“What on earth have we just seen?” Cycling ‘fan’ kicks bottle into bunch, causing rider to crash; BBC accused of “demonising e-bikes” as cyclist says they’re more dangerous than cars; Telegraph brands middle-aged bike mums “pests” + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
“What on earth have we just seen?” Cycling ‘fan’ kicks bottle into bunch and causes rider to crash, as fuming teammate scolds spectator
Some bizarre scenes from the first stage of the Giro d’Abruzzo this afternoon, where a spectator appears to have caused a crash after kicking a rider’s discarded bottle back into the peloton.
The baffling incident took place with around 24km of the four-day race’s opening stage between Cupello and Casalincontrada, in central Italy.
As the peloton ascended the steady climb to Gaurdiagrele, an empty bottle can be seen gently rolling to the side of the road, after being tossed by one of the riders near the front.
Nella prima tappa del Giro d’Abruzzo 2026, uno spettatore ha rilanciato una borraccia sulla strada, facendola finire in mezzo al gruppo. Il corridore della EF Peyton Burckel si è quindi distratto, finendo a terra 🤬💥#Ciclismo #Cycling #IlGirodAbruzzo pic.twitter.com/Mifrksz9WF
— Eurosport IT (@Eurosport_IT) September 15, 2026
Of course, as any cycling fan knows, this is a common occurrence during bike races, with riders tending to lob discarded bidons in the direction of roadside fans, who take them home and cherish them as souvenirs. Seriously, at races like the Tour de France, bidon hunting is a sport of its own.
That wasn’t the case for one spectator today, however, who responded to the rider’s bottle pass by toe poking – for reasons only he can explain – the bidon back into the bunch.
As the bottle rattled around, bouncing off the riders’ wheels, one EF Education-Aevolo rider (representing the WorldTour outfit’s feeder team) raised his arms in disapproval at the spectator’s bizarre actions, appearing to wag his finger in his direction.
Less than a second later, the confusion leads to a touch of wheels and another EF rider – young American Peyton Burckel – hits the deck.
Over in the TNT Sports commentary box, Jez Cox was rather understandably baffled by what he’d just witnessed.
“What on earth? What on earth have we just seen?” Cox said as he viewed a replay of the bottle kick.
“I’ve no idea what’s gone on there, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. The two things might be unrelated, have I imagined that? I hope I have.”
View this post on Instagram
Thankfully, Burckel escaped without any serious injuries and managed to get back on his bike and regain contact with the peloton. At the finish, Italian Alessandro Fancellu of MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort (now that’s a proper team name) held off Tudor’s Mathys Rondel for the win with a stunning long-range sprint, taking the leader’s jersey in the process.
The headlines from the opening stage of the Giro d’Abruzzo will, much to the chagrin of the organisers I’m sure, be dominated by one spectator’s foolish move. Of course, the ‘fan’ and his one-two with the peloton isn’t the first time the peloton has been endangered by the actions of spectators in Italy this year, unfortunately.
During this year’s Giro d’Italia stage to Naples, two spectators were widely condemned by cycling fans after they stepped onto the road and lunged towards the peloton on a roundabout. A number of riders, including former race leader Thomas Silva, were forced to swerve to avoid the men, who aimed kicks in their direction, while Soudal Quick-Step’s Gianmarco Garofoli was pushed by one of the spectators.
The incident, captured on the TV cameras, was also filmed by what appeared to a friend of the men and posted on social media, the clip showing the spectators laughing throughout the incident. Two of the men, aged 19 and 20, were later charged by police with endangering public safety during a sporting event.
“The BBC’s shoddy reporting is leading to more dangerous roads”: Broadcaster accused of “dogged determination to demonise e-bikes” after cyclist injured in cycle lane crash claims “recklessly driven e-bikes are a far bigger danger” than drivers
Another week, another questionably worded BBC report about ‘e-bikes’. I’m sensing something of a pattern emerging here.
Last Monday, you may remember, Callum reported on this very live blog that Auntie Beeb’s news team came in for criticism after erroneously describing an illegal, high-speed bike user, stopped by police, as “an e-bike driver”. No mention of EAPCs, 15.5mph cut-offs, e-bike law, nothing.
