Live blog: ‘What makes cyclists angry?’ asks study… (go on, guess); A day at the eRaces; Cyclists, human beings? Janet Street Porter wades in; Cav can “definitely” break Tour de France stage win record says Eisel; Why e-bikes are great + more
SUMMARY
Cavendish can "definitely" break the record for Tour de France stage wins says Bernie Eisel
At the start of the season, Mark Cavendish said he was starting to feel strong after two seasons where he felt he was, “in races, but not racing,” as a result of Epstein Barr Virus.
However, he withdrew from Paris-Nice earlier this month and Dimension Data say they don’t know when he’s going to race next.
Cavendish is currently four short of Eddy Merckx’s all-time record of 34 Tour de France stage wins. It seems a way off, but his long-time team-mate and friend Bernie Eisel says he can “definitely” still get there.
Speaking to the BBC, Eisel said: “The record is what drives him and why he is still in the sport.
“If we look back, he has won probably 150 races and 30 stages in the Tour, [he is] a world champion on the track, on the road, and pretty much won a stage on every tour out there and won one-day races.
“He doesn’t have to do it any more, but he is chasing that record. Of course, that creates a lot of pressure but he is dealing with it.”
He added: “I think if we look back at Cav, he has been doing it for almost 15 years, in different teams, different line-ups.
“I think together with [Dimension Data team-mate] Mark Renshaw, they are the best lead-out man and best sprinter together.”
A reminder that today’s British Cycling Zwift eRacing Championships will be broadcast live on BT Sport today
Both the afternoon and evening sessions will be livestreamed on British Cycling’s Facebook page and website. The evening races will be live on BT Sport.
Mark Cavendish Tour de France stage wins by year
Up until 2011, he was with T-Mobile/HTC; in 2012 he was with Team Sky; from 2013 to 2015 he was Quick Step; and he’s been with Dimension Data since then.
Janet Street-Porter responds to the study that found more than half of drivers don’t view people on bikes as being completely human
There’s no real need to link to the article. The headline reads “If cyclists don’t want to be ‘dehumanised’ they could start by behaving like decent human beings” and you can pretty much auto-complete the rest of the piece.
We’ve covered Street-Porter’s views on cycling before. She believes that cyclists want all other forms of transport ‘eradicated’ and once said that “cyclists and their powerful backers are destroying London for the rest of us.”
Jonny Bellis suspended as Drops sporting director after assaulting his girlfriend
Court hears that 2009 brain injury triggers aggression when he drinks alcohol.
Merckx in the making...
Classic fever…. SC #cycling #vittoria pic.twitter.com/mMJh1Ftk6b
— Sonny Colbrelli (@sonnycolbrelli) March 27, 2019
Yet another reason why e-bikes are great
While cycling today I met John from Altrincham, originally from Flixton. He can’t walk more than 60 metres now but on his e-bike he happily covers 20 miles! @WalkRideAlty pic.twitter.com/xZQkdh9K1E
— Urmston Bee Network (@BeeUrmston) March 27, 2019
‘What makes cyclists angry?’ asks study
“Interactions with cars” mostly
A recent study administered the Cycling Anger Scale (CAS) to a sample of 636 active cyclists (who regularly ride on-road) in a bid to understand the situations that provoke the most anger in cyclists, and whether this anger differed according to how comfortable they were with cycling.
Researchers identified four different situations that provoke anger in cyclists.
- Interactions with cars
- Interactions with pedestrians
- Interactions with other cyclists
- Police presence
The least anger provoking situations involved interactions with police. The most anger provoking situations involved interactions with cars.
The study said: “This is likely to be due to the higher level of danger associated with collisions with motor vehicles for cyclists.”
Anger also differed according to levels of cycling confidence. Those with higher levels of confidence generally reported lower levels of anger – particularly when interacting with cars and other cyclists.
In contrast, a 2017 study of driver anger at cyclists found that it is often borne of ignorance of the law.
Self-driving cars could exacerbate congestion and result in fewer people walking and cycling, warns new DfT report
Report says walking and cycling “must remain the best options for short urban journeys.”
