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I am Dr. Bakare Tunde, the
I am Dr. Bakare Tunde, the cousin of Nigerian Astronaut, Air Force Major Abacha Tunde. He was the first African in space when he made a secret flight to the Salyut 6 space station in 1979. He was on a later Soviet spaceflight, Soyuz T-16Z to the secret Soviet military space station Salyut 8T in 1989. He was stranded there in 1990 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. His other Soviet crew members returned to earth on the Soyuz T-16Z, but his place was taken up by return cargo. There have been occasional Progrez supply flights to keep him going since that time. He is in good humor, but wants to come home.
In the 14-years since he has been on the station, he has accumulated flight pay and interest amounting to almost $ 15,000,000 American Dollars. This is held in a trust at the Lagos National Savings and Trust Association. If we can obtain access to this money, we can place a down payment with the Russian Space Authorities for a Soyuz return flight to bring him back to Earth. I am told this will cost $ 3,000,000 American Dollars. In order to access the his trust fund we need your assistance.
Consequently, my colleagues and I are willing to transfer the total amount to your account or subsequent disbursement, since we as civil servants are prohibited by the Code of Conduct Bureau (Civil Service Laws) from opening and/ or operating foreign accounts in our names.
Needless to say, the trust reposed on you at this juncture is enormous. In return, we have agreed to offer you 20 percent of the transferred sum, while 10 percent shall be set aside for incidental expenses (internal and external) between the parties in the course of the transaction. You will be mandated to remit the balance 70 percent to other accounts in due course.
I used to use a helmet
I used to use a helmet-mounted cam, but it was a bit heavy and there’s always the worry about whether it would cause injury in a crash, so now I use a Fly12 on the front and a Fly6 on the rear. I particularly like the circular storage they use, so you can leave them over-writing the oldest footage and just have to keep them charged up.
I actually found that when I started using a cam, I became a lot more conscious of how I was riding and I ended up becoming slightly more cautious and better at looking ahead and anticipating what the traffic was about to do.
@Wellsprop – I like the idea
@Wellsprop – I like the idea of trackers being fitted to all motor vehicles, but I don’t like the central control part of it as that’s a bit of a privacy nightmare (e.g. crooks watching your video to get an idea of your daily schedule and home/work locations). I’d prefer it if they were made into black-box type affiars and the contents examined by police/insurers whenever there’s a traffic incident.
I’m surprised that more insurance companies don’t provide reduced premiums for people fitting dashcams as it must save the companies time and money with disputed claims (which most traffic collissions are). The cameras are cheap enough now that they’d pay for themselves after just one incident.
The idea of measuring driving quality would be interesting as that could probably be achieved without needing complete access to the video. A few accellerometers could measure the “smoothness” of a driver and some decent algorithms could reduce that to a simple score that could be uploaded to the insurance company. It would be easy enough to put that into a phone app as the phone wouldn’t need to be anywhere special in the car and could be left in a pocket or bag whilst driving although that would rely on the driver remembering to turn it on and off for trips, so maybe a specialist device permanently fixed to the car would be better.
Data-driven safety improvements are the way forwards.
@Wellsprop – I also cycle
@Wellsprop – I also cycle around Bristol and there’s a big variability in drivers’ behaviour. My estimation is that 95% of drivers are well-meaning and semi-competent and 5% are useless/aggressive.
Presumably, similar percentages apply to cyclists/skateboarders/joggers etc. but it’s the tonne of metal that makes all the difference. Now the idea of presumed liability is to assign liability in lieu of other evidence and statistics support assigning blame to the big, heavy dangerous thing moving at speed as opposed to the slower, less protected fleshy things.
Also, if you’re in a motorised vehicle, it’s quite easy and cheap to get a dash-cam and thus provide evidence if your involved in an incident and thus protect yourself against all the RLJers throwing themselves onto your car.
I don’t really see a down-side with presumed liability apart from people’s prejudice against non-motons.
I agree. The problem is that
I agree. The problem is that cyclists are a minority group, so it’s going to be difficult to get the majority (motons) to give up their advantage voluntarily even though the statistics clearly show that most road incidents are caused by moton’s lack of attention.
I personally think that the ubiquity of cameras will help. If a few insurers realise the huge cost savings of getting customers to run dash-cams and with the increase in cyclists using cameras, there will be better evidence to decide liability.
I’m often conscious of the choice of words used in reporting of traffic incidents, but there is some logic in describing a vehicle hitting a cyclist as physically, that’s what happens even though the driver may have been the cause. When they phrase it as “cyclist hitting vehicle” though, that’s rarely accurate and definitely disingenuous.
That wasn’t properly serviced
That wasn’t properly serviced/installed. It sounds like the chainring bolts weren’t installed with some threadlock compound which is just careless and they weren’t sufficiently tightened as well. I’d expect Giant or the bike shop to make good on the damage as it’s a result of incorrect installation.