Well, this week, they’re at it again.
Yesterday, the BBC published an interview with Morwenna Hughes, a cyclist who was seriously injured in a collision on a two-way cycle lane in Hammersmith in June. Morwenna suffered facial injuries in the crash and may not regain full mobility in her left arm.
Hughes, a cyclist in London for the past 25 years, says the incident happened so fast she couldn’t tell what kind of ‘e-bike’ the person who hit her was riding.
Nevertheless, she told the BBC that e-bikes should be subject to registration (though, as we point out all the time, if an illegal or modified bike was involved, it has to be registered and licensed to be used on the road).
View this post on Instagram
And according to Hughes, ‘e-bikes’ (presumably of all legal stripes) are now a bigger danger to cyclists on the road than motorists, despite 60 of the 79 crashes which killed a cyclist in the UK last year involving a driver, and two involving another person on a bike.
(While cyclist deaths dropped again in 2025, the number of people on bikes injured increased sharply by 14 per cent. However, when we asked the Department for Transport, it said there is currently no way of finding out how many of these collisions and incidents involved electric motorbikes and illegally modified e-bikes.)
“I’m a huge fan of cycling and I’m an advocate for getting people on bikes,” Hughes said.
“But this has really shaken my confidence both as a cyclist but also as a pedestrian. And just being even a pedestrian in busy areas where there’s e-bikes around, I feel very anxious.
“Up until maybe a year ago, cars always felt like the biggest danger to me. But I think in the last year, I definitely feel that recklessly driven e-bikes are a far bigger danger to cyclists.
“And it feels like it is just increasing. So I do feel like it has got progressively worse over the last few months to the point now where in some parts of my commute, I feel like you’re almost outnumbered by e-bikes.”
But what kind of e-bikes? This is where the BBC’s report doesn’t really help when it comes to clarifying things.
Take this section, for instance, which manages to link illegally modified, high-speed bikes, legally classed as motorcycles, with legal hire bikes.
Hospitals have reported an increase in injuries to both riders and pedestrians.
Legal e-bikes can only go 15.5mph but many are illegally tampered with or “chipped” to go much faster and should technically be classed as motorbikes.
As first reported on BBC London, Jane Ouartsi was hit by a minor riding a Lime bike.
The impact was very serious and long lasting. She suffered a broken femur, a fractured collar bone and two spinal fractures requiring three operations.
Meanwhile, Hughes also reckons the proliferation of Lime, Forest, and Voi e-bikes in London have contributed to the rise of reckless riding.
“If people are renting Lime bikes or Forest bikes, they’re paying by the minute,” she said.
“I understand they might want to get to their destination as quickly as possible but there are so many people cycling recklessly and because they are unaccountable for their reckless cycling.”
In a statement to the BBC, buried near the bottom of the story, the London Cycling Campaign’s Tom Fyans pointed out that all-important distinction between legal e-bikes and their high-speed, illegal counterparts.
”Legal e-bikes help get loads more people cycle who never would have otherwise – with all the benefits to health, climate, pollution and yes reducing road danger these bring,” Fyans said.
“But we need to tackle the illegal bikes and ensure every road user, cyclist or not, obeys the Highway Code, to keep us all safe.”
Fyans’ helpful quote, however, wasn’t enough to prevent the BBC from getting another healthy dose of criticism for their reporting on all things e-bike.
“You never see this kind of anguish about drivers and cars do you?” Gaz wrote on BlueSky. “Cyclists say recklessly ridden and illegally souped up cars have become a danger to them on the capital’s bike lanes and roads.
“But then it’s the BBC and their dogged determination to demonise e-bikes.”
“You mean e-motorcyclist right, not e-bike rider, two different things!” noted Tony on Facebook.
Jack Fifield added: “BBC London posts a video where someone injured by an e-bike rider (type of e-bike, whether legal or illegal, unspecified) says the danger from e-bikes is greater than cars.
