"You must stop driving and surrender your licence to the authorities": Jeremy Vine in disbelief at people blaming cyclist for shocking crash which saw driver jailed; Pidcock's bike-handling masterclass; Richie Porte's new bike day + more on the live blog

kingleo wrote:

As a cyclist you must expect some motor vehicle users to pull out in front of you or across you, always ride with your hands on the brakes in traffic

Oh cheers, never thought of that and I'm sure many road.cc readers haven't, jolly useful tip.

In this instance the rider was travelling close to 30mph (by my reckoning) when the driver pulled in front of her when she was about ten metres away, she had her hands on the hoods but no chance to stop in time to avoid the impact.

In fact the police calculated the cyclist's speed as only 19.2 mph, so below any possible motorised speed limit. The calculations are in a video on their Twitter link.

Have you got a link to that please? Can't find it anywhere, I'd be interested to see it. My back of an envelope calculation was that from the moment the cyclist appears in the frame she appears to cover five bike lengths, or 10M, in 0.75 seconds, so was travelling at around 12.5 m/s or 28mph. Academic really though as whether it was 20 or 28 the cyclist had no chance to brake in time.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1740469534190981555

It's also in the Road.cc blog above, if the link doesn't work.

Thanks for that. Just going to repeat the caveat that the driver is totally at fault whatever speed the cyclist is doing before I say that the video there is frankly fraudulent. You can see my slowed down version here:

https://twitter.com/Rendel_Harris/status/1741164923772641612

Clearly showing that the counter jumps straight from 0.25 seconds to 1.00 second to make it look as if the cyclist was going slower than she was. For those without Twitter, see the screenshots below: 0.11s the cyclist is still two bike lengths from collision, 0.22 seconds the collision occurs, a millisecond later the counter jumps to one second.

Edit: now explained, my misunderstanding: the figures on the right of the decimal point are apparently not seconds but a frame count, so on a 25 frame per second video it goes up to 25 then the number on the left goes to one second and it starts again from 0.

Totally agree with you that the cyclist was NOT at fault in any way whatever their speed. Worrying that there are even people on these comments finding ways to blame her

Yes. Lets blame the cyclist for not being carefull enough.
Next step would be to require all cyclists to wear a zorb ball around them to prevent injuries/deaths...

It is a shame we don't have footage from the cyclist's perspective.
If we did, then using a motor vehicle dashboard overlay (like CycleGaz has done to some of his clips) would show that the dangerous driving in this instance would be considered unacceptable by everyone if seen from a driver's viewpoint.

Shoplifters get worse sentences than killer drivers.

I dont think many shoplifters even get prosecuted.

Neither do many killer drivers

As the saying goes, "if the penalty is just a fine,  it means it is legal for the rich"...

Just thinking about it more, I wonder if that one person caught 20 times in 4 years would class as the "unluckiest" person ever.

How was it possible, given what we know about lack of police resources, to be caught so many times?

mitsky wrote:

As the saying goes, "if the penalty is just a fine,  it means it is legal for the rich"...

Just thinking about it more, I wonder if that one person caught 20 times in 4 years would class as the "unluckiest" person ever.

How was it possible, given what we know about lack of police resources, to be caught so many times?

Because they won't stop driving like a lunatic.

eburtthebike wrote:

I know the police and legal professions are undermanned, underfunded and demoralised, the prisons are full to bursting, and driving is a right not a privilege, but how can you be caught driving whilst banned twenty times without being locked up?

Actually, how can you be caught driving while disqualified 20 times without one of your neighbors disabling your car in self defense?

Dangerous conduct is not allowed, but this was not dangerous. 
In this case, it looks like rider in front tried to shut the door on the move by coming to the rut in the centre, overtaking rider aiming for the same line leans in for support on the way past. I wouldn't have an issue with it.

Obstruction to delay the progress of another rider is forbidden, but I wouldn't class this  as obstruction. Something like carrying the bike wide to stop someone running past would be. 

And yet blocking in many forms is acceptable, as long as the blocker can claim they were just trying to make progress

lesterama wrote:

And yet blocking in many forms is acceptable, as long as the blocker can claim they were just trying to make progress

And Iserbyt's team is one of the most frequent users of blocking tactic.

Was Pidcock's wheel ahead? If so or they were level then he is simply taking a line that Iserbyt wanted too. Still room on his right but they converged. Good to see close racing, the women's race was a bit boring (but a great win by Pieterse).

A last lap dive bomb is nothing new for Pidcock......he did something similar in the XCC Worlds on the final corner to grab a bronze medal. And made Luca Schwarzbauer cry and the unfairness of it.

Eli just got one with it.....as he'd do the same.

Due to it being St. Pidders, it is "incredible cyclocross skills" but MVdP was called out the other day for shoving a backmarker out the way.

It was a normal pass and nothing to do with "incredible cyclocross skills".  I wonder what the reaction would be on here if it was the other way round?

MVdP is the cyclo-cross GOAT. I'm not sure anyone's trying to claim Pidders has better skillz than MVdP, but he is a seriously skillful rider. The overtake itself was exciting, but nothing particularly skillful. The 20 seconds leading up to that overtake - accelerating hard over the bridge and cornering on the limit with pulse over 190 and legs full of lactate - made the overtake happen. Can you corner faster? Can you take the lines Pidders does?

I certainly don't have the talent of Pidcock but then again I don't go ripping the rear mech off when I make an arse of things nor headbutting others to get in front of them.

the rear mech hanger was bent, it will break, its specifically designed that way to save the frame, if you try to bend it back in place.

snap it off and you get to at least run with the bike back to the pits in parts or make a fixie of your bike, instead of having to carry it all the way.