Search found 2371 matches

by EdinburghFixed
21 Jul 2010, 9:36am
Forum: Non-standard, Human Powered Vehicles
Topic: Crack and tear
Replies: 24
Views: 2453

Re: Crack and tear

What I'd really like would be to have both brakes controlled by a single lever - I'm so used to braking with my front only on two wheels, that both times I've ridden a trike I pretty much braked it all on the front left wheel all the way around - unless I remembered!

Think drums might require a bit too much lever force for that though - hydraulic discs would be the only option.
by EdinburghFixed
21 Jul 2010, 9:30am
Forum: Lands End to John O'Groats
Topic: A442 Through Telford - Don't!
Replies: 39
Views: 7477

Re: A442 Through Telford - Don't!

jochta wrote:I don't know Telford at all but if the road is so dangerous for cyclists and has a cycle path why are no-cycles signs not used? As I posted elsewhere this is done on the Eastern Bypass in Oxford as seen below on Google Streetview...

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&sourc ... 00478&z=18

That would help cyclists who are strangers to the area wouldn't it?

I've sometimes thought when I've been in a strange area which are the roads the locals would never dream of cycling along and am I on one of them. Maybe an online collection of 'red routes' somewhere, or even on Opencyclemap might be a valuable resource.


The problem is that danger is so subjective and often, the alternatives wholly inadequate. A good case in point is the A90 west from Edinburgh. It is a busy dual carriageway but wide, with excellent sightlines. It also happens to be the only direct route linking Edinburgh with Fife.

A few years ago the council decided to ban bikes on this route, for "safety" reasons (it turned out that in the previous 10 years there had been a total of ONE cyclist death - they also rigged a survey of numbers by doing it on a weekend, instead of a commuting day to make it seem less utilised). Now, I can absolutely understand that some, many, or even most riders might not choose a dual carriageway, and it is possible to avoid if you're willing to ride a few extra miles on a much hillier, rough and untreated route - but one death per 10 years on a commuter route is safe enough for me, at least. You can choose to ride down the pavement beside the dual carriageway, but it is not very safe - so narrow that at points two bikes cannot pass each other, so overgrown that foliage from both sides of the path hit you at the same time, never gritted (so in winter you have the irony of cycling on an icerink while next to you is a perfectly good bit of road that is top priority for salting).

Another local example is the new A68 Dalkeith bypass. An almost ideal road for cycling as it is flawlessly smooth and utterly straight - nobody is going to nail you from around a blind corner on this one. Unfortunately, it terminates on the Edinburgh bypass which is closed to bikes - there is no legal alternative but to backtrack. For the sake of a 200m 'missing link' to the parallel B road, you have to ride a further ten kilometers! (the link will never be built because in the council's opinion A-roads are too dangerous for bikes and this de-facto ban is much less controversial than a real one).

There is also the question of time of day, for example. On my own end to end attempt I rejected the A30 as being too busy for safety, took an alternative route - but later in the day, I passed over it to discover traffic was passing at about 2 vehicles per minute, and enjoyed a very fast and direct final 10 miles in which every overtake was peformed fully in the other lane - much safer than the sketchy passes I had been experiencing on the "safe" minor road. A ban on the A30 (which the HA and many cyclists might support) might have led to my death in a blind corner accident.

I wouldn't want to speak directly to your Oxford example without having been there, but there's nothing on the streetview that suggests to me a road I would choose to avoid, especially not in favour of riding on the pavement with all the associated dangers that presents. (For example, this part of my LEJOG route looks much worse, yet I found completely fine).

So, thanks but no thanks to the nanny state, however well meaning!
by EdinburghFixed
20 Jul 2010, 10:45pm
Forum: Campaigning & Public Policy
Topic: Copengaenize.com & Vehicular Cyclists
Replies: 88
Views: 6536

Re: Copengaenize.com & Vehicular Cyclists

One thing I've always thought would be genuinely useful would be the establishment of a national technical expert group on bike facilities, to endorse (or, probably more often, to condemn) the plans and implementations that we see here.

In an ideal world such a group would be endorsed by all the major advocacy groups - CTC, Sustrans, Cycling Scotland, Scottish Cycling, whatever the southern equivalents are, and so on - so as to present one point of contact and one 'message' for planners and their minions.

