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Live blog: Active travel campaigners slam Budget, Italian ex-pro dies in plane crash, £330 Bournemouth prom cycling fine + more
All the news from the site and beyond as we start a new week
Mon, Oct 29, 2018 16:00
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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
Jakrayan 18 minutes ago
I'm criticising them for not riding in secondary position, not primary. At least 60cms (2 feet) from the edge of the road as the HC explicitly recommends. Leaving aside the small minority of riders who find mounting and dismounting a bike difficult - which sounds suspiciously similar to the motorists "but, but what about disabled drivers?" when talking about LTNs - what's wrong with able bodied riders walking the few metres over that narrow, Victorian bridge? Sure, if there's clearly no-one on it I wouldn't condemn anyone for riding it slowly, but if it's not clear forcing pedestrians to stop and squeeze to the side is, frankly, a rather entitled opinion. Plus it's easy to hold a road bike a little ahead of you and hold the saddle - normally no need to hold the bars if it's straight - so you're really not taking up much more room at all. There's a railway underpass near me that links to a shared then segregated path. It's narrow, and the path approaches at an angle so you can't see if it's clear, but many riders still choose to pedal through despite the clear 'no cycling' signage. Why?? Personally I don't go that way, except on foot, preferring the surrounding roads.
bensynnock 40 minutes ago
I think you're giving drivers too much credit. Many would not think twice about blocking the road if it makes their life easier, such as when turning right onto a busy road.
bensynnock 43 minutes ago
They might have to, but they won't. What they will do is pull out over the cycle path while they wait for a gap in motor traffic.
Safety 1 hour ago
"We have enough regulation." I agree with the exception being legally allowed to sell something which is virtually illegal to use. How many purchasers own a suitably large piece of private land?
Tradescant 5 hours ago
@jackcycles I'm not sure my grandchildren got that memo. Cycling should not be just for hardened road warriors.
DS2025 5 hours ago
Chrisonabike There are a number of police forces in England and Wales that are using portable testing equipment already... How effective it is another matter, I haven't looked into the results of failing (I would hope they just seize and crush the motorbike without any faff but I am sure there are appeal processes, promises not to use them on public roads etc).
KiwiMike 5 hours ago
Woah there - a precision-engineered European-made product, with unparalleled adaptability, is somehow a ‘rip off’? Compared to what - Temu? As per the article, most quality through-axles go for £50-60+, but aren’t adaptable and don’t provide any stand or trailer capability. If you want to balance your £3-4-5k suspension or carbon bike, or bikepacking setup on a budget product subject to highly focused stresses, fair play. Cycling’s a broad church.
Dnnnnnn 6 hours ago
@eburtthebike I've found Spanish drivers to be almost entirely excellent around cyclists.
neilmck 7 hours ago
I agree, the study was made after cycle paths that had been introduced in Berlin during the 70’s and 80’s caused a big increase in cycling deaths. It is an interesting study for cyclists to read in order to know what dangers exist at badly designed junctions. Here in Paris we have very few bi-directional paths. The ones I have cycled on have no building entrances or courtyards (so no cars crossing the path) and every junction is traffic lights to prevent accidents.
thrawed 7 hours ago
We have enough regulation. They're running a motorbike without insurance/registration and possibly without a licence, and the punishment for being caught with all that is pretty severe already. The problem is lack of enforcement.
21 thoughts on “Live blog: Active travel campaigners slam Budget, Italian ex-pro dies in plane crash, £330 Bournemouth prom cycling fine + more”
Ermm – they do understand
Ermm – they do understand that “£420m for potholes in today’s Budget” is total and utter f-ing peanuts, right??
Same old shit, different day.
Same old shit, different day. So you can beat someone up, attack with your killing weapon of choice and get no charges but a cyclist on the prom gets a bigger slap than someone distracted driving or speeding.
Fucking ridiculous!
£330! Totally
£330! Totally disproportionate. This driver was under the influence of drugs, put other road users at risk but was fined about the same, even if he did have to do some community service https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/17001272.drug-swipe-on-driver-in-boscombe-gave-positive-result-for-cannabis/?ref=ar
Mind you, they did the right thing with this idiot https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/16986349.mitchell-stuart-drove-his-porsche-at-55mph-near-lilliput-c-of-e-infant-school/?ref=ar “He is one of those start-up child prodigies.” I think they meant one of those upstart children.
£330 fine is rediculous when
£330 fine is rediculous when compared with what drivers get for more dangerous offences, however, the cyclist was stupid to get back on his bike after being informed of the ban. When taking into account the situation and that he was let off and then decided to try and take advantage he probably deserved a good chunk of what he got.