This is what the British Cycling Zwift eRacing Championships look like
These were the last two in the men's elimination race
British Cycling Zwift eRacing Championships - have we just seen the future of bike racing?
Few people enjoying the sunshine in London’s sprawling Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park this afternoon would have been aware that they were close to a sporting first – as British Cycling held its first-ever eRacing National Championship in partnership with Zwift and Wahoo.
10 men and 10 women are fighting it out to be crowned the inaugural national champions today – the third and final races will be broadcast live tonight by BT Sport from 8pm from their studios in East London.
We’ve been lucky enough to be down there today, and BT Sport have pulled all the stops out – the riders are arrayed, horseshoe fashion, in a huge studio and it has been fascinating to watch the production process.
Of course, virtual cycling will never take the place of the real deal on the road, but with eSports attracting some huge audiences both online and in arenas, we may have just got a glimpse of a new discipline emerging.
It’s the first time in any country that virtual cycling has had this kind of platform. It’s also a bit bizarre, though to see riders you know from the UK elite racing scene battle it out on turbo trainers – and with an absolutely HUGE screen showing their Zwift avatars behind.
One thing’s for sure. Zwift will never look the same on a laptop again.
As Bedford decides whether to renew PSPO, campaigners argue it has reduced the number of people cycling into town
Number of fines has risen six-fold since enforcement was contracted out to a private firm.
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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.
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Latest Comments
"All that's required is an to roads policing" - that's a big all... Although no doubt the "idiots just keep coming" aspect does apply: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9lel2wz93o "Man charged after car crashes through bowling alley" - luckily they only skittled over skittles.
Almost any change to roads and streets is accompanied by a period of heightened danger, and in the UK "look out for cyclists" will need to be learned... practically. And over the time it takes for cyclists to become a regular feature. OTOH once (if...) good designs are in and frequent enough such that drivers encounter them AND the cyclists on them regularly (another big if) I don't think they should be much more difficult than a footway to deal with. These things are all over NL - don't have the collision stats but they should. (NL isn't perfect but collecting info on the safety of designs to feed back into better designs as required is part of the "sustainable safety" philosophy - if they're really a killer I think they'd be altering these.)
I'm in the happy position of agreeing with everybody here! I've never considered a bike with a stand, yet I'm impressed by the ingenuity and adaptability of this axle. I tow a Yak Bob with a Robert Axle, employing my El Cheapo Vitus gravel bike and I just have to be very careful where I stop. Hedges are generally a dead loss, and I seek walls, telegraph poles and signposts and generally lean the widest part of the Bob against it. One very awkward task is removing the two steel pins which lock the trailer arms onto the special mounting slots on the Robert axle, and when you have one out, the sodding weight in the trailer can twist the whole caboodle and bend the Bob fitting before you can get the other out and unhitch. I doubt if a stand would help with that. You can imagine that this combo is a real pain when you have to get it over the bridge at railway stations, and it nearly resulted in Merseyrail nearly parting me and the trailer on the platform from the bike on the train. It's a long story for another time. Another axle example recently featured on here, with a 12mm front axle bearing the Herculean weight limit of a monster American front rack.
This has nothing to do with the type of bike - it's the type of behaviour that's the problem. Banning the sale of such bikes will not curtail the behaviour. They'll just find another type of vehicle and continue to drive dangerously as there's such a lack of enforcement. I'd sooner see them ban the bally. But really, all that's required is an improvement to roads policing.
The EAPC Bill is welcome, but full of holes. What's to stop an overpowered but temporarily limited e-bike being sold and subsequently delimited? This is often a trivial process.
@KiwiMike Yeah, in my over four decades of riding all over Europe I've never 'been for a ride in the countryside'. That must be it. Or, and I know this is a wild concept, you just accept that I just voiced my personal experiences and never missed a kickstand, like I wrote. Anyway, what's the big horror of laying your bike on its side for the very few occasions where there is nothing to lean your bike against?
They may have looked, but did they see?
Ds2025: where they are going wrong is that they are crushing the motorbike rather than the person sat on top of it. If they did the latter this issue would be solved in less than 24 hours.
