My Message to Laura Trott

Dear Laura,

No.


Ok. It will probably take a few more words than that, but the above word pretty much sums it all up.

Laura you are undoubtedly an amazing track and road sports cyclist, one that me and my family were shouting for at the top of our lungs at the recent Glasgow track World Cup event in Glasgow. Today you told us that cyclists are muppets and that the only way to protect muppets is to get the muppets to wear helmets.

From Toy Nerd wesbite

I suppose it will protect from Miss Piggy's violent tendencies.

Seriously though, let's get one thing straight. Helmets are NOT the answer. Helmets, will not make our roads safer. Helmets will not save people lives.

Sure, we've all heard it...

I fell off my bike my helmet cracked! I'm only here because I wore my helmet!

Sigh.

I'd really love to know how you know your sister was saved by her helmet? 
 

You know what, I can't actually be bothered getting into the science of helmets, the fact that if they are cracked that they have actually failed in their protection, the fact that they are only rated in a collision with a very particular type of impact at below 12mph. The fact that by increasing the cross-sectional area of your head it can actually increase the likelihood of your head hitting the ground in a crash.

I'm not going to even link to any information from experts that show that at best the jury is out on whether helmets actually improve outcomes or make them worse. Yes, that's right, it is possible that helmets could actually lead to more deaths and injuries.

I'm going to do one thing. I am going to post a link to this video and I am going to ask you to watch it. After you have watched it I am going to ask you one question. Watch it closely.

Ok. My question is this....how many cyclists were wearing helmets in that clip?

Remember this is in rush hour. Not only that, but some of these cyclists were weaving in and out of other traffic (yes cyclists are traffic), and....yes I know it's terrible, some of them even ran red lights...the scoundrels.

Yes Laura the answer is none.

So is Amsterdam (the place that this rush hour video is from) awash with cycling deaths and injuries? Are these cyclists taking huge risks with their lives by not wearing a magic piece of plastic?

No.

Oh, look, I've come to the same word I started off with.

No.

Do we need helmet compulsion?

No.

Will forcing people to wear helmets make cycling significantly safer?

No.

When you look at helmet adverts in the magazines do they ever focus on how this helmet is better than any other helmet, not because it has better ventilation or it's a pretty shape, but instead because it is safer than it's competitors?

No.

Did Amsterdam, the rest of the Netherlands, and a growing number of enlightened nations and cities make cycling safe for it's citizens by calling cyclists muppets and forcing them to wear polystyrene on their heads?

NO!!

Let's end all this nonsense once and for all. We do not need helmets.

We do not need people who happen to be able to make bikes go faster than the rest of us, but who obviously haven't spent a lot of time researching cycle safety (sorry Laura, but that is blatantly obvious), telling us that we need helmet compulsion. The problem is that because you can ride a bike faster than the rest of us, people listen to you. Therefore, you have a responsibility to us all to research your comments on safe cycling before you make them. If you had, you would realise what we really need is  investment in our streets to make them cycle safe, just as Amsterdam has done and continues to do. Yes, you mention this, but mentioning it at the same time as helmet compulsion....well.....the article is only going to go one way, isn't it?

Laura, I beg you, if you really want to make Britain a cycle friendly nation, put pressure on the government to invest REAL money in cycling, and take a step back from the victim blaming helmet nonsense. Support #space4cycling, support Get Britain Cycling, support us at Pedal on Parliament up here in Scotland and write to your MP.

Please, please, PLEASE don't mention helmets again.

Many thanks

Magnatom

P.S. Please don't support the Nice Way Code either.....

Tyred of Hearing About Red Light Jumping?

Edit: Looks like I didn't notice the ahead only filter lights. Oops! It may not have been a red light after all. Oh well. I'll leave this here as a sign of my stupidity. :-)



This is not about the Nice Way Code (NWC). Honest! It is about an advert, but it's not about that now infamous NWC advert that suggests that it's only cyclists that run red light. So please don't flick to another web page, as I understand that we are all NWC fatigued.

This is about a completely different red light jumping advert, one that you might not expect....

YouTube makes its money by selling adverts. Companies make adverts and then pay YouTube (Google) money to place adverts at the start of videos made by other people. It's quite  money maker for Google I understand. Of course, the people who make the YouTube videos get a very small slice of the pie for allowing the videos to be there, so everyone is happy.

It's even smarter than that though. The advertising videos are placed on YouTube videos with related content. The idea is, if you're watching a video about fridges (for example it could be an advert for this really cool fridge), then an advert for a fridge at the start of that video is more likely to result in a converted sale.

All good.

Of course the system isn't perfect. Sometimes it links the wrong videos with the wrong content. I personally find it amusing when car adverts are placed at the start of my videos, especially when the adverts that show cars swooping through winding Californian empty roads, where the sun is shining and there are no damn cyclists holding them up. I love it especially when the advert is at the start of my filtering videos.

