Road Safety

I have a love/hate relationship with bike lanes and cycle tracks. Too often, they’re like the little girl from the nursery rhyme. She rode down the street on a bike that she’d borrowed, When bike lanes were good, they were very, very good, But when they were bad, they were horrid. OK, so I’ll probably wait a long...
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I found this video on YouTube about the debate in New York. It’s three years old, so if you’ve visited / live there, I’d love to hear if there have been any changes: As far as segregtion & integration goes, I’ve still not yet made up my mind. I look at what has been achieved...
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Coming to probably quite small screens on a desk top near you: *UPDATE* The full version of this video is now featured on this blog post, along with details of how I feel Nick Clennett, Gateshead Council’s Head of Transportation and Highways has let us down with the sub-standard bike facilities around Gateshead College’s Baltic...
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The question posed today by the Fat Lad, which I picked up via The Bicycle Diaries was, Are dedicated bike lanes protecting you from cagers or treating cyclists as 2nd class road users? It’s one of those subjects like the ‘H’ word that’s sure to generate a stack of opinions, usually backed up with Science. Real...
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So after her sentencing earlier this week, there was a bit of a public outcry - it seemed that killing another driver in a journey during which she’d sent 20 text messages is deemed to be worth more than 21 months inside by the UK’s Joe Public. The Attorney General is reviewing the case, and...
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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 Phillippa Curtis, the 21 year-old who sent 20 text messages and made a bunch of phone calls before hitting a stationary vehicle & killing it’s occupant, Victoria McBryde, has now jailed for 21 months. Despite the evidence of her own experience, when in court, she claimed that it was sometimes acceptable to use a...
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Not bad for a snappy title, huh? OK, so here’s my thing - just after I first graduated, I worked on Head Up Displays (HUDs) for fast jets. These are the things that pilots look through, and all sorts of useful data gets projected, focused so that it appears to be miles ahead of the...
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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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Meh! Driving. It’s just now how I expected it to be - certainly not the way it was portrayed in all those adverts. I mean, I already have the foxy Wife, and lovely Daughter, but where were the wide open roads so I can pretend to be a Formula one driver: . . . where’s my...
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