“Totally unacceptable”: Cyclists react to concerning close pass prosecution figures; How much should hiring a bicycle cost?; Pedalling squares (literally); Cycling drops heart and cancer risks, study shows; Disc brake orchestra + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
Why was Paris-Roubaix so fast?
> This year’s Paris-Roubaix was the fastest ever — is it all because of aero bikes?
How much should hiring a bicycle cost?
A pretty broad question… a city hire scheme bruiser vs a 10 grand race bike for a week in Mallorca, there’s obviously going to be a fair bit of difference, but Decathlon’s announcement of a £40 price to hire a bike for a day got us thinking.
Not least because, as many of you pointed out, you can hire a car for a similar amount. It seems £40 per day is just not realistic for just about anyone, after all, if you’ve got a budget that’ll stretch to £40 for a day, something tells me you’re possibly not going to rush to Decathlon for a rental.
Adding to the conversation, we received an email from road.cc reader Cedric who sent us a photo of his Hero Jet, a bike he reports in India can be bought forever for £45, making Decathlon’s £40 per day look… well, “expensive”…
“Then you own it; you can keep it for the rest of your life,” he added. And while you might struggle to find a new bike for such an affordable price in the UK, the point still stands… how many days of Decathlon hire can buy you a decent bike that’ll last you as long as you want it to?
So, I guess the question I’m rambling towards is: how much should Decathlon’s hire bikes cost per day? We heard from readers who’d hired city bikes in the Netherlands and Italy for less than €10 a day and another closer to home who pointed out the affordability of Brompton’s scheme. £10? £20? Name your price, readers of the live blog…
Pedalling squares (literally)
It works! pic.twitter.com/2NMVqe6qJg
— OriginCycling (@OriginCycling) April 11, 2023
Cycling drops heart and cancer risks, study shows
Cyclingelectric has reported a study from Hannover Medical School in which it was found that riding an electric bike can lower the risk of a heart attack by 40 per cent. The director of the research, Uwe Tegtbur, expressed surprise at the extent of the health benefits, which showed that riding between 12 and 15 kilometres by electric bike every day would have a contributory effect of reducing cholesterol levels and lower the risk of cancer by 30 per cent.
The chance of metabolic issues such as obesity, heightened blood pressure and developing sugar or fat metabolism disorders were also shown to be cut in half. The study used 1,879 participants, reportedly among the largest to be studied. And it’s not just those riding electric bikes too, with 629 participants riders of non-electric bikes joining 1,250 riders of e-bikes.
Typically the electric bike riders were older, with a higher body mass index and many said they had joint wear, high blood pressure or diabetes. Data was then collected via an activity tracker over a month. In conclusion, the study suggested while a lower proportion of those who rode e-bikes tended to reach the World Health Organisation’s 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity target, “e-bikes might facilitate active transportation, particularly in older individuals or those with pre-existing conditions”, leading to the aforementioned health benefits.
Look away now if you don't like heights... Riding a BMX at 2,000ft under a hot air balloon
Disc brake orchestra
🔊🎻🎻🎻🎻 #DiscBrakespic.twitter.com/CBy0bR3SRa
— Tour de Dope ™ (@triviumcolombia) April 12, 2023
"A mis-named levy on bellendery": James May succinctly summarises road tax
Ah, road tax, where have you been? It seems an age since we’ve heard your familiar two-syllabled silliness…
It’s all thanks to Mr May who was wondering about the workings of Twitter (making it “difficult to keep up to speed on racist pub decor and rants about ‘road tax’”)…
It would appear to be a mis-named levy on bellendery, but I need to do more research.
— James May (@MrJamesMay) April 13, 2023
And that is how it shall be reffered to from this day onwards…
New boss at British Cycling — Jon Dutton appointed CEO
"I used to be really scared of heights": Kriss Kyle on THAT 2,000ft BMX ride
Some quotes from the ban behind the quite ridiculous video we shared on the live blog earlier…
Kriss Kyle, the 31-year-old Red Bull athlete behind the jaw-dropping vid, said he “used to be really scared of heights”, something he’s “overcome”.