Unfortunately, I gave it up as impossible when I realised that even cyclists can't agree on what makes an acceptable facility. For some, any distance of pavement that is changed to dual-use represents a victory in the slow march to reassign all pavements as facilities, while others reject any segregated facility as automatically fatally flawed. There is such a fundamental gap between what cyclists want, and what non-cyclists think they would want if they were cycling, as to be all but unbridgeable.
by EdinburghFixed
20 Jul 2010, 10:16am
Forum: Non-standard, Human Powered Vehicles
Topic: Crack and tear
Replies: 24
Views: 2453

Re: Crack and tear

Unless you want a dynamo, or to ride in the mountains, I'd have drums. I've recently spent a bit of time on both a new Adventure FS and a QNT, the former with discs and the latter with drums. For my money, the drums performed perfectly well and will never need maintained - and I might even venture that they stop better in the wet than discs anyway (oo-er!).

The only fly in the ointment is that if you dream of a SON dynamo hub, that's disc only. And apparently, drums fade if they get too hot (although disc rotors warp).

I'm not sure if there is a weight penalty with drums though.
by EdinburghFixed
20 Jul 2010, 8:28am
Forum: Campaigning & Public Policy
Topic: Should we boycott LBC?
Replies: 18
Views: 1961

Re: Should we boycott LBC?

Well, probably a good start would be to write to the station controller stating that as they are inciting violence against a vulnerable minority, you will be listening elsewhere - you might add (whether you do so or not) that you have written to some of the advertisers you heard on their station, pointing out that they are associating themselves with incitement of violence and asking them to reconsider where they spend their ad money.

A few of those and I wager you might see some improvement.
by EdinburghFixed
19 Jul 2010, 7:09pm
Forum: Helmets & helmet discussion
Topic: Stop Headway
Replies: 373
Views: 32479

Re: Stop Headway

Yes, I'm sure I read somewhere on cyclehelmets.org a statistic that 50% of cyclists with fatal head injuries had fatal non-head injuries too.
by EdinburghFixed
19 Jul 2010, 12:19pm
Forum: Helmets & helmet discussion
Topic: Stop Headway
Replies: 373
Views: 32479

Re: Stop Headway

Great point. I guess that's what would be good about testimonials, in that they are positive stories of real people not dying left right and centre while enjoying an active lifestyle?

'Removing barriers to a healthy active lifestyle" sounds like a good tagline, actually.
by EdinburghFixed
19 Jul 2010, 12:17pm
Forum: Lands End to John O'Groats
Topic: July 11th 4 day LEJOG
Replies: 17
Views: 2056

Re: July 11th 4 day LEJOG

Well done!

I'd be interested to know how long it took you to get to key points / how much rest time you took (or I guess, if you've uploaded GPS traces anywhere)?

Presumably the afternoon start was to get winging up the A30 under cover of darkness?
by EdinburghFixed
19 Jul 2010, 9:55am
Forum: Helmets & helmet discussion
Topic: Stop Headway
Replies: 373
Views: 32479

Re: Stop Headway

Hrmm. That's actually a really good idea. I wonder if it would be possible to find a variety of people who have escaped sedentary health issues by taking up cycling, and getting testimonials from them that imitate the Headway ones.
by EdinburghFixed
19 Jul 2010, 9:19am
Forum: Helmets & helmet discussion
Topic: Stop Headway
Replies: 373
Views: 32479

Re: Stop Headway

OK. So what would be a good way to proceed?

In the interests of fairness I am minded to try and communicate with them before setting up some kind of 'stop-headway.com' site, although I'm certain that they're not going to reverse their position based on anything as squalid as evidence.

pwward wrote:One important point to make when debating with them is that by supporting initiatives that reduce cycling many more people will end up head injured. This is because the largest cause of head injuries in Britain (by far) are cerebro-vascular accidents (CVA's or strokes) and the protective effects of cycling (and other forms of regular exercise) against cardio-vascular disease are well established and acknowledged, even by others keen on helmet laws like the BMA.


I found this very interesting. Another clear example of the public health VS narrow interest conflict.

