Live blog: Manchester offering free family cycle training; petition for enforcement of safe passing distance in Australia; father and son everest the Kemmelberg + more

The first comment on the Facebore post linked above is basically "what about when it's raining? Or if your job is far away? Ha! Checkmate, cyclists!" Well, er, no. That's when you use a van. The hard of thinking seem to believe that once you've used a bike you can never, ever go back to using a motor vehicle, for any reason ever.

Is that for giving a different kind of signal to drivers?

@Steve K You're more charitable than I: although Ofcom does impose a requirement for balance on his type of show, it's not a news programme, he doesn't have to be absolutely strictly impartial. I suspect he's well aware of the fact that the majority of his audience likely lean towards the anti-cyclist end of the spectrum and doesn't want them turning off/over by being too much the other way.

@Surreyrider Just wondering, how do you feel about gravel roads and bikes designed for same?

@Surreyrider I guess he's meant to be the neutral host. If he'd been a guest on someone else's show, he probably would have.

I ride on roads to get to gravel, am I allowed to view Road.cc? 🤡

"The trouble with cyclists - and I'm generalising here - " to the extent that I really mean most, but not all drivers.

"cycling across Route 66: all 2,448 miles of it" That must be the widest road on the planet. How long is it?

@Steve K I don't understand why he didn't rip her particlarly laughable (not to mention moronic) views to shreds. Gagged maybe?

No mention of the battery life of these lights, so let me help the editors out. Cateye makes a bunch of these lights but we'll only discuss the 3 they discussed. The 2200 will run for 1 hour at 2200, to 12 hours at 200. The 1700 runs for 1.25 hours at 1700, to just 5 hours at 400, there is no 200. The 1300 runs for 2 hours at 1300, and 7.5 hours at 300. This one has the longest battery run time of the 3. You can go online to Cateye and get more details about other lumen settings and their run times. The problem with most lights, including the Cateye, is that they do not have a replaceable battery; and according to Cateye the battery is only good for about 300 cycles which is the worse I've read in the industry, most are good for 500 cycles, the top of line ones like the Exposure are good for 1000 cycles AND the battery is replaceable; the NiteRider Lumina boost series also has a replaceable battery, but it will only cycle 500 times, but at least you can get the battery replaced for a nominal fee. The reason I bring this battery thing up is because it is a waste of resources and our money to buy a light that can only be charged about 300 to even 1,000 times, which is about 1,000 to 2,000 hours of run time when the LED bulbs are good for at least 15,000 hours for the cheapest LED bulbs, most are good for 25,000 hours; so we're throwing away perfectly good lights just because the battery cannot be replaced. I stopped buying lights that cannot have the battery replaced, even my taillight has a replaceable battery, it's from Exposure; finding replaceable batteries in a taillight is very difficult to find because there are only 1 or 2 that can be replaced.