“No stats presented to show that this is demonstrably false. The BBC’s shoddy reporting is leading to more dangerous roads.”
“Without invalidating the experience of this person, this certainly isn’t universal,” Anton argued on Instagram. “Let’s remember that for every serious injury caused by an e-bike this year there are very approximately 30 caused by motor vehicles.
“I find it odd this account is silent on those. I wouldn’t object to tracking and publicising these rates more carefully, but for the love of god can we have some journalism?”
Same time, same place next week, alright?
Telegraph columnist brands e-bike riders “reckless pests” – including “entitled, middle-aged mums” on cargo bikes
It’s going to be one of those days, isn’t it?
Not to be outdone by Auntie, the big wigs at the Telegraph decided this morning that 37 hours (give or take a few minutes) was clearly long enough without an anti-cycling or e-bike story appearing on their illustrious web pages.
So, they commissioned their cyclist hater-in-chief Celia Walden to get in on the act.
Walden, you may recall, penned that infamous, poorly timed tirade against cyclists back in 2011, when she described people on bikes as “plugged in their iPods, calmly humming ‘lalalalala’ along to Sasha Distel, as that articulated lorry indicates left” – in the same week a London cyclist was killed by a HGV driver with a faulty indicator turning left into her path.
> Lorry that killed Paula Jurek had faulty indicator inquest told – CPS dropped case against driver
Yes, that Celia Walden.
In May, Walden (the daughter of one of Margaret Thatcher’s ministers) also popped up on this live blog after she accused “red light flouting” cyclists of “terrorising children and the elderly”.
So, who does she have it out for this time? Well, kids on Lime bikes and mums on the school run, apparently.
In her latest column, titled ‘Failure to act on e-bikes is now wilful negligence’, Walden doesn’t even pull off the BBC trick and confuse legal and illegal e-bikes – in fact, it’s the legal ones she’s concerned about. Or the “reckless pavement pests”, as she calls them.
“I live near a busy high street, where at least once a week I’ll be forced to dodge everyone from 10-year-old boys racing each other on Lime Bikes outside Waitrose to entitled middle-aged mums careering along at twice the speed of traffic on pretty, higher-end models,” she writes.
“You know the ones, they’re deceptively dainty, styled like old-fashioned pushbikes, but look down at the wheels (coming straight at you) and they’re as thick as those on motorbikes.”
Hmmm… Turns out Walden is a bit confused, after all. I told you it’s going to be a long day.
“They couldn’t steal my bicycle, but they did take my mobile phone”
Bikejacking is, unfortunately, a global issue, as the peloton’s grizzled veteran Oscar Sevilla discovered (again) to his cost this week in Colombia:
> 49-year-old pro cyclist Oscar Sevilla victim of an armed robbery whilst training in Colombia
Tom Pidcock, Zoe Backstedt, Adam Yates, and Cat Ferguson headline 36-strong British squad for Montreal world championships
Yes, it’s that time of the year folks, when the world championship squad announcements start rolling in, a few days out from the start of the annual rainbow-themed week-long festival of bike racing in Montreal.
And today was the turn of good ol’ Team GB, who have announced a pretty strong all-round line-up for next week’s races, led by Tom Pidcock and Zoe Backstedt.
Pidcock heads into the men’s road race as one of a host of favourites, in the absence of two-time defending champion Tadej Pogačar, off the back of a strong September which has seen him win the GP Industria and Artigianato in Italy and finish fourth and sixth in the GP Quebec and GP Montreal, respectively.
Pidcock, who also finished ninth at this year’s Tour de France, will be supported on the hilly Montreal circuit by Adam Yates, Vuelta white jersey winner Oscar Onley, national champion Fred Wright, Finlay Pickering, Mark Donovan, and James Shaw.
In the men’s time trial, the in-form Callum Thornley and Ethan Hayter have been selected, Hayter finishing second in the Vuelta’s opening TT in Monaco, before Thornley was just pipped by two seconds to the stage 18 time trial victory by Stefan Küng.
