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I think we should start
I think we should start campaigning for more drivers to wear helmets as there’s now quite a lot of cyclists that carry D-Locks (or paving slabs if you happen to be Legs11).
I spotted this little nugget this morning on the BristolPost: https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/cyclist-sought-after-van-driver-2392174
A cyclist has allegedly smacked a van driver over the head with a bike lock after a crash in Whitehall.Avon and Somerset Police has launched a major appeal following the attack which detectives are treating as GBH.
The incident happened on Foxcroft Road at the junction of Whitehall Road, on Tuesday December 18, at around 12.40pm.
A force spokesperson said: “There was a collision between a white van and a cyclist and when the motorist got out of the van he was struck across the head with a bike lock.
Come on then, let the noddy
Come on then, let the noddy hats battle commence.
The IRC X-guards are really
The IRC X-guards are really reliable and got me through last winter with no problems: https://thecycleclinic.co.uk/collections/road-tyres/products/2017-irc-formula-pro-fusion-x-guard-tubeless-tyres
(I also went from the Schwalbe Pros to them as well, but my issue was that the Schwalbes were a bit slippery in the wet).
Nope.
Nope.
Probably not weed related.
And getting back on topic a bit:problem is, and has been talked about many times (including by Guy Martin when he raced against an AI car) is how these vehicles are programmed. MB have already said they will sacrifice innocent victims to keep their motorvehicle occupents safe.Elsewhere and incl Guy Martin say those in the vehicle should be the ones that take the hit. There’s a discussion here https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/3pw714/why_selfdriving_cars_must_be_programmed_to_kill/
Seems to me that the only viable solution is for all cars to have the same homologated safety logic, like they have sealed ECUs in F1 & MotoGP. It’s the same as the rules of the sea and rules of the air, albeit in a more chaotic environment. If all cars know the control rules for all other cars then that should eliminate vehicle to vehicle collisions.
The challenge is that it removes a differentiator for the manufacturers – why would you buy a Merc instead of a BMW if it drives the same? Of course, you’ll no longer be driving it so perhaps that question is irrelevant .
One of the posited developments of autonomous vehicles is that they will constantly communicate with each other. This should have both safety benefits (I’m crashing, keep clear! Ice here! etc) and allow “platooning” (forming convoys of vehicles all heading for the same destination, thus saving energy).
Platooning won’t be safe. Even with as close to zero reaction time as possible to an obstacle, somewhere in the queue there is going to be a collision, unless the platoon is moving very slowly.
They’ve been a lot safer than human drivers so far.
It’s interesting that Judge Sally Cahill presumably went unchallenged when she said: “He does not have any brakes…………..He is going down a main busy street, knowing he can’t stop.”Apart from a few minutes at a cycle show, I’ve always skated on ice skates. It might not be good for the wheels, but can’t you do a ‘hockey stop’ on inline skates? My short experience taught me that in line skates are very easy to use if you can ice skate. It’s a pity I’ve long lost touch with the mate who used to commute from Mile End to Victoria on inline skates. It never crossed my mind that he wouldn’t have techniques for emergency braking.
From my limited experience with inlines, they have a rubber block at the rear that can do a slow controlled stop. More common is the T-stop where you put one foot perpendicular behind the other foot (not in front) or if you want to do an emergency stop, you throw yourself onto your knees and elbows (pads are recommended for this maneouvre).
I really don’t see how you’d equate skating with using a weapon.
I have experience of Avon &
I have experience of Avon & Somerset police and you can raise a complaint online: https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/contact-us/complaints/
I would imagine that most UK regional police would have something similar.
I’ve done a couple of long tours with older teenagers and their fathers. It’s a great experience for everyone and once they realise they’re not on mountain bikes the teenagers very quickly out-paced the old men.For tandems these look ideal to me. It seems to me that they remove the stoker from only having the back of the pilot’s neck to look at. Tandemists I’ve shown it to love the look of it. It’s a very joyous picture; I found it on the web some time ago, don’t know where, and I don’t know who makes these, but they look great.
A reverse image search brings up these sites (amongst some others):
https://www.roulcouche.com/page/page.php?id=pino
http://www.cycleszen.com/tandem-couche.html
and this site looks relevant too:
http://dandyhorsemagazine.com/blog/2017/05/01/riding-tandem-with-your-8-year-old/
problem is, and has been talked about many times (including by Guy Martin when he raced against an AI car) is how these vehicles are programmed. MB have already said they will sacrifice innocent victims to keep their motorvehicle occupents safe.Elsewhere and incl Guy Martin say those in the vehicle should be the ones that take the hit. There’s a discussion here https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/3pw714/why_selfdriving_cars_must_be_programmed_to_kill/
I’m firmly in the keep straight and slow down/stop camp for autonomous vehicles. It’s the right thing to do in most cases and swerving out of the lane that you’re in can have unpredictable consequences (could also open up the manufacturer to legal action).
