Live blog: Removable windscreen for urban bikes; banned driver charged after Essex cyclist was killed in New Year’s Eve crash, Chris Froome to ride Tour de Yorkshire + more
SUMMARY
Froome to race Tour de Yorkshire with World Championships in mind
Chris Froome is hoping to ride the UCI Road World Championships in Yorkshire in September. With that in mind, he aims to ride the Tour de Yorkshire in May.
Froome said: “Yorkshire hosted the start of the Tour de France a few years ago and the atmosphere was just incredible. The Tour de Yorkshire has been growing year on year and I’d love to get out there this year.”
As we reported earlier in the week, both Froome and Geraint Thomas are targeting the Tour de France this year. Thomas said that his Worlds ambitions centred on the time trial.
“Looking at the course for Worlds in Yorkshire, I think the Men’s Elite Individual Time Trial will be my best chance of getting a title. It’ll be a good goal to have for the end of the year. I certainly want to be there because the support in Yorkshire is unbelievable. I think it’s going to be a massive World Championships and I want to be a part of it.”
Entries open for the Cyclone24 at Geraint Thomas National Velodrome
The event takes place on the Newport velodrome now named after the Tour de France champ on October 20-21st, which will see 24 teams of six ride in relay over 24 hours from noon to noon.
if you fancy it then the Early Bird Team Entry is £900 for a team of six, available until 31st December 2018. Standard Team Entry is £999 for a team of six – unless you’ve competed before you also need to attend a taster session to prove your worth on the track first – head here to find out more.
Elan Valley Trust working with Back on Track to design new adventurous trails in Llanerchi Woods
If you’re partial to off-road riding and aren’t far from this picturesque part of Mid-Wales, then there’s good news in the form of potential new and exciting trails at Llanerchi Woods, reports County Times. The Elan Valley Trust says the new trails would “bridge the gap” between easy and difficult mountain bike trails in the Elan Valley.
Jennifer Newman, of Elan Valley Trust, said: “The development of a new woodland biking trail will complement and enhance the current mountain biking available at Elan.
“The construction of the new blue and red trails will provide the much desired for circular routes.”
New bike day for team Deceuninck-QuickStep
Our riders aren’t the only ones waiting for the new season to finally kick off.
Photo: Justin Sullivan pic.twitter.com/XhXEX4hY1R— Deceuninck-QuickStep (@deceuninck_qst) January 3, 2019
New name, and a fleet of shiny new Specialized Tarmacs for Deceuninck-QuickStep riders in 2019.
Turning blue shorts brown...
Australian pro Miles Scotson got a bit of a scare thanks to a mid-corner white line in the Bay Crits series. Thankfully for us and unluckily for Miles, fellow pro Alex Dowsett had a GoPro handy to catch a very good save!
Callum Skinner predictably unhappy with Russian anti-doping situation
Speaking at the time, Callum Skinner said that the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (Wada) decision to lift the suspension of Russia’s anti-doping agency “just stinks basically”.
He’s backed the comments from the Wada Athlete Committee after Russia missed the deadline to hand over doping data from its Moscow lab.
Well done to the @wada_ama Athlete Committee for following the @ukantidoping AC in speaking out.
This isn’t a West vs Russia issue.
It’s about athlete welfare and fair play. All athletes are invested in those values, if only the leaders of WADA and the IOC were too. pic.twitter.com/DUa0yQp4b6
— Callum Skinner (@CallumSkinner) January 2, 2019
The Dutch are spot on again
The Dutch have calculated the benefit/cost to society of different travel modes per urban km travelled. I converted it to £ and miles.
Cycling +98p
Driving -54p
Bus -42phttps://t.co/8lPxlCMPfK@Jesse_Norman how close are these to UK figures? Can we get them published? pic.twitter.com/tdFoUCdxYo— Adam Reynolds (@awjre) January 2, 2019
This time, in realising the benefits that cycling brings to the economy, that has been handily converted into £s by the chairman of Cycle Bath Adam Reynolds. What would the figures look like for the UK, we wonder?
