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news
Leave Vs Remain poll - leave the swipe/love the swipe?; Couple jailed after driving into cyclist while having "full blown domestic”; “intimidating” young cyclists… young cyclists that are intimidating, Trek wonder material?; Pink it shrink it + more
SUMMARY
road.cc shirt logo arty shot08 March 2019, 16:41
Grand piano towing cyclist falls foul of San Francisco's steep hills
This was doubtless quite a noisy crash.
08 March 2019, 15:35
Poll: Leave Vs Remain - leave the swipeable site or remain with the swipe
On Monday our two week experiment of shutting down the swipeable smartphone version of road.cc comes to and end, and we want to know how the last two weeks have been for you… in a swipeable smartphone version of road.cc context. So, do you want to leave the swiping behind and seize control of your scrolling, or remain part of the swipeable elite?
08 March 2019, 15:32
Ice-T gives shout out to his favourite pro cycling team
“It’s time to wrap up all that cross stuff and get back to the road,” apparently.
Just a little love from a super big fan. No big deal @FINALLEVEL pic.twitter.com/ZvxqfEQMXA
— Aevolo Cycling (@Aevolo_Cycling) February 26, 2019
08 March 2019, 14:39
Careless driver who left cyclist in coma fined £485
Victim calls for introduction of offence of ‘causing serious injury by careless driving’, but Cycling UK warns of the possible unwanted side-effects of merely ‘bolting on new offences’.
08 March 2019, 13:24
Ooooo, maybe it's for us?
Hey @DPD_UK can you inform your "professional" drivers about the law regarding solid white lined cycle paths? Look at that lovely loading bay opposite... selfish and your convenience shouldn't put others at risk - James St West, Bath @ASPBath @CycleBath #soomuchstupid pic.twitter.com/p1JYi2iQpi
— Johnny (@Johnnyonabike) March 8, 2019
The building in the background is the road.cc office...
08 March 2019, 12:06
Couple jailed after driving into cyclist while having "full blown domestic"
The Yorkshire Evening Post reports on a Leeds couple who have been jailed after they hit a cyclist while having a “full blown domestic” in the car on their way back from a wake.
Amanda Brown and Terry Leach were involved in three collisions in Beeston on July 6 last year, including a hit and run on a cyclist.
Brown was driving the 4x4 even though she did not have a licence and the couple were seen swapping seats after the third crash.
The number plate came off when she hit the cyclist – who somehow only suffered minor injurie. When police tracked them down, Leach initially said that the vehicle had been stolen. The pair came clean a few days later.
"She should not have been driving,” said Elyas Patel, defending Brown. "These events occurred because of her inattention at the wheel. They had been in a year-long relationship. They were, to respectfully use the vernacular, having a full blown domestic as they travelled through those Beeston streets."
Brown pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, having no licence and having no insurance and was jailed for eight months.
Leach pleaded guilty to perverting justice and was jailed for six months.
They have since split up.
08 March 2019, 11:51
A beautiful road, but only to look at, not ride!
+ + pic.twitter.com/8IzvLs3oMa
— Les Amis de Paris-Roubaix (@A_ParisRoubaix) March 7, 2019
This shot of the Trouée d'Arenberg sector of Paris-Roubaix looks lovely, but we've heard that it's a bit bumpy.
Would you take your own bike down there?
08 March 2019, 11:48
Burnham and Boardman accuse government of treating cycling as 'an afterthought'
Greater Manchester’s Mayor, Andy Burnham, and Cycling and Walking Commissioner, Chris Boardman, have called on the Government to provide *sustained* funding for cycling and walking.
08 March 2019, 09:39
The bikes of the Strade Bianche
It's our favourite pro race tomorrow, the glorious Strade Bianche, and we've had a rummage around in the archives and dug out our bike tech feature from two years ago. It'll be interesting to watch the race tomorrow and see how much the bikes and equipment have changed.
08 March 2019, 09:25
Skoda’s new Klement “micromobility” e-bike concept goes 28 mph and doesn’t have normal pedals and chain
Car firms just loving developing concept bicycles and we’ve seen them corkers over the years. The latest isn’t really a bicycle as you don’t actually pedal it, instead it’s a “micromobility concept” and was developed by Skoda to put our changing world.
This two-wheel concept was designed to cater for young people who are looking for a sustainable alternative to a car and who expect it to be easy to use, fun, as well as faster and more convenient than a conventional bicycle,” explains Skoda in its press release.
The most curious design aspect is that instead of pedals, it has car-like pivoting pedals for the accelerator and brakes to control the 4 kW hub motor and 1,250 Wh Li-ion battery, which combine to apparently offer a top speed of 45km/h and a 60 km range. Is it still a bicycle if you can’t pedal it? No course it is, it’s more akin to e-scooter or e-motorbike than an e-bicycle.