In the women’s road race, Zoe Backstedt – no stranger to rainbow jerseys at junior and U23 level – will be joined by Pfeiffer Georgi, Anna Henderson, Josie Nelson, Flora Perkins, and Lauren Dickson, who has enjoyed a very impressive breakthrough year for FDJ in 2026.
Backstedt, the current national road and TT champion, will double up again in Canada, the Welsh star taking on the elite women’s time trial with debutant Anna Morris, a four-time world champion on the track.
In the U23 ranks, Movistar’s wonderkid and former junior world champion Cat Ferguson, whose 2026 has been interrupted by injury, is the stand-out name in the women’s race alongside Imogen Wolff, while Ben Wiggins will ride the time trial and Tour of Britain best young rider Elliot Rowe leads the road race squad.
“The road world championships are always one of the standout events in the cycling calendar, and we are excited to return with a highly competitive Great Britain Cycling Team squad,” GB performance director Stephen Park said today.
“This squad showcases the very best of British road racing, at a time when more British riders are making their mark across Europe and on the wider international stage than ever before. That progress is testament to the programmes and pathways we have in place, as well as the fierce domestic competition that continues to drive our pipeline of talent.
“We’re proud of the balance in this squad, from established world-class performers to riders taking the next step in their development, and we’re looking forward to seeing them test themselves against the very best in Montreal.”
Here’s the full Great Britain line-up for next week’s world championships:
Elite Men
Mark Donovan
Ethan Hayter
Oscar Onley
Finlay Pickering
Tom Pidcock
James Shaw
Callum Thornley
Fred Wright
Adam Yates
Elite Women
Zoe Backstedt
Lauren Dickson
Pfeiffer Georgi
Anna Henderson
Anna Morris
Josie Nelson
Flora Perkins
U23 Men
Jacob Bush
Mattie Dodd
Elliot Rowe
Will Smith
Ben Wiggins
U23 Women
Cat Ferguson
Abi Miller
Awen Roberts
Imogen Wolff
Morven Yeoman
Junior Men
Leon Atkins
Gus Dutton
Finlay Storrie
Dexter Townsend
Evander Wishart
Junior Women
Aalia Clay
Peggy Knox
Gabby McHugh
Zoe Roche
Melanie Rowe
Tom’s got rainbows on his mind…
View this post on Instagram
How to shut down an anti-cycling commentator on the internet… especially when they mention cycle lanes
Over the years on the live blog, you’ll have noticed that the highly rhetorical question ‘Why don’t cyclists use the cycle lanes?’ is almost always followed by an image of a car, or lorry, or bin, or tree, or Santa’s sleigh blocking a piece of cycling infrastructure, rendering it unusable.
So, it’s always a bit discombobulating to discover that that very question is still being asked, without a trace of irony, on the internet.
> Why don’t cyclists use cycle lanes?
This time, it’s Alasdair Smith, a former professor of economics and vice-chancellor at the University of Sussex, who’s been suffering from some social media irony deficiency when it comes to bike lanes.
Smith was responding to another BlueSky user, who was decrying being “nearly run over” by two cyclists, when he suggested: “Basic rule no 1 that should be established and enforced: if a cycle lane is provided [at great public expense] it is illegal for cyclists to use other lanes or the pavement.”
Let’s just say it wasn’t long before Smith regretted ever picking up his phone. Take it away, everyone:
— Mike Cookson 🔶 🇪🇺🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ (@mikecookson.bsky.social) September 15, 2026 at 7:20 AM
The cycle lane.
— Alex Freeman (@northernnerd.bsky.social) September 15, 2026 at 12:02 PM
lol
— OB Cycler (@obcycler.bsky.social) September 14, 2026 at 10:55 PM
I think we’ve made our point.
Oh, and finally, another user replied with this: “OK, adding to the rule: All cars found parked in a bike lane shall be towed and crushed.”
Surely that’s only fair Alasdair?