Story update: cyclist killed in Thurrock hit-and-run named by police and banned driver has been charged
The cyclist killed in a hit-and-run in Thurrock, Essex on New Year’s Eve has been identified by police as 43-year-old Alexandru Matei, reports Essex Live. The driver responsible, 31-year-old Ravinger Matharu, has been charged with causing death while disqualified from driving, causing death while uninsured, causing death by aggravated vehicle taking, failing to stop at the scene of an accident and failing to report an accident. He has been remanded in custody to appear at Basildon Magistrates’ Court today.
Pro Conti team hasn't heard of Naomi Klein
“Pass the fully-automatic logo gun, we’ve got a jersey to do.” https://t.co/hUpQ0qyiMB
— Pro Elbows (@pro_elbows) January 3, 2019
Ireland abandons plan for close pass law and sets to work on ‘dangerous overtaking of cyclists’ offence instead
Attorney General felt passing distance would too easily be challenged in court.
"Cycling to work? But what about when it's raining?"
Then you need the Veltop Urban in your life! You get a waterproof basket and the ‘windscreen’ is removable in seconds according to Veltop. We’re intrigued, and will be trying to track one down soon…
British Cycling handed £5.6 million funding boost by Sport England
British Cycling today receive another £5,690,000 funding boost from Sport England in 2019, taking the total received to £17.3 million since 2017. Sport England also announced a £15 million funding injection to be channelled directly in to local community cycling facilities as part of the staging of the 2019 UCI Road World Championships in Yorkshire.
Martin Merryweather, British Cycling’s Strategy Director, said:
“This funding award is fantastic news, and gives us additional momentum and impetus as we look forward to 2019, building on British Cycling’s reputation for successfully combining elite success and increased participation.
“Our HSBC UK Breeze programme has been the hugely successful cornerstone of our women’s strategy, which is on course to encourage one million more women to cycle by 2020. It is our intention to continue to develop and evolve programmes which effectively inspire people from all walks of life to take up cycling, through industry-leading research, insight and dedication.
“This, in addition to the legacy funding for the UCI Road World Championships – which will also be aligned to many of our programmes – is a fantastic boost for recreational cycling as we look forward to 2019, and we’re extremely grateful to Sport England for giving us the opportunity to continue this vital work.”
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@SecretSam That's not really fair, in fact not fair at all. It wasn't his fault that the last two mountain stages were shortened and on the first one he had dropped everyone and was a minute clear as he summitted the Iseran when the stage was neutralised, and on the second he stayed with or dropped all the other GC contenders. You seem to have forgotten his Giro win as well as Paris Nice and the Tour de Suisse. Only the fourth rider to have won the Tour and Giro before the age of twenty-five. Yes he probably couldn't have stayed with Pogacar even if he hadn't had the awful crash, and probably nor could any other rider in history except perhaps Merckx.
@lesterama Bernal has had two whammys. His crash, which he has probably never fully recovered from and Ineos taking a nosedive. They have no focus and no identity.
@Zermattjohn Read the comment I posted about my experience
I bought some Challenge Strada tyres. After a while the sidewalls began to detach from the tyre and the tread became rippled making them unsafe to use. The shop I bought them from asked me to drop them in and he would show the Challenge rep as he was due in the following week. The rep bizarrely firstly claimed that the tyres had failed because they may have been punctured (they hadn’t), then immediately claimed that they had failed because the rear tyre was more worn than the front! I emailed pictures to Challenge and was told they had failed because they had been fitted incorrectly. The black strip they had introduced to stop the issue I had was supposed to be above the rim. Which it clearly was shown to be correct on the pictures I sent to them which proved that the tyres were correctly fitted. This seems to be the norm now in the cycle industry, if there is an issue with a product, the company automatically blames the end user rather than look to address the issue, thereby pissing the customer off. A pissed off customer rarely returns.