“That was probably one of the scariest things I’ve done — if it had gone wrong I’d have fallen off the side,” Kyle said. “I’ve done one skydive and I said I’d never do it again. I used to be really scared of heights, I put myself into these crazy things I say I’ll do, you visualise something and look at the things you can achieve — for me, it’s about that adrenaline rush and scaring yourself.
“I feel like I’ve overcome the fear, I think you have to dive into it to get over it. This is hands down the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and one of the hardest things I ever will do probably — it was one hell of a ride.
“We were on standby for a year for the right conditions, it only comes around once or twice a year. It came around in December and I wasn’t ready for it, it was minus 12 up there, pretty chilly.”
Just for all of our peace of mind it’s probably worth pointing out Kyle did the stunt with a 20kg parachute… just in case…
Dorset Council responds to MailOnline story having a pop at cyclist for not using cycle lane
Remember this?
A week on and Dorset Council got back to our request for comment. Better late than never, I guess…
We maintain over 2,500 miles of roads, footways and cycleways, as part of our ongoing programme, and this stretch of cycleway on Wimborne Road is cleaned regularly using our specialist electric sweeper that we have recently invested in.
In some areas, the existing landscape may result in undulations, such as near driveways, but we have not received complaints about this being an issue on Wimborne Road. We actively encourage anyone with concerns about road, footway or cycleway surfaces to complete our online reporting form.
We follow national standards when designing and building cycle lanes to ensure safety and accessibility for all. We’re committed to offering a sustainable, inclusive, active travel infrastructure that everyone, from young children to the elderly, feels safe and confident using whether cycling, walking or wheeling. Since implementing our new cycle lanes, the number of people using them for commuting, leisure activities with families, and walking has increased.
In the market for a new jersey? Best cheap cycling jerseys 2023 — cooling comfort on your bike rides from just £21
> Best cheap cycling jerseys 2023 — cooling comfort on your bike rides from just £21
"The whole third-party reporting system needs to be properly sorted out. Properly": Cyclists react to concerning close pass prosecution figures
You might have read our story by now…
Yep, it’s the news that according to data released by the force which pioneered ‘close pass’ policing, 213 reports of careless or dangerous driving around cyclists last year resulted in no further action being taken. Just one resulted in prosecution…
Those numbers come despite West Midlands Police receiving 5,551 submissions of video evidence relating to potential driving offences, over 2,000 more than the number submitted in 2020, and almost 1,800 more than 2021.
While it might be a stretch to say the news has taken anyone by surprise, it has not gone down well…
Dr Robert Davis, the chair of the Road Danger Reduction Forum suggested the “whole third-party reporting system needs to be properly sorted out. Properly.”
CyclingBirmingham said the figures were “unbelievable”. “What a waste of our time and a disregard to our safety,” they said. “Hundreds of people, put in danger, hundreds of people doing their part to try and bring justice to make cycling safer and hundreds of people disregarded.”
Local riders who have been submitting footage to the force expressed disappointment, one saying they had submitted around two per ride and ten per week, “I’ve been wasting my time trying to make the roads safer for all of us,” they concluded. “West Midlands Police really doesn’t care about road safety.”
“This is not surprising at all. I stopped reporting to them after they ignored several very clear videos and told me a death threat I received was my own fault,” another local rider added.
I’m not surprised. I have submitted close pass videos to West Mids Police and never hear about the outcome however @warkspolice always let me know what action is being taken.
— Cycling Chris 🇺🇦 (@cadencechris) April 12, 2023
Just pathetic
— 〰Stefan Gigacz (@cnresearch) April 13, 2023
One prosecuted that is totally unacceptable
— Merseyside Have Your Say (@MerseyRoads) April 12, 2023
We’ll hopefully hear back from WMP today and bring you their response…
13 April 2023, 08:14
13 April 2023, 08:14
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Latest Comments
Lol. I’ve been saying the same to my watch. It keeps prompting me I need to do more calories on certain days and I tell it - but I did some gardening in the afternoon which included digging but u don’t let me record that. And then I have another biscuit with my tea.
"~15% of the riding time that I’m forced to use the road(because the infrastructure for cycling is insufficient or nonexistent) " Amsterdam?
Same here. I have a helmet with built in front and rear lights and have a red light clipped onto my bag plus lights attached to my bike front and rear but still have drivers putting me in danger. My commute is about two miles and I normally have around four incidents a week where I have to brake hard or take other evasive action to avoid being hit by distracted drivers. A big percentage of these are drivers coming on to roundabouts when I am already on them.
