“You’re just confusing drivers with this nonsense”: Cyclists blast road safety group for warning “never attempt to undertake on the inside, even in a cycle lane”; Time for an Ineos women’s team?; Dog walker nearly wipes out Hirschi + more on the live blog

I think I sense a theme developing this week on the live blog…

Yesterday, you may remember, Thames Valley Police – again – came in for flak after posting some since-deleted road safety guidance on social media, advising cyclists to “be safe, be seen” and telling them that “road users can’t look out for you if you are in dark clothing and can’t be seen”.

Rather inevitably, the hi-vis clothing guidance led to accusations of “victim blaming” from cyclists on Twitter, and prompted the second deleted post in a week from Thames Valley’s account. Oh, dear.

> “If you can’t see a cyclist in broad daylight, please hand in your driving licence”: Police slammed for (yet another) “victim blaming” post telling cyclists “road users can’t look out for you if you are in dark clothing”

With TVP in need of a well-earned social media break, today’s questionable online road safety advice comes courtesy of Northern Ireland and its ‘Share the Road to Zero’ initiative, a road safety community programme with the stated aim of eliminating all road deaths in Northern Ireland.

To mark the Bike Week, the UK’s annual awareness-raising event for cycling, Share the Road to Zero has been sharing a series of road safety ads which have aired on television in Northern Ireland over the past few years.

Today’s clip features a cyclist filtering past a van driver indicating to turn left. Then, in a sequence repeated in all of the campaign’s videos, the incident gives way – just before the inevitable collision – to an imagined conversation in which the driver tells the startled cyclist that he was “in my blind spot”, before the voiceover urges us to “look out for each other”.

Which all sounds fair enough.

But the problem – as many have noted on social media – stems from the written advice that accompanied the video.

“Remember vehicles’ blind spots when you’re cycling,” Share the Road to Zero wrote.

“Never attempt to undertake on the inside, especially at junctions, even if there is a cycle lane.”

Remember vehicles' blind spots when you’re cycling.
Never attempt to undertake on the inside, especially at junctions, even if there is a cycle lane.#BikeWeekUK @niroadpolicing @deptinfra @CyclingUK_NI @SustransNI @cyculcc @CyclingUlster @pcsp_s pic.twitter.com/9wOFKCTtf0

— roadtozero (@roadtozero) June 11, 2024

It’s that advice, particularly concerning the ability of cyclists to “undertake” while riding in a bike lane, which has attracted some amount of consternation and debate on social media.

“Whilst I agree it’s not a good idea to pass a vehicle on the inside in certain situations, if a cyclist is in a cycle lane, then they are not ‘undertaking’,” wrote Gary.

“They are passing in their lane and it’s the driver’s responsibility to look out for them and not kill or injure them.”

Others noted that the advice seems to contradict the Highway Code, the most updated form of which is yet to be implemented in Northern Ireland (though rule 160 of NI’s current code advises drivers to “be aware of other vehicles especially cycles and motorcycles that may be filtering through traffic”).

> “Read the Highway Code – that is not a safe pass”: Police say post advising drivers to give cyclists “an arm’s length” of space while overtaking was published “in error”

“Completely incorrect, you’re just confusing drivers with this nonsense,” added Adespoto. “At junctions the cyclist has priority whether or not there’s a cycle lane. Read the rules.”

“Please delete this tweet immediately, it contradicts the Highway Code and sends out a very dangerous message to drivers that they can cross a bicycle lane without checking to make sure it is clear before doing so,” wrote John.

Meanwhile, the Spiky Club accused the campaign of appearing “to not have picked up a copy of the Highway Code in the last thirty years”.

“Filtering on either side is expressly permitted and drivers are warned to expect it,” they wrote. “Your advice runs counter to the Highway Code. Be ashamed of yourselves and delete this tweet.”

Mustapha Cycled added: “Your intentions are in the right place but this message is fundamentally in conflict with the Highway Code.”

Over on Facebook, the advice was similarly challenged.

“Passing on the left at a junction would be shared fault according to the UK Highway Code,” said Simon. “Without a junction it would be entirely the drivers fault, especially with a cycle lane. The OP got it wrong this time.”

However, not everyone was rushing to condemn the community programme’s guidance.

“That’s a difficult one,” said the PhoneKills Twitter account. “That’s good advice to stay defensive on the junctions and larger vehicles have blind spots.

“Anyhow filtering on the inside is regulated clearly in HC, and it’s allowed. This tweet will get a lot of hate, but I’m on the fence here.”

