Luton Town fan’s charity cycle to away match ends on day one… after his bike was stolen outside a Starbucks

Maybe people do not have the capacity to look out for everyone on the roads because there are so many users squeezed onto small roads in the uk. Brains are not 100% functional, as we know they lapse. Maybe we should have a country wide chat regarding vehicle usage. Maybe radios, satnavs, fones should be removed from cars, or restricted to passenger use. Maybe we have to accommodate homo sapiens are a murderous bunch, so when someone's mown down it can be forgotten easily, after the 'ohmygod' ten minutes. Segregated cycle lanes, or a complete ban on the motor vehicle, lol. Essentially the human race is speeding up and the average cyclist cannot keep up. In the midst of these problems as we are, I personally have to not care about my well being if I wish to continue using bikes. This is a strange and interesting dilemma, yet it sits in harmony with the current zeitgeists twisting as they are.

"Illegal e-bikes" seems like a reasonable phrase to me. It's not strictly accurate if you're very pedantic (it's currently perfectly legal to own and even use such a bike in certain circumstances; it's the use of the bike on public roads that is illegal), but it's good enough. "Illegal (motor)bike" doesn't disambiguate between illegal electric and petrol powered bikes - illegally used dirt bikes etc have been around for decades, long before the current electrification. Whether or not that distinction is relevant depends on the context. In fact, without context, I think I would wonder if "illegal bike" was talking about normal pedal bikes that are somehow illegal (maybe circumventing anti-dumping laws or not complying with relevant safety standards etc.) "Electric motorbike" is technically accurate, but I would only apply it to Sur-Rons or similar - I can see that legally it applies to any non-EAPC ebike, but doesn't fit well with less motorbike-esque versions or homebrew conversions. It also doesn't distinguish between legal and illegal - it's perfectly possible to legally ride an electric motorbike or electric moped, and some people do. So to use "electric motorbike" to mean "illegal electric motorbike" falls into the same trap as using "ebike" to mean "illegal ebike". “Illegally modified e-bikes” is also inaccurate - firstly, many of them are not modified in anyway; you can just buy them like that straight from the internet. And again, there's no law against modification, or owning a ebike that has been modified to no longer be an EAPC. It's the use of an ebike that has been modified to no longer be an EAPC (if it ever was one) on public roads that is illegal. So of all options, "illegal ebike" seems like the least problematic.

@Jem PT Scottish Gaelic - under the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005, public bodies (including the police) have certain duties regarding "promoting, facilitating and supporting the use of the Gaelic language."

@Jem PT Scots Gaelic for Police. And yes, it does seem very similar to the Scots English. ;)

I would use "illegal motorbikes", as there is never such a thing an illegal non-motorised bicycle.

What's with the bi-lingual 'Police' on the Scottish Police van?? (Or is the lower line 'Glaswegian'??

@stulemanski "... if drivers decided it was okay..."

Really? They lost me at "SUV".

@mitsky in theory there's a purpose, being it should mean steps to doing something about this can be skipped if they do this again or penalties could be higher etc. Since in practice nothing of consequence happens however (and certainly not like them immediately being banged up / car crushed etc - plus of course there might be a long period before anything might happen under the current system) it's simply "don't do it again, or we'll tell you not to do it again, again"...

@flowboy "Shared space" - this is a thing that some urban planners / designers got wildly enthusiastic about *. A couple of UK ones still do, long after the Dutch ones abandoned this as being dangerous and unpleasant for people not in motor vehicles. The take-home is it doesn't work well for humans. Safety is not best served by creating uncertainty. And motor traffic dominates as normal, except under very specific conditions **. Plenty on that online (see eg. David Hembrow's "a view from the cycle path" blog for that mostly in NL, Aseasyasridingabike for some UK examples). * I can only conclude they love being able to have more of a blank canvas to create on, so they can be more free to play with "blue sky" designs. Also perhaps they like the "cleaner lines" to spaces without all the paint, signs, marked areas for different modes etc. ** There is in fact an opportunity to have "sharing" and indeed "clean lines" - that is by having a genuine "home zone" / "play street" / "woonerf" (Dutch term). But that requires this is not a) still principally a space for motor vehicles, which in turn means b) those areas should not be permeable for driving through, and everything should promote very low speeds and indeed not much driving (or even parking) there.