Glasgow's South City Way sounds great, does it not? As a user from before and after I wholeheartedly welcome the construction of the segregated route, but so much of the detailed construction is poor, if not unsafe. I provide a link to a presentation I made when construction was half complete (a personal view) and the construction errors remain outstanding to this day: crossed by high speed flared road junctions, poor colour differentiation, car door zone risks and so on. And yet cyclists come because they feel safe. It's a complex subject but IMHO the feeling of safety (or lack of) is a critical component. https://drive.proton.me/urls/B67AK44G90#CFueBGjscoWr
I can only conclude that you haven't been into a city in the last few years. Food delivery riders in particular are riding overpowered "eBikes" that are basically mopeds ... powered only via the throttle without pedalling at significantly more than 15mph. Problem is they look like normal bikes/ebikes and not like mopeds so that is what people describe them as. My reading of the article is that it is those vehicles that are being talked about here.
I have the Trace and Tracer, which have essentially the same design, albeit smaller and less powerful. The controls are a little complicated but only because there are loads of options. In reality, once you've chosen your level of brightness, you'll only cycle through 1 or 2 options and it's dead simple. The lights are rock solid, bright, with good runtimes. The only thing I find annoying is charging them - if your fingers are slightly wet or greasy, getting the rubber out of the way of the charging port is a pain in the arse.
Dance and padel is all very well, but when is Strava going to let me record my gardening?
You can use it to check whether it's raining.
If it's dusk, i.e. post-sunset, then the cyclists should have lights on and thus the colour of their top is irrelevant. If you want to complain about cyclists not having lights when it's mandatory then by all means do but their top has nothing to do with it.
All of my Exposure lights with a button allow cycling through the modes with a short press. I have five of those; it would be odd if Exposure didn’t allow this functionality with the Boost 3. I also have two Exposure Burners if I remember correctly: they are rear lights for joysticks that clip on and are powered through the joystick charging port. They don’t have a button. None of my Exposure lights have failed. I looked at the Boost 3 review photos but none showed the button, so far as I could tell. I also have Moon lights. Good experience generally. One did fail, possibly because it was so thin it used to fall through the holes in my helmet onto the ground. Also, the UI and charge indicators vary for my Moon lights. Perhaps the latest ones are more consistent. My worst lights ever were from See.Sense.
59 thoughts on ““Totally unacceptable”: Cyclists react to concerning close pass prosecution figures; How much should hiring a bicycle cost?; Pedalling squares (literally); Cycling drops heart and cancer risks, study shows; Disc brake orchestra + more on the live blog”
Just want to tell you a
Just want to tell you a little story (not a close pass as such):
Coming in this morning, approaching red traffic lights, two lanes in my direction. Two cars stopped ahead of me in my lane, and I was riding about three feet out from the kerb to try and ‘discourage’ anyone trying to get to the lights in front of me.
Peripheral vision picks up a big grey car approaching on my right. I think, “Well, there’s nowhere they can go” (less than a couple of car lengths to the back of the queued cars at the lights, in my lane). They ease left. Then they ease left again. Practically touching my handlebars, and I yell out. They stop moving left, but keep moving forward, stopping with me right next to the passenger door.
I lean down to look in, expecting some rowdy bloke, and it’s a little woman in her late sixties, neat grey hair and glasses. She doesn’t look at me. Hands fixed on the steering wheel and staring straight ahead.
I move forward a bit, turn and look into the windscreen and say, “What did you think you were doing?”. She didn’t look at me, didn’t even blink.
The lights change and I make a point of taking primary, and she whooshes out past me (decent pass, ironically) and disappears into the distance at definitely more than 20mph.
(BTW the car was a big electric Porsche)
Not to dismiss her prior poor
Not to dismiss her prior poor driving and subsequent speeding, but when she was stationary she probably ignored you out of fear.
It’s more likely the classic
It’s more likely the classic I know I did wrong but if I ignore you it didn’t happen and you’ll go away.
AidanR wrote:
And yet I was the one who would have been knocked over and run down…
(Mind you, people do sometimes say I can look a bit scary at times…).
