Peloton reckon they're the perfect Mother's Day gift; Cycling bad for your health, says former French minister for... health; Cyclist knocked off by 10ft wave from 4x4; The worst road in Britain?; New petrol to give city cyclists cleaner air?; & more

Must be including all the men who bought their wife a Peloton as a gift 

Possible, but not listed in the video as one of the reasons so many women are now cycling.  Or are they?  A million new people start cycling but the data shows no change or a decline in cycling?

its supposed to be measured through the British Cycling Annual survey, in the past it was stated they had GfK NOP survey about 10,000 people, and then extrapolate the results to the population as a whole. You get counted then if you cycle "regularly" which they define as at least once per month, or "frequently" once per week, so technically if you cycled 11 times one year, and 12 the next, and been influenced to increase your cycling by a British Cycling programme, youd be counted.

Im presuming the methodology theyve used is comparable since they started the campaign 7 years back, and its simply the numbers churning out are now 1million higher for women cyclists, whether that should tie in with other cycling surveys numbers I doubt

She's talking to her base, in this case drivers who feel they're being pushed off the streets of Paris. Facts, truth and common sense don't come into it. Many politicians use this tactic, and it works.  

dobbo996 wrote:

She's talking to her base, in this case drivers who feel they're being pushed off the streets of Paris. Facts, truth and common sense don't come into it. Many politicians use this tactic, and it works.  

You're right, but personally I don't see how cycle lanes will make much difference to the drivers in Paris - the roads are very congested. They've got a good metro system though, so maybe drivers aren't the majority there.

It’s the planned removal of 72% of on-street parking to make room for the cycle lanes, there’s no point of driving a car if you can’t find 12m2 of public space to store your vehicle for hours on end both near home and work. If it gets too hard to enjoy a car, more will give them up and use alternatives, reducing traffic congestion. This Hildago policy exposes the hypocrites who want cyclists out of their way and in their own space, but don’t want to give up their own selfish use of space to achieve it. But they’ve got no answer to it, so they resort to absurd statements.

I believe the plan is 50% of parking spaces to go - source here https://annehidalgo2020.com/question/comment-faciliter-les-deplacements-... - but I could be wrong.

I also think road.cc are wrong when they say she is planning a bike lane on every street. She says every street should be cycleable, which is not the same thing. It seems it might be a network of 15 bike routes, 170m in total. Still great.

HarrogateSpa wrote:

I believe the plan is 50% of parking spaces to go - source here https://annehidalgo2020.com/question/comment-faciliter-les-deplacements-... - but I could be wrong.

I also think road.cc are wrong when they say she is planning a bike lane on every street. She says every street should be cycleable, which is not the same thing. It seems it might be a network of 15 bike routes, 170m in total. Still great.

Wow - 170 metres really isn't all that ambitious...

hawkinspeter wrote:

They've got a good metro system though, so maybe drivers aren't the majority there.

Indeed.  My fondest memory of my time in Paris last fall was having a team of pickpockets on the Metro try the push and grab to get my wallet from my cargo pants, and the fun of slaming the grabber into the wall of the train car and pinning him there by the throat until I verified that I still had my wallet.

The tandem had broken down and we had to take the metro. The 5Km trip took as long as it would to ride. If I lived there riding year round would be the way to go.

This is stupid political posturing at its worst. I consider myself a small government conservative / libertarian, so I can't see why automobiles should get a huge subsidy.  Oh well, what do I know.

Agreed, but plenty of different reports\studies out there which show drivers breathe in more polution than cyclists.  Even taller pedestrians are better off.

That is utter pony!! I know Shifnal, and its a relativley nice little town. This is shameful!

I'm guessing it's a bit of a rat run to the M54 if it's the one I think it is, people hopping across from the A5 there rather than going through central Telford.

Down here in Hampshire it's much the same. Permanent standing water plus heavy traffic just seems to grind away the surface. Two massive holes in the road I live on have just had the white paint treatment, which is handy because there's huge chunks of aggregage strewn across the road.