The evidence chain is quite short - there is good evidence of causation between sedentary lifestyle and increased mortality / reduced quality of life. All that we really need is to display a link between helmet legislation and reduced cycling levels, and it's in the bag, evidence-wise. The huge number of sedentary deaths and tiny number of cycling deaths make the sensible course self-evident.
by EdinburghFixed
19 Jul 2010, 8:52am
Forum: Campaigning & Public Policy
Topic: "Cyclist, 76, fighting for life after sliproad crash"
Replies: 147
Views: 11193

Re: "Cyclist, 76, fighting for life after sliproad crash"

irc wrote:The bottom line though is that it was the cyclist who was mainly at fault. If anyone suggests the cyclist might have a civil claim they would have to accept the driver has a stronger civil claim against the cyclist. I've not seen anyone suggesting the cyclist be charged with careless cycling? There is a strong case there. Not in the public interest I would think but if we are apportioning blame that is where to start.


I'm not sure I follow the second point. Perhaps the cyclist simply expected that a driver approaching a crossing, blind, on the boundary of a 40mph zone with preceeding warning signs would have slowed to 40mph, in which case no collision would have occurred. Remember that he managed to pass all the way from the right side of the lane, fully across the car until he was hit by its left hand side. If the driver had slowed to an appropriate speed there would have been no impact, would be my line of attack.

After all, if the driver cannot see the cyclist and cyclist cannot see the driver, then the cyclist would be expected to proceed onto the crossing (according to our very own green cross code). I think it's hard to make the case that if a collision then occurs, the cyclist automatically bears the brunt of responsibility because they should have anticipated that the colliding vehicle would be going too fast.

I'm not even sure whether the cyclist admitting that they could have been more prudent actually circumvents the liability a driver bears for hitting someone on a crossing with excess speed. The Highways Agency would argue that the 40mph limit protects the crossing because drivers who are entering the limit legally will also have passed the crossing at 40mph (and of course, there is the advance warning of a pedestrian crossing sign on approach, so no question that it is coming up).

If the collision would not have occurred had the driver been about to enter the 40mph limit legally, then the fact that it did (and he wasn't) must bear heavily on any allocation of liability. The law is clear - you must have slowed down to the target speed *before* you enter the zone, otherwise you commit an offence. Hitting someone at the same time, IMO, doesn't clearly mark the victim down as the main perpetrator.
by EdinburghFixed
19 Jul 2010, 8:36am
Forum: On the road
Topic: Helmet - recent accident
Replies: 212
Views: 10095

Re: Helmet - recent accident

When I started looking into the possibility of getting a recumbent for my (at the time) 35 mile commute, I went on a couple of more specific forums and the first topic I came across was a discussion about how basically everybody would immediately shatter into component parts if they didn't wear american-football style armoured shorts & shirts (and elbow pads?). Not very encouraging.

On the same forum just now, there's a topic about how if you don't ride with a mirror and regularly use it to dive into the ditch, you will certainly be crushed to death by a following vehicle every 5 minutes.

The oddest thing is, when you suggest that actually, 52 cyclists in the whole of the UK were killed by cars in a YEAR and that's not a lot really, people get ferociously hostile.
by EdinburghFixed
18 Jul 2010, 11:01am
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: Mark Beaumont: slacker spokes good?
Replies: 29
Views: 3256

Re: Mark Beaumont: slacker spokes good?

If the angle is bad, why not use a fewer-cross lacing pattern?
by EdinburghFixed
18 Jul 2010, 10:59am
Forum: Campaigning & Public Policy
Topic: "Cyclist, 76, fighting for life after sliproad crash"
Replies: 147
Views: 11193

Re: "Cyclist, 76, fighting for life after sliproad crash"

There was never much merit in the topic, and I did suggest at the start (privately) that it might be shut down.

However I was wrong, as 'Ulysses' used the rope to hang himself - I think there's enough here to effectively guarantee the success of a civil claim by the cyclist if they chose to pursue it (whatever the allocation of contributory might be in the final judgement). As it is, the fact that he does not want to pursue matters makes it a moot point, but it's certainly been an interesting experience.
by EdinburghFixed
18 Jul 2010, 10:52am
Forum: Bikes & Bits – Technical section
Topic: Spokes and rims
Replies: 9
Views: 658

Re: Spokes and rims

I know this doesn't help the OP, but having to re-rim my commuter once a year was probably the biggest motivator for our ongoing programme converting everything to disc.

Then you can have a lovely wheel and it will do a million miles without rim failure :)