Plans for London-wide e-bike hire licences delayed by impending public consultation
Just when you thought there wasn’t enough e-bike news today:
> Plans for London-wide e-bike hire licences delayed by impending public consultation
A positive cycling infrastructure post (for a change)
The cycle lane junction at the bottom of Vauxhall bridge looking good this afternoon in the London rush hour
— Timothy (@westcountrytim.bsky.social) September 14, 2026 at 6:26 PM
Decathlon duo Felix Gall and Gregor Mühlberger’s “top secret” move to Lidl-Trek finally confirmed in joke video (featuring some terrible acting by Andy Schleck)
And now for something completely different…
One of the worst-kept transfer secrets of the season has finally been confirmed, as Felix Gall – fresh from his second grand tour podium of the year – was officially unveiled this morning as Lidl-Trek’s latest signing for 2027.
The knobbly-kneed Austrian climbing sensation will be joined at Lidl-Trek by his compatriot and current Decathlon teammate Gregor Mühlberger, who crashed out of this month’s Vuelta (where Gall finished third) on stage 13, while sitting in ninth place overall.
The duo’s signing got the full social media treatment from Lidl-Trek, who poked fun at the “top secret” nature of Gall’s arrival (in fact, the move was widely known since June), and even coerced team boss Andy Schleck into some ropey acting:
View this post on Instagram
Don’t quit the day job, Andy.
Gall’s move to Lidl means he won’t have to play second fiddle to French phenom Paul Seixas at Decathlon. However, the 28-year-old now joins another team stacked with grand tour talent which, let’s face it, are all roughly on the same level (in other words, below that of a certain currently injured Slovenian).
For the 2027 season, Lidl-Trek will have Gall, Juan Ayuso, Derek Gee, Giulio Ciccone, and Mattias Skjelmose on their books, not to mention Mads Pedersen and Jonathan Milan. Who do you leave out of the Tour de France team? Let’s hope Andy’s man management skills are better than his acting…
Private Eye does cycling (again)
What’s going on? Did everyone have a big meeting on Monday morning and decide it was anti-cycling week? (I know what you’re thinking, that’s every week for some papers. But this is getting out of hand.)
View this post on Instagram
Or, you know, maybe he saw a driver obeying the speed limit or not using their phone at the wheel…
‘It’s called compliance, sir…’
View this post on Instagram
“Looking at the new proposals, it would appear that the area would be far safer with them than without them”
Help us to bring you the best cycling content
If you’ve enjoyed this article, then please consider subscribing to road.cc from as little as £2.49. Our mission is to bring you all the news that’s relevant to you as a cyclist, independent reviews, impartial buying advice and more. Your subscription will help us to do more.
18 Comments
Read more...
Read more...
Read more...
Latest Comments
The police are quite correct to point out the context of the crime figures. It is only reasonable for the public to expect that no crimes will be solved if the police can't be bothered to implement counter measures such as CCTV and patrols.
@OnYerBike Unless said brain has been made stoopid by all the pollution...
@mdavidford I was driving my wife's car the other day. Dipped beam has a very sharp cut off around 4ft above the ground. It only takes a small bump or roll in the road to make that 6 or 7ft above the ground.
@OnYerBike well, I was only one in 1963, so definitely don't remember that. However, one documentary in over 60 years (maybe one or two more, to be generous) is hardly a good sign. I put "investigative journalism exposés" is quotes, deliberately. it may be obvious to you and I (and quite a few others) that traffic and climate change has been a problem for decades but the fact that action to address the issue is quite telling of the motonormativity that exists. We didn't need this BBC video to point out the e-bike issue, either, but my point was not so much that we needed a video about the car situation but that the BBC video shows the bias involved. The presence of a pavement parking ban makes the decision not to make hire bikes lockable even more puzzling than it already is, and definitely doesn't help the Active travel PR with the naysayers.
@wtjsa £15 - 500 lumen torch set on strobe usually does it when I'm walking the dog.
Ref the mechanic leaning right out of the team car, I'm pretty sure the UCI issued an edict forbidding that sort of behaviour.
Insightful phrasing there.
