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Live blog: Alejandro Valverde says “I never tested positive,” Frankfurt tow away nearly 800 cars in a month for parking in cycle lanes + more
All the news from the site and beyond as we start a new week
Mon, Nov 05, 2018 15:42
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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
eburtthebike 34 minutes 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 39 minutes 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 42 minutes ago
@kingleo They aren't the only ones!
Rendel Harris 47 minutes 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.
eburtthebike 1 hour ago
Whilst extreme cases shouldn't make law, this case does demonstrate that the justice system is failing to protect innocent road users. If people continually to break the law, then either the crimes aren't being detected or the punishments are not severe enough. In the case of road law, it's both, and the chances of being caught driving dangerously are miniscule, and even if caught, the offender will at most be banned, which they can and do, ignore. So how to get dangerous drivers to reform or make sure they don't drive? 1. Police on bikes. Just look at how many criminals cycling mikey has had convicted. A real police constable could do so much more. 2. When caught, immediate impounding of vehicle, rapid review by a judge, so the punishment immediately follows the crime. 3. No points on licence, no hardship pleading, just removal of licence. Three months for a first offence, then rapidly escalating to lifetime ban for the fourth. 4. Anyone caught driving whilst banned gets an immediate three month prison sentence, second offence a year, third ten years. I'm sure there are plenty of other good ways of making our roads safer by removing the incompetent and dangerous drivers, but it's a start.
Mr Blackbird 2 hours ago
Having visited Spalding several times, my greatest fear is entering some of the shops.
andystow 2 hours ago
@This Wreckage oh, I'm well aware. They still do it here in the US.
andystow 2 hours ago
@rgriffith7 I don't know where you live, but having ridden quite a bit in both the US and the UK, I'd take the UK any day.
kil0ran 2 hours ago
@davids oh yeah. It's been a long day already here. I'll see if I can edit, thanks
rbrtribble 3 hours ago
@Sniffer great comment, I reckon five years (no parole) in prison for driving while banned will keep them off the road when convicted.
17 thoughts on “Live blog: Alejandro Valverde says “I never tested positive,” Frankfurt tow away nearly 800 cars in a month for parking in cycle lanes + more”
Quote:
Would love to see that happen in places around the UK, but it would be seen as more of the Great War on the Motorist (TM) and no police force would touch it.
brooksby wrote:
Would love to see that happen in places around the UK, but it would be seen as more of the Great War on the Motorist (TM) and no police force would touch it.
Think they would need to build a bigger compound first.
Grahamd wrote:
nah, just crush them and deposit the offending cube of scrap metal on their porch.
brooksby wrote:
Would love to see that happen in places around the UK, but it would be seen as more of the Great War on the Motorist (TM) and no police force would touch it.
It’s a bit of a giggle commuting (by bike/car/bus/horse/whatever) down Hotwell Road in the morning – any of the cars left in the left-hand lane just get picked up and stuck on the back of a lorry
Canyon48 wrote:
You realise that they have to do that *every* morning- there are some people down there seem to think that recovery charge is just part of the cost of running their car, it seems…
Quote:
Duplicate post.
Except clearly the prospect
Except clearly the prospect of your car being towed has no effect on driver behaviour as (a) there are dozens of tow companies making a healthy living from doing this already, and (b) inspite of a month of warning, 850 drivers in one city still parked on the bike paths. Useful as revenge, but not sure how useful as a deterrent. Perhaps if the cars were then crushed……
I love the word
I love the word Abschleppdienst.
ConcordeCX wrote:
some of the German nouns are pure class. While the compound nouns are in a league of their own. I still break into cold sweats thinking about it and trying to get my tongue around them when I attempted and failed my German O’Level quite spectacularly.
I think it’s not so much the
I think it’s not so much the police that wouldn’t touch it as local councils.
Bezirksschornsteinfegermeiste
I used to be a bit of a bookie in my early teens and was fascinated with long words, I can’t recal many so had to look it up but some of the longer words in every day use are in German, Finnish + Scandanavian words too
Bezirksschornsteinfegermeister – head district chimney sweep
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän – Danube Steam boat river captain
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
it’s a process called agglutination. The second word breaks up quite easily into “Danube steam ship travel business captain”.
you’ll enjoy this one, which I’m going to practice shouting at recalcitrant drivers, just to disorient them:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphioparaomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon
ConcordeCX wrote:
I don’t recall seeing that in Auguste Escoffier’s Reportoire de la Cuisine, that’s a belter!
Valverde: “I never tested
Valverde: “I never tested positive”. Oh well, that has a long history as a valid defence then….
I was almost starting to feel
I was almost starting to feel sorry for Valverde, thinking that he was getting a disproportionate amount of stick, but then he goes and says something like this and any sympathy disappears. So he was just storing his blag with a highly notable doctor linked to doping for prosperity?
Footpath parking seems to be
Footpath parking seems to be default setting for a lot of Drivers, no matter the situation. I have noticed an increase in people parking a few inches onto the footpath in locations where it makes no difference “Emergency Sevices might need to get by” … Well, don’t fucking parking there if Emergency Services are so important to you.
one from down under on
one from down under on yesterday’s ride – not 100% sure on the law – parking in a bike lane is legal in Victoria unless signs (none) say otherwise – blocking access to/from probably is a parking offence I’m told but at most its around a $95 fine