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Live blog: N Yorks campaigner calls for infrastructure not prestige events, Addison Lee plans to put driverless cabs in London by 2021, sneak peek at the new Pinarello gravel bike + more
All today’s news from the site and beyond as we start a new week
Mon, Oct 22, 2018 14:19
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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
rbrtribble 1 hour ago
@wtjs "Nothing changes if we don't want it to. I love you", (oops a quote from GEN V). I didn't need to put that last bit in, but hey you write so passionately and so long and obviously have an emotional attraction to cycling. "If you don't have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true"
grOg 3 hours 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 3 hours 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 3 hours 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 3 hours 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 5 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 5 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 5 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 5 hours ago
@kingleo They aren't the only ones!
Rendel Harris 6 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.
24 thoughts on “Live blog: N Yorks campaigner calls for infrastructure not prestige events, Addison Lee plans to put driverless cabs in London by 2021, sneak peek at the new Pinarello gravel bike + more”
I do hope both Alex Dowsett
I do hope both Alex Dowsett and Chris Boardman have a punch up to decide this, it’s the only real way to find out who’s most right*
*that and graphs obvs. Everyone knows a graph always wins a debate.
I think we’re beyond graphs.
I think we’re beyond graphs. After St Sir Chris Lord Boardman’s latest vanquishing of the most recent addition to the Order of the Helmets, nothing less than a tapestry will do.
Just how small is the number Alex can count to, or are we really expected to believe that he hears multiple hundreds of stories per day. Also, loads of my friends tell me of the good times they have when pissed, countless stories. Should we make alcohol consumption mandatory?
I say this as someone who had a positive experience of a collision and a helmet, I still don’t think it needs to be compulsory…
Chris Boardman and Superman
Chris Boardman and Superman once had such a heated arguments about helmets that they bet that the loser would wear their underpants on the outside.
Cycling into Manchester (from
Cycling into Manchester (from the North West – Liverpool Street) is a joke at the moment. Roadworks on other nearby roads is forcing too much traffic into too small a volume of roads and the traffic lights at some junctions are just pointless as people just drive through them. Some cyclists too, sure, but absolutely shitloads of cars.
Chris Boardman was banned
Chris Boardman was banned from participating in time trails after the judge sentenced time to life imprisonment.
So if driverless cars a made
So if driverless cars a made to brake if there is an obstruction ahead then surely the safest place to cycle would be in front of one?
Ratfink wrote:
Only if the tech “sees” the cyclist, and that is the nub of the problem with driverless car in a nutshell.
usedtobefaster wrote:
Would take my chances with the tech versus the average Addison Lee driver!
gonedownhill wrote:
Good point …
usedtobefaster wrote:
And in the case or Mercedes cars, whether it chooses to prioritise people inside the car or outside of it.
When Chris Boardman crosses
When Chris Boardman crosses the road, the cars look both ways.
hawkinspeter wrote:
Chris Boardman doesn’t cross the road. The opposite pavement comes to him.
davel wrote:
I was going to ask “why does Chris Boardman cross the road?”, but no-one questions Chris Boardman’s intentions.
hawkinspeter wrote:
There is no ‘Chris Boardman’s intentions’; there is only ‘Chris Boardman does’ and ‘Chris Boardman does not’.
davel wrote:
I heard that Chris Boardman sleeps with a nightlight on – not because he’s afraid of the dark, but because the dark is afraid of him.
.. hang on a min.. the
.. hang on a min.. the ‘Grevil gravel bike’… all I can think of is G G G Granville the G G G Grevil G G G Gravel bike…
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… WTF… is that Alex Dowsett, he’s getting everywhere today!
Dowsett vs Boardman sums up
Dowsett vs Boardman sums up the helmet debate; one uses myths, rumours and apocryphal stories, the other uses facts, research and data. ‘Nuff said.
Except perhaps from “shut up Alex until you have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
The scary thing is that many
The scary thing is that many are saying, we don’t want compulsion but compulsion via the back door by encouraging people to wear them, all the whilst utterly ignoring the stats both for professional racing types, amateur racers and the ‘others’, also ignoring that head injuries sans helmets riding a bike is massively less than walking, driving and most other activities.
Or maybe types like Dowsett think the 1.3million annually reported head injuries (A figure accepted by the head injury orgs in the UK) are totally false, the c.160,000 hospital admittances from such are also false OR that they are all cyclists?
Given that the official figures are c.3100 serious cyclists injured (and the majority caused by errent motorists) maybe he thinks somehow this number are all head injuries and that somehow even if they were this is a much bigger issue than 160,000 that are admitted to hospital.
As I’ve said elsewhere when you have a ratio greater than 1000:1 if just comparing the admittances alone to 50% of all (seriously) injured cyclists being to the head, to then only promote helmets for people on bikes is not only ludicrous, it’s ignorant of basic stats, ignorant of studies that show the effects of helmet wearing.
It’s insideous creep, sickening and a slippery slope of only making matters worse as we have seen in the UK, in France, in US, in Canada, in Australia, in NZ, basically any country you want to pick that has seen significant increases in helmet wearing or compulsion. Time and again this has been shown to be true.
So we get compulsary helmet wearing and if you don’t, then what, NSW levels of fines that the police only focus on instead of killer drivers, and from that more injuries and deaths of cyclists who are then forced off the roads, more victim blaming by police, government, judges and cycling organisations?
DOWSETT YOU IGNORANT UNEDUCATED CUNT, YOUR WAY MAKES CYCLING MORE DANGEROUS AND PUTS ME AT MORE RISK, GO FUCK YOURSELF!
If I headbutt something then
If I headbutt something then I’d want to be wearing a helmet – I’d stand with Dowsett.
Thing is, I’d rather not headbutt anything at all – Boardman for PM!
2Loose wrote:
For ‘headbutting’, I hear you.
But most definitions of ‘headbutt’ don’t include drivers rear-ending, t-boning or left-hooking you, and helmets are a weird fixation in relation to such situations.
And I’d also rather not head
And I’d also rather not head but anything regardless of my mode of transport or activity.
Dowsett knew the reaction his tweet would get and was just being an attention whore.
The real debate here is how
The real debate here is how has Still Open All Hours ran for as long as Open All Hours? By eck they didn’t make much telly in them days.
Organon wrote:
That’s a tricky one.
Do we go by the time period or the number of series? The original ran from 1973 to 1985 although 1973 was just the pilot episode, so we might want to consider 1976 to 1985. Still Open All Hours has been running since 2013, so that’s just 5 years. If we go by series, then the original only had 4 series and the new one has just started its 5th series.
I can see the arguments carrying on for a long time.