We were told that we'd need to be really tall to merely fit on 29". Top execs at big bike and tire brands told me 29" would never work, or even get around any sort of corner. This was in 2004 when I was already a while into racing mine, a 2002 Gary Fisher and a 2003 Surly. Now, short ladies are getting XCC/XCO world cup podiums, their season best results on 32", and we're again told we need to be "this" tall. It will be restrictive in climbing and technical stuff. Seewald would have become XCM world champ on BMX bike and that he chose the bike for worlds having just received it days prior...he was probably forced by KTM, right? The evil ploy of the bikeluminiti to sell us bikes by making then better, arrrrrrrrggh! Oh, all the marketing millions being spent to force us to empty our wallets, why oh why? DH and Endoro are largely "safe", same as dirt jump and BMX was from 29". What's curious, is that the bike industry didn't test what size is best, for any terrain or rider height. 700C already existed and was resisted HARD by the big companies. 32" was invented by Walmart to make fun beach cruisers with, just because they wanted to. All of the multi billion bike industry didn't try a thing. Just copy-pasting last year's homework with a slight change, resistance all the new stuff best they could. Except electronic shifting, of course, every must have their bike connected to the mothership...
@mdavidford but it was grrrievious bodily harm!
@Motivated it’s strange how different riders ‘see’ things. My eyes are even older and I’ve done a series of all night road rides with my trusty Raveman 1200PR. Because a needed alight to last the full night, I ran it at 200 lumens, with the odd blast of full power in the trickier bits. I never thought I needed ‘more light’ and we weren’t hanging around. Mind you I come from early 80’s mountain biking when our double Eveready Night Riders were given a massive boost with ‘Xenon bulbs’. To us youngsters it was revolutionary. These and a Petzl Zoom seemed to create almost daylight even though the combined light output was probably around 30 lumens. Luxury…
18 thoughts on ““What on earth have we just seen?” Cycling ‘fan’ kicks bottle into bunch, causing rider to crash; BBC accused of “demonising e-bikes” as cyclist says they’re more dangerous than cars; Telegraph brands middle-aged bike mums “pests” + more on the live blog”
“But then it’s the BBC and their dogged determination to demonise e-bikes.”
To be fair, the BBC doesn’t only demonise e-bikes, they hate all bikes. They are so utterly biased that they can’t even report the incredible health benefits of regularly riding a bike. Then there is their thirty year campaign promoting cycle helmets, breaking all their own rules, and refusing to allow counter views.
It seems likely that the increasing rate of collisions involving e-bikes is in line with their increasing popularity, so it isn’t that they are uniquely dangerous.
Really sorry to hear of Morwenna’s collision and injuries, and I hope she recovers quickly and fully, and regains her confidence.
Ah, good old Tom Edwards of the BBC.
He who blocked me on Twitter when I argued (politely, not abusively) about his incorrect use of language (referring to cars/vehicles over drivers), without being able to justify why he felt he was right (when he wasn’t).
@mitsky The BBC refusing to admit mistakes and ignoring any criticism? You surprise me.
They really don’t know how to learn from their errors do they?
Zero humility yet they will try and pretend they are non-partisan and totally neutral. Absolute joke. And in a time when they are fast running out of friends
@Smoggysteve Agree. All you have to do is catch News Watch at the weekend to see how they are never wrong with any of the News output complaints sent in to the programme, and that’s when they can be bothered to respond.
@kinderje I call it News Wash
It seems to me that trying to get the use of illegal electric motorbikes and scooters under control is like the proverbial ‘shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted’.
They are everywhere now and with so many being used the time to take action was when they first appeared on our streets and the problem was manageable. The police randomly stopping and confiscating one every now and then doesn’t achieve anything. I’m afraid that it is too late
“They are everywhere now” / “I’m afraid that it is too late”
Just wait until you hear about motor vehicles!
I’m also a bit pessimistic about how a combination of “laissez-faire (capitalism)”, lack of interest in transport issues outside of national infra (which will run over budget) and keeping the grumbling from drivers down … has apparently poisoned the well of cycling travel / EAPCs.
But as NL and other countries have shown, while you might not be able to return the djinn to the bottle you can reduce the harm and improve spaces and transport options.
Paradoxes – It’s an open goal but also very hard to make happen (because “change” and not the kind that generates mind-bending concentrations of cash).
