Live blog: Geraint Thomas wins TT nats, Alex Dowsett on the history of time trialling, Barnes sisters 1 and 2 at national champs TT, + more
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Thu, Jun 28, 2018 13:20
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Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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Latest Comments
chrisonabike 10 minutes ago
@Rendel Harris indeed, but giving this a sympathetic reading it *is* a bit harder to see cyclists especially in low light conditions. I think this usually means "I was a bit startled when I noticed cyclists where not expecting them / so late that if I had needed to I wouldn't have had time for evasive action". That might be when unlit non-reflective cyclists appear from a side road - or where people are salmoning against traffic flow / on and off the footway. We all have tons of experience looking for motor vehicles and are familiar with where they'll be and how they will move. Cyclists are significantly smaller, have more complicated shapes and may not be exactly "where we expect the motor vehicles". They may be moving at unexpected velocities. Plus even if cars don't have their lights on they tend to reflect. I put this one in the "follow the opposite philosophy to 'shared space' for better safety" category. That is: safety between road users is enhanced when a) people can clearly see other road users b) and have as much time as possible to deal with them c) and know exactly where to expect them / what to expect from those other road users. Most humans perform very poorly when faced with the unfamiliar and worse when startled...
chrisonabike 27 minutes ago
@ajuk.uk@gmail.com "There does seem to be evidence that 20 mph limits work on roads that already lend themselves to such low speeds, and I do think the lack of a 25 mph limit option is an issue for some roads." Again - not disagreeing that numbers alone are not the best way. But I ask: were people already doing 20mph or near that when those roads that "lend themselves" to that speed had a 30mph sign? I would expect in most cases the answer was "no, people saw thirty and that primed them for the 'expected' speed". Or perhaps "they hadn't noticed the signs at all but it seemed like e.g. a residential area and they recalled from all those years back 30mph probably made sense"? Since we've previously gone through the evidence * that merely changing a number on a sign *does* in fact change behaviour and lower average speeds, and AFAICS nobody has proposed a "a set amount" they hope it will constrain people to ... ... is it fair you're disputing the evidence because it doesn't fit with how you feel it *should* work / your local experience? Or do you believe that eventually everyone will revert back to the old speed or higher because 'freedom' or because nobody's actually getting nicked for ignoring the limit? (And if the latter - what's the point of proposing that the speed limits should help with policing, if there aren't the police?) While I can believe that the truly reckless and *some* less circumspect wrong'uns are more likely also to wildly speed, I think this assertion needs more scrutiny **. As for "forcing the police to target them" I think it's been amply illustrated on this site that many of the police don't feel forced into doing much if any enforcement on the roads (see wtjs etc.). Even where they are more active the level of enforcement isn't such to make many drivers worry about "what happens if I break the law *and* get caught?" I don't feel we need 25 or 32 or other intermediate speed limits. In practice where there's enforcement at all there *may* be the discretionary 10% + a few mph in play - so you might even be fine and not fined doing 35mph in a 30mph limit. But you're far more likely simply not to experience any enforcement. And even if you are detected it's still first chance, then maybe any number of 2nd, 3rd etc. with a reasonable lawyer / sympathetic magistrate. Although if you feel the most important thing is to identify indifferent drivers (and assuming we've got enough police / cameras / "spy in the car" black boxes from somewhere) then having lots of non-power-of-ten speed limit signs might be a way to spot who's paying attention or not. Or ... if we changed to km/h (imagine!) you get a finer-grained 10 / 20 / 30 etc. * The last time this topic came up, or the time before! ** I don't know if anyone has studied this, but I'm not sure of the relative amounts of harm caused by a) a small minority of reckless joyriders and "sod getting a licence" types (who *are* very likely to cause serious harm) and b) vastly more "average reasonable drivers" - who are human and thus cut corners and sometimes make unfathomable errors - who cause damage (up to killing people and destroying buildings) at a small but definitely non-zero rate overall. It wouldn't surprise me if the overall determinant of harm turned out to be simply proportional to the number of drivers times time driven for times some measure of speed. (Since speed reduces both time to do something about a situation and increases the harm, absent a lot of engineering to mitigate it - e.g. evidence shows motorways are statistically safe environments).
belugabob 31 minutes ago
Now the wands are gone, I look forward to the cycling lanes being cleaned regularly - and not parked in (thereby leaving plenty of room for the buses and emergency vehicles) (all to delivered before Coventry win the FA cup again)
chrisonabike 1 hour ago
@perce everyone should wear lights, full stop. And punctuate properly - that really gets up my colon! Anyway, must dash...
perce 1 hour ago
@Ojisan My old English teacher told me i had to work on my punctuation, so I started going to school half an hour earlier.
