Live blog: “Selfish” cyclist 'holds up' truck driver; Bike clamping in London Bridge City; Crap bike lanes; Watch a handcycling LEJOG world record attempt documentary; a near miss for a pro + more

Bicycling with a twist from r/bicycling

To the learner driver and their instructor today that close passed me with the horn blaring. I hope you fail.  pic.twitter.com/61WE2uxYGc

— Jake (@jakey_stewart) January 9, 2020

From the force that brought us Operation Close Pass, it's Operation Top Deck.

#OpTopDeck | We've gone viral with this video we released way back in 2018 showing how we used buses to catch motorists using their phones. The clip's surfaced again and has had 3.4m views in a few days. Loads of people are asking us about it, so here's a thread explaining all! pic.twitter.com/ckibHTJCrP

— West Midlands Police (@WMPolice) January 9, 2020

He's been charged with careless driving.

A 58 yr old Tesla driver was stopped by #Burlington OPP in #OakvilleON, using autopilot while using both hands to floss teeth and going 135km/hr. Charged careless ^kw#ArriveAlive #lookmanohands pic.twitter.com/zPK34AmVPJ

— Sgt Kerry Schmidt (@OPP_HSD) January 8, 2020

Tesla tells drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel when the semi-autonomous ‘Autopilot’ feature is engaged.

In 2018, a Tesla on Autopilot crashed into police car in California.

A year earlier a Stanford University robotics researcher said the firm’s technology displayed a frightening inability to recognise cyclists.

After testing the feature along with a colleague, Heather Knight recommended that it never be activated when cyclists are around as she believes people would be killed.

Barrow’s having a crackdown on cyclists.

The Mail reports that police have started issuing £50 fines.

Speaking earlier this week, PC Emmie Doughty of Barrow Police said: “In a nutshell, cycling has been banned on the pedestrianised area in the town centre for some time.

“We have been aware of complaints that have been made to us about people cycling and a recent accident which involved an elderly female being run over and sustaining some serious injuries.

“As part of the force wide week of action we have added this issue to the list of things we are dealing with this week.

“This is not a one week event but will be a sustained focus going forward. We have decided to advise people for the first couple of days and then take enforcement action.

“Anyone found to be contravening this will receive a £50 fine.”

Mel Nicholls suffered a series of strokes as a young woman. She was left unable to walk or use much of the left side of her body following the third one in 2008.

In June 2019, she set out to break the world record for handcycling from Land’s End to John O'Groats.

Dream Big from Friction Collective Film on Vimeo.

Robert took this shot a while back when leaves made things extra dangerous.

He provided us with a StreetView link as well where you can also see the few metres of cycle path on the opposite side of the road.

A couple of months ago, we reported how a cyclist’s bike had been clamped in London Bridge City, a development on the south bank of the River Thames owned by the Kuwaiti sovereign wealth fund.

The development includes the 13-acre More London shopping area and Nigel has got in touch with road.cc to say his bike was clamped there yesterday - even though there are no signs indicating you aren’t permitted to lock your bike up.

“I just got back from a coffee with a friend near the Tooley Street exit of London Bridge station,” said Nigel. “When I came out of the cafe I found my bike had had an extra lock placed on it in the hour I was in the coffee shop.

“On this lock I was told to phone a number to get it released, and the tag giving these instructions had the branding of the local council on it. I phoned the number and was told someone would be along shortly to unlock my bike: 20 minutes later a perfectly amenable chap showed up (albeit with the wrong key at first) and unlocked my bike, saying that I can't lock my bike there.

“For context ‘there’ was around a tree, out of the way. When I told him that there were no signs up in the area suggesting that you couldn't lock your bike up or that doing so would risk having it temporarily impounded, he responded: ‘Yeah, this is private property and the owners don't want to put any signs up because then they'd have to hire guards to police it’ – ignoring the fact that the owners are clearly happy to hire people to arbitrarily lock up bikes, then come back to unlock them, or that wasting 20 minutes of my time was a bit of an inconvenience. (Thankfully it wasn't raining and I wasn't in a rush to get anywhere). I should also note that I was not fined.

Nigel added: “I feel like this sort of behaviour clearly shouldn't happen: by all means put up a sign warning cyclists not to park bikes in the area, but don't come along and lock up people’s private property for no good reason without due warning.”

The photo above is how Nigel found his bike (after he took his own lock off).

Marco Mathis coming down Puig Major in Mallorca, as shot by Rick Zabel.

It's a particularly nasty bend, according to my colleague Liam.

 

 

 

 

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downhill training with my mate @marco_mathis . don‘t try this at home

A post shared by Rick Zabel (@rickzabel) on Jan 3, 2020 at 9:27am PST