I came this way today with the car boot sale in operation. There was a marshal at the entrance, who stopped a car turning right across the cycleway as I was approaching. So that certainly works. I think it necessary for the marshal to be there, I couldn't say if the driver would have turned if he hadn't been there but you always have to suspect the worst. Unfortunately there is no marshal at the exit, and there was certainly a car stopped across the cycleway as I was approaching it. But he pulled onto the road before I reached it, and the following car stayed off the cycleway as I went through. Ideally there should have been a marshal there too. On the whole, though, it's a really high standard piece of infrastructure. Just a pity it doesn't extend a bit further.
“absolute carnage” So right! Just look at the bodies piled up, blood running in the gutters and injured people limping away. It's a bit of a problem with a road, delaying some people for minutes at a time: it isn't carnage, let alone 'absolute carnage'. Anyone who exaggerates so ridiculously really shouldn't be allowed to comment in public, unless they want to demonstrate their idiocy to all and sundry.
34 thoughts on “Live blog: ‘What makes cyclists angry?’ asks study… (go on, guess); A day at the eRaces; Cyclists, human beings? Janet Street Porter wades in; Cav can “definitely” break Tour de France stage win record says Eisel; Why e-bikes are great + more”
I think if Cav had hit 2019
I think if Cav had hit 2019 fighting fit right at the start then he would have a decent chance to pick up a result or two at the tour, even as an older rider when he’s on form and puts his mind to it he’s right up there, but with all the setbacks I think it’ll be a struggle to beat some of the fastest guys out there at the moment. His ability to negotiate the bunch at the end would probably help him out over a few of the biggest ‘drag racer’ style sprinters, but in a straight up sprint I think he might struggle.
There are some new kids in
There are some new kids in the peloton now (Cav was one of these in 2008) and in a straight drag race against them he might not have the legs. However, if he can find some creative and inspired ways in which to cross the line first, he will truly cement his position as a great (greater than he already is) road racer. He has got more skill, guile and experience of how to do this than anyone else. So why shouldn’t it happen?
Velovoyeur wrote:
Unfortunately, as Ned Boulting said in one of his talks, Cav can also find some creative and inspired ways of hitting the ground. I really hope that he can find some form for the tour, stay safe and pick up a few more wins.
What a waste of oxygen JSP
What a waste of oxygen JSP has become. There are moronic, idiotic, ignorant, arrogant, abusive, scumbags in all walks of life – that’s what humankind is! So why is she singling out cyclists for behaving exactly the same as everyone else?
So every single one of us has to be paragons of virtue in order to elevate ourselves to being allowed to be called human? What complete and utter bullshit.
In future road.cc, just ignore her.
What doesn’t make cyclists
What doesn’t make cyclists angry then? Angry with cars, angry with peds, angry with other cyclists and angry with the police.
And the angriest cyclist…..one on for a PR on Strava.
I was going to play Bike
I was going to play Bike Bingo with JSP’s ‘journalism’ but I threw up on my card.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6858315/JANET-STREET-PORTER-Cyclists-need-start-behaving-like-decent-human-beings.html
Oh, go on, it’s so much fun to poke a stick at the dozy old trollop and her mouth breathing readership.
Mungecrundle wrote:
thanks for that …not.
This is representitive of joe public though, we see it in the police, in government in the justice system and even judges. It’s all hate crime and does have a direct affect on our safety and well being, yet not a jot is done to make change to put the facts out, to curtail the hate speech and vitriol that is lamped onto all of our fraternity.
It’s basically the same as when a person on foot stabbed and killed someone in the street last week, so ‘they’re all’ (as in pedestrians) carrying knives and threatening people so are pavement lice, all need to be licenced, insured, and have regular stop and check by police just for being a pedestrian.
Mungecrundle wrote:
Don’t – they make their money from clickbait like this and this will only encourage them.
99.9% of the comments will still want all cyclists ‘put in a camp’ anyway…
In any other context you know the typical mail readership almost certainly hate her. She’s such an utter fuckwit, how is she still in a job?
StoopidUserName wrote:
She’s written the same sort of stuff in the Observer.