@kingleo And there are hundreds, if not thousands of people holding up a shattered helmet saying it saved their life, the doctor/policeman told me.
I spend a month most years in China because of family, and a cargo bike there with an electric motorbike style front end and either LFP or advanced lead acid batteries, costs under £100 and is the backbone of every trade. There are a hundred different kinds but what they share in common is functionality and cheapness. Even the ancient pedal pulled wooden wagons with literally welded spokes from the sixties have been electrified with e-motors attached to the underside - and they cost sod all. In China cheap transport for business is a public good like drinking water. Because to get people to work you have to make work affordable. That's a secret of capitalism we in the UK could do better to learn.
@Zermattjohn handmade genuinely means handmade with Challenge. You cannot compare ride quality of a mass produced, vulcanized Panaracer tyre with these. The ride quality is incredibly supple, and can transform a riding experience. More expensive yes, but worth every penny!
@SecretSam 2019 Tour (don't see anyone else putting their hand up to say they won it), 2021 Giro, 2019 Paris-Nice, 2019 Tour de Suisse, 2018 Tour of California. So I'd say Lesterama is about right with his burned bright comment.
"Over 1,000 dockless bikes seized in Westminster The authority said the bikes would continue to be removed where they caused an obstruction, with operators charged for their return." Would love to know how many motor vehicles were removed (and their "operators" charged for their return) for the same reason. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c84g1x0g0d42o
@OnYerBike Thanks for the interesting article link (table below for any interested), as you say it does show that the top 10% of pros manage 4.63 w/kg over four hours, but that only extrapolates to 325W if the rider is 70kg, and of course a lot of them are well below that, e.g. Vinegaard 60kg so his power over four hours would be more like 279W at that w/kg. Note also that the average for the bottom 90% is "only" 3.83 w/kg, so the average 68kg (World Tour average weight) rider in that cohort would be putting out 260W over four hours. So I'd still argue that across the average of the peleton, with 10% capable of about 325W over four hours and the other 90% about 260W, a figure for the whole peleton of around 280-290W would be more realistic.
5 thoughts on “Live blog: Removable windscreen for urban bikes; banned driver charged after Essex cyclist was killed in New Year’s Eve crash, Chris Froome to ride Tour de Yorkshire + more”
Yet another banned driver
Yet another banned driver involved in a death. We have to have a better system for preventing these people from driving and detecting them when they do, as they clearly obey no laws nor respect the life and limb of other people.
It can’t be beyond the wit of scientists and technicians to develop a cheap, universal system for ensuring that a driver is legal.
I’m sure the government review of road law will address this issue, but the backlog of issues is now ominously long. Still, I’m sure it’ll happen any day now.
‘Froome lands on British soil
‘Froome lands on British soil in Knighthood bid.’
The problem with enforcing
The problem with enforcing bans with technical means is that it needs to be continuous authentication. So that means biometrics, and the only systems that really make sense for that are iris recognition or heart rhythm. They’re expensive, and probably not good enough to be 100% successful at preventing banned drivers from driving, plus there is a substantial risk of false positives for the non-banned population. And there are privacy aspects because the continuous authentication would require reference to a central database and potentially end up tracking everyone’s journeys.
I don’t think facial recognition is sufficiently good to be able to use the ANPR technology to prevent use of the road network.
That leaves legal enforcement. I think a ban backed with a mandatory prison sentence (or 24hr curfew) is probably the best option. If you’re caught driving whilst banned (admittedly unlikely) you go to prison for a year. Do it again and its five years. And life bans should be mandatory for persistent offenders.
None of this will happen until we get the right sort of victim, or a truly exceptional death toll. Even then it probably won’t – the bus driver with persistent health issues in Scotland springs to mind.
kil0ran wrote:
it could be done fairly easily with fingerprint readers on smart keys.
Those removable screens for
Those removable screens for cycling in the rain are really popular in China and have been available for years there.