(edit – it’s been a while since my last haircut)
brooksby wrote:
It is of course human nature, but I still find it disappointing that those that might be considered vulnerable in other circumstances do not perceive the vulnerability of others when protected by a 2t box. I guess if they did then they would be considered “Woke” and expelled from the bridge club.
A man shouting at a woman is
A man shouting at a woman is likely to create fear, even though she was protected by 3 tons of metal and you were the one in actual danger.
AidanR wrote:
The only time I actually shouted was “Oi!” when she was about to clip my handlebars.
I didn’t shout at her once we’d stopped, just used my ‘normal’ voice and sadly shook my head.
I do take serious exception to your belief that I can’t shout at someone sitting in three tonnes of electrified Porsche who’s driven close enough to nearly make contact and/or push me off the road… You know, in case I scare them…
I didn’t say you can’t do it!
I didn’t say you can’t do it! If I was in your position I’d have done the same thing. I was just offering an explanation of why she didn’t acknowledge you.
AidanR wrote:
OK, fair enough: I misunderstood.
Had a similar one, well I’ve
Had a similar one, well I’ve had lots of the move left shoulder barge but this one was different few weeks back.
I’d used prime to block an overtake going into a mini roundabout, but in the next section of road the driver overtook with only at most 4-6 inches gap, really at minimal speed difference, and then started to move left once alongside
And it’s an old boy in a Volvo, and he had a dash cam too, shows how close I was I could see it, I didn’t react in case I decided to submit, had a friend whose submission got downgraded from a nip to a warning letter because they raised an arm at the vehicle.
But I thought well wtf was the driver thinking anyway, but would he have countered with his dashcam footage that obviously doesn’t then show how close he gets.
With hindsight, I think I
With hindsight, I think I might have an incident where the driver had dashcam footage. I was told by the police officer that the driver had pointed out that he had waited behind me for at least half a mile along the high street (it’s slow moving anyway and average speed during the day is probably only 20mph) and only overtook me after we turned off and he had decided it was safe to do so. TBF, when we turned off I was going to give way to him before we entered an up hill stretch with parked cars on the left but he had actually dropped back, because it’s a funny junction, so I just kept going. He then squeezed between me and a brick wall as I was passing the parked cars. I wondered how he had such a good recollection of the incident but then realised with hindsight that he probably had his own dashcam evidence. Regardless, it didn’t make any difference and he was invited on a driver awareness course.
I think I was surprised that
I think I was surprised that someone with a dashcam, though Ive encountered it driving too so maybe its not that unusual, would drive like that, knowing theres a record of it that shows theyre guilty, were I to report them, comes back to my view most people dont expect cyclists still to be carrying cameras.
I certainly hadnt kept this driver behind for long, and I had every right to take prime through the roundabout, which stopped them overtaking, but I didnt report it because as per everyone elses conclusions and the point that triggered the discussion, actually the police arent taking most of these seriously anymore.
Awavey wrote:
This indicates a broken system. Offence committed but the subsequent (and trivial) behaviour of the victim causes the police to change their action against the offender.
They should deal with the crime, and if the victim in reacting commits another crime, prosecute if appropriate. Jeez, this country.
had a friend whose submission
had a friend whose submission got downgraded from a nip to a warning letter because they raised an arm at the vehicle
He shouldn’t feel bad about it- the police demonstrate that they would have thought of another way to bin the NIP anyway, by making such a ridiculous judgement. They use whatever’s handy as an excuse.
I don’t actually submit that
I don’t actually submit that much but I recently submitted 3 close passes in just over a minute of footage*. 2 of the driver got courses, which to be honest, I consider a result. The third (in reality the first of the passes) TVP described as an elderly genleman driver and just had a chat with him. I must be missing something because I suspect that the elderly gentleman may be the biggest risk.
* what a pain, I did 3 seperate submissions which even if you’re really going for it take at least 20mins each.
Surely this must be classed
Surely this must be classed as age discrimination and therefore illegal? Although I admit some Police forces may have previous for discriminatory behaviour.
I accept that it’s not as
I accept that it’s not as simple as I describe and there would of course be mitigation they could easily use. The most obvious one in this case is that his overtake was just before the no overtaking zone. The other two were close passes in a no overtaking zone. I also accept that it’s always at the discretion of the officer. So if the officer in question is more lenient then there’s no individual discrimination.
