Calls to ban motor traffic from Richmond Park after shocking crash; Litter pocket; Tour of Cambridgeshire postponed; The Killers' Brandon Flowers needs surgery on cycling injury; Pro back after heart scare; Extreme winter commuter + more on the live blog

but what do pro riders put in their jersey pockets though that needs not to be covered in sticky gel wrappers?  bearing in mind the likes of Alice Barnes has her whole career I believe just used her jersey pockets for used gels and never discarded any and doesnt need an extra pocket.

And I get us normies have keys, moneys,mobiles,airpump,tools, maybe tissues, I just put empty gels in my saddle bag tbf, but what are pro riders carrying that needs protecting, its not like they wear the same jersey the next day without washing it anyway.

just seems a roundabout way of them literally saying,hey we wont litter anymore, but rather than just saying that, it has to have an extra hook that shows their previous littering habits were just they didnt have enough jersey pockets before...

Awavey wrote:

but what do pro riders put in their jersey pockets though that needs not to be covered in sticky gel wrappers?

I have no idea but if the little pocket means they don't simply toss their used wrappers away then it has to be a good thing.

I'd be happy to have a small 'litter' pocket in a jersey so that empty wrappers are stored separately from full ones (and anything else I'm carrying). If nothing else, it prevents the wrapper being removed accidentally when I pull out the next piece of food that I want to use.

But the topic of wrappers and bottles allows people to sidestep the much more significant issues of pollution and the environmental damage caused by pro racing.

Possibly they just don't want to be wasting time and attention rifling through empty wrappers to find the unused one, when they need to be concentrating as much as possible on the race.

MSR is taking place on the 20th March.  Not this Saturday.

Sniffer wrote:

MSR is taking place on the 20th March.  Not this Saturday.

Doh!

Thanks for the correction.

Catching up late on a Friday evening, was beginning to think that the build-up had passed me by.

now in week 5 of non weight bearing

Best wishes with this- I am reminded how lucky I was with my own free fall.

So sorry to hear of your broken hip. I've commuted in similar conditions this winter but I dragged my old mountain bike out with 2.1" knobblies. No way I would do that sort of thing on 28mm road tyres these days although there was a time when I would but as I get older I'm so much more warey of breaking bones. A good friend of mine came off his bike at low speed and broke the head clean off his femur. I few days later I came off on a diesel spill and landed hard on my hip. My first thought was have I done any serious damage. Fortunately nothing more than bruising and soem broken skin. Get well soon.

I saw pics of this crash on Twitter first as the Royal Parks Police posted them. That car must have been going considerably faster than the speed limit. It would not suffer that kind of damage at 20mph. I hope the cyclist heals up ok. I also hope the police take proper action against the driver.

And on another topic, I hope Brandon Flowers from The Killers heals up ok too. I've seen them live and they were pretty good.

Looking at the pictures on twitter, it looks like the driver could be an elderly lady, the Nissan Leaf will be automatic. She possibly floored the accelerator instead of the brake, which is frighteningly common.

a Nissan Leaf, so its electric and the torque at low speed on those electric motors, which is near instaneous no mechanical lag, is greater than some even well tuned sports cars, Nissan once unbelievably claimed it could out accelerate their Nissan GT-R, marketing hype for sure, but you get the idea.

True the Nissan 2018 40kW Leaf will outpace many ICE from10mph to 40mph. I know because I own one, Ive embarrassed many a car with the acceleration.   The 60kW model has alot more 30-70mph grunt. 

If the driver wasnt expecting it by unintentionally accelerating hard, the car can lose traction being fwd and torque steer- if you're not quick to react.   

I guesswork until driver, witnesses and victim comment

Perhaps electric cars with such rapid acceleration should have enhanced brakes?  

Reminds me of a mate in the early 80s who put a Porsche engine into his VW Beetle.  He couldn't wait for the upgrade brakes to arrive, so drove it. Let's say it wasn't very good at stopping, but luckily the engine survived the ensuant smash. 

He didn't follow the Hayes manual then ?

Refitting is the reverse of removal ?

The brakes are very good on the Nissan Leaf, vented discs front and rear.  My Tesla acclerates 0-60 in ~4 secs  It too has excellent brakes. 

 Its the right foot thats  connected to the slow brain reaction is the issue.  

I'm a advocate of driver retest every 5 years, both skill, reaction and physical assessment.  This would be a huge revenue earner for HMG and remove many poor drivers, either skill or phyical problems from the road.  

After a thorough re training or medical control should said driver be allowed to drive again.

We need a much, much higher standard of driving skill on UK roads

But, but driving is a right that cannot be taken away.

#irony

I agree with you about retesting. I took my car test a very long time ago. Curiously enough, it was doing my motorbike test a few years later that really taught me how to drive.

Chris Hayes wrote:

Perhaps electric cars with such rapid acceleration should have enhanced brakes?  

Reminds me of a mate in the early 80s who put a Porsche engine into his VW Beetle.  He couldn't wait for the upgrade brakes to arrive, so drove it. Let's say it wasn't very good at stopping, but luckily the engine survived the ensuant smash. 

Sounds like he couldn't control the acceleration. The brakes weren't the issue....

Yeah we have a couple of the bonkers Teslas at work plus a couple of the Porsche Taycans. The acceleration is beyond silly. It's like warp speed with no build up. Electric car and old lady equals disaster.

I clicked the Tweet link and related Tweets showed this beauty from a Taxi driver retweeted by Cylcing Mikey (and others)

https://twitter.com/MikeyCycling/status/1362088029314244611?s=20

So filming kids and women, 
Filimg whilst driving
Fiming whilst speeding (he is good enough to show the SL is 20 and goes up to 24 on his car before he stops)

Amazing. Clearly the kid has just learnt to ride a bike as well, can't imagine why they're not learning to ride on the road from day 1

its so tempting just to reply to that taxi driver and say yeah Id ride on the flippin pavement too if there were people driving around on the road using their mobile phones to film stuff and not paying attention to the 1 tonne of lethal equipment they are in control of..

the mentality of some of these people, the worst thing is I bet even if you are riding on the road, theyd still give you a hard time just for being a cyclist.

you read that inital setup and it sounds just maybe a normal kind of rider gets bounced on to the road after a collision style incident,then you read driver hurt their hand & that sounds a bit odd...click through to the tweet...holy f*** what the hell, 20mph, are they serious !!!

Id guess the car is an automatic, and the driver panic stamped on the gas rather than the brake when faced with a sudden impeding collision with the cyclist, and just steered onto a fence or something, I doubt they pulled it out of the tree to take a the picture, that could so easily have been a fatal or serious injury on the cyclist(s) caught up in that.

wont ban cars through there will they though

No chance of them banning cars.......imagine that. I'm not sure what would make them ban cars...