Also there’s never been a better time to do it. And yet it’s always the case that “there’s no money” / “we don’t have space” / ” the have-nots will have to bear the consequences” / “don’t you know there’s a war on?” / “new tech just around the corner will change everything anyway”…
@ColdHand And when they do take action, they confiscate and destroy legal e-bikes, using an entirely invalid method for finding their maximum powered speed.
I would argue that people speak from their own experience in some cases here. When people are around cars they expect danger and they are more alert and more aware of the dangers. They know cars. They understand cars and they know that a car is not going to come around a blind bend on a footpath etc.
When they haven’t been hit by a car but they have been hit by an ebike, its hardly surprising that they fear one more than the other. Ebikes also intrude on spaces that people felt we previously safe. Thats ignoring the massive prejudice so many people have against bikes and the massive motonormativity in society that minimises anything involving cars and their danger.
Like it or not as well, there is an e-bike/e-motorbike problem that is growing. They are the choice of the oiks of society. I saw a lovely group of them on clearly illegal ebikes causing trouble outside my house the other day. A black man on a push bike was cycling along the road and clearly said something or did something they didn’t like (probably existing or asking them to mind out for him) and they hurled abuse at him and then as a particularly lovely parting shot, one of them shouted n***** at him.
You can’t expect people to see the rise of this and not be concerned.
“They dont understand cars and they expect that a car is not going to come around a blind bend on a footpath etc.”
FTFY.
But, seriously, this is definitely subjective – if the young lady involved had suffered the same injuries due to a car driver, I somehow doubt that cars would have been described as the bigger menace.
It does seem that e-bikes (or the confusion over what constitutes an e-bike) are the flavour of the month – both with the mainstream media, from a scapegoat point of view, and with the criminals, who have embraced them as a cheaper alternative to a dodgy hot-hatch.
The authorities don’t seem to be willing/able to take robust enough action.
Does anybody know how this situation is panning out, on the continent?
Agree – IIRC it’s still the case that more pedestrians are killed by drivers of motor vehicles *on footways* than are killed by cyclists anywhere.
Of course that just opens up arguments about exposure and differences between cyclists and drivers, if only they’d take away those 80cm-wide cycle lanes and give them back to people on foot etc
Ultimately to work around “humans” the Dutch “each mode in its own space” approach * is the way.
* This is in practice more complicated / flexible eg. in the countryside they often build cycle paths and not footways, because pedestrians can use them and there should be few cyclists and even fewer pedestrians.
Meanwhile, the criminals are using the main highway, instead … you know, the highway that is much wider and goes just about everywhere 🙄
When are the BBC, Telegraph, and Mail, etc., going to do some articles about motorists killing and injuring people, including themselves?
The police use e-motorbikes.
With the “kicking the bottle back into the peloton” incident, it’s impossible to tell for sure from the footage but it looks quite likely to me that the spectator tried either to trap the bottle with his foot or deflect it to the side of the road so he could pick it up, made a total horlicks of his timing and so managed to poke it back towards the riders. I hope that is the case, if it’s not obviously one hopes the authorities will get hold of him and charge him with whatever the Italian equivalent of reckless endangerment is.
I subscribe to Private Eye, and jolly good it is too, with some of the best investigative journalism in the country, and I have written to them several times to encourage them to cover active travel, but with no success.
I have sent them a link to the story about the Conservative council ripping out the cycle lanes paid for by TfL for the ‘Rotten Boroughs’ feature, I wonder if they’ll use it?
As someone who now only very occasionally cycles in London, I do find thr hire bikes quite hazardous. They might not kill me, but the motor vehicle I could fall under might. I think the issue is their acceleration, much faster than mine in my later 60s, particularly on a well loaded touring bike. I’ve learned my lesson and will do much to avoid arriving at Liverpool Street Station near office going home time, but I do understand where she is coming from.
Does it, though? Looks to me like there’s a general surge of the peloton from left to right across the road, and that looks far more likely to have been responsible for the crash than ‘confusion’ over the bottle incident.