road.cc live blog: How to watch the Cyclo-cross Worlds, 12 riders test positive at one race, Should drivers with points on their licence be required to have black box car insurance? + more
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Fri, Feb 02, 2018 09:00
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Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn’t especially like cake.
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Latest Comments
HLaB 27 minutes ago
He "never thought of that" and "some of my best friends are" . Sounds like he doesn't think of much and is just blinded by his hatred into inventing things. Why is road.cc giving him air space!
the little onion 42 minutes ago
Barry Shitpeas (Philomena Cunk's sidekick) was a very prescient character. Basically a quarter-wit expressing ignorant opinions without any understanding of the issues at hand, with ample doses of Dunning-Kruger.
chrisonabike 57 minutes ago
Never mind the police - many cyclists (at least in the UK) would be totally unfamiliar with a velomobile, so perhaps police can be forgiven for ignorance there. (I've "normal" recumbents and even those cause lots of head-turning). And for "e-things" the tail of the market is very much wagging the dog of regulation. Or rather there's almost zero political interest in that. In an ideal world someone would find the money and time to get the police trained - but I wonder if most of them even keep abreast of things like the highway code wording tweaks? (Do those not specialised in road policing / pursuit driving get any more training than the average driver eg "enough to pass the test, once per lifetime"?)
Mr Blackbird 1 hour ago
I thought that the lengthy technical downhill section on narrow roads was a poor piece of organisation. It was inevitable that faster riders with their team car would catch up with team cars of slower riders. Riders passing each other was a bit of a lottery at times. The camera motorbikes struggled to get out of the way at times.
mdavidford 2 hours ago
It's not a 'statement' though - it's road.cc's words, based on l'Equipe's interpretation. The actual statement issued on it said that the judge authorised it "guaranteeing strict proportionality between the infringements on the rights of the athlete and the stakes of the fight against doping in terms of fair competition and protection of his health."
Rendel Harris 2 hours ago
Trust me Callum, if you'd grown up watching the Tour in the 1980s, as I did, you would not be hankering after those long flat stages that weren't even as exciting as watching paint dry, it was more like listening to paint dry. As for the supposed benefits of those long TTs, what did they give us? Indurain winning five Tours in a row without winning a single road stage in any of them. As McT says below, you simply can't Pogacar-proof a course and we just have to accept, and enjoy, the fact that we are watching the greatest GT cyclist of all time. Anyway I think it has been a great Tour so far, yes no enormous drama about the inevitable winner (though of course Vinegaard and now Lipowitz have shown us that anything can happen) but just about every day has had a fascinating plot and multiple subplots. Some time in the future there will be another Indurain-style winner, playing it cautious, following moves, making incremental gains and winning without ever lighting up the race and we'll be saying I wish the old days of Pogacar making those spectacular solo breaks were back.
Gravel1-2 2 hours ago
The main issue is the layout of the stages with the bigger climb first then a shallow finish climb. It means pogacar can get a gap at the top of the big climb and then stretch 10-15 seconds to a minute plus at the finish over smaller riders like Vingegaard. A summit finish on the hardest climb might not lead to the most exciting racing but equally would keep the gaps closer. I totally agree with the TT kms though, they should have 60+km tts in the grand tours.
mctrials23 3 hours ago
@MaxiMinimalist I mean, that statement makes it sound like they had reason to think those two are doping. Either they didn't follow procedure and are making shit up to cover themselves up or something is going on.
Mr Blackbird 3 hours ago
Quite possibly. But the changeover time loss would be a bit more significant if it was done on the flat just after the downhill when the riders are travelling faster, the deceleration, changeover and acceleration loss could easily be around 30 seconds, which is quite a lot of a 34 minute effort.
mitsky 3 hours ago
So Skoda have taken a leaf out of Dung-Old Karen Taco Trump's book and are re-naming something when they have no authority to do so?
25 thoughts on “road.cc live blog: How to watch the Cyclo-cross Worlds, 12 riders test positive at one race, Should drivers with points on their licence be required to have black box car insurance? + more”
I doubt there would be enough
I doubt there would be enough black boxes for all drivers with points, let alone engineers to fit them. Making them mandatory for any driving offence not covered by a fixed penalty notice would appear entirely reasonable though.
Grahamd wrote:
Nothing to fit, no engineers needed. One of the UK’s largest insurers, Aviva, do this through a phone app.
Quote:
Yes.
I think a better idea to the
I think a better idea to the insurance thing would be something that goes on your numberplate outlining the type of offence, eg as symbol to show you’ve been caught speeding, one for texting while driving, one for drink driving. the shame would probably be enough to stop a number of people, especially those with personalised plates, wouldnt want that ruined with something that shows you’ve been caught drinking and speeding, it’d help other motorists and the police identify who to look out for too.
RobD wrote:
You would get some people who’d make that a collectable thing, and want to get the whole set
RobD wrote:
There speaks the voice of someone who has a car for each member of the household.
For the rest of us who have several people using the one vehicle then that would not work
Given that the current system
Given that the current system clearly isn’t working, we need to look at alternatives, and this one seems quite promising. Some drivers might try using the big brother argument and privacy issues, and there is some traction in those, but I think my life and the lives of my loved ones is more important.
Until we have 100% driverless cars, human error by drivers will continue to kill thousands a year, and maim tens of thousands more. If it was any other field of human activity, it would be banned until the problems had been solved, but because we are a car-centric society, our politians are too weak to do this.
I’d suggest that this actually doesn’t go far enough, and all new cars should be fitted with the black box.
burtthebike wrote:
Be careful what you wish for, there’s plenty of reasonably founded speculation that the autonomous vehicle lobby will seek for segregated lanes, stealing valuable and ever-dwindling street space from human powered transport. And unlike us after some decent cycle lanes worth a damn, they’ve got existing funds and the elusive promise of £b for the economy to sway councils’ decisions and get protective legislation in place.