ClubSmed wrote:
Fixed that
ClubSmed wrote:
Such as running over an elederly man who’d fallen into the road, despite the car 100m ahead managing to swerve around him, while driving your car with a defective headlamp, on the (handsfree) phone to your boyfriend arranging to meet up (presumably for some rumpy pumpy), failing to stop, turning around, coming back, and then skulking away when spotting it was in fact a person she’d hit (as she suspected, despite having said she thought it was rubbinh but suspected it was a person – go figure that out).
Depriving a family of a family member and she’s fined 500 for leaving the scene, not for the intial accident, or the defective lights.
Random thought in response to
Random thought in response to the Bournemouth article; does dabbing count as cycling? That somewhat archaic practice of having one foot on a pedal and using the other to scoot along like a scooter user?
kil0ran wrote:
Given that even pushing a bike down the pavement is technically illegal – you should carry it – I would imagine “dabbing” would also fall foul of this.
vonhelmet wrote:
I don’t believe that pushing a bike is technically illegal – got any references for that?
From this article http://www.bikehub.co.uk/featured-articles/cycling-and-the-law/ :
Scooting on a bike (I’m pretty sure that dabbing is something entirely different in modern vernacular) would thus be considered to be riding it.
vonhelmet wrote:
Not true https://www.cyclinguk.org/cycle/scooting-cycling
kil0ran wrote:
Scooting, or dabbing as you call it, is as far as I know, technically legal as you aren’t riding the bike. I’m sue I’ve read legal opinion about this, but perhaps someone with more knowledge than me could elucidate?
Found this, https://www.cyclinguk.org/cycle/scooting-cycling which makes it clear that pushing your bike with both feet on the ground is definitely legal.
Cycling back towards
Cycling back towards Greenwich from Bethnal Green the other night, 11.30pm, going through Greenwich foot-tunnel I got an earful from a drunk woman walking the opposite way to me because I was cycling through. She stepped out in front of me to stop me, shouting at me to get off my bike. OK, strictly speaking, the rules say don’t cycle (they also state you’re meant to walk on the left, and she wasn’t, but I digress). There needs to be some kind of proportion (as I tried to explain to her). It was an empty tunnel, apart from her. At 11.30pm I’m not causing anyone any harm by cycling. “What about small children walking in here” she ranted. I looked up and down the deserted tunnel and looked bemused. At busy times, during the day I’ll always get off the bike and walk. That evening I’d come across so much agressive driving on the streets of east london, I couldn’t help thinking, as this angry woman ranted at me, we have our perspectives all messed up.
£330 is too lenient.
£330 is too lenient.
People who think they are above the law should, and will, be made to pay, entitled cyclists are no exception.
A440 wrote:
I’d be happy to agree if the same standards were applied to motorists as well.
A440 wrote:
Ooh, Charles Bronson! Go on, baby, make me pay! Make me pay ’til I beg for more! Wear your superhero mask for me, big boy!
The full Herald on Sunday
The full Herald on Sunday piece is truly appalling. (They don’t appear to have made it available online.)
“…cyclists are allowed to run riot on our roads, never signalling, rarely obeying traffic lights or pedestrian crossings, and often exceeding 20mph speed limits in towns or wobbling along on 60mph country roads, causing drivers on blind bends to have heart attacks.”
“They cause cars to overtake into oncoming traffic, but don’t give a damn as long as they get to practise their smug hobby and display their disturblingly distended calf muscles.”
“Humour” indeed…
PS – sad farwell to Norman Sheil – Class rider – brilliant coach – nice guy who had little time for the UK “blazer brigade”
JohnnyRemo wrote:
Oh how I love this one: a clear confession that the driver is not in control of their car and hence had no way of preventing it from swerving into the oncoming traffic.
rkemb wrote:
It’s the sense of entitlement that does it. “The speed limit is 30mph, therefore I am entitled to travel at 30mph no matter what.” Well, no, that’s not how it works.
rkemb wrote:
I think we’d always assumed motor vehicles were like bicycles (short of a mechanical failure, the rider is completely in control of them) when clearly they’re actually more like horses (and horsists are constantly reminding us that they have very little control over their two tonnes of very nervous and jumpy still-almost-wild animal).
Cycling UK and Sustrans are
Cycling UK and Sustrans are right, and this budget is yet another disaster for active travel and sustainable travel. £30bn for roads and £650m for alternatives to driving, which is exactly the inverse of what it should have been. This government has gone way beyond hopeless, hurtled past totally incompetent and is currently at abysmal.
I stand corrected – I was
I stand corrected – I was misinformed.