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news
"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
SUMMARY
West Midlands Police video29 December 2023, 12:14
"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
It'll never cease to surprise me (although it probably should have by now) that no matter how obviously not a cyclist's fault a collision can be, there'll still be a queue of people claiming to the contrary. Exhibit A:
This is the footage, released by West Midlands Police, showing the moment a 71-year-old cyclist was left with a bleed on the brain, a broken shoulder and a broken ankle after a driver — who was jailed for 12 months after pleading guilty to causing serious injury by careless driving — ignored give way markings and caused the collision.
As Traffic Sergeant Jordan Keen from West Midlands Police pointed out: "She [the victim] is an experienced cyclist and a member of a local cycling club, but it's clear from the footage that Freeman's careless driving when crossing the junction meant she stood no chance."
And yet, the top responses to West Midlands Police's post?
"Wow the cyclist shouldn't have been going that fast though?!"
"The cyclist should have been extra vigilant approaching that junction. The cyclist is the more vulnerable road user. Given the speed, it was probably an electric bike. That would have been 100 per cent fatal if they weren't wearing a helmet!"
"Cyclist is going way too fast. Probably breaking the speed limit but clearly not proceeding towards a major crossing with caution. Irresponsible."
Give me strength...
BBC and Channel 5 presenter Jeremy Vine, who cycles around London and posts videos of his travels on social media, has also commented on the footage too, saying: "Watch the red car. Watch the cyclist. Now ask yourself, 'Was the woman on the bicycle to blame in any way for that collision? Should she have avoided it?' If your answer is any version of yes, YOU MUST stop driving and surrender your driving licence to the authorities."
The police posted a video showing a motorist colliding with a cyclist. Plenty of people the replies seem to blame the cyclist for "speeding" instead of the *convicted* motorist.
Here we are again...
The cyclists approx speed.https://t.co/gQGWKNInAu pic.twitter.com/89zlSpomfL— Cycling via... (@cyclingvia) December 28, 2023
29 December 2023, 15:03
Crowdfunder set up to save bike shop from closure after Christmas Day burglary
29 December 2023, 11:36
Shocking footage released by police shows driver crashing into cyclist, catapulting her into the air (+ video)
29 December 2023, 11:17
AA president calls for more traffic police to "increase the perception" thousands of people driving while disqualified "are more likely to be caught"
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency has raised safety concerns after issuing statistics, reports by Sky News, which show thousands of "selfish" motorists are "brazenly" ignoring driving bans, with one person caught 20 times in four years.
More than 37,500 people have been convicted of driving while disqualified in the last four years, 8,000 of those being repeat offenders. DCS Andy Cox said the actions of those who drive while disqualified are "selfish".
"The public understandably expects these serious offences to be recognised as such when habitual disqualified drivers are brought to justice," he said. "Via deterrence we can reduce danger on our roads and ultimately save lives."
Likewise, AA president Edmund King commented on the figures, and said an increase in traffic police numbers would "increase the perception they are more likely to be caught".
29 December 2023, 11:08
Nah, I think I'll pass
That was stressful 😅😅
29 December 2023, 10:44
Richie Porte's flash new bike day makes us jealous
Must be nice being a retired, top-level professional cyclist. Your money and wins in the bank, free to ride whatever whenever. Of course, we'll avoid thinking about the years and years of suffering, sacrifice, crashes and just generally living like a monk... yep, just focus on the shiny S-Works and sunny rides, that's the way. It's a beauty...
Porte retired at the end of 2022, the Tour of Britain cancelled early due to the Queen's death his final race. Last January, his wife hit out at trolls having a pop at his 'post-retirement weight gain'.
> Richie Porte's wife "already tired of seeing comments about his weight" after rider's retirement
I put that 'post-retirement weight gain' in quotation marks because quite frankly a professional athlete put through years of the most strict dieting, reaching the limits of health and performance, returning to a more normal life post-retirement is probably something to be celebrated... oh, and he's still in better shape and faster than 99.9% of us...
Yep, definitely faster...