1) From 213 reports there’s
1) From 213 reports there’s just one prosecution – that is useless. However I’m mildy surprised that there were just 213 reports in 2022.
2) I don’t quite understand where the ‘5,551 submissions of video evidence’ comes into this story.. as it it seems a bit of a tease/distraction.. how many of those have resulted in some action?
The report in this live blog
The article is confusing – I don’t understand it either.
Presumably the 5,551 pieces
Presumably the 5,551 pieces of video evidence includes dashcams, CCTV and other videos which related to drivers but didn’t involve cyclists.
AidanR wrote:
That would be my interpreation. I accept that there are, of course, many more cars but this does seem to disprove the idea that the Militant Cycists are the ones submitting loads of footage that are putting the livelihood of hard working motorists at risk. In reality they seem far more likely to be reporting each other.
That was 213 reports from WM
That was 213 reports from WM Police alone. That’s not nationwide. The video evidence submissions number by comparison, though, is startling. I can’t se an average of 25 or more clips being submitted per single incident. Several must be being discounted as not warranting action or investigation, pretty much either before watching, or from the first watch. Which means either someone who is poorly trained is performing the initial analysis on the videos, or they simply don’t have time to look properly at them, if a near miss wasn’t blatantly obvious, the clip will just be ignored.
In the separate article on
In the separate article on this story I’ve linked to the actual FOI response which clarifies.
In 2022, there were 5,551 “submissions of video evidence were received by the force relating to reports of driving offences” (of which 872 were issued NIPs, 186 driver training courses and 3,445 no further action. They don’t say what happened to the remaining 1,048!)
Of those 5,551, 286 were “where the driver was reported to have
overtaken a cyclist in a potentially careless / inconsiderate or dangerous
manner (so called ‘close passes’)”. Of those, 1 NIP, 69 driver training and 213 NFA (and 3 lost in the ether).
I am slightly suprised how many people are reporting offences other than close passes on cyclists. I know plenty of people run dashcams in their cars these days, but still suprised that so many bother submitting things – witnessing a driving offence from the safety of a car is very different from feeling mortally imperilled!
The 1048 won’t have met
The 1048 won’t have met submission criteria, so aren’t processed, NFA means it was processed a police decision was made but judged as not prosecutable.
For Norfolk/Suffolk though they’ve stopped officially publishing the data
(But also get plenty of FOI requests on it) usually more than 2/3rds of all submissions don’t meet submission criteria.
OnYerBike wrote:
Yes, but remember that the vast majority of people who are killed or seriously injured in road collisions are the occupants of cars, so still a desire to improve road safety, even if it is just for themselves and not more vulnerable road users.
NickSprink wrote:
people think they are safe in their cars. That’s why cyclists need helmets but car occupants do not. (in the public psyche)
Thanks for that.
Thanks for that.
Dr Robert Davis, the chair of
Dr Robert Davis, the chair of the Road Danger Reduction Forum suggested the “whole third-party reporting system needs to be properly sorted out. Properly.”
100% this.
Stopped bothering reporting close passes / incidents a while ago as it was literally a complete waste of my time.
Lancashire Constabulalry are utterly useless in this regard.
I put this on yesterday’s
I put this on yesterday’s live blog this morning, but I’ll put it here now:
The Chocolate Path in Bristol
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-65260326
British Cycling appoint new
British Cycling appoint new ceo https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/about/article/20230413-about-bc-news-Jon-Dutton-appointed-as-British-Cycling-CEO-0
FWIW, I live in Sussex and
FWIW, I live in Sussex and run a camera to record bad driving. I’ve just submitted a FOI request to Sussex Police to see how many NIPs etc were issued for close passes etc. I’ll report these data when i receive them.
However, having spoken with the Police *multiple* times i can confirm that in Sussex:
They have a civilian(s) who checks the video to ascertain whether it’s a close pass, but that the staff may not be as well trained as they’d like (as the job doesn’t pay well enough – their words) and that if i submit every single close pass (which i did one year) they ask me to stop submitting such a volume of incidents as they can’t deal with them all (also their words).