It’s made with an aluminium frame featuring a single-side frame design and a beam dropping down to the go and stop pedals.
Course, it’s a smart bike as well, with daytime running lights, indicators and a cradle to nest your smartphone which you can use to monitor the battery and navigate your way to wherever you’re going.
And, just like a car, it has cruise control, hill hold, heated seat and grips and ABS disc brakes, o you can go about your day in comfort and control
Guido Haak, Head of Product Management at ŠKODA AUTO, said, “Micromobility is becoming increasingly important in cities. By presenting the KLEMENT at the Geneva Motor Show, we are showcasing our vision for the future of micromobility: sustainable, innovative, electric and with a pure, modern design. The KLEMENT is a state-of-the-art, dynamic and easy-to-use vehicle, and allows the ŠKODA brand to further appeal to a younger target group with a heightened sense of environmental awareness. The concept is perfectly aligned with our customers and our eMobility Strategy. We are therefore assessing whether, and how, this exciting, new mobility concept can be added to our portfolio in the future.”
Did you know Skoda started out making bicycles in 1895? Well you do now!
Stealthy assisted speed: e-bikes that look like road bikes
08 March 2019, 09:22
Has Trek developed the next wonder material?
If you go to Trek’s website today you’ll see an intriguing message. “A change like this comes once every 30 years,” it boldly goes, while an accompanying email sent on the first day of the month added “it is cycling’s biggest change since carbon fibre. And this one matters more.”
It’s launching on 20th March, but what exactly is it launching? To be honest we’ve not the foggiest. The timing could coincide with an updated Domane, the company’s endurance bike that will be raced in the classics including Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, which are held in early April.
It says it’s the biggest change since carbon fibre. Given carbon fibre has been the biggest change in cycling in the last 20-30 years and has radically revolutionised cycling, has it enabled the use of another new wonder material?
Trek was an early pioneer of carbon fibre with its OCLV manufacturing process. There have been a few interesting carbon-based developments along the way. Nanoparticles were the big thing in about 2006 about the same time as Museeuw was pushing flax fibres, there was spread two carbon a few years ago, and we’ve seen a few examples of additive layer manufacturing (3D printing), which got many people, us included, very excited - imagine being able to print your own bespoke frame? - but so far the full scope of its potential hasn’t been released.
The only material with such potential we can think of its graphene, which some bike companies have dabbled with. Maybe Trek has found a way to really extract its potential. It has released this short video on Instagram that shows what appears to be a material of some sorts
But then maybe it’s nothing to do with bikes at all. Trek is big on advocacy so perhaps it’s a new way it aims to move cycling forwards from a sports and utilitarian point of view? We’ll have to wait and see I guess.
Whatever it is, it needs to be good to justify this sort of marketing promotion.
08 March 2019, 09:19
Limar celebrates International Women’s Day with... pink helmets
On International Women’s Day, Italian helmet brand Limar has launched a range of helmets “woman’s touch”.
It sadly demonstrates the phrase “pink it and shrink it” is still true in parts of the cycling industry. The “special edition colours dedicated to women style’ feature a black and pink colour scheme, with pink decals and “delicate dots in seawater”.
The new colour scheme is available on three helmet models, the Air Pro, Air Star and Berg-em.
08 March 2019, 09:15
Police visit West Midlands schools in bid to clamp down on ‘intimidating’ cyclists
A new training course could be rolled out to secondary schools across Solihull in response to concerns over the riding of some young cyclists.
Coventry Live refers to a 2016 incident when more than 100 young cyclists caused "traffic chaos" on Collector Road in Castle Bromwich by weaving across lanes, blocking cars and performing stunts.
The newspaper says that since then there has been “a steady stream of reports about anti-social behaviour on often busy roads.”
Solihull Police have said that they will work with schools to deter such incidents.
Solihull Council said that a training session at the Tudor Grange Academy Kingshurst had been "well-received" and the same session would be run at the Grace Academy, in Chelmsley Wood.
Ted Richards, the council's cabinet member for transport and highways, explained: "There have been incidents of – gangs is the wrong word – but certainly groups of young people on push bikes who have been intimidating residents. We want to work to promote a responsible attitude when they are using the highways."
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
Latest Comments
- Legin 2 min 46 sec ago
Very different actually; reading the detail, this is a minor offence, previously declared, but the Minister has resigned. Compare and contrast this...
- joe9090 12 min 45 sec ago
Bus driver couldnt be bothered to look.
