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Live blog: Climb for Costa update, Froome and Uran hit the dancefloor, catching the bus Dafne Fixed style + more
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Wed, Nov 07, 2018 08:36
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Jack is group editor across road.cc, off.road.cc and ebiketips, overseeing all three sites in the F-At Digital group to make sure everything’s up to scratch. He’s been writing about cycling and multisport for over a decade, arriving at road.cc via 220 Triathlon Magazine in 2017. He worked across all areas of road.cc including tech, news and video, and also contributed to ebiketips before being named editor of road.cc in 2021 (much to his surprise). Jack has been hooked on cycling since his student days, and currently has a Trek 1.2 for winter riding, a beloved Bickerton folding bike for getting around town, and an extra beloved custom Ridley Helium SLX for fantasising about going fast in his stable. Jack has never won a bike race, but does have a master’s degree in print journalism, and two Guinness World Records for pogo sticking (it’s a long story).
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Latest Comments
eburtthebike 17 minutes ago
"Over the course of the evening, your friend made Gabrielle Debotte write a note on her phone with a false account that she had not seen you on the day of the collision at all." I sincerely hope that friend is in police custody awaiting trial for aiding and abetting and perverting the course of justice. And I hope he gets the same judge.
wtjs 22 minutes ago
@rbrtribble All accidents including eg: a touch of a bumper should be reported to the police and an interview with a traffic cop before driving away from the scene What sort of dream world is this?! None of these fanciful wishes will happen in the car-crazed 'we'll give you a subsidy so you can drive and park everywhere with no thought to sensible fuel-conserving driving' UK. Sadly, the succession of dreadful Tory nonentity transport ministers has been followed by a succession of equally dreadful Labour ones, all desperate to avoid being accused of the 'war on the motorist'. Lilian Greenwood was charged with implementing the January 26 Government Road Safety Strategy until she was moved to be replaced by another deadbeat intent on doing nothing for fear of upsetting drivers. Labour could fight the established police strategy of ignoring and actively opposing any legislation to the benefit of cyclists, but they won't. The police are intent on protecting motorists from VED evasion, MOT offences, mobile phone offences, white line offences and most importantly cyclist-close-passing offences. I ask yet again for the evidence of effective police action against this latter offence (not the joke advice letter or joke driving course), but this evidence never appears. The obvious conclusion is that this police action does not exist.
eburtthebike 24 minutes ago
@kingleo They aren't the only ones!
Rendel Harris 30 minutes ago
@Sniffer This is why I would like to see every driving licence having a readable chip that showed the driver status and making it impossible to get fuel from a petrol station without presenting it at the pump as proof of validity. Of course there would be ways around it, getting mates to fill up the car etc, but with an estimated 650,000 unlicensed or licence suspended drivers in the UK restricting the fuel supply could do a lot to hamper them. The same chip could carry proof of insurance and MOT for the car, again, no proof, no fuel. Cut offenders off at source.
eburtthebike 49 minutes ago
Whilst extreme cases shouldn't make law, this case does demonstrate that the justice system is failing to protect innocent road users. If people continually to break the law, then either the crimes aren't being detected or the punishments are not severe enough. In the case of road law, it's both, and the chances of being caught driving dangerously are miniscule, and even if caught, the offender will at most be banned, which they can and do, ignore. So how to get dangerous drivers to reform or make sure they don't drive? 1. Police on bikes. Just look at how many criminals cycling mikey has had convicted. A real police constable could do so much more. 2. When caught, immediate impounding of vehicle, rapid review by a judge, so the punishment immediately follows the crime. 3. No points on licence, no hardship pleading, just removal of licence. Three months for a first offence, then rapidly escalating to lifetime ban for the fourth. 4. Anyone caught driving whilst banned gets an immediate three month prison sentence, second offence a year, third ten years. I'm sure there are plenty of other good ways of making our roads safer by removing the incompetent and dangerous drivers, but it's a start.