And, finally, John accused the campaign of “excusing bad driver behaviour”:

‘None so blind as them that don’t look’. No excuse for ‘blind spots’ given the range of multi-angled mirrors available not to mention cameras and peripheral sensors (just a version of the parking sensors that were in Poundland for a pound a couple of decades ago).

The claim of ‘blind spots’ is just a statement that the vehicle is not fit for the road. Again, your posts seem to excuse bad driver behaviour. The ‘blind spot’ argument isn’t used when there are narrow lanes and motor vehicles are within a hand’s breadth of each other.

I see Bike Week has started well, then…

A High Court judge has ruled against campaigners who mounted a legal challenge after the government last year cut the budget for active travel schemes by two-thirds.

Transport Action Network (TAN) says it hopes to appeal and is “bitterly disappointed”, having believed the cuts of around 65 per cent — made by the Conservative government to the active travel budget in March 2023 — were unlawful and “outside the framework provided” by the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS) made under the 2015 Infrastructure Act.

Read more: > High Court judge dismisses legal challenge to government’s cycling funding cuts

The first reviews are in (kind of)…

I swear I've never heard anyone call Fabio Jakobsen "Hulk" but Tour de France: Unchained is gaslighting me into believe that's been his nickname forever.

— Benji Naesen (@BenjiNaesen) June 11, 2024

If we can ignore the weird attempts to coin nicknames, apparently – according to the court of Cycling Twitter, anyway – this series is very good, and an improvement on the original. Just don’t call him Hulk…

Bicycles looked after on a Great Western Railway train at Paddington Station, London, circa 1900 pic.twitter.com/RSr5GIeI8f

— Cool Bike Art (@CoolBikeArt1) June 10, 2024

Meanwhile, in the brilliantly advanced 2020s:

> “Vertical bike storage is discriminatory and should be outright banned”: Rail engineer Gareth Dennis explains why taking your bike on the train is such a faff

Yesterday’s news that Pauline Ferrand-Prévot – to date the only female pro cyclist to race for the Ineos Grenadiers and the author of the British squad’s 500th victory – is set to return to road racing in 2025 with Visma-Lease a Bike has reignited that old debate that has been rumbling on in for 14 years…

Should Ineos set up a professional women’s team?

With some of the biggest and most successful teams in the men’s side of the sport, such as Visma, UAE, Lidl-Trek, DSM, Jayco-AlUla, Movistar, and FDJ, sponsoring their Women’s World Tour counterparts, Ineos’ distinct lack of interest (with the exception of their solitary backing of Ferrand-Prévot’s off-road career over the past two seasons) appears increasingly glaring, especially considering the rapidly growing nature of women’s cycling.

> Pauline Ferrand-Prévot set to join Visma-Lease a Bike on three-year deal in road racing return, as Ineos confirm no plans to start women’s team

Of course, this is nothing new.

In 2009, when plans were being finalised for what would become Team Sky, Britain’s women were arguably making greater waves than their male equivalents.

When Dave Brailsford was waxing lyrical about developing a (male) Tour de France winner within five years, the women’s side already had their own double winner of the women’s version, Nicole Cooke, who also happened to be the reigning world and Olympic champion. Emma Pooley, another winner of what was then the Grand Boucle, was a year away from winning a world time trial title, while Lizzie Deignan (then Armitstead) was already winning and on the verge of a big breakthrough.

> Could Team Sky be about to run a women's team?

Meanwhile, the last British winner of a world title on the road was David Millar in the time trial in 2003 –Millar would be stripped of that title after admitting EPO use, a fact that ruled him out of involvement in the Sky project anyway.

With the exception of Mark Cavendish, who had already established himself as the fastest man in the world (and, again, wouldn’t be immediately involved with Sky), it would take until Bradley Wiggins’ surprise fourth at the 2009 Tour for Brailsford’s assertions of British grand tour dominance to not appear just a case of wishful thinking.

And it’s not that there weren’t attempts to drum up for a women’s Team Sky to exist alongside the men. A group of leading riders were rebuffed at the time, while another move to secure a women’s squad in the wake of the 2012 London Olympics was thwarted at Sky’s board level, a decision described by future team CEO Fran Millar nine years later as “an oversight”.

(The prioritisation of a less successful men’s group over the country’s high-achieving women is a long-running theme in British cycling, unfortunately – just ask Eileen Gray, who was forced to run the multi-world title winning British women’s team of the early 1960s, led by Beryl Burton, on a pittance, and often with outright opposition and sometimes sabotage from the BCF, while the men were afforded considerable backing and came away with little to show for it.)

