News

You may have noticed a few changes starting to creep into this site - tweaks to the layout, an updated banner, stuff like that. One of the things I’ve changed today is important for email subscribers. Until now, I’ve been using a service called Feed My Inbox to do this. But some users have reported...
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Possibly the strangest news story ever, via MSN : A woman driver caused a pile-up after becoming distracted while shaving her bikini line. Megan Mariah Barnes, 37, crashed into the back of a truck in the Florida Keys after giving her ex-husband the wheel as she shaved her private parts. Barnes was driving to meet her boyfriend...
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There’s something going on, y’know. It seems that this thing where women cyclists in That London are at more risk than men are just refuses to go away. According to this report by the BBC , women account for only 27% of the capital’s bike journeys. Yet of the eight cyclists killed by drivers of...
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One of the institutions of British cycling is the British Heart Foundation’s London to Brighton Ride . With 27,000 riders heading out to cause traffic mayhem (the roads on the route are closed to proper, tax-paying traffic…) the ride’s about 60 miles, and the event has been run since 1980. But actually, it’s a...
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Actually this is Oxford Circus. Until now, it’s been a victim of the "keep the people away from the cars by fencing them in" logic that traffic planners love. You know the sort of thing - put fences between the people and the cars, so the drivers feel that it’s "safe" to drive faster than...
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This is SCARY stuff! This video comes via Andrea at Velorution. Just watch the truck come bowling along, desperate to overtake the cyclists . . one of whom was Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, who was out scouting routes for a cycling super highway. I&
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So there’s this case of Daniel Rosier that went to court in Oxford last week. He cycled past a line of cars at a pedestrian crossing, but didn’t stop, and hit a pedestrian. THEN he stopped, and helped the child he’d hit, and looked after them ’till the boy’s parents arrived. Anyway, he broke the law,...
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Somehow this completely passed me by last year - Change Your World a Sustrans campaign about getting people to use their cars 10% less. Of course, car use actually dropped by 12% last year, though everyone seems to be saying that this was due to the economy going into free-fall. Or as our Prime...
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This today via Adrian Fitch’s Random Ramblings - a story about bicycle helmets, accidents and blame as reported in BikeRadar. Putting it simply: Involved in an accident on a bike? Hit by another vehicle, and suffer a head injury as a result? Weren’t you wearing a helmet? Then you’re partially to blame. Maybe. Or at least that’s one...
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So. Yesterday, Amsterdamize put up some charts about the Dutch population’s ways of getting around. Great stuff, showing how far people travel, and what mode of transport they use depending on journey length, and how far people cycle. As an engineer, I like numbers,  so I thought it would be fun to compare our part...
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