60somethingcyclist 2 hours ago
Arrogant obnoxious Tory.
Rendel Harris 2 hours ago
How do you see them then? Do you regularly drive into black cars?
eburtthebike 3 hours ago
@Blackthorne83 He'd love to, but some bastard's taken out the cycle lanes.
kil0ran 4 hours ago
I was a few bikes away from the fatal collision during Ride London a few years ago, I barely avoided the victim's dog which was running loose. Definitely one of those slo-mo adrenaline fuelled moments and I was only doing about 40kph. At lead out speeds it really doesn't bear thinking about.
15 thoughts on “Live blog: Geraint Thomas wins TT nats, Alex Dowsett on the history of time trialling, Barnes sisters 1 and 2 at national champs TT, + more”
Meh. You don’t need CO2 for
Meh. You don’t need CO2 for proper beer anyway.
KendalRed wrote:
I like my cider like I like my women: flat, dry and smelling of apples.
Wait a minute, that sounds wrong – I’ll come in again.
hawkinspeter wrote:
How about strong, sweet and leaves a hole in your wallet
Simmo72 wrote:
I like my cider like I like my women: cold, cheap and alcoholic.
Nope, still not right.
hawkinspeter wrote:
I prefer mine in the park on a bench, cheap and not too gassy.
.
.
.
But I don’t drink cider.
KendalRed wrote:
Or proper cycling.
I get shoaled a lot in London
I get shoaled a lot in London, it’s really frustrating as I’m rather rapid from a standing start, let alone cruising speed, this happens mostly because other selfish twunts go past the white line and stop in front of me and anyone else abiding by the rules. Cycle lanes simply aren’t as wide as they should be. Vauxhall Bridge is a prime example, concrete/armco in one of the lanes.
Occasionally I pull up alongside other cyclists. I’ve yet to experience anyone who can keep up, though a couple have benefitted from a massive tow through Hyde Park 🙂 I wouldn’t behave like this if I was likely to be slowing people down though.
What I find worse though, is when I stop behind the car/van/taxi at the front of the queue at a red light (like you are supposed to), only for half a dozen dozy dawdling cyclists to amble past and stop past the white line. This then results in a gaggle of slow cyclists taking ages to get moving and the car/van/taxi having a sizeable delay to slower-than-usual forward motion, delaying everyone who is abiding by the rules. Only for the car/van/taxi and myself to overtake the lot of them about 50m later. Seriously guys, why can’t you join the queue, it’s not very British, is it!? I can understand why drivers get so frustrated by this at is does genuinely hold up traffic. ASL boxes at every appropriate traffic light would go a long way though.
ChrisB200SX wrote:
I think that’s just it – especially in London you almost expect every set of lights to have an ASL so quite often cyclists are moving to the front purely because they know 90% of the time there is an ASL which is the safer place to be..
Htc wrote:
But the point is that shoaling is deeply selfish and ignorant. As are their closely related cousins, the RLJ’er. Very rarely are they travelling particularly fast…but they will overtake while you’re stopped at the light and get in your way 50 foot further on. They’ll do this multiple times without giving a toss.
They are car drivers but on a bike. No consideration for anyone but themselves…their journey times takes precedence over everything.
It’s not cricket.
StoopidUserName wrote:
So, they’re cyclists then.
hawkinspeter wrote:
So, they’re cyclists then.
— StoopidUserName
no.
StoopidUserName wrote:
Are they, maybe, true scotsmen?
hawkinspeter wrote:
So, they’re cyclists then.
— StoopidUserName
…but not cricketers.
spot on…
😀
I dont’t think I am a shoaler
I dont’t think I am a shoaler. I often see skiny women riding antic steel bikes overpassing me, sometimes because I stop at red lights, and sometimes because they truely are faster.