2 hours ago
This article reads like it was written by AI.
mdavidford 2 hours ago
Deliberate sarcasm / cynicism, or sadly accurate Freudian slip?
chrisonabike 2 hours ago
@Freddy56 is it like not needing to use paper and a slide rule, or ... is it more like the car and "traffic in towns"? Perhaps it's no more healthy to avoid thought and mental effort than physical exercise? Perhaps we'd all avoid massive cost and health issues if - like the car - we could agree some sensible limits at the beginning? OTOH given the never-before-seen sums going in to this, and the large number of (smart and already powerful/ wealthy) folks and organisations desperately needing to make it "too big to fail" to protect their speculation ... ... and human nature (plus captive audience now we're all already online and almost everything from clothing to cereal coming with chips) ... I think you may be right in that even if we have no use for it (and it'll make us redundant), tough.
Freddy56 2 hours ago
AI "slop" is a pointless finger pointing. This is the new revolution and after graphic designers and accountants and radiologists- photographers will need to retrain for the new environment. No ideal but it is real and now. Adapt and survive
19 thoughts on “road.cc live blog: Terpstra takes E3 Harelbeke, buy Lance’s house, limited edition Cannondale Supersix, bicycle-to-vehicle beacons proposed + more”
Okay, I’ll bite…
Okay, I’ll bite…
Who will have to pay to retro-fit beacons to existing bikes?
Who will pay to retro-fit the detection and collision avoidance technology to all the existing cars trucks, vans, lorries, buses and taxis out there?
Who will be judged at fault in a collision between a beaconless bike and a sensor equipped vehicle?
I’d like to have device on my
I’d like to have a device on my bike that sent an electric shock to the bollocks of the driver of a car detected within a metre of my bike. Said shock to increase the closer the vehicle gets. I’d happily pay for that, in fact.
Eton Rifle wrote:
Not a bad idea, but being run over by a woman is going to be just as annoying and painful.
And yet, a car supposedly
And yet, a car supposedly dripping with the latest detection technology and fail safe automated braking systems ploughs into and kills a pedestrian crossing the road in Arizona. ?
ermmm… bicycles already
ermmm… bicycles already have retro-reflectors mounted on them… perhaps these vehicle systems ‘experts’ should consider devising some device which scans the field of view and detects reflected ‘light’… sort of like a radar does but with an infra red low power eyesafe laser?
I’m calling bullshit on the
I’m calling bullshit on the bike detection technology. Half the time, drivers can see the bike perfectly well, but will still insist on overtaking at inappropriate times/places and without any due consideration. How will a detection system improve that?
Why do we keep trying to
Why do we keep trying to invent things that dull the attention of road users? It’s bad enough that most cars resemble starship command inside now. The last thing we need is going from SMIDSY to sorry my detection system didn’t see you mate and besides I was looking at facebook anyway.
My brother recently moved to Australia and said the driving standard is dire over there and reckons part of it is everyone driving automatics. It’s just a another level of disconnect from driving.
Sensors to also measure
Sensors to also measure passing distance and batch report anything too close?
Seems to me that that whole
Seems to me that that whole thing would be monumentally hackable. The beacon will need to be small and low-powered so they’ll be really easy to hide. IBM announced tech this week smaller than a grain of rice that could be used for this.
What’s to stop you, for example, hiding one in a manhole cover or on a bollard and bringing traffic to a halt?
Or taking primary and riding at 5mph preventing the vehicle from overtaking?
Its all completely unworkable and the logical extrapolation will be to ban pedestrians and cycles (and motorcycles and horses) from areas where driverless vehicles operate.
And then we get to my neck of the woods where there are unfenced roads and livestock roaming about – I guess that means they’ll all need to be tagged too.
kil0ran wrote:
And this is exactly what we’ll get if this technology becomes mainstream. There’ll be places you can buy them in bulk from Chinese wholesalers, and they will be laid in weird patterns across the road to ‘assist’ motorists into a ditch. I could even lay them on the pavement in front of my house to stop people parking there!
Re ‘Ouch’.
Re ‘Ouch’.
A Darwin Award must be in the post – especially if next time he smashes his bollocks into that wall!
This appears to be a new
This appears to be a new version of victim blaming; it’ll be the cyclists fault for not fitting the latest gadget.
It is the responsibility of the people causing the danger to prevent/reduce that danger, not for cyclists and pedestrians to have to take actions to avoid being run over. Make the vehicle technology safe or keep it off the road.
Car detects bike with chip,
Car detects bike with chip, driver ignores the warning, status quo.
It will not work in
It will not work in Colchester.
On the subject of bicycle /
On the subject of bicycle / car sensors.
Lets go a step further so the software in the car can detect dangerous overtaking distances between the two sensors, then feed this back directly to the driver’s insurance provider, who can then increase their insurance premiums accordingly.
The government can offer a free standard version of the bike beacon, paid for by also offering a super-lightweight carbon fibre version for ‘proper’ cyclists who wouldn’t be able to resist the marginal gains.
Kojima wrote:
Better still, switch the car to limp home mode with a max speed of 15 mph so that affected cyclist can taunt them for miles and miles and ….
Most people probably already
Most people probably already have a highly detectable beacon – their phone. It’s likely squawking out all sort of radio signals (WiFi, Bluetooth, ANT+, 3g/4g etc.) right now.
It’s not “victim blaming” to envisage a future where road users are sharing speed, direction and position information in an effort to avoid hitting each other. It’s already used extensively in the air and at sea (AIS). At sea it’s mandatory for big heavy stuff to have AIS (>300t I think). E.g. http://shipfinder.co/ – and an awful lot of smaller craft use it as well along with sonar, radar and, yes, eyeballs.
Maybe Garmin will bake their LiveTrack system into all their devices in future and build automotive versions…maybe they have already.
“It is not easy for human
“It is not easy for human drivers to see cyclists on the roads” Manuel Marsilio – general manager of the Confederation for the European Bicycle Industry
Yes, actually it is QUITE easy to see cyclists on the roads IF you are paying attention & looking where you are pointing your two tonne lump of steel. With ‘friends’ like this in the industry, who needs enemies…
That Cannondale looks great.
That Cannondale looks great. You don’t often see British Racing Green on a bike.