Soon to be a thing of the past? Unrepentant taxi driver squeezes past ‘wobbly’ cyclist on soon-to-be-pedestrianised Oxford Street; Indian summer Lime Bike rolls out first Cycle to Work subscription; “Strava AI stole my KOMs” + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
"Pointless and dangerous": Camera cyclist reports taxi driver for what could be one of the last horrible close passes on Oxford Street
You’d hang it in the Louvre (or the National Gallery), if it wasn’t so awful… but what with the news that over a kilometre of Oxford Street is set to be pedestrianised from 26 October, interactions such as this one are set to become a thing of the past in this particular location.
As others have pointed out on YouTube and on a Reddit Thread concerning this video, it would have been wise for “wobbly cyclist” to hold back for the bus – but putting them and others in considerably more danger, a taxi driver decides to undertake them, while overtaking a Lime rider far too close on the other side.
When the camera cyclist catches up with the driver and says the move was “stupid”, the driver replies: “I think you lot are.”
Where to start… it will likely start and end with a warning letter for the driver, as the camera cyclist says he has reported him.
Tuchel on a Lime bike
Wonder if he stopped in the shop window to visualise more formations that Trent Alexander-Arnold doesn’t fit into…
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Seems harsh...
NYC has a plan to stop homeless people from cycling between hospitals and the streets https://t.co/H3fmROx6lG
— Gothamist (@Gothamist) September 29, 2026
One of the perils of writing about bicycles day after day is over time you forget words have potentially more than one meaning…
What now for Maindy?
The Welsh Government has today announced £2 million in sports facilities investment, with a closed road cycling circuit in Cardiff top of the list…
Intended to provide “a lasting legacy for the city. The multi-functional circuit will support club training sessions, schools use, community sessions, events and competitions, coaching and workforce development, and pay-and-ride activity.”
That all sounds well and good, although there are reasons to be sceptical. Not least because £2 million spread across five different projects isn’t a lot of money, and because Cardiff already has an outdoor velodrome.
The last time we reported, specifically on the Maindy circuit, it was at risk of being demolished to enable the expansion of the secondary school over the road.
Since then, I (Callum) actually ended up living a stone’s throw from Maindy for a while, whilst plans to build a new velodrome in Cardiff Bay were scrapped. For the Maindy Flyers club that kick-started the careers of Geraint Thomas, Elinor Barker and Owain Doull, that was actually good news given that the lack of an alternative circuit strengthened the club’s case against the velodrome’s closure.
So is the funding intended to upgrade Maindy? Is it renewed funding towards a new velodrome project? Is it something else entirely that hasn’t been made clear. Rest assured we’ll try and get to the bottom of it.
Still, nice to see the Welsh Government investing to try and make a legacy out of next year’s Grand Depart. It’s also a great excuse to wheel out this photo of the head of government…
August and September sentencing round-up
The latest instalment of the feature we’d much rather not feel the need to publish:
If you've forgot your Sram charger, you can now get a custom-made carbon-covered battery to charge it while you travel
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If your bikes run Sram AXS and you need a lighter and more convenient solution for charging on the move, Ti-Parts have a novel solution.
Encased in carbon fibre and weighing just 20g, you can charge the battery with a standard phone charger and then stick it on your bike to charge up. This gives you “extra convenience when you travel or race when you forget to bring a charger”, says Ti-Parts.
Bear in mind it’s priced at £106, and we’ve seen Sram’s own AXS battery charger going for around 37 quid – so you could just buy three of those for around the same price and make sure one of them goes with you on your travels.
What if you forget your Sram charger, your £106 carbon-infused battery and your phone charger? Maybe buy two or three of each just in case…
Time to switch out the head coach in our Footballers Who Cycle XI?
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It’s another mention for London’s foremost e-bike hire scheme operator and another football reference, as we’ve been alerted to this clip of England manager Thomas Tuchel hacking around on a Lime bike.