Mungecrundle wrote:
I’m sorry, I read it and I can’t unread it now…
Anyway, here y’go, people – the accumulated wisdom of JSPs years, so you don’t have to pay the DM clickbait machine
… Is there a name for a female gammon, yet?:
“Once, it might have been possible to say loud and proud that you like eating meat – not any more.
Anyone that foolhardy must be prepared to be roasted online by militant vegans, bombarded with pictures of miserable dairy cows, and threatened with physical violence.
Meat eaters have become pariahs, and will soon be forced to meet in secret to enjoy rare steaks and chat about making a decent black pudding. Admitting you like bacon and love a juicy sausage is tantamount to admitting you enjoy porn.
In modern society, a ludicrous puritanism has taken over – we have to be constantly vigilant not to offend someone somewhere, from Muslim women wearing veils (the New Zealand Prime Minister can take hers off now, we have got the point) to people who are on a journey from one sexual place in the spectrum to another.
The subject of Gender fluidity is a minefield, best avoided in public, because there’s a 100% chance of offending someone somewhere. I have no idea what ‘+’ stands for, who constitutes a ‘he’ and who is a ‘the’ or a ‘she’, so I am steering well clear. As an opinionated woman, I’m starting to self-censor. I certainly couldn’t run a class for primary kids telling them about relationships and gender, now officially part of the school curriculum.
Discussing race is another no go area – Amber Rudd (trying so very hard to say something positive and on-message on International Women’s Day) was roasted for using the term ‘coloured’ instead of ‘black’, much to the annoyance of Labour’s Diane Abbott.
Dictionaries are finding it hard to keep up with this constant revising and sanitising of modern language. At the end of the day, if someone calls me ‘girl’ or ‘lady’, how upset am I going to be? Surely we should all learn to be more relaxed about terminology, because at the current rate, we’ll have nothing left to talk about except the weather. BY the way, are the new names for storms gender neutral? I thought not.
The most sensitive and easily offended of all special interest groups are cyclists. You’d think they’d be thick-skinned, tough individuals, used to the rigours of weaving through heavy traffic in appalling weather, pumping their way up hills at the weekends in their embarrassingly clingy lycra.
Criticise cyclists at your peril – they are far more abusive than vegans any day. Dare to suggest they are pampered road users, with special ‘lanes’ being built at vast expense, causing massive traffic jams for all other road users, and you might as well stay off all social media and emails for weeks. You will be deluged with nastiness. Cyclists are more aggressive than militant Scottish Nationalists and Brexiteers – quite an achievement.
In their eyes, cycling is next to godliness, and the rest of us (just like meat eaters and dreary heterosexuals) haven’t got the message, we are inferior human beings.
Cycling has become (like veganism) a modern religion. Devotees wear cameras to record anything that gets in their way, convinced the world wants to harm them. They regard other road users are unhealthy scum and serial polluters.
Not only have cyclists got a powerful lobby campaigning for more road space, more cycle routes through the countryside, and more traffic free areas in towns, they also use pavements whenever it suits them and routinely ignore traffic lights.
If any motorised road user is caught exceeding the pitiful 20 miles an hour speed limits in most parts of London, they will be fined hundreds of pounds and marched off to be re-educated at special classes which take up a big chunk of the working day.
No such punishments exist for cyclists who speed, and who refuse to wear helmets. Cyclists don’t have to prove their cycles are roadworthy, get them insured or even pass any kind of driving test. Any fool can get on a bike.
Since the success of the Tour de France in Yorkshire in 2015, the roads throughout the county are clogged every weekend with middle aged men in lycra (MAMILS) attempting to emulate the yellow jersey brigade.
Luckily, my local village managed to raise the money for a defibrillator, because the hill above it is bound to result in heart attacks and we are at least an hour from a hospital.
Now, in the latest example of language sanitising, experts want the word cyclist banned because they say it ‘dehumanises’ the poor darlings.
Researchers at Queensland University in Australia claim that non-cyclists rate cyclists as ‘not completely human’. The Professor in charge of the study wants us to call cyclists ‘people on bikes’ and learn how to grow ‘a culture of mutual respect’. Drivers stand accused of deliberately blocking these paragons on two wheels and cutting them off, of throwing things at them and shouting. I haven’t done any of these things (yet), but I’ve come very close.
