road.cc live blog: STOLEN BIKE ALERT! + Peter Sagan’s #PowerShower,and more
Black Friday morphs into Cyber Monday, while Chris Boardman and Peter Hitchens both pen columns opposed to cycle helmet compulsion
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captain_slog 7 hours ago
I see quite a few MAAP items out in the Surrey Hills. The new shop has a cafe and they're from Melbourne so the coffee should be good: I'm looking forward to visiting.
jackcycles 10 hours ago
@chrisonabike Mercedes was acceptable, but the second one (old Toyota people carrier/ex-taxi) was a prosecutable offence.
Rendel Harris 12 hours ago
I wasn't saying that nor talking about people who say that. I said it was silly to claim that wearing a helmet indicates acceptance of dangerous driving and poor infrastructure. I choose to wear a helmet; I also regularly report dangerous driving to the police and correspond with councils and road authorities about ways infrastructure could be improved for cyclists. I rather doubt I'm the only helmet wearer who does so.
Steve K 12 hours ago
@JamieT (a pedant writes) she's a London Assembly member, not an MP.
eburtthebike 15 hours ago
@Rendel Harris ".....but the claim that wearing one is somehow to be accepting dangerous driving and poor infrastructure is silly." Not that silly. Demanding that cyclists wear a helmet is seen by many people as 'the answer' to cycling safety, so there's no need to put in infrastructure. The difference between infrastructure and helmets is that infrastructure works. Helmets are a distraction from what really works, and the more time we spend talking about them, the less time we spend on things that do work. Helmets should be consigned to the dustbin of history as a failed experiment, and we should cease even mentioning them.
wtjs 15 hours ago
@Mr Blackbird Hats off to George Hall My hat's not coming off- despite this touch of cycleway-washing, Hall still bears the Mark of Cain, until he repudiates his party altogether
JamieT 16 hours ago
Perhaps an article showing a) what is available in the uk as cargo bikes and) comments from real life scenarios from those already using bikes or cargo bikes as one gentleman has done in the comments. Perhaps road.cc could follow up with this. Even the London Assembly member said not every business should use cargo bikes but suggested a more nuanced approach suitable for certain trades or companies....
19 thoughts on “road.cc live blog: STOLEN BIKE ALERT! + Peter Sagan’s #PowerShower,and more”
Who is Chris Voardman? (sic)
Who is Chris Voardman? (sic)
The Hitchens article was
The Hitchens article was pretty good , although it could have done without trotting out the old RLJ line – this is the one paragraph the article could have done without:
I guess the MOS publishing this article means they can tick the box marked alternative viewpoints and carry on as normal with their bike-bashing agenda, which predictably is what you will see in the comments (don’t go there if you want your blood pressure to remain normal) this one’s a peach…
Hitchens lives in Oxford. He
Hitchens lives in Oxford. He cycles.
Obvs he is utterly unsound on nearly every topic other than cycling, but on this one (ignoring the RLJ comment, possibly put in by his editor), he is ok.
Christopher Hitchens???
Christopher Hitchens??? Messages from beyond the grave it seems!
MrB123 wrote:
Good point. Said deceased Hitch drank like a fish, smoked like a Bali volcano and probably never sat on a bike beyond the age of 11. His brother doesn’t smoke, has always appeared not to need alcohol in order to spout the views of a pub bore, but does cycle.
The Times has dropped any
The Times has dropped any pretence of being pro-cycling, not printing the CB article and then printing this:
“Sir, The possibility of compulsory cycle helmets (Leading article, Nov 25 and News, Nov 24) has received the same negative reaction as mandatory motorcycle helmets and car seatbelts in the 1970s and 1980s respectively. Both of these are now accepted as normal and life-saving. One would have thought the cycling lobby would be keen on anything that makes cycling safer. To the suggestion of high-visibility clothing I would add third-party insurance and a change in the law which assumes that in a car-versus-cycle accident it is always the car that is to blame. Cyclists cause accidents as well.
John Deards”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/should-cycle-helmets-be-made-compulsory-fp57hjbvl
Quite why an editor would publish such completely wrong nonsense is hard to divulge, but it is clear that the Times is now with the vast majority of the media, and is anti-cycling.
The cycle -ball defense is up
The cycle -ball defence is up the court as it’s a free kick a bit like what you get with a penalty corner in field hockey, you have limited defenders in the ‘area’.
As for the helmet debate, circa 160,000 serious head injuries admitted into hospital annually from a reported 1.4million head injuries total.
the total cycling KSIs of all types of injuries, on road and off road, single person and including motorvehicles and also including non admissions AND children is 3397, (I can’t find data as to how many of those are head injuries only)
Roughly 75-80% of incidents involving a motorvehicle are the sole fault of the motorist according to police stats, though IMHO I’d reckon it to be even higher given how the police can’t be trusted with how they interpret incidents through their motor-centric biased eyes.
