"Ever since I was a young boy
I’ve played the silver ball
From Soho down to Brighton
I must have played them all
But I ain’t seen nothing like him
In any amusement hall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball"
I’ve nothing against the deaf, dumb, and blind (Some of my best friends etc…). But...
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Assassination Attempts
Know Your Enemy 3: The Pinball Wizard
Know Your Enemy 2: The Door Zone
Do you trust the occupants of a parked car to look before they fling a door open? And How wide does a car door open?
But it’s not all one sided - sometimes I see riders doing things that are just plain asking for trouble. A good example of this is filtering through traffic -...
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Two Assassination Attempts - One Successful
Before you panic, not it wasn’t me who actually got killed by a car - it was a fluffy bunny-wunnie.
So let’s get my near-miss out of the way first. I was riding north up the coast into the wind, early on today’s bank holiday. The roads were deserted at a time in the morning...
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Another Techno-Fix For The Symptoms
There’s this from yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald :
The cyclist-friendly car
STEPHEN OTTLEY May 18, 2010 - 4:18PM
Subaru has developed a new system that can detect and avoid cyclists and pedestrians.
Subaru has developed new safety technology that can detect and avoid pedestrians, cyclists and other cars on the road.
Pedestrians...
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Impatient Drivers: Granny’s Revenge
We were talking earlier in the week about how impatience & being a slave to the clock is the biggest danger on the road . Well maybe there’s a cure for that sort of thing - this video’s been around for a while, and I’m pretty sure it’s a spoof . . . but...
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Most Dangerous Piece Of Equipment On The Road?
One of the guys in the office has a yacht. I’m not talking about a dinghy, but a proper, pucker yacht. The kind of thing that you could use for sailing across oceans in comfort and style.
Anyway, he says that the most dangerous thing on a boat is the calendar . You...
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Civilised, Long-distance Commute
Thursday is a bike day. We won’t let the weather, the clients we have to see, or the errands we have to run put us off doing it all on two-wheels. And this week, I had all three - cold & drizzly first thing in the morning; a meeting with a client that required...
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Do You Have A Sixth Sense When It Comes To Other Road Users?
Take a look at this film from Andyb0000 on YouTube - pause it and note down the time in the film at which you’d identified what was going to happen:
Thankfully, Andy is on the mend, but his footage raises some interesting questions about the degree of vigilance that’s needed to ride on the roads...
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Men Make For Thick-Skinned Cyclists
There’s a reason that fewer women than men seem to ride their bikes in the UK. As explained in Beauty & The Bike , it’s the infrastructure - we’re expected to just mix in with the traffic, and it often just doesn’t feel safe, whatever the official statistics say.
Warning: sweeping generalisations ahead.
The thing is,...
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Jumping Red Lights: Safer Than Stopping?
Big ride today - nearly 80 miles playing in the hills of County Durham, getting as far as Wolsingham & then coming home via Durham and the Angel.
I had an incident at a set of lights that made me question the safety of my pedantic attitude to red lights. You see, when I...
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