I am that old-fashioned person, a walker. A pedestrian. Not a jogger or a skate-boarder or an electric scooter user. I quietly walk part of my journey to work every day along a canal towpath. It is my attempt at mindfulness, gazing at the moorhens and ducks, admiring the stagnant water and peeking inside the curtains as I pass a line of old barges turned into trendy homes. Cyclists thunder past in packs, their ugly middle aged bare thighs pumping furiously, intruding into my zone of peace and contemplation. They would force me into the water if they could.
The vast majority do not bother with a bell to signal their impending approach – that would wreck their machismo posturing. Urban cyclists refuse to give way to anyone, ignoring signs telling them to slow down. I end up screaming at these warriors on wheels who can’t bear the fact harmless peace loving walkers use the same footpath.
Respect works both ways. As far as I’m concerned, cyclists need to learn manners, and until they do, they are as toxic as vegans. “
brooksby wrote:
So are we.
Count yourself fortunate.
Legs_Eleven_Worcester wrote:
So are we.
Count yourself fortunate. — brooksby
Was just trying to helpful – let everyone read JSPs pearls of wisdom (
) whilst avoiding the DM site and making sure their click counter doesn’t, er, count us.
brooksby wrote:
Probably an article 11 or article 13 infringement. The Roadcc management are now facing a €bzillion fine and 6 years hard labour at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Nice one Brooksby, they had it coming.
Mungecrundle wrote:
Was just trying to helpful – let everyone read JSPs pearls of wisdom (
) whilst avoiding the DM site and making sure their click counter doesn’t, er, count us.
— Legs_Eleven_Worcester Probably an article 11 or article 13 infringement. The Roadcc management are now facing a €bzillion fine and 6 years hard labour at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Nice one Brooksby, they had it coming.— brooksby
Had to google that.
“Article 11 is … also known as the ‘Link Tax’, it targets news aggregators such as Google and Apple who each have news services which curate the most important news stories of the day, using AI-driven algorithms. It essentially attempts to help news outlets generate more money for the content they produce.” – taken from https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/32552/what-is-article-13-and-article-11 for the purposes of reasonable debate and review
Come on, mungecrundle – does anyone seriously consider JSPs ranting to be “the most important news stories of the day”??
brooksby wrote:
Seems like a cast iron defence to me. I hereby rename you “Mr Loophole”, champion of internet freedom.
Mungecrundle wrote:
Was just trying to helpful – let everyone read JSPs pearls of wisdom (
) whilst avoiding the DM site and making sure their click counter doesn’t, er, count us.
— Mungecrundle Probably an article 11 or article 13 infringement. The Roadcc management are now facing a €bzillion fine and 6 years hard labour at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Nice one Brooksby, they had it coming.— brooksby
Had to google that.
“Article 11 is … also known as the ‘Link Tax’, it targets news aggregators such as Google and Apple who each have news services which curate the most important news stories of the day, using AI-driven algorithms. It essentially attempts to help news outlets generate more money for the content they produce.” – taken from https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/32552/what-is-article-13-and-article-11 for the purposes of reasonable debate and review
Come on, mungecrundle – does anyone seriously consider JSPs ranting to be “the most important news stories of the day”??
— Legs_Eleven_Worcester Seems like a cast iron defence to me. I hereby rename you “Mr Loophole”, champion of internet freedom.— brooksby
I thank you 😉 Can I call you as a witness in my defence when the black helicopters arrive?
brooksby wrote:
A squealer?
Oh god, I’ve just been sick in my mouth!
The press should be free to
The press should be free to express an opinion, but not free to invent facts (which is just a sugar-coated way to say ‘to lie’).
I’d give the press two choices.
I read about an interesting
I read about an interesting study carried out on rats in the 1970s, whereby they were allowed to breed in a utopian environment – they carried on quite happily for a while until overpopulation made them all mad with each other, they stopped breeding and they died out.
Could this be the explanation for the modern pre-occupation with hating others, be it immigrants, cyclists or anyone else ‘different’ so well evidenced by JSP’s diatribe against pretty much anyone who isn’t her…? Are we now just driving each other slowly insane?
