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Live blog: Deliveroo rider reveals all, Zwift will pay $25,000 towards medical bills of cyclist who lost his leg if 25,000 complete virtual climbing challenge, shoddy Christmas gift idea, cyclist hit by rocket fired from moving car + more
All today’s news from the site and beyond
Tue, Nov 06, 2018 16:06
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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.
38 thoughts on “Live blog: Deliveroo rider reveals all, Zwift will pay $25,000 towards medical bills of cyclist who lost his leg if 25,000 complete virtual climbing challenge, shoddy Christmas gift idea, cyclist hit by rocket fired from moving car + more”
Do it at a mosque, go to jail
Do it at a mosque, go to jail. Do it to a cyclist, hilarious.
I saw that fireworks thing
I saw that fireworks thing yesterday, on Mailonline. Some of the remarks in the comments section were just beyond belief.
I don’t get how it can be allowed to make such comments about a group of people i.e cyclists when its punishable in law to make the same remarks about religious, physical or racial groups.
PRSboy wrote:
Because its not punishable by law to make those comments about cyclists. Religious groupings, gender/sexual identity, racial identity, even being a Goth (dress style/music, not sacking Rome) are “protected characteristics” but mode of transport is not.
brooksby wrote:
Fair enough, it just seems odd to me that you can’t make nasty comments that incite hatred against people based on where they worship, but you can based on how they get there.
Its surprising to me when I’m driving my kids and their friends about how often the other children will make a remark about a cyclist holding us up. You know full well that they are just echoing what their parents say and think.
Comments normalised in mainstream media is also influencing others as it makes it acceptable to hate “cyclists”.
Today’s derogatory comments poster is tomorrow’s punishment passer etc.
PRSboy wrote:
It is everywhere, in two broad flavours, I think.
There’s the nasty shit on social media and BTL, which I’m sure does foster the attitude that results in pricks launching fireworks at people because they’re on a bike. Hopefully we’re looking at a small section of keyboard warriors and an even smaller section of mouth-breathers who’d ever turn it into anything real.
Then there’s the widespread ignorance and misinformation which is EVERYWHERE (like the kids parroting their parents). I had a walk through Manchester city centre with our COO yesterday – this is the COO of the UK arm of an international bank, which in itself is just a title, but he’s a clever bloke and a sound one at that. He knows I ride a bike so he was asking me about bike routes through town, and then opined about the challenges of retrofitting bike infrastructure onto roads designed for cars. I pointed out the couple of flaming flaws in that and he laughed at himself, but the point of this long and boring humblebrag about being cosy with the COO is to say it isn’t just the S*n ‘readers’ who don’t get bikes and cyclists.
At a time when active travel is the answer to at least a couple of major problems, the only way I can think of to tackle so much ignorance across the population is to pray to St Sir Lord Chris and hope Manchester is the next Amsterhagen.
davel wrote:
One of those flaws being that, in the centre of somewhere like Manchester which has been there a lot longer than there have been motor vehicles, the roads were not “designed for cars”: the car-favouring infrastructure is retrofitted to the city layout that has been there for much longer.
rkemb wrote:
One of those flaws being that, in the centre of somewhere like Manchester which has been there a lot longer than there have been motor vehicles, the roads were not “designed for cars”: the car-favouring infrastructure is retrofitted to the city layout that has been there for much longer.
— davel…and that roads were actually built for bikes.
ChrisB200SX wrote:
Nah, unless you mean that’s another one of the flaws. In which case, aye 🙂
ChrisB200SX wrote:
Roads were [i]paved[/i] for bikes: mostly they were already built.
rkemb wrote:
No, they really weren’t. Paved and covered roads, for wheeled transport, pre-date bicycles by several thousand years. Some may have been paved in the UK in some particular places that helped with bicycle transportation, but that’s not their general raison d’être.
fukawitribe wrote:
True indeed – the Romans constructed roads paved with stone in the UK 2,000 years ago. There are some roads being found now in parts of East Anglia paved with wood that may be older still.
OldRidgeback wrote:
Anyway, I think we can all agree that roads were not made for cars, and that the car-specific infrastructure is “retrofitted”, so the claim that retrofitting cycling infrastructure is somehow overly problematic is nonsense. Which was my original point.
rkemb wrote:
Wellllll – still no, but I get and completely agree with your point about it being necessarily over problematic.
rkemb wrote:
How very dare you. It was my original point.
PRSboy wrote:
The inclusion of Goths is relevent here though I think. It was included specifically after an appalling crime in which one person was murdered and another was seriously injured; that led to a change in guidance on what constituted a protected characteristic. There have been several crimes reported on road.cc and elswhere that begin to approach some of the pertinent points in that case; someone violently targetting another person due to their membership of a perceived sub-culture. Incidents like this firework one and cases where drivers have gone out specifically looking for cyclists to drive at or into to are getting into that territory, in my opinion. I’ve even read of people getting abuse whilst pushing their bikes; that’s not transport choice as the common factor, it is the targetting of a percevied sub-group.
From a different tack, it’s also worth noting that after the English riots a few years ago, some people were jailed for inciting riots in areas where no riots actually took place. So they ‘incited’ on Facebook, nothing actually happened, but they were jailed for the incitment. If someone incites people to follow this firework example, then why should that not be treated in the same way even if there are no further attacks?
