"One more reason why everybody should be retested every five years": Cyclists react to latest survey showing many drivers unaware of Highway Code rules; Castelli invents the 'jack-sey'... to everyone's amusement; Peloton's playlist + more on the live blog

Hirsute wrote:

I just read Sunak is not going to force everyone to wear cycle clips nor outlaw having N+1 bikes.

What about N+1 comments?

Hirsute wrote:

I just read Sunak is not going to force everyone to wear cycle clips nor outlaw having N+1 bikes.

On the other hand perhaps he'll make cyclists less hated by letting motorists off "road tax" also?

The part I'm unclear on is whether they mean "we'll achieve net zero (planned) change" or "we'll make net zero effort"?

Probably the one thing that unites everyone around this debate is that they just want the problem to go away.  They've enough things to worry about already and those seem much more urgent or localised.

Steve K wrote:

In terms of renaming errors, nothing will every beat Newcastle Polytechnic in the 90s (when Polys all became Universities) - it was within a matter of days of being called The City University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The late great Humphrey Lyttelton on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue:

Quote:

Nottingham is a fine city with a fascinating history. It's well documented in official records that the city's original name was 'Snottingham', or 'Home of Snots', but when the Normans came, they couldn't pronounce the letter 'S', so decreed the town be called 'Nottingham' or the 'Home of Notts'. It's easy to understand why this change was resisted so fiercely by the people of Scunthorpe.

Rendel Harris wrote:

The late great Humphrey Lyttelton on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue:

Quote:

Nottingham is a fine city with a fascinating history. It's well documented in official records that the city's original name was 'Snottingham', or 'Home of Snots', but when the Normans came, they couldn't pronounce the letter 'S', so decreed the town be called 'Nottingham' or the 'Home of Notts'. It's easy to understand why this change was resisted so fiercely by the people of Scunthorpe.

With computer technologies, there's the Scunthorpe Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

Quote:

The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL's profanity filter prevented residents of the town of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England, from creating accounts with AOL, because the town's name contains the substring "REDACTED". In the early 2000s, Google's opt-in SafeSearch filters made the same error, with local services and businesses that included Scunthorpe in their names or URLs among those mistakenly excluded from appearing in search results.

That wikipedia page has some amusing examples such as: The word or string "ass" may be replaced by "butt", resulting in "clbuttic" for "classic", "buttignment" for "assignment", and "buttbuttinate" for "assassinate"

hawkinspeter wrote:

Rendel Harris wrote:

The late great Humphrey Lyttelton on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue:

Quote:

Nottingham is a fine city with a fascinating history. It's well documented in official records that the city's original name was 'Snottingham', or 'Home of Snots', but when the Normans came, they couldn't pronounce the letter 'S', so decreed the town be called 'Nottingham' or the 'Home of Notts'. It's easy to understand why this change was resisted so fiercely by the people of Scunthorpe.

With computer technologies, there's the Scunthorpe Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

Quote:

The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL's profanity filter prevented residents of the town of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England, from creating accounts with AOL, because the town's name contains the substring "REDACTED". In the early 2000s, Google's opt-in SafeSearch filters made the same error, with local services and businesses that included Scunthorpe in their names or URLs among those mistakenly excluded from appearing in search results.

That wikipedia page has some amusing examples such as: The word or string "ass" may be replaced by "butt", resulting in "clbuttic" for "classic", "buttignment" for "assignment", and "buttbuttinate" for "assassinate"

There's a firm of heating engineers not far from me, I really don't know how their domain name gets past profanity filters, or why nobody asked "are you sure?" when setting everything up.

Hirsute wrote:

Anyone else getting slow response times and

502 Bad Gateway

on the site ?

 

Yes, seems to be taking forever today as it was last night.

Yeah, I've got rural internet, which at the best of times seems to involve TCP/IP packets being transmitted by smoke signal and carrier pigeons, but it's taking multiple minutes to load pages on Road.cc today. Other sites not affected.

Yesterday I got waiting for js.stripe.% or something and that's with NoScript !

BalladOfStruth wrote:

Yeah, I've got rural internet, which at the best of times seems to involve TCP/IP packets being transmitted by smoke signal and carrier pigeons, but it's taking multiple minutes to load pages on Road.cc today. Other sites not affected.

While IPoAC (IP over Avian Carriers) can not help you with your latency issues, this form of Internet can actually be much faster for latency insensitive, bulk throughput (i.e. MB/s) than other forms of rural Internet access.

Paul J wrote:

While IPoAC (IP over Avian Carriers) can not help you with your latency issues, this form of Internet can actually be much faster for low-latency, bulk throughput (i.e. MB/s) than other forms of rural Internet access.

I was discussing that only last night with some friends.

Quote:

Rafting photographers already use pigeons as a sneakernet to transport digital photos on flash media from the camera to the tour operator. Over a 30-mile (48 km) distance, a single pigeon may be able to carry tens of gigabytes of data in around an hour, which on an average bandwidth basis compares very favorably to current ADSL standards, even when accounting for lost drives.

On March 12, 2004, Yossi Vardi, Ami Ben-Bassat, and Guy Vardi sent three homing pigeons a distance of 100 kilometres (62 mi), "each carrying 20–22 tiny memory cards containing 1.3 GB, amounting in total of 4 GB of data." An effective throughput of 2.27 Mbps was achieved. The purpose of the test was to measure and confirm an improvement over RFC 2549. Since the developers used flash memory instead of paper notes as specified by RFC 2549, the experiment was widely criticized as an example in which an optimized implementation breaks an official standard.