It depends on the size of the
It depends on the size of the pothole. If you only moved out less than a metre or so, then the overtaking cyclist should have left more room and he would be at fault for overtaking when not safe to do so (i.e. He was performing a maneuvre and thus should have anticipated the bad road surface). If you swing out more than about a metre, then I reckon you should have checked first, but with a pothole, you might not have had any choice about it and had to go around for your own safety even if you had checked and seen an overtaking cyclist (the checking would most likely have tipped off the overtaking cyclist that you were about to move, though).
Overtaking other cyclists should always be performed with a decent safety margin. As an overtaker, you have the better view of the situation and should be able to react quickly enough to avoid getting within “brushing” distance.
I did get told off the other morning about overtaking a cyclist without using a bell which surprised me as I hardly ever use a bell to warn that I’m overtaking. I left him a good 2 metres of room (I used the other side of the road as he was close to the middle line – only a small back road), so I think I just startled him with a quick silent pass.
Sounds like you might be more
Sounds like you might be more stretched out and haven’t quite got the flexibility for it (yet). Either persist for a couple of weeks to see if you adapt comfortably or shorten your reach (saddle position or stem length). Your saddle might be at a strange angle, but I’d have thought a bike fit would end up with your saddle within 5 degrees of horizontal.
Numbness in your hands can be a sign of too much weight on them, so shifting your saddle forwards on the rails might be a quick fix if there’s room to move it.
Make sure you record the basic measurements if you weren’t given them by the bike fitter, so you can compare your position before and afterwards and reset back to the bike fit settings if you get pains etc.
Go back to whoever did the bike fit. I would expect them to identify and fix free of charge.It can often take a couple of weeks for your body to adapt to a new bike position, so it might be futile to go straight back to the fitter.
Pass on the left and overtake
Pass on the left and overtake on the right (except when a newbie goes the wrong way).
Highly contentious and slightly tangential to the article, but I think I’d pay a road cycling tax in exchange for segregated infrastructure. Okay, I could easily make an argument the other way, but with taxation comes representation. As part of the major city transportation overhauls we need, this could make sense: widespread congestion and emission zones; ‘green’ public transport, etc.To my mind, I already pay tax for providing suitable infrastructure. However, that tax is then used mostly to provide roads that aren’t always that suitable for cycling on, despite the fact that cyclists pay the same proportion of tax and cause far less damage to roads and the environment and lessen the burden on the NHS. (I wouldn’t mind paying for decent cycling infrastructure as long as I can opt out of the proportion of income tax that gets spent on making dangerous road junctions.)
The other day, I thought it’d be nice if vehicles were taxed in proportion to how much damage they cause to the road infrastructure. What would be nice would be sections of main roads that have sensors to weigh the vehicles. Combine that with license plate readers and you can figure out the approximate weight of each individual vehicle (including cargo) and then charge the owner/driver a tax based on the fourth power of their weight (which is proportional to the damage caused to roads). I reckon that would mean that cars would pay almost nothing and the economics of using large lorries would change as it might prove more cost effective to divide the load into several lighter vehicles. It’d depend on how high the tax rate would be set.
Northwave are worth trying
Northwave are worth trying though mine are only just about wide enough. I get some rubbing on my little toe from time to time with them.
Also, if you enjoy riding the
Also, if you enjoy riding the newer bike, then you haven’t wasted your money at all.
My money is on it being your
My money is on it being your position on the bikes. Get a tape measure and take some basic bike fit measurements (e.g. saddle height and reach) and compare the two. Maybe then try tweaking what you can on the road bike to see if you can get it closer to your position on the hybrid and see if that improves your speed?
Alternately, your tyres can make a big difference, especially with different pressures. Too much tyre pressure can slow you down, although I’d be surprised if it makes that much difference going uphill.
Mmmm Marmite!
Mmmm Marmite!
It’s all to do with risk
It’s all to do with risk management.
Any kind of sun tanning is causing damage to the skin and is thus “unhealthy”. Whether it’s worth worrying about it depends on a number of factors including your skin-type and the type of exposure. It might be that your chance of getting skin cancer would be significantly less than being struck by lightning in which case there’s little point in worrying about it. If on the other hand, you might be fair-skinned and have a 10% chance of melanoma in the next 5 years, then it’s worth taking precautions.
The modern rates of skin cancer are increasing which may be down to a number of factors. e.g. people taking more foreign holidays; thinner ozone layer; better detection rates; fancy skin care products etc.
So, I’d recommend to take the “easy” precautions – make your kids wear hats and protective clothing, and apply SPF lotions when feasible. Keeping them inside could possibly increase their risk of getting obese, type II diabetes, heart disease etc, so I’d guess that would be more harmful than exposure to the sun.