The problem is that both of the above examples – hate crime and inciting riots – involved perpertators tranggressing lines that were recognised as such by those in the position to apply the law or to amend guidance on the application of the law. By comparison, there is a spectrum of negative feeling towards anyone using a bike – ranging from casual indifference to our safety to an active desire to cause harm – that is so normalised in our society now that no one in a position to do anything about it actually cares. We have become one of the ‘guilt-free meat puppets’ through which the violence and visciousness of our culture is allowed to express itself.
PRSboy wrote:
What do you expect, you look in a sewer you are going to see $hit.
Meanwhile, everyone is going
Meanwhile, everyone is going mental over people burning a tasteless model of Grenfell Tower. Bad taste, yes. Actually dangerous to life and limb, no.
The police are rightly
The police are rightly persuing this crime: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/06/liverpool-homeless-man-firework-assault, so presumably they are taking action to find the
perpetrator behind this video?
Reported the video to
Reported the video to Facebook, apparently it does not break any community guidelines. Strange as this is one of facebook community guidelines:
Do not post:
Content depicting, admitting or promoting the following criminal acts committed by you or your associates
• Acts of physical harm committed against people
I’ve chased it up again. I’m sure if the person being targetted with explosives was not on a bike they would have taken the video down.
a1white wrote:
Presumably Facebook doesn’t consider cyclists to be people?
Carior wrote:
Time for roadcc to stop Facebook only competitions I think.
Grahamd wrote:
For all we know the person on
For all we know the person on the bike might have been a pregnant woman. The sad thing is, reading the hate filled comments on the facebook video (which I have reported), as soon as the person is on a bike, they suddenly morph into an anonymous target that it is ‘hillarious’ to launch high explosives at.
a1white wrote:
Its happened before, hasn’t it? Wasn’t there something a while back, where a cyclist was pushed off so he went into a hedge or a ditch. And apparently it was hilarous
Not helped by how cyclists are portrayed in TV and films, is it? Grant Peterson wrote something about how if you want to portray a adult male as a bit of a wimp or otherwise emasculated, or as an over-the-top exerciser, then you put them on a bike (see the 40 Year old Virgin, see Stuart from the Comic Book Store in the Big Bang Theory, etc etc etc).
Great innit. What a country
Great innit. What a country we live in. Homeless man attacked with fireworks, police investigate (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/06/liverpool-homeless-man-firework-assault), cyclist attacked with fireworks “Good shot that man”… And the police wonder why respect for them is dropping.
Quote:
Are they quite sure its the world’s first two-in-one backpack? I don’t know about handlebar bag converters, but there are plenty of rear pannier converters already out there, IIRC.
brooksby wrote:
Plenty of two in ones that can be a back pack or pannier, there are even pannier bags that are funky hand/shoulder bags, I bought one of my lady friend last xmas. Has proper rack hooks, sturdy carry handles and a shoulder strap. Lovely 70s design, waterproof and cost e £13
Quote:
You’d really have to hope that Zwift were extremely confident of meeting the goal — or at least would contribute $1 per rider if the goal was not met…
It would take approximately 5% of Zwift’s user base to do it, and given the subscription model I have to assume most users are active users, so one would hope it’s an extremely achievable goal.
That perfume bottle is pure
That perfume bottle is pure class when compared to this musical bike – ‘cos we all wear full downhill helmet, knee and elbow pads whilst riding a step through frame with stabilisers down to the shops to fill up the hard pannier top box (to the tune of Lonely Goatherd)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k59PRXhq2Wg&t=113s
Given that the sick sub
Given that the sick sub-humans who burnt the Grenfell Tower in effigy are being considered for prosecution under the Public Order Act “They were held on suspicion of intentionally causing harassment, alarm or distress under section 4a of the Public Order Act.” it appears at least possible that those who threaten or harass or cause alarm or distress to cyclists, could be prosecuted under the same act.
It also appears to me that
It also appears to me that the driver is the one filming.
Deliveroo video
Deliveroo video
“…could have used a moped…you can’t run red lights like you can on a bicycle”
bike_food wrote:
Yep, that was as far as I got before turning that little twerp off.
Zermattjohn wrote:
He earned £75 over the week. Mind you, his week was basically three days of doing deliveries for three or four hours a day. I’d say he earns a fair bit more from his YouTube channel.
The world has gone ever-so-slightly mad.
Whether Cycling should be
Whether Cycling should be classed as a hate crime was debated on this post – I still think it should be
https://road.cc/content/forum/241489-anti-cyclinganti-cyclist-hatred-hate-crime
cyclesteffer wrote:
Thanks, I missed that particular thread at the time. No mention there of using the Public Order Act to prosecute anyone who causes cyclists harassment, alarm or distress, so should we be crowdfunding a prosecution as a test case? Count me in for £50.
cyclesteffer wrote:
No, it shouldn’t be, or we’re all in trouble. I hope you mean “whether cycling should be classed as a protected category for hate crimes legislation”.
cyclesteffer wrote:
I have a bit of a problem with the whole category of ‘hate crime’ because it’s potentially such a huge category. I mean they’ve just said ‘misogyny’ should be included (and I bet a _lot_ of domestic violence and sexual crimes have some weird rage against women behind them), and that horrible mockery of the Grenfell fire victims recently seems to me to be a hate-crime directed at ethnic minorities and/or anyone poor in public housing. Loads of attacks on disabled (especially mentally disabled) people seem to clearly meet the criteria, but I don’t think the law recognises that yet.
Vast numbers of crimes are clearly motivated partly by hatred of a particular group, cyclist-bashing is very clearly one of them, but I’m starting to think it might be easier to work out which few crimes against people are _not_ about group hatreds.