Yup, plastic hats for people on bikes is surely the solution, wankers!
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
Thanks for that. Have you a link to your data source(s), please?
Eton Rifle wrote:
Head injury data is a bit hit and miss and variable in the numbers as no-one seems to like collating it and even some hospitals are loathe to actually respond (around 16 basically gave researchers the middle finger) or simply don’t manage to put the reasons for the head injury on the form.
here this suggests closer to 200,000 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25340248 but that’s just for admissions and reported head injuries, non reported probs push the total of head injuries and serious head injuries up a chunk more.
The KSIs you can find on the .gov site for all years.
The other thing is child head injuries, there is the thinking that putting a helmet on children who cycle is a good idea, personally i think it’s wrong thinking. I have expereincean in this, my son cycled along a quiet 60mph road downhill to high school for 7 years and he wore a lid once before he started there (& still alive now at 26.lol)
We already know the groups that are effected most by risk compensation, adult males particularly those in competition (injury rates, crashes and deaths gone UP since helmet mandation in 2003) but also children. Children take a huge amount of extra risk when they feel protected, this is well known and is recorded many times over in various testing.
Put children into an environ where they feel safer and they will push the boundaries even more, much more than they did before, also adding up to 20% the weight of their heads and increasing the circumference significantly also means banging your head with a helmet (& obviously saving the childs life/saving from total disblement …not) more often than without.
Headway even come out with total lies to a parlimentary committee no less stating that 20,000 children would be saved from head injuries if wearing plastic hats which is utter gash and exceeds the current number of total serious head injuries suffered by children from all walks of life by 14-15,000, and also ignoring the other million plus head injuries that occur elsewhere, wankers.
The last lot of figures i found was 12 child head injury only deaths as an occupant of a motorvehicle in England & wales, the total number of child cycling deaths for the whole of the Uk was SIX, not all of them would have being solely due to head injury and unlikely that a helmet would have made a jot of difference even if they were wearing one.
figures for child only head injuries below but from 2009-10, good luck finding more up to date numbers.
Yes some amazing and welcome
Yes some amazing and welcome rational words (excepting the RLJ stuff) from Peter Hitchens.
And to be fair he has been one of the rare columnists to express spot-on anti-car sentiment before.
Will post link if I can find it.
emishi55 wrote:
Here it is:
One Reason Why I hate Cars
18 January 2012 1:34 PM
OK, so the bus video has been
OK, so the bus video has been removed and replaced by someone who was safely overtaken by a Merc.
Is this going to be a new feature where praise is given on safe overtakes? Otherwise why the fuck would you upload such a video to Youtube?
don simon wrote:
being tailgated is an offence, it’s also very intimidating to say the least with some nobber trying to push past when there’s clearly no safe gap to get past. Maybe you enjoy being tailgated by 2 tons of german wankwagon that has the potential to kill you, personally I don’t.
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
I don’t see anything wrong in this video. I believe the wide angle lens of the camera makes it look like the Merc is closer than it really is. If the cyclist didn’t have the camera I don’t think he would have noticed anyhting other than a car wanting to get past. Impatient? yes, but not dangerous or illegal.
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
Cameras can, and often do, foreshorten distances. So it’s difficult to say whether any law was broken.
Cars sit on the tails of bikes, this one didn’t seem so intimidating as to warrant being called a nobber, they weren’t trying to push past either, I suggest they know the road and were accelerating at an upcomping opportunity and then sitting back when they realised the pass was unsafe. They then waited for what was a safe pass. And overtook.
Cars have a right to use the road too, share it nicely.
don simon wrote:
Not like that and law-breaking ia red herring. The rider clearly felt intimidated or they wouldn’t have posted the video. Isn’t that enough? You think they should “man the f%@& up? In fact, the driver overtook at the first safe opportunity – jolly good – so why in the name of kacked pants are they getting close, falling back, getting close etc when there isn’t an opportunity? Crap driving, pure and simple. No excuses.
PS hilarious reflection of the rider in the mudguard.
Jitensha Oni wrote:
Perhaps they should man the fuck up! You can say fuck here as we are mostly adults, not all though, so I have to be a bit sensitive with the snowflakes. That was not a dangerous pass, nor was the run up.
Bit 50:50 for me, the pass
Bit 50:50 for me, the pass was safe and he/she was a reasonable distance away the majority of the time. The negative being the frequency of trying to look to pass when clearly not safe. Pretty much the exit of every bend saw an acceleration and crossing of the white line getting nearer to the cyclist. An extra second given each time to see there wasn’t a passing opportunity would be a higher standard of driving.
It is sad though that if 100% of drivers were like this then my journey would likely be better…
I’d argue that impatient
I’d argue that impatient driving always has the potential for danger…