By the way, I saw this article about grocery delivering, unmanned, autonomous vehicles hitting the streets in Scottsdale (they go a max of 25mph):
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/driverless-mini-car-deliver-groceries.html
From here: https://www
From here: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/black-cabs-taxis-air-pollution-london-research-true-icct-a8688141.html
Some newer models of the black cabs were found to emit even more pollution than older models.The Chinese-owned London Electric Vehicle Company, formerly known as the London Taxi Company, based near Coventry, makes the TX4 Euro 5 model which was found to produce at least 50 per cent more NOx than either of the company’s earlier Euro 3 or Euro 4 models.
This means the average NOx emissions from black cabs have risen, per kilo of fuel used, over the past five years.
The research shows Euro 5 models along with older models are responsible for about 60 per cent of greater London’s NOx emissions from passenger cars.
Euro 5 and Euro 6 diesel cars are on average producing six times more NOx than equivalent petrol cars, the research adds.
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Water bottle full of paint stripper could do it.I managed to douse a woman’s handbag and iPad in SIS earlier in the year as she aimed her roofless twat mobile towards me!
As tempting as that would be, it implies premeditation and though the chances of getting stopped on a bike are pretty slim, I wouldn’t want to be considered amongst the acid-throwers of this world.
As a less dangerous alternative, I’ve sometimes imagined carrying eggs (make a mess of their paintwork if they don’t clean it off straight away) or maybe some kind of paintball pellet although they tend to be water soluble.
(In answer to Davel’s comment, I do think that Avon & Somerset are much better at video footage than they were even a year ago).
I went to a presentation night at the University of the West of England. They’ve been involved with lots of robotics and automation. There was a guy doing a presentation on a lot of the challenges faced by driverless cars.One of the ones he said was a major problem, with driverless cars, is when the car asks the driver to take back control as it cannot cope with a situation up ahead.
He said that they’ve found out that people are completely unprepared to take back control of the car.
I guess its a bit like when you’ve been driving for hours on a motorway, and then stop to take over from your partner. It takes you a while to kind of flip your brain back into driving mode.
Yet with autonomous cars, the car might be asking you to take back control within a second, and they’ve found out people are completely unprepared for it, when the car has been driving for a couple of hours.
Autonomous cars that rely on having a driver are a complete waste of time and probably more dangerous than just letting drivers drive. At least if you’re actively driving there’s a chance that you’ll be paying attention, but to expect a non-driver to suddenly become alert and responsive to the situation is just laughable.
yeah I have had similar thoughts for sure, especially following some appalling close passes Ive had lately,though most are still in the daylight fwiw, one car last week only missed knocking me off because their wing mirror was already folded back, but part of me feels like Im letting people like that win if they bully me off the roadI recommend ‘Freakonomics’. Everything is incentive. We do things (or refrain from doing things) for pleasure (or pain). As long as there is no incentive not to act dangerously around cyclists – and a clear incentive in doing so, because the more they do it, the more they frighten cyclists and the fewer cyclists are likely to venture abroad – then car drivers will continue to act dangerously around cyclists.
The only question is: are you prepared to give them an incentive not to act that way around you?
Can we follow this through – genuinely – because you often espouse the angry response sort of stuff. I relate to it because I can be an angry twat too – particularly when my heart rate is up and I’ve just been skimmed by a berk in a couple of tons of metal.
I agree broadly with your incentives model (economics), but it applies to populations, just like it says in Freakonomics. I might be doing srchar a disservice here, but he hasn’t struck me as a population.
Genuine question, because if there is some sort of consensus on here, we might be onto something useful*. How, without getting arrested, is srchar supposed to incentivise enough drivers on his commute in order to make any sort of difference?
* Personally, I think the single biggest change in incentives would be a liability law, you know, like all our more civilised European neighbours have. I have evidence-based (I think) rants about it on various channels and to various people in various levels of politics whenever I get the chance. But if we all started doing something that became noticed – would that have an effect?
I’m more of a fan of using cameras to discourage poor drivers. It takes more effort to submit videos to the police, but I think that having a warning letter from the police drop onto your doormat probably has more of an effect than just getting into a shouting match.
The other advantage of using cameras is that it works better if you don’t retaliate or get angry (i.e. the police are more likely to agree with you) and by trying to do that, it can improve your disposition. I can certainly relate to getting angry with close passes and I used to try to catch up with the drivers to give them my opinion or desperately try to overtake them to “prove my point”.
I also like to think that there’s a “herd immunity” effect with cyclists using cameras. The more drivers that are caught out by cyclist cams, the more drivers that take care around cyclists (hopefully).
janusz0 wrote:
You’ll appreciate her help up the hills, you can easily do all the work on the flat. I’ve found that one problem is cadence. My sometime tandem partner can’t cope with my high (to her) cadence. Every cyclist finds being stoker hard until they learn to curb the urge to steer the tandem. Early on, the pilot may find their saddle pointing sideways. Give her tasks like signalling and navigation to make her feel important. Try riding as stoker yourself.Sometimes you can work around the cadence issue by using shorter cranks for the person that is struggling.