However, the acquisition of French star Ferrand-Prévot in 2022 was, according to Ineos’ now departed deputy team principal Rod Ellingworth, a sign the team was at last “moving in the right direction”.

> Rumours surface about Ineos Grenadiers women’s team

Well, yesterday’s news seems to show Ineos have once more veered off course – and it’s left many fans and pundits on social media scratching their heads.

“It still baffles me that there is no women’s Ineos Grenadiers – or a Team Sky before that,” cycling writer Andy McGrath said on X, while fellow journo Richard Williams branded the lack of interest “a disgrace”.

“I guess when a sponsor gives you €30/40/50m a year and they don’t ask for it (especially when there are characters like James Murdoch and Jim Ratcliffe) you don’t bother pushing.  It’s sad and ironically very reminiscent of what happened at Manchester United FC,” added Steve Fry, referring to the Glazer family’s decision to disband United’s women’s team after taking over in the mid-2000s.

“From a sponsorship perspective, Sky was a bit of a surprise. Ineos not so much,” said Ben Atkins.

(CorVos, SWpix.com)

“What baffles me is that with 50 million Ineos doesn’t have a women’s team, devo team, and still manages to retain a sponsor with deep pockets without winning a GT, a top one-week WT race or a world championships since 2021,” wrote Eurosport commentator Gonçalo Moreira. “Their business department is the team’s true star.”

“Baffling, and a huge miss to help develop the sport on the women's side in the UK. Honestly, I think it's pretty shameful, given the seeming unlimited resources the organisation have always had,” said Harry.

“It is shameful that any major team sponsor does not insist on female and male teams. Will Ineos be closing the Man Utd women’s team?” asked Wayne Mills.

Cycling writer Katy Madgwick also noted that “it’s actually much better at the Conti level for women than men here right now, the scene is ripe with talent, Ineos could easily just pick one and throw money at it.”

Pfeiffer Georgi and Anna Henderson drive the break at last week’s Tour of Britain Women (Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)

While most onlookers were critical of Ineos’ disinterested stance, others described the decision as “business”.

“Thinking about it though, they’d have to have a long term plan,” said Dr Headgear. “Imagine the shit if they sponsored a team for three years and didn’t renew, leaving them short of a sponsor and... boom.”

“I’d probably rather see the Ineos organisation throw some structured money at one of the already existing UK women’s (and Devo) teams than create a new one,” added Stine Momo.

What do you think? Is the lack of an Ineos women’s team still baffling 14 years on? Or is the women’s side of the sport ticking along just nicely without Sir Jim’s input?

First look at world champion Mathieu van der Poel’s latest custom rainbow-themed paint job for the Tour de France:

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by M-Level (@m_level.custom.paint.factory)

Thoughts/Comments?

The day has finally arrived, when we’re all able to watch a somewhat overdramatised, slightly fictionalised version of last year’s Tour de France. Ah, these heady days we live in…

Damn it, just remembered – ‘Bake Off: The Professionals’ is on tonight too. Going to be a busy evening in front of the TV, then.

After we spotted a plethora of interesting, unreleased tech at the Dauphiné last week (covertly or otherwise), new bike season continues at the Tour de Suisse, where Wilier unveiled their brand new Supersonica SLR.

Somebody in the Veneto has been listening to lots of Oasis by the sounds of things…

Anyway, Wilier says the Supersonica SLR is the Italian manufacturer’s “best time trial bike ever”, and it was designed in collaboration with Groupama-FDJ and the French team’s double European time trial champion Stefan Küng.

“The Supersonica project is the first genuine project developed from scratch together with Wilier,” Jérémy Roy, Paris-Nice stage winner and current material performance manager at Groupama-FDJ, said.

“Wilier's innovation lab department spent an enormous amount of time on it and the results came in record time. After so many virtual tests, followed by multiple wind tunnel tests, we are proud to see this fast and modern bike that took shape in less than a year. I must say that a solid foundation has been laid for the future of our partnership.

“The performance features can be seen in the extreme attention to detail: revised geometry, remarkable aerodynamic efficiency, improved rigidity, and a new improved handlebar.”

If you’re in the market for a new FDJ and King Küng-approved time trial machine, the frame alone will set you back €9,000, while the whole thing (including its tailor-made extension service) comes in at €27,400.

Despite making use of his new almost thirty grand bike, Küng could only manage eighth on Sunday’s admittedly very short opening time trial at the Tour de Suisse, though his young British teammate Samuel Watson finished sixth. Which may or may not mean the Supersonica is well suited to a classic out and back UK 10 miler.

As long as you pick tyres that can roll with it, and you don’t look back in anger at your minute man, of course (I’ll stop now)…