Mr Blackbird 1 hour ago
Having visited Spalding several times, my greatest fear is entering some of the shops.
andystow 1 hour ago
@This Wreckage oh, I'm well aware. They still do it here in the US.
andystow 1 hour ago
@rgriffith7 I don't know where you live, but having ridden quite a bit in both the US and the UK, I'd take the UK any day.
kil0ran 2 hours ago
@davids oh yeah. It's been a long day already here. I'll see if I can edit, thanks
rbrtribble 3 hours ago
@Sniffer great comment, I reckon five years (no parole) in prison for driving while banned will keep them off the road when convicted.
18 thoughts on “Live blog: Climb for Costa update, Froome and Uran hit the dancefloor, catching the bus Dafne Fixed style + more”
Given their pricing I think
Given their pricing I think the idea is a DOA. £1 unlock + 20p a minute. £5 for a small journey – bargain!
Just get a bike.
Those e scooters were
Those e scooters were featured on BBC R4 news yesterday, quite an extended piece, detailing all the environmental benefits etc; longer than they have spent discussing the overwhelming greater benefits of cycling in the past thirty years. The BBC apparently has a blanket ban on even mentioning the incredible benefits of cycling, and the recent phone in on the You and Yours prog barely mentioned them, only when callers said how good they had been.
Given the overwhelming benefits of cycling, congestion, pollution, health, obesity etc, one might think that it would be front and centre of any item about those subjects, but it is never mentioned by the BBC. If anything else had half the benefits of cycling, they would be all over it 24/7/365.
The rest of the media is barely any better.
Crocs yes, but where are the
Crocs yes, but where are the pink pyjamas?!!!
Cue the usual late middle
Cue the usual late middle aged men braying about what people should be doing.
One less person on a toxic fume emitting mode of transport is good by me. I have no problem with the scooterers I’ve come across on the roads. Leave your crab in a bucket mentality alone and mob up with potential allies against the death cage lobby instead.
roadmanshaq wrote:
Which scooterers were these, considering they are illegal to use on the road?
Wait until someone kills an OAP on the pavement then you can talk about ‘death scoots’ instead of ‘death cages’ . There’s nothing fundamentally dangerous about cars…..unless you don’t control them properly. Same difference.
You’ll never win against the ‘death cage’ lobby anyway. It’s a multi-billion pound industry. Scooters….not so much.
It think the most telling part of scootering is you look like a bellend. Maybe if you’re one of radical kids that pop barspins and 360 on normal manual ones. Being a cyclist puts you into a lower social grouping so god knows what using a scooter does to you unless you’re a hipster.
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
What a load of garbage. Cars and other motor vehicles kill thousands a year via fumes and particulates alone. You’re just completely ignorant of basic environmental health and there is no point continuing a chat with someone so clearly proud of being a blustering, anti intellectual fool.
roadmanshaq wrote:
Considering that one of the complaints often used against cyclists is “bl00dy stupid adults playing on their toys”, with a failure to see bicycles as a valid form of non “toxic fume emitting mode of transport” and with a commensurate loss of status as a road user, exactly how far down the ladder do you think using an e-scooter will put you?
And, as YW rightly says, how long until some e-scooterer knocks someone down (whether or not its their fault) and the Tabloid Hounds are let loose on them…??
brooksby wrote:
Thinking that you’re ever going to win the public argument by appeasement is the worst fallacy there is. The suffragettes and civil Rights movement didn’t get their way by meekly soliciting the media’s OK and only a fool would think that method would work re rididng our society of the tyranny of the death cage.
roadmanshaq wrote:
Considering that one of the complaints often used against cyclists is “bl00dy stupid adults playing on their toys”, with a failure to see bicycles as a valid form of non “toxic fume emitting mode of transport” and with a commensurate loss of status as a road user, exactly how far down the ladder do you think using an e-scooter will put you?