- Rendel Harris 48 min 39 sec ago
Yes, that's exactly what it's supposed to be as we were talking about why if you apply mathematical principles to the phrase "That's three times...
- Natrix 53 min 58 sec ago
Looks like the sort of phone that was designed to be smuggled into prison, via a mars bar or where the sun don't shine...........
- Rendel Harris 1 hour 16 min ago
A good saving no doubt, especially if you're working on rrp for the groupset and wheels, but with 105 Di2 available from multiple retailers for ...
- anotherflat 1 hour 25 min ago
So that's an increase in KSI per mile, if falls are 5 and 6% but miles cycled has decreased 7%, increases of 2% and 1% killed / seriously injured....
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There's no need for foul language.
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It is astonishing how cheap you can get bikes for on eBay if you're happy with rim brakes!
- jamesha100 12 hours 36 min ago
I have been in Belfast for work this week and have been shocked by the congestion around the city centre. There are lots of frustrated drivers...
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37 comments
The Trek video seems to be about a possible new material of thin self locking layers, graphene bonding?
One incident in 2016? Really?
So where's police and/or council reaction to this ...
As I've pointed out before: to the overwhelming majority of British car drivers, you are vermin. You matter less than a slug on which they'd step.
Dehumanising another group makes it easier to kill them. The Nazis knew this, of course. I'm not equating cyclists and Jews because obviously, we're not being rounded up and marched into gas chambers. But the process of dehumanisation is broadly similar. What's that term that I see very often in comment threads on the right-wing media? 'Road lice'?
'Läuse' in German. A common term post-1933.
Trek's wonder material?
aluminiuminsider.com/ucla-scientists-develop-welding-method-for-7075-aluminium-alloy/
> Poll: Leave Vs Remain - leave the swipeable site or remain with the swipe
Please throw away my unintentional vote. I was just searching for the "Ditch the mobile site" button!
What he said.
Neither work well. While I'm at it, comments in the Google amp version don't work either which is often how I enter the site.
"Just" make the desktop site responsive. I appreciate it's perhaps not a small "just".
The desktop site is responsive. As far as we know there isn't any way of commenting on an AMP page because it's simply a cached page, you would need to click on the log in button at the bottom of the story and that would take you on to the actual site where you could then comment. AMP pages are simply pages of the site that Google has cached to give a faster load time and use lower bandwidth.
.
I think some of you are intentionally missing Darrens point.
Ive seen a few kids doing this. Riding the wrong way down a dual carriageway, deliberately riding at cars then swerving, seeing how close they can get without hitting the car. Then riding AT a parent walking their kids to school, and swerving at the last second. You just need to see the videos on youtube and instagram to see how much some push it.
Now thankfully not all kids are this stupid. Most will still ride in a groups, doing skids and wheelies and probably crash into each other, and it at worst it will be an inconvenience but more likely hilarious and no-one will get hurt.
I'm hoping it's simply that other commenters haven't seen this stuff happen and don't realise how dangerous it gets, assuming it's the more like what's shown in the article's picture. But it does feel like a lot of people take a blanket, tribal 'cycling good; cars bad' mindset.
My experience of this is in East and South East London and is exactly what others have described. Quite literally riding on the wrong side of the road, towards oncoming traffic, through crowds of pedestrians using a crossing, often pulling wheelies. Can anybody really defend that?
Please don't take my words out of context as if I'm diminishing a drivers' responsibility. We should have the courage to look past our biases and call out dangerous and anti-social behaviour, even when it's 'our tribe'.
"They have since split up."
One for The News Quiz if the story were not so serious.
Training course? Quite right too, only three of that group can pull a wheelie.
Have you experienced what's being described? I wonder if everybody is commenting about the same type of behaviour because I can't imagine anybody defending the things I see. If you were regularly forced to take evasive action, as a pedestrian using a crossing or as a driver suddenly forced to be responsible for avoiding that KSI, you might take a different view. We'll have to agree to disagree. I think endangering others is a dick move regardless of what age you are or what mode of transport you use.
I agree with you about endangering others.
I also agree with your point about pedestrians being regularly forced to take evasive action as I've seen a lot of car drivers speed up to jump through a red light (if they do it soon after it turns red, then it's not as bad, apparently).
However, I have no sympathy for a driver "suddenly forced to be responsible" - they should be acting responsibly to avoid KSIs all the time and not just when some kid on a bike is behaving foolishly.
Seriously - how many people have been injured by these kids?
This is the most important question.
By coincidence, I saw this earlier today (tweeted yesterday and retweeted by Chris Boardman):
There were 48 under-16s killed on UK roads in 2017, out of a total of 1,793 road deaths.
