Petition demanding cyclists "display registration, pay road tax and have insurance" closes after six months... with just 353 signatures; Tadej Pogačar's pisstaking attack (and latest win); Strava adds feature; Hire bikes go missing + more on the live blog

There's a petition to sign which seems quite worthwhile. Three incidents involving vulnerable road users in 10 days!

mctrials23 wrote:

Lets be fair here. That petition didn't meet the 10,000 signatures threshold because it didn't get enough traction. If everyone in the country was asked to vote on it there would probably be a few hundred thousand signatures. The number of twats on the road who clearly hate cyclists is more than 323 per town.

That's the problem with democracy - people are idiots.

What we need is to have leaders that work for the benefit of society and not just jumping on whatever bandwagon they think is popular.

stonojnr wrote:

How are Strava calculating biggest climb ? As I really doubt I've ever done a ride with 15,000 feet of climbing in it, that's like riding up Mont Blanc.

You can click on the activity it's getting it from. Mine shows 5,598 feet, and looking at the ride it was on a 108 mile ride with lots of hills nowhere near that tall. The ride varies from about 480 to 800 feet.

That's for max elevation gain. My "biggest climb" statistic is a totally erroneous one, either from a GPS glitch or errors in Strava's elevation calculator.

andystow wrote:

That's for max elevation gain. My "biggest climb" statistic is a totally erroneous one, either from a GPS glitch or errors in Strava's elevation calculator.

Yes, this. Your biggest individual climb will encompass the single individual segment that has the largest elevation change. The problem is, the map data that Strava used isn't always accurate. Until I did a hilly sportive 2 years ago, my "biggest climb" was actually a stretch of road that was about 5m IRL, but a data black hole had the start of the segment some 150 vertical metres off. According to Strava the road starts about 120 metres below sea level in a very small spot...

Matthew Acton-Varian wrote:

andystow wrote:

That's for max elevation gain. My "biggest climb" statistic is a totally erroneous one, either from a GPS glitch or errors in Strava's elevation calculator.

Yes, this. Your biggest individual climb will encompass the single individual segment that has the largest elevation change. The problem is, the map data that Strava used isn't always accurate. Until I did a hilly sportive 2 years ago, my "biggest climb" was actually a stretch of road that was about 5m IRL, but a data black hole had the start of the segment some 150 vertical metres off. According to Strava the road starts about 120 metres below sea level in a very small spot...

I believe it at least used to be the case that if your recording device had a barometer for elevation, Strava would not overwrite it with their own.

Strava terms it 'elevation gain', meaning altitude accumulated during a single Strava activity, probably over several individual climbs. Not difficult to find rides with that amount of elevation. Fred whitton gave me 3581m of elevation, whatever that is in ye olde units, can't be far off.
If you doubt what your ride has recorded Strava has a feature in the web interface, not the app, to correct the accumulated climb.

It must be a different metric, because the ride activity shows 'elevation gain' which is only 597ft, which still feels more in the right ballpark,and it shows a maximum elevation of 15,435 feet, try more like sea level for actual maximum elevation, but how does that translate to biggest climb ?

Is there a similar one calling for the banning of private motor vehicles from the roads?

This is the nearest

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/654115

I will sign this one

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/655210

We believe LED headlights need to be banned on public roads. A recent survey found that almost 9 in 10 people think at least some headlights on cars on the road today are too bright.

I hope hat doesn't creep into bike lights.  I love my LED lights

Hirsute wrote:

This is the nearest

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/654115

I love this one.  Ryan desperately seeking some kind of revenge upon the automotive industry, because he didn't change his cambelt in time!

Signed. Thanks for the link. 948 so far

39 assholes as of this moment.

... because if you have a car and have paid "road tax" that gives you a claim over any tarmac / paved public space?

Perhaps with these just apply the other headline rule*?  e.g. just tack on "in my / our opinion" to the end?  Then you can ignore it.

* The first being if it ends with a question mark the answer is probably either "no" ("will e-bikes lead to the end of cycling as we know it?") or "we don't know" ("Do Labour have a secret plan to fix our streets?")

Hirsute wrote:

War on motorists continues

"The Tories are so desperate for "motorists" to become a distinctive political identity demographic, it's mad."

"She's quite right; encouraging traffic to flow is communism."

I despair of the department for drivers - can we have the finished review of road traffic offences and the results of the pavement parking consultation?

Why are so many people so keen to tell the world that they are crap drivers?

On the subject of pavement parking I just got an email informing me that it was recently debated in parliament. It's a depressing read but does offer a glimmer of hope in that they are considering making it easier and cheaper for local authorities to deal with it using TRO's, if I have understood the parliamentary language correctly.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2024-03-07/debates/047DDD2E-5BA9-4...

Thanks for that.  I signed the petition and got the same email this morning.  I didn't follow the links because they looked like they could have tracking information in them.  The link you haveposted has the same ID string as mine so I can cross that off my list

I read an article yesterday where They were complaining that yellow hatched boxes "take up too much room on the road" and are just traps for "hard working otherwise law abiding motorists".

It worries me that so many motorists don't seem to understand the purpose of things like yellow hatched areas - they are not there just to tick off motorists… 

Do these people understand what it would be like if there were no parking restrictions, no road traffic laws, etc etc??  I remember playing Car Wars and Battlecars in my youth…  It would be like that! (but without rocket launchers and armour).

brooksby wrote:

(but without rocket launchers and armour).

Don't tempt them.

"hard working otherwise law abiding motorists"

Transl:

"I break road traffic laws all the time, some consciously, others out of shere ignorance. But I generally don't get caught"

Yes, but you only break them because you're in a hurry, with lots of important things to do, places to go and people to meet. Unlike those bone idle lycra-clad cyclists. In fact most of the time it's their fault you need to break the laws.

Damn those lycra clad ruffians and their Jedi mind tricks!

The Post seems to keep using that photo from 'Save our Seafront' (the group opposed to the changes), which shows the seafront halfway through "building" it.  You'd think they could bother to send someone to take a photo of the finished product, before the council dismantle it.

brooksby wrote:

The Post seems to keep using that photo from 'Save our Seafront' (the group opposed to the changes), which shows the seafront halfway through "building" it.  You'd think they could bother to send someone to take a photo of the finished product, before the council dismantle it.

I suspect the Bristol Post writers are too lazy and I'd expect Clevedon seafront to be a bit blustery at this time of year. Maybe they'll go for some seafront ice-creams when the weather improves.