Our footballers who cycle XI feature currently has Roberto Mancini as head coach with Neil Warnock as his assistant – but now we’re not sure Mancini purchased his road bike with legitimate funds, so perhaps the German should take the reins…
Lime launches the first annual Cycle to Work subscription
More Lime Bike news, that may mean we’ll see even more of the distinctive e-bikes parked outside Skehans in Nunhead very soon.
The e-bike hire operator has just launched ‘the first annual subscription for shared e-bikes’ in partnership with BHN Extras. That means riders will be able to pay for a subscription through salary sacrifice and pay monthly, allowing them 500 minutes of riding per month.
Alice Pleasant of Lime said: “We want to make it easier for more people to choose shared e-bikes for everyday journeys. Through this partnership, eligible employees can access a Lime Annual Subscription through their workplace, giving them a more affordable way to include shared e-bikes in their commute, whether they ride all the way or connect with public transport.
“It is another option for people looking to make how they get to work more sustainable, healthy and convenient.”
The subscription is priced at £635 per year/£52.92 per month before tax or national insurance savings. Because higher rate taxpayers have a larger percentage of taxable income beyond the basic rate, the subscription is actually cheaper for higher earners after the tax break. Here’s what subscribers can expect to pay:
£38.10/month (28% savings) for basic rate tax payers (<£50,270)
£30.69/month (42% savings) for higher rate tax payers (£50,271-£125,140)
£28.05/month (47% savings) for additional rate tax payers (>£125,140)
Worth it, or better to stick to your own bike? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Apologies for the disruption...
It appears a disgruntled Manchester City fan might have taken umbrage with our strapline this morning and crashed all three of our websites. We’ve identified the problem now, and things will hopefully continue as normal for the rest of the day. As you were!
"Strava AI stole my KOMs"
Have you noticed Strava being a bit more stringent with verifying that your rides were completed on conventional bicycles recently?
One serial KOM-hunting road.cc reader got in touch to say: [Strava] used to allow you to self certify a ride as a ride (i.e. not an e-bike), but now you have to wait for a human review to check.
“I was on a streak of 28 rides in a row with at least 1 KOM each ride but now Strava might decide the streak is over? Not sure I’m okay with that.”
As someone who has never achieved a one KOM streak, let alone 28, I can’t say this will affect me. But perhaps it could be considered a good thing that Strava are being a bit more on it with checking that rides are legit…
> Strava KOMS are being hijacked by motorbikers going as fast as 112mph
A burst of warm weather in September = Lime Bike mayhem outside London pubs
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You love to see it… well apparently some don’t according to numerous people in the comments section, but it’s nice to see how many folks are hopping on a bike to get to the pub nowadays.
Yours truly has had many a drink in this very pub when some friends lived in the neighbourhood, and if I remember correctly a Thai restaurant was operating within it around that time. I shall have to return, by Lime Bike of course…
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Latest Comments
"...if I encountered someone driving on a person path..."
Where did this strawman come from? Why would interventions aimed specifically at addressing concerns more common with women cause men who are already using the infrastructure to abandon it in favour of the roads? That doesn't follow at all. You could quite conceivably make up that extra 100% almost entirely of men, and hardly shift the needle on women cycling at all.
@AidanR why worry more about things like underpasses over the quality of cycle lanes as a whole? sure make an underpass better lit etc but if the chances if you being killed on a clear and open bit of infrastructure then thats not fixing the wider problem. The priority should be making cycle lanes better EVERYWHERE. You make it sound like men are not vulnerable at all. underpasses, tunnels, quiet isolated paths, canal paths all have security issues that are there whether you ride a bike or walk it, thats another problem that needs addressing that no matter the mode of transport
@Smoggysteve I get what you're driving at, but I think you're coming at it from the wrong angle. The majority of people who would cycle if only it were safer (be it due to traffic, or in this case because of the underpasses in MK) are women. So if you want to increase the numbers of people cycling, the best strategy is to address their concerns. Of course, there are also men who don't cycle due to the perceived danger, so as a bonus you'll get more men cycling too.