And, as YW rightly says, how long until some e-scooterer knocks someone down (whether or not its their fault) and the Tabloid Hounds are let loose on them…??
— roadmanshaq Thinking that you’re ever going to win the public argument by appeasement is the worst fallacy there is. The suffragettes and civil Rights movement didn’t get their way by meekly soliciting the media’s OK and only a fool would think that method would work re rididng our society of the tyranny of the death cage.— brooksby
Excuse me?
My point, I think, was that many people already think that cycling is too dangerous and wouldn’t dream of cycling in with motor traffic, so how many people do you think would want to mix it with motor traffic on a scooter (even one with a LiOn battery for a motor)?
My other point was that cyclists=”evil runners down of poor pedestrians” in some corners of the media, and that all that vitriol would come crashing down on e-scooterists too as soon as there was the slightest hint of “Oh, well they nearly run me down, they did!”.
And as a final point, though I do take on board that we need to get people out of their cars, I’m still umming about e-bikes at present (got buzzed by one on my non-electric bike recently) so e-scooters are for me a bit of a step too far.
Final, final point, is that I’m really not sure that campaigning for cycling infrastructure or for alternatives to the motor car is truly comparable to the suffragettes or the civil rights movement. I understand the analogy, but…
brooksby wrote:
— brooksbyGiven that you exhibit complete ignorance of the harm caused by motor vehicles in pollution and maiming of normal people in their thousands, every year, I will not sweat your small minded Benedict Arnold chasing down of ebike riders and scooterers.
Get your priorities right.
roadmanshaq wrote:
Don’t be a middle aged brayer telling people what to do, mob up with the potential allies against the death cage lobby instead, and then tell people what to do.
These scooters have been
These scooters have been noted to have been left in really awkward places where they’ve been deployed in the states – partially blocking pavements, right next to crossings, and on street corners, for a few examples.
At least with these, they’re going to be a shape and size where I can easily chuck them out of my path if they’re in the way of my wheelchair – Obikes etc are way too bloody heavy, I usually end up just shoving them aside.
I have no problem with them in principle – anything to help bridge that last-mile gap and coax people out of cars – but like bloody sodding sandwich boards, if they’re taking up pavement in such a way as to present a navigational hazard to MI and VI pedestrians, then they shouldn’t be there and should be removed, before somebody either gets hurt or, ehem, accidentally damages them with their wheelchair.
Plenty of people in London on
Plenty of people in London on scooters of all sorts, skates, rollerblades, skateboards and even electric skateboards, all just getting on with it. Law needed to change ages ago. Anything that gets people out of their short-distance car journeys.
General Motors competition –
General Motors competition – I name this bike, “Fugly”
I think they need seatbelts,
I think they need seatbelts, airbags, numberplates, riders to wear helmets and Sa-vile’s wardrobe… then yes.
Actually, having not seen them i may be wrong, but the thing that would concern me is the wheels. Are they big enough to tackle the average pavement…
“GM are branching out and
“GM are branching out and have developed a folding e-bike… and presumably after a creative block in the boardroom they’re now asking members of the public to give them a hand naming it.”
Has “Too lazy to walk” been taken?
I do not think brooksby is
I do not think brooksby is ignorant of any of the things that you accuse him of there, perhaps you should read some of his other posts.
I also don’t think that the legality for escooters sits anywhere close to votes for women or the removal of the Jim Crow laws.
Segways never managed to be legal, nor did the hoverboard craze, these escooter people had better have very deep pockets, the Tory party don’t come very cheap.
Yes because you’re a fool –
Yes because you’re a fool – he literally claimed ‘cars do no harm’ in this same page ignoring the deaths and injuries caused by air pollution.
I have a right to not choke on toxic fumes and die a premature death, how about you start sticking up for yourself instead of rolling over for the death cagers like a tame dog. Scooterers are allies against the institutional ruination of our breathing gases.