I have had close passes not sent a NIP because of staff illness and holidays and they missed the cut off point for sending a NIP out. I have also not had a NIP sent out because they didn’t realise a NIP needed sending out (i made a complaint to Professional Standards).
Currently, i’m not sending many in as it’s a complete waste of time (i.e., they rarely do anything with my close passes).
This is my experience with
This is my experience with Lincs Police. If I send them the ones that really put the $h!ts up me or are clearly agressive they tend to do something about it. If I send in the mildly annoying ones where they could have given a full lane and chose not to then they do nothing.
I was quite miffed when I was
I was quite miffed when I was close passed when I was cycling at 20 in a 20, with weird street markings (representing pavement past front doors and gates with wheelie bins in it) so single lane with a speed chicane for good measure, and a van close passed me at speed as a punishment pass. The driver stopped as I shouted “Oi!” because both I and the oncoming car had to take evasive action. He did the usual “all over the road” bit and then swore at me. I reckon there was video evidence of multiple offences, speeding – readily calculated from road markings – close pass, careless to oncoming car, obstruction, public order, but it didn’t make the cut. Stupid thing was if the driver had stuck to near the limit they wouldn’t have been near me until the road widened and was 40mph.
My front camera died a couple of months ago, and I haven’t bothered to replace it.
I wouldn’t mind if they said “Can’t be bothered with court but we will sling out a warning letter with a cut and paste of the HWC and other words of advice”. Why bother to accept submissions if they won’t do the bare minimum?
IanMSpencer wrote:
Completely agree. 60min was quoted as the average time to deal with a submission. That shouldn’t take more than 10min, especially if they didn’t insist on 2min either side of the incident. The only proviso I would make is that a record of the letter needs to be kept and repeat offences dealt with properly and that the driver is made aware of this.
If I send in the mildly
If I send in the mildly annoying ones where they could have given a full lane and chose not to then they do nothing
Lincs Police has clearly failed to totally adopt the Brave New World where you do nothing no matter how fast and close the pass, or whatever the road traffic offence. BMW AF11 XVU MOT expired 2.6.22, reported to the UK’s most idle/ bent and useless police force 18.7.22. Still on the road without MOT/ insurance 9 months later. You can forget all these Righteous Cops Kicking Ass telly programmes- in reality, they just do nothing
On the ongoing Decathlon hire
On the ongoing Decathlon hire bike saga cost, it was for an EBIKE !!!
Find anyone hiring out Ebikes in the UK for significantly less than £40 per day, because my money is on the big sports selling stuff corporation actually did their research first and that’s the going rate like it or not.
Awavey wrote:
Zoomo in London, Manchester and Edinburgh will rent you one for £35 a week, though admittedly that’s with a 150km a week cap. Their “Pro” subscription for £49 a week is unlimited mileage.
You are correct in general though but that just highlights how greedy people are being, e.g. Decathlon’s £40 is 5% of the price of the bike they’re offering, twenty hires and they’ve made it back. Imagine if car hire worked on the same metric, you’d have to pay £800 a day to rent a £16k hatchback!
But Zoomo is a subscription
But Zoomo is a subscription service, it only makes sense to compare like for like day hire rates to judge if Decathlon are above the market rate.
An update on yesterdays story
An update on yesterdays story
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/12/arnold-schwarzenegger-california-pothole-los-angeles
IanMK wrote:
I think you’re about the fourth person to post this update, now, Ian
Apologies to all.
Apologies to all.
Has anyone posted this story yet? If they have I’ll head on home.
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/1757697/driving-laws-motoring-fines-warning
File under: ….but cyclists
IanMK wrote:
Interesting – reminding motorists that a PCN can impact their insurance premiums too.
On the sidebar, it had this one:
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/1756632/smooth-speed-bumps-anger-speeding-middlesbrough
They’ve just put ones like that in my village. A normal car can drive with its wheels either side of the bumps, and there’s room for a normal car to actually drive around the bump (ie. between the bump and the kerb).
Apparently the council intends eventually to put in a painted cycle lane at each side of the road, to narrow the road and (supposedly) stop cars going around the bumps.*
*but only when there’s a cyclist passing there too?