Going by the photo in the Star article it's much worse than a section of Welshpool Road in Shrewsbury. Scrolling down to the comments I see two people have already said the same.

That French politician is merely trying to differentiate herself from Hidalgo. She also probably hasn't considered that anything "good for cyclists" is good for pedestrians - which is everybody once they get off a bike or out of their car.

The European Environment Agency (EEA) said last month that "Switching to cycling and public transport is 'essential' to hit sustainability targets":

https://cyclingindustry.news/switching-to-cycling-and-public-transport-e...

TfL's Will Norman subsequently tweeted that 2 million people are at risk of type 2 diabetes and 1 in 6 NHS beds are occupied by people with diabetes. And that's just a single condition linked with the current obesity epidemic, before we even being to consider issues like the impact of road casualties or the role of transport-based air and noise pollution affecting health.

As we know already, the answers are staring us in the face.

There is a pothole near me which has been repaired three times, last time in January; less than a month later, it was worse than ever, so I reported it again.  They had no explanation as to why the repair hadn't lasted even a month.  More than a month later, it's still not filled in.

The problem is that the government have taken so much money from local authorities that they can no longer manage the work load of the existing road network, but the government plans to construct more roads, creating more traffic, wearing out the roads quicker.  When I say government, I use it in the loosest sense, not the logical ordering of events by rational people.

Captain Zhap wrote:

RE cyclist knocked off by 10 foot wave, the article states that

A CYCLIST was knocked off his bike after a car splashed a 10-foot wave, caused by blocked drains, a councillor has claimed.

Of course, the wave was not caused by blocked drains, more by careless driving. 

I don't think it's necessarily careless driving.

It falls somewhere betweeen utter laziness ("What? Turn my wheel, or wait, so I don't drench the plebs on the footpath?") or even a You've Been Framed type game ("Oooh - let's see how big a splash I can make!").

My understanding is that it can fall under driving without due care and attention.

I was (poorly) making the point that the media is yet again making the incident the fault of anyone but the motorist. In this instance, it's the condition of the drains. Although the drains issue is unacceptable, it is the motorist's responsibility to drive to the conditions at all time.

I agree wholeheartedly with your second paragraph, but I'd add that the game might be that of splashing the cyclist.

RAC says

Under section three of the Road Traffic Act 1988, it is illegal to splash someone as it amounts to driving “without reasonable consideration for other persons.”

Those found guilty of deliberately driving through puddles and splashing pedestrians will likely be hit with a £100 fixed penalty notice and three penalty points if caught by police.

However, should motorists be deemed to be driving in a manner that “amounts to a clear act of incompetence, selfishness, impatience, and aggressiveness” then the maximum punishment of a £5,000 fine could be levelled.

https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/drivers-splashing-pedestr...

If the Cllr got the reg, they should report it.

hirsute wrote:

Those found guilty of deliberately driving through puddles and splashing pedestrians will likely be hit with a £100 fixed penalty notice and three penalty points if caught by police.

I wonder: does "deliberately" mean that they turned the wheel to go through the puddle or does it mean that they didn't turn away from the puddle despite knowing what would happen?

As ever, 'context', 'reasonableness'.

Sounds like water was clearly deep and/or witnessed to be clearly deep, so any reasonable person would know the outcome of driving at speed through said water.

The offence is driving without reasonable consideration, and CPS charging guidance says is it's appropriate "when the driving amounts to a clear act of incompetence, selfishness, impatience or aggressiveness in addition to some other inconvenience to road users", including "driving through a puddle causing pedestrians to be splashed". So I'd say incompetently driving through a puddle and splashing someone is caught, even without malice.  

Fair enough, Cap'n, I wasn't meaning to have a go 

Touche, I posted, and then thought, that sounds a bit grumpy!

Note to self, reread before hitting save!

See what the dickhead was driving? BMW. Enough said.