How waterproof are these pigeons?  I can imagine taking a couple of spills, stopping to send some data and finding you're suffering from pocket loss since the pigeon in yours has become waterlogged.

chrisonatrike wrote:

How waterproof are these pigeons?  I can imagine taking a couple of spills, stopping to send some data and finding you're suffering from pocket loss since the pigeon in yours has become waterlogged.

yep, the site was quite slow yesterday too

Hirsute wrote:

Anyone else getting slow response times and

502 Bad Gateway

on the site ?

Yes - I dropped them an email about it yesterday.

I think they need to boost their systems a bit

peted76 wrote:

"It's a bit inbetween a jacket and a jersey"

"So it's a Gabba scusa.. Perfetto"

"Depends, does it have short sleeves or long?"

"Short"

"That's the Gabba then."

"No, some of our Perfettos have short sleeves now too"

"Mama mia, whatever we call it, it can't be worse than this" 

postrestant wrote:

The first illustration contradicts rule 74 of the Highway Code:

Turning. When approaching a junction on the left, watch out for vehicles turning in front of you, out of or into the side road. If you intend to turn left, check first for other cyclists or motorcyclists before signalling. Do not ride on the inside of vehicles signalling or slowing down to turn left.

Is this a contradiction in the Highway Code?

The order of events is not clear on that diagram.

If the car was already waiting and signalling to turn left ahead of the cyclist (and believed that they'd turn left before the cyclist would be near), then the cyclist shouldn't go on the inside. (I'd take primary and then overtake a signalling vehicle in that scenario).

If the car was overtaking the cyclist on the approach to the junction and intended to turn left, then that's very poor driving.

It could certainly be clearer how the various rules interact, but as I read it there could be a difference of approach according to whether the cyclist is turning or going straight on:

Rule 182 - (for everyone) Do not overtake just before you turn left and watch out for traffic coming up on your left before you make the turn

Rule H3 (for motorists) - You should not cut across cyclists, horse riders or horse drawn vehicles going ahead when you are turning into or out of a junction or changing direction or lane, just as you would not turn across the path of another motor vehicle... Do not turn at a junction if to do so would cause the cyclist, horse rider or horse drawn vehicle going straight ahead to stop or swerve.

Rule 74 - (for cyclists) Turning. When approaching a junction on the left, watch out for vehicles turning in front of you, out of or into the side road. If you intend to turn left, check first for other cyclists or motorcyclists before signalling. Do not ride on the inside of vehicles signalling or slowing down to turn left. [Is this last line intended to apply only where the cyclist is turning??] 

Rule 76 (for cyclists) Going straight ahead. If you are going straight ahead at a junction, you have priority over traffic waiting to turn into or out of the side road, unless road signs or markings indicate otherwise (see Rule H3). Check that you can proceed safely, particularly when approaching junctions on the left alongside stationary or slow-moving traffic. Watch out for drivers intending to turn across your path. Remember the driver ahead may not be able to see you, so bear in mind your speed and position in the road.

Interesting. It almost seems like they asking both sides to exercise extreme caution, by placing significant responsibility on both parties. (H3 line after the quotation also gives a right of way to cyclists: 'You [vehicle driver] should stop and wait for a safe gap in the flow of cyclists if necessary.'

Pragmatically, I can't see myself undertaking a stationary car or lorry waiting to turn left ... but then that may annoy cyclists behind me (or even lead to a crash if I slow down when they don't expect it) ... and the waiting vehicle driver

I just preferred the principle of 'don't undertake' ...

postrestant wrote:

Interesting. It almost seems like they asking both sides to exercise extreme caution

Yes - the HWC does this in a number of places: driver should do [x], but cyclist should still be prepared for them not to. I ride defensively / assertively - I'll hold my own, but I'm always ready to cede priority to 2 tonnes of metal if I need to. 

NB: "right of way" and "priority" are different, as are "undertaking" and "filtering" 

Everyones favourite driving instructor, Ashley Neil, did a piece on this on his Youtube Chanel. I'm not inclined to go looking for the link and driving footfall in his direction but if anyone is intersted it's out there.

Yeah.  So it's "sport".  That's not a bad answer (also ticks "community", "mental health" etc.)  Without a serious look at "active travel" though we're missing the "incidental exercise" which can give everyone some baseline movement which they're just not getting now (and additionally open lots of other virtuous circles).

bbc wrote:

Despite cuts to the cycling and walking budget in England earlier this year that were criticised by campaigners, the government commits to "facilitating active travel" as part of its new strategy, "and recognising how the sector can support wider societal outcomes, as well as the health and social care system".

Translation: "We are facilitiating, by mentioning it (when prompted) every few months.  We will happily say this is a good thing, we don't have enough, we should have more, and say things about how active travel is about more than just travel.  Then (thankfully) we can drop the topic and talk about things which really matter to people and which aren't a way to lose political capital for no clear gain."

bbc wrote:

There will be a new targeted campaign to get children active, a review of school sport provision, and a new scheme designed to improve connections between schools and sports clubs. But it also warned that it was "up to the sector to come together and help make that change".

Translation: "We can't run for you!  We aren't going to force anyone to run!  And it's not our job to organise a sports club.  Actually ... we are cool with selling off the sports fields too.  If you want to set up a gym franchise though we can maybe talk party donations and corporate tax breaks?"

Such a shame they have chosen mid-September. Better weather might encourage more people outdoors for fitness.