Speed bumps are useless. If
Speed bumps are useless. If anything they slow you down.*
*Viz
absolutely mind boggling that
absolutely mind boggling that the city think it’s OK for a company to leave the road in this state for an extended period.
At least anyone with a damaged vehicle now knows they can bring action against the city and the utility company, who have taken deliberate action resulting in damage to third party property.
Given that car crime is so
Given that car crime is so prevalent and so likely to end in injury or death, surely it’s time we had a proper national traffic police section? Properly funded and trained obviously, able to seize and destroy cars used as weapons, and wide-ranging powers to fine and temporarily suspend licences and impound cars until the driver has proved that they are fit to drive. Even minor transgressions should be followed up with appropriate action. With an easily accessible portal to report dangerous driving.
What we have now is clearly not working and the ksi rate is way, way too high. People need to have it drummed into their thick skulls that a car is a killing machine, and you must concentrate 100% on driving it safely, not occasionally glancing ahead when you feel like it.
I believe they tried this in an area of Australia (Victoria?) and the results were highly beneficial. They may have dropped it in favour of fining cyclists.
We could start by treating
We could start by treating “traffic offences” as crime. It is breaking the law. We have a current focus by political parties on attacking everyday low-level crime but nobody is mentioning road crime, there are far more people affected by speeding, bad parking and poor driving than there are by burglaries and recreational drug use.
bobbypuk wrote:
Didn’t you get the memo? Apparently road crime isn’t “real crime” and the police need to spend more time on whatever the speaker decides “real crime” actually is (usually something they haven’t done themselves…)
brooksby wrote:
Yup. Real crime. Not something that kills 2,000 people a year.
eburtthebike wrote:
I think you’re underselling it.
Let’s not forget that 26,000 people were seriously injured in 2021 (gov.uk should list them and the cost of their treatment) and that there were an estimated 128,209 casualties of all severities.
If we want to get a glimpse of the scale of the problem we should add to this the ones that thankfully have no reported casualties, the unreported collisions and single vehicle incidents, the near misses that scare the sh*t out of even the hardiest types, the aggression* and threats and all the many people who are deterred from cycling or who give up cycling because of the danger…
* not just towards cyclists, I had an Audi driver force me to take evasive action while walking on a quiet lane yesterday evening because he/she couldn’t didn’t want to turn the steering wheel an inch or two to go around me (there is room for 2 vehicles to pass).
Road crime is real crime, as most of us on here are only too aware.
Here’s my little story from
Here’s my little story from 20 mins ago.
Coming to a 30 from a 60, also junction in play. Check behind – he’s a bit close
Then he squeezes through with oncoming traffic.
I gesture with what the hell
He then slams his brakes on.
I am then waiting for him to get out the car but I suspect the van driver behind put him off.
Van driver did perfect overtake and gave me a thumbs up !
Surprised there has been no
Surprised there has been no story about the Tour of Cambrigeshire calling it a day after this year.
2023 Tour of Cambridgeshire to be final edition
It was on the blog and
It was on the blog and discussion yesterday. I don’t think it will be missed much, considering how many people were complaining of lack of organisation.
“A mis-named levy on
“A mis-named levy on bellendery”: James May succinctly summarises road tax
I’m nicking that one for my own dictionary.
A new segregated two-way
A new segregated two-way cycle lane is among a set of new proposals put forward for Temple Way by Bristol City Council.
https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/new-segregated-two-way-cycle-lane-proposed/
Quote:
Shock news just in: excercise has health benefits, stay tuned later for our expose on whther ursine faeces can be found in the woods.
wycombewheeler wrote:
Shock news just in: excercise has health benefits, stay tuned later for our expose on whther ursine faeces can be found in the woods.
I thought that as well, but this was specifically about electric bikes, which also provide the same benefits as riding an unpowered bike, so pretty relevant news.
The Kriss Kyle hot air
The Kriss Kyle hot air balloon video is nuts, especially the ice pick on the rail. No room for error, although would be pretty spectacular if he went over and had to use the parachute
NotNigel wrote:
Am I the only one a bit concerned about where the bike would have gone in that case? Looked like a rural area but hardly uninhabited, a BMX descending from that height…
I believe the stats so show a
I believe the stats do show a couple of KSIs on car occupants by cyclists over the last half-decade – maybe here’s the explanation?