Never mind JSP. At least the
Never mind JSP. At least the ramblers don’t walk around in packs, taking up whole of a canal path or NSN route, ignoring the polite requests to allow other people pass or forcing cyclists out of the way.
I have also never heard of a rambler getting angry at having an ancient right of way blocked by a celebrity, farmer or council / planning team as they are such a calm group.
And what demographic makes up the rambling society, is it not middle classed, middle aged in gators? Huffing and puffing there way up hill and down dale, good job that there is plenty of rural defibrillators out there!
Is JSP admitting to being a Peeping Tom here?
rkemb wrote:
Is JSP admitting to being a Peeping Tom here?
She admires stagnant water? But still hates cyclists? Demented is not too strong a word.
Disect JSP’s rant and the
Disect JSP’s rant and the problem is clearly that ‘people on bikes’ have been steered towards riding on narrow towpaths and pavements turned into shared use paths. And on the subject of purpose built carriageways made specifically for one type of transportation may I point out motorways and for that matter rail tracks. As a ‘person on a bicycle’ I am prohibited from riding on motorways that cost in excess of 30M per mile to build.
And you can say you like meat – you just have to be a vegetarian to be allowed to say it. You can say you are a vegetrian who still likes the taste of meat and that allows you to eat meat substitute. That presupposes that you used to eat meat but gave up so when you are not patting youself on the back you have to self-flagellate.
earth wrote:
Yup. Though surely there’s also ‘footways’?
I haven’t read the article, so perhaps that was mentioned?
But JSP has ‘form’ when it comes to effectively siding with petrolheads while pretending to be speaking for footists. And in any case I remember, as an adolescent, feeling patronised-as-fuck by her Godawful ‘network 7’ ‘youf’ programmes. Never liked her since.
What makes cyclists angry?
What makes cyclists angry?
“Researchers identified four different situations that provoke anger in cyclists.
Interactions with cars
Interactions with pedestrians
Interactions with other cyclists
Police presence”
They seem to have missed some other common causes of anger in cyclists: the DM, Telegraph, JSP, Top Gear, the BBC, all the msm in fact, the judicial system, national government, local government, planners, politicians etc, etc.
BTW, why is it “interactions with cars” not interactions with drivers? Seems like they might have their own prejudices.
So Janet Street Porter
So Janet Street Porter complains how everyone is so easily offended these days then proceeds to rant about how offensive she finds cyclists…hmm…
Didn’t know she was still around these days…daft old goat
Cupov wrote:
I have reported you to the National Goat Council for the serious offence of insulting goats. Your punishment will be a lifetime’s supply of the DM.
As a quarter Scottish cycling
As a quarter Scottish cycling Brexiteer I think JSP will probably swipe left for me on Tinder.
D J wrote:
Does that mean she’d like you or not? If the former, its a purely personal opinion meaning no offence to anyone but: “shudder” (sorry, couldn’t find an appropriate emoji)
We are constantly treated to
We are constantly treated to ‘news’ about Zed-wift. It may be that other people are really interested, and I’m missing something. I suspect it must be sponsored content, in which case it would be good if it were labelled as such.
HarrogateSpa wrote:
I’m very much interested in eRacing, anything that brings folk into the cycling world is a good thing, I watched it yesterday and it was very enjoyable, at the end of the day it was 10 men and women giving it everything to win a race and in that regard no different to any other form of cycling, it isn’t a replacement of what we have today but an addition, and a good one at that.
bigbiker101 wrote:
I watched it too, fell asleep during the mens race,, if you think its enjoyable to literally watch someone play a computer game, including what seemed like random bonuses that made you go quicker, more power to your elbow. Zwift has its place as way to ride a bike indoors, instead of just spinning aimlessly, but I dont think its as a spectator sport
JSP wrote:
JSP wrote:
“Since the success of the Tour de France in Yorkshire in 2015, the roads throughout the county are clogged every weekend with middle aged men in lycra (MAMILS) attempting to emulate the yellow jersey brigade.”
Dear Janet, I think you’ll find it was 2014. Thanks. Or were you trying to get as much b*llsh*t into your article as possible?