There were 24,831 serious injuries. Yes, that's TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND PEOPLE in one year. Just stop and think about that.
So an average of 68 people every single day are hospitalised, traumatised, possibly disabled, paralysed or a limb amputated (my daughter's friend is one of those - she had to have her leg amputated after a car left the road and hit her).
So excuse me for not being too fucking bothered about kids pulling wheelies etc.
And a big middle finger to the c..ts in cars, vans and trucks that don't respect other road users.
Thank you Simon E for putting things in perspective. While the government, if I can dignify such a complete shower with that description, ignore deaths and injuries on the roads, knives are an emergency.
98.5% of them, in other words.
Darren, I think that you need to develop a sense of proportion. Those kids are enjoying themselves, but the danger is to themselves. If I met them while driving, I’d stop and give them a cheer. In their own way, they’re “reclaiming the streets”. When I’m walking, my life is regularly and seriously endangered by people driving where they shouldn’t, for example over a zebra crossing that I’m already walking over. Streets should be far more than just a convenience for motor traffic.
Unfortunately “drivers aren’t forced to avoid KSIs”, but they should drive in a manner that precludes KSIs. Needing to stop your car carefully just isn’t a big deal. Or to put it another way, what makes you more important than them, or me? I’d like to see a lot more kids playing on the streets.
I'm with you on this Darren. We've just had an incident in our town where one of them bombed it off up the road, popped a wheelie and then hit an oncoming bus. Obviously on social media etc it was the bus driver's fault, the child was an angel and a funding page was set up and a new bike was provided...then the video footage emerged.
I have.
There's a large group of kids who patrol up & down Tooley Street in London quite frequently and cause all sorts of havoc. Great that they're on bikes but is pulling a wheelie into the path of oncoming traffic really the best way to travel?! And that's even before pedestrians are confronted by a large group on the pavements.
They need to pay road tax! Bloody cyclists.
8 months with many aggravating factors, that was dangerous driving and leaving the scene of multiple crashes... and trying to pervert the course of justice.
What exactly do you have to do to get anything like the maximum sentence?! (Presumably run over a young female doctor who has carelessly walked out in front of you.)
If you are refering to Mrs Briggs, the photo may have made her look like a medic, but she was in HR.
Any of the above will probably get you a custodial.
One for the statisticians. I don't have the numbers but if you've witnessed the behaviour you couldn't possibly argue that it wasn't dangerous and likely to lead to KSIs. They got mad skills but riding into oncoming traffic, through reds and weaving around wheelieing while filtering?
Allocation of resources isn't binary and I'm vocal about our woeful driving standards too. Changing cultures and instilling social values is much cheaper and more effective while they're young.
I'd guess that the danger is largely confined to the kids performing the stunts and thus self-limiting. As to KSIs - it's tricky to do much damage when travelling slowly on a bike (excepting falling off and banging your head on something concrete).
Personally, I'd much rather kids learn that we don't have to be slaves to the cult of the car and continue to suffer with thousands dieing of pollution and careless/dangerous driving. Also, it's a relatively benign way of kids "sticking it to the man" and blowing off steam.
Wheels up, knives down.
Kids on bikes is great. Kids riding against traffic with absolute contempt for every other road user and pedestrian is another thing entirely. We bemoan the selfishness of non-cyclists but it has to work both ways. What happens when these kids hit 17 and get a driving licence, having learned that a FU attitude is tolerated? Teaching the highway code is one thing but this, like so much else, boils down to basic social values of empathy. That's a much harder nut to crack.
The thing is that when kids grow up, they sometimes get more responsible (citation required).
More importantly, how many KSIs are due to kids cycling "irresponsibly" and how many are due to typical adults in typical cars?
If they didn't learn that by 17 by cycling, they'll very quickly pick it up after they start driving. Because quite clearly such an attitude is tolerated among drivers.
That is a picture that makes me very happy. Children reclaiming the roads to cycle to school. Bloody marvellous!
I'm all for a bit of training to improve road skills, traffic awareness and respectful attitude to more vulnerable road users such as pedestrians. Hopefully the kids will take those lessons forward when they are old enough for driving licences.
The standard of parking from some of the other parents around my daughter's schools is horrific! Blocking driveways, parked on reserved spaces, blocking junctions, you name it.
We walk the girls to school - it's exactly half a mile and I can do it in about 8 minutes.
But get this for madness - one of the parents that lives 3 doors along from us DRIVES HALF WAY! Yes, she gets her 2 kids in the car, drives 0.3 miles, gets them out of the car, walks 0.2 miles to the school and then does the reverse to get home. The other morning, my wife walked back with her to her car and was actually home before she was.
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