ROOTminus1 wrote:
“… there’s plenty of reasonably founded speculation that the autonomous vehicle lobby will seek for segregated lanes…”
No there isn’t. Driverless vehicles will need less space because they will be following the lane, not weaving around like humans do, so they’ll need less space.
But please feel free to continue your scaremongering.
Telematics is interesting in
Telematics is interesting in how they incentivise good driver behaviour. A mate’s son has just passed his test, he gets extra mileage added to his allowance on a monthly basis if he scores well on speeding. Sounds great but then there’s the clause where they’ll cancel his insurance if he drives 30mph over the speed limit. Not sure if that’s a sliding scale at lower speeds but what sort of message does that send?
kil0ran wrote:
It sends the message not to speed.
rct wrote:
It sends the message not to speed.— kil0ran
It sends the message that driving 29mph over the speed limit is OK because all it means is he’ll lose mileage bonuses that he doesn’t currently need. That’s how my mate’s kid has interpreted it. Now if there was a market where he could sell earned miles that might work…
The only thing these black
The only thing these black boxes do is to control the top speed of drivers in known speed limit areas. If the speed limt has been changed temporarily (roadworks for example) it is not registered.
Also, it does not stop the ever increasing “I’ll ignore that red light because I won’t be caught” attitude!
So I don’t see how it will improve safety other than control the top speed of those who do speed and get caught. All other aspects of bad driving (aggression, middle lane hogging, jumping red lights, driving too close, parking on pavements etc etc) will simply continue to happen and get worse.
The solution is more cameras and / or more police on the roads
Marky Legs wrote:
Don’t they also use an accelerometer to measure heavy acceleration, braking, and cornering?
Perhaps they don’t solve every problem but a partial solution to any problem is usually better than no solution.
portec wrote:
I thought black boxes in cars just measured G forces. The phone apps use GPS tracking as well.
What if one circumvents this
What if one circumvents this blackbox by using a hire car? They can easily say they forgot to take the box with them when switching vehicles.
Hire companies should also up their standards and run checks on drivers
RoubaixCube wrote:
Many do, but also every check involves a charge from the DVLA and the appointed technology providors the DVLA saw fit to work with. If every customer was checked in full, that would require to pass the cost onto the customer, increasing your car rental costs, and right now the industry is being squeezed by price, so not a straight forward thing.
Technology is also going into cars that would enable a company to montior how the car is being driven, where and at what speed. it isn’t being used for those purposes but the potential is there, but you have GDPR, data protection and human rights regulations screaming out at you. It’s a much bigger topic. We can do all of this and more…..and what? End up like China where freedom & rights are a joke.
Be carefull what you wish for
Be carefull what you wish for. Only a hop skip and a jump to boxes being extended to bikes.
I am all for punishment for bad behaviour but I am also a beleaver in right to privacy.
jimt wrote:
When they fit effective black boxes to every car as a legal requirement I’ll be delighted to fit one on the road bike. By all means have privacy, but if you insist on driving a tonne or so of polluting monstrosity maybe you should have to make that sacrifice?
jimt wrote:
What’s a ‘beleaver’? Is it the opposite of a ‘remainer’ ?
Who are you going to get to
Who are you going to get to pay for the black boxes? Currently they are offered for free by insurance companies because insurance companies believe they will reduce claims or at least provide data that allows the insurer to better price insurance (i.e., insurers are willing to pay for them because they benefit the insurer). Can’t see insurers forking out for blanket installation for good of cyclists/other vulnerable road users. Good luck trying to convince the govt to add them to all vehicles (queue outrage from motorists about added cost of motoring in times of austerity). In August last year the FT reported that “[telematics boxes]can cost as little as £50 to buy now, and less than that to install” so maybe the solution will ultimately be that they get so cheap it stops being an issue. The other problem about blanket installation (before you get to privacy concerns) is that it will make some people economically uninsurable. There’s an argument these people shouldn’t be driving anyway. But tey probably will and they probably will continue to do so, just on an uninsured basis, which may not be a great outcome as they are more likely to have collisions.
surly_by_name wrote:
Many, if not most late model cars (post 2012?) have this installed already. Car makers install it as part of the airbag and crash prevention systems, it stores data for the last 2 minutes. The data from these has been used in a number of court cases here down under to establish the behaviour of the driver immediately prior to the accident. The technology is already there.
Arguably making on board
Arguably making on board camera’s a legal requirement. If you know you are on film it will have an impact on a lot of bad driving. it won’t stop the narsacistic idiots and illegal drivers who just don’t care but it could provide a cultural change
the down side is you need resource to review, laws to support, police to action and something to protect all those genuine mistakes and edge cases……and it is very 1984……so it won’t happen…maybe.
Simmo72 wrote:
Personally, I think this is a great idea, and make a non functioning camera an mot fail. In most cases I suspect evidence would be captured on 3rd party vehicles, rather than the offending vehicle, but that’s ok. I have always thought plod had a bias towards catching speeders as opposed to other traffic offences because it is easy, and conclusive, to read a number from a display, compared for example to arguing that somebody jumped the lights. Cameras would give plod the evidence they need. But as you say, there are too many PC people in the UK who would argue infringement of civil liberties. Presumably meaning spouses could check up on where cheating partners had been while supposedly working late!
1) This reinforces the common
1) This reinforces the common misconception that it is always safe to drive at the speed limit, rather than educating drivers to judge what is safe.
2) Speeding is only one form of dangerous driving, and a black box does nothing to stop tailgating, poor discipline at junctions, blind overtaking, and so on.