29 December 2023, 09:59
How to watch cyclocross (and all the other racing) now GCN+ has closed
29 December 2023, 09:58
The year in cycling — all the biggest and best moments from the past 12 months
29 December 2023, 09:04
Bike-handling from another planet: Mathieu van der Poel, Tom Pidcock and Puck Pieterse show off their incredible cyclocross skills
Water is wet, the Pope's a Catholic, cyclocross is muddy, Mathieu van der Poel won again last night. As on Boxing Day at Gavere, Puck Pieterse took the women's race too, both riders taming the mud, sand and technical sections with their quite incredible bike-handling skills. Just look at that power...
🔥 El 𝐳𝐚𝐫𝐩𝐚𝐳𝐨 de la bestia
🧨 @mathieuvdpoel se marcha en el tramo de arena tras una dura competencia en la primera mitad de carrera
📺 En directo en @Eurosport_ES 2⃣ y en la APP con @Juan_Clavijo_ y @kapelmuur29 pic.twitter.com/aRZbe3ss7D
— Eurosport.es (@Eurosport_ES) December 28, 2023
And the skills continued after the finish line...
Puck Pieterse wins in Diegem 🔥
The Dutch National Champion claims her second win in a row in the Superprestige Diegem with a faultless performance 👏#Diegem #Cyclocross pic.twitter.com/QC6s6uQ7o9
— Eurosport (@eurosport) December 28, 2023
Tom Pidcock took second in the men's race, pulling off a daring last-corner overtake of Eli Iserbyt which was arguably the most jaw-dropping bike-handling of the night...
A Pidcock 𝒅𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒃𝒐𝒎𝒃 🏎️
Tom Pidcock reveals his inner Lewis Hamilton with a last lap lunge to secure second place in Diegem 🇧🇪#cyclocross | @INEOSGrenadiers pic.twitter.com/xnquvxmxN4
— Eurosport (@eurosport) December 28, 2023
Smooth. Tom P's never limped away from the lights while awkwardly trying to clip in, has he?
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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29 comments
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, and watch the front wheel of the vehicle that is waiting to pull out from the left or right - if it starts to move do an emergency stop and shout stop, stop, stop very loudly. On roundabouts, if you are in the outside lane and a vehicle is coming from the left and looks like it is traveling fast into a roundabout, stop quickly and let it go by - even if you have the right of way - the driver might not see you. If you are going across an exit road on a roundabout look carefully to the left to see if any vehicles are going to turn into that exit and into you - best just to wait till the road is clear. I find roundabouts the most dangerous obstacles on the road for cyclists - many motorists view them as performance driving speed tests and drive as fast as possible around them. I commuted on my bike to and from work in London for 48 years and only had a few very minor accidents.
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.
Re: the collision. Frustrating but not surprising - cyclists getting the blame/being criticised for doing less than two thirds of the speed a car would be in the same situation is something I see all the time.
There's going to be a moratorium on jail sentences of less than 12 months. Shoplifters will benifit most from this but number 6 on the list is Driving while disqualified from holding or obtaining a licence.
I'm of the opinion that jail should be an option for those who drive while disqualified (repeat offenders in particular), but the maximum sentence is 6 months so nobody will be going to jail for it.
Shoplifters get worse sentences than killer drivers.
I dont think many shoplifters even get prosecuted.
Neither do many killer drivers
MvdP, Pidcock & Pieterse all have something in common, apart from being skilled riders...
They're three of only four riders to have won World Cups in CX, XCC & XCO.....(the other is British, who wears a Red Bull helmet).
DCS Andy Cox said the actions of those who drive while disqualified are "selfish"
This kind of language, equating the behaviour to 'naughty, but boys will be boys', does not help. Only proper penalties will help.
".....thousands of "selfish" motorists are "brazenly" ignoring driving bans, with one person caught 20 times in four years."
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?
The depth of motornomativity in our society is truly awesome.
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.
Actually, how can you be caught driving while disqualified 20 times without one of your neighbors disabling your car in self defense?
Genuine question. Is deviation from your line to shoulder barge your opponent legal in cyclocross?
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
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.