Mercian is well and truly back and Gloria does it again: road.cc Recommends updated with six sublime cycling products

RE: Bus stop bypasses. "Controversial". In the same way that "washing your hands sometimes" used to be controversial? (Obviously, almost all "change" is controversial until it has happened...) I can only recommend Ranty Highwayman's recent open letter posted on his blog: Floating Bus Stops: An Open Letter to Members of the Greater London Authority A bit more forceful in tone than another recap he did on the topic there ("Floating Bus Stops: Redux") which I'd also recommend.

RE: Bus stop bypasses. "Controversial". In the same way that "washing your hands sometimes" used to be controversial? (Obviously, almost all "change" is controversial until it has happened...) I can only recommend Ranty Highwayman's recent open letter posted on his blog: A bit more forceful in tone than another recap he did on the topic there ("Floating Bus Stops: Redux") which I'd also recommend.

@Geoff H That would be great. Would also add to the pain when they get the bill for the towing and recovery. Downsides? Alas, yes: you have to get the money out of them, else for the council "it hurts us more than it hurts you". And I bet the real inconvenience of waiting to get their vehicle (or even sending a flunky) might push some of these types to dig their heels in. When fighting the rich you may run out of money (or fear you might...) before they do. Even when it's a council doing it. Also - for a few years the roads would be blocked by all the tow trucks we'd need to have on constant call-out. Actually, maybe that's a positive...

@cardch Crafted, Sturdy and Enigma are the only ones I know of. I'm fairly certain Five Land in Scotland have made Ti frames for other builders in the past too. I'm not knocking Gloria, especially as they are upfront about it. As I said before, it's the dishonesty from other companies that really gets me. It's straight up lies and unbelievably dishonest. Laverack have videos claiming to be their workshop (when in another video they show the very same beading cabinet in a contractors workshop), Reilly have various photos of one of their team using a powerfile on a frame making sparks fly right on a place that there would be no reason to file (unless taking a cable guide off a completely nonsensical place). I say this as someone who has worked on ti frames as a job (different career now) so can see through it all. It's really unfair to consumers to push higher prices especially when justified by smoke and mirrors. Laverack are made by Waltly too, so why are theirs twice the price of a Gloria?

@Pub bike And the main roads too!

Parking in the cycle lane for the Range Rover class: "Meh. A ticket is just the cost of parking where I want." A tow >might< get their attention (and their lawyer involved.)

Why doesn't the bus driver slow down behind the cyclist and then stop? It has to stop at the bus stop. There is no reason to stop alongside and/or just in front of the cyclist.

@the little onion a vanishingly small number. Its complete bollocks that they can't prove someone was a certain distance. Every car has published dimensions. Every car is clearly taking up a proportion of a lane when a close pass happens. Every cyclist can be rationalised to be taking up at least 1m of that lane width. I'm sure they can do the very very basic maths. If the car is 2m wide and takes up 2/3rds of the lane and the cyclist is taking up 1m of the lane, how far out of the lane would they have to be in order to pass safely. Its pretty simple to say that when they barely have their wheels over the centre line that perhaps, just perhaps we can make the wild assumption that they weren't 1.5m away.

very bad driving obviously, but also I would suggest bad cycling too. the bus was very nearly completely past when it started to indicate; much safer than persevering up the inside would have been to have dropped back and either waited, or overtaken on the right. Cyclists should not have to make that choice- I get that- but on this occasion Vine chose to increase the danger to himself.

The bus driver is completely in the wrong and should be reported to the police (as I know from long experience, no point in reporting to bus companies as they will say they are dealing with it but can't tell you what they are doing due to confidentiality issues, I have it on good authority from someone who has worked for a bus company that the "action" usually amounts to, "Fred, we've had another bloody letter from another bloody cyclist so I've been told to tell you to stop being a naughty boy, ho ho ho…"), but I must say I would have done two things differently to JV: firstly, knowing the bus was behind me and the location of the bus stop as long as I was confident enough in my speed being at or near the speed limit I would have moved in front of the bus at the traffic lights and stayed there so they couldn't overtake; secondly as soon as the front of a bus appears alongside me I'm braking and letting them go first, regardless of the rights and wrongs, and maybe once they've passed and stopped at the bus stop I might be going round the outside to have a few choice words but the physical risk of insisting on keeping pace with a huge vehicle that you know is moving inwards simply isn't worth it.