Compliance is not the same as vibration damping Anyway, the price is beyond belief. Plus, I think the large majority of people that go after the last performance benefit are not swayed much by the comfort argument. And the large majority of people that aim for comfort do not necessarily want the lightest-of-the-lightest. The last group may want peace-of-mind, though. Implying a version with steel spokes and brass nipples. That would be more suited for year-round sorrow-less riding, even if it weighs more.
@AidanR Im sure it may but the fact is this: WE still do not know the numbers based on this it could be 400 people it could be 4000, if one in four are female then im sure 1000 female cyclists is better than 100. Increasing the number of all riding is surely a better target to set than just improving a ratio. If the amount of women riding doubled and the amount of men stayed the same it would still be ratio of more men than women. but the positive of more women gets ignored. Also if the amount of male riders dropped significantly and the ratio went to say 1 in 3 or 1 in 2 is that a good thing? the statistic might make it look so but it isnt since fewer journeys as a whole took place. So ignore the ratio. just get people riding more first. One step at a time, more people riding is the positive that needs to be aimed for first and foremost. If that encourages more women to ride then great, if the ratio went to 1 in 5 but ultimately many more women were cycling then that's still an improvement.
@shufflingb Agreed. I have a 2 year old 1050 that I still love. Only thing i'm mildly covetous of is the USB C port placement. It would solve an issue on my road bike with a stem mount when i need to charge on the move. Other than that, most of the upgrades will be UI related and likely appear on the x50 units.
@Smoggysteve there is a lot of research that shows that if cycling infrastructure is improved, perceived (and actual) safety increases, and this leads to proportionally more women cycling. This has been shown in NYC and London (mini Holland programmes).
Stupid! An incredible amount of space wasted on jousting! .... even stupider >>> my bothering to comment!
@danhopgood 100% bang on there.
8 thoughts on “Soon to be a thing of the past? Unrepentant taxi driver squeezes past ‘wobbly’ cyclist on soon-to-be-pedestrianised Oxford Street; Indian summer Lime Bike rolls out first Cycle to Work subscription; “Strava AI stole my KOMs” + more on the live blog”
I thought that *was* normal…
A claimed streak of 28 rides with at least one KoM in each, his latest ride at an average of 24kph? Yeah I’d flag that too.
@Miller It’s not my idea of fun, but not especially suspicious if your sole aim is to bag KOMs. Just pick obscure segments where the KOM is not especially challenging, go pretty easy the rest of the ride, and blast the segment as hard as you can.
@Miller Why? If I was going out KOM hunting I would 100% be taking it as easy as possible for much of the rest of the ride. My mate rides with his partner a fair bit and has some KOMs around where he is. He gets most of them when hes on a ride with her and his average power is often not much higher than this for the rides and hes 80kg.
Why, well just for example I’ve seen too many ‘KoMs’ belonging to someone who has no followers, who follows no-one, who pootles round at 20kph except for one hill which they zoomed up. That’s obviously an ebike phenom which perhaps Strava is stripping out these days. The people I know who get real KoMs ride fast and are well connected.
“That was stupid, really stupid.”
“I think you lot are”
If you think they’re a) a “lot” [as in some kind of connected group], and b) stupid, then driving into a narrow point full of them was probably a more stupid thing to do.
That said, it took axolotol around a minute to bump into him again. I think by that point, the moment has passed – I’d let it go. At that rate, the idiot-count is going to lap itself.
@GMBasix sure, what’s the point in having a confrontation in the street? Just submit the footage and move on.
wait until cyclists try riding through pedestrians on Oxford street, there will be far more confrontations….I ride it regularly as a ‘sharpener’ and for a buzz…trains focus and wider attention if you want to make progress, braking, stop start and general handling. then makes the rest of london feel much easier