Anyway, I digress....

Yesterday, when looking at some comments on one of my videos the following advert started up at the beginning.

Ok, so this one isn't actually advertising a car, it is advertising car tyres, but the principle is the same. Sweeping road, swooping through.......oh wait....it's not all California. At least from 25 seconds onwards it's not all California. In fact some of it is in London!

The advert makers have been smart though. They've managed to avoid the London congestion long enough to make a video. They have even managed to make it look swooping. OK, they had to speed the footage up considerably to make it look swooping, but, you know what, if we could all manage to drive around at x5 even Glasgow might look swooping.

But wait!!

Something is very amiss with this advert. Very amiss, and I'm quite chuffed I spotted it in my first watch through. Did you see it? No?

Ok then, go back to the video and look closely at the section from about 40 seconds until about 47 seconds. Have you seen it now?

Whomever was filming this sequence for YOKOHAMA appears to have ran a red light. Go on, look again!

Yes, the car, and we have to assume that this is a car, as it is an advert for a car tyre after all, went straight through a red light that we can see other traffic stopped at. It looks like they might, just might be slowing down for the second set, but it cuts before they reach that set so we will never know.

Hmmmm. Perhaps as the NWC suggests (sorry I promised not to mention that didn't I?), it wasn't filmed from a car and was filmed from a bike.

It's certainly possible, though the footage does look pretty smooth (bike footage tends to be a bit bumpier), the camera is keeping up with traffic (bikes can never do that....can they?!) the camera is in the middle of the lane (bikes aren't supposed to do that.....are they?!)....oh and in some shots you can actually see the shadow of the car.

It'll be a car then.

So well done, Yokohama (a make that I had never heard of until today and will never buy), not only does your advert suggest that your tyres are so damn good that you just don't want to stop at red lights, and that they are probably grippy enough to help you outrun the police if they happened to see you do it, but you've dispelled the myth that it's only cyclists who run red lights.

I wonder if this advert was produced by the same advertising agency as the NWC.....

Fit for the job?

As you may have already discovered I had a bit of an incident with my Ribble bike the other day.Yes, my frame split completely. You could pull two ends of the downtube apart quite easily. I was lucky, it happened at a non-critical moment and there was no harm done to me (I'm sure a few of my readers will be disappointed).

The bike was bought in December 2009, so I've had it for 3 years 8 months, so it wasn't old. To be fair though I've probably done quite a few miles on it. It was my "not so great weather' bike, so living in Glasgow that meant it got used a lot. At a rough guess it has probably done about 13,000 miles. A fair mileage.

Is 13,000 miles a reasonable distance for a bike to fail at? That's a good question. If there are any specialists out there I'd quite like someone to have a look at the split to see if it was just lifetime fatigue. Anyone?!

Obviously I contacted Ribble to let them know about the incident and to see if they would replace the frame. Here is the response I got.

Thank you for your email and attachments.
Our alloy frames do have a 12 month warranty and as your bike was purchased in 
2009 this warranty has now expired.
As you are no doubt aware, all frames no matter the material will wear over time 
and usage and I can see from the image you have forwarded that this bike has 
covered a considerable amount of miles. 
Ordinarily due to the age and usage we wouldn't offer a refund or replacement, 
however under the circumstances we can agree to send you a replacement frame. 
This frame is brand new and unused, however the down tube bottle cage bosses are 
slightly out of alignment but I note from your video that a bottle cage is not 
currently being used on your Ribble Audax
There is no manufacturing defect to be concerned about as we have sold thousands 
of this particular model and this is the first instance of a breakage of this 
type being brought to our attention.
Please let me know where I can arrange to have your replacement frame delivered 
to.

To be completely fair to Ribble, this is actually a reasonable response. Legally they didn't have to offer me anything, as the frame was only guaranteed for a year (I didn't actually know that). OK, they have offered me a slightly, 'soiled' frame, but they are right, I don't use a bottle cage. I could just take the frame and either build it back up (although I'd need to buy a few new bits and get an bike shop to install some of it..) or I could sell it on.

But wait.

I re-read the e-mail and it started to concern me. They didn't seem in the least bit surprised that my frame had failed, after all, I had done a reasonable amount of miles. Hold on though.....shouldn't a bike frame be able to last a reasonable amount of miles?! Are my distances really that excessive? Was the tool really fit for the job?

Let' be honest here, I bought the Ribble back in 2009 because it was pretty cheap. It had reasonable specifications for the price and it looked like it would do the job. It did until yesterday. However, I bought a  bike that the manufacturer was only willing to guarantee the frame for one year. That has to say something about the quality.

I'm not saying that Ribble are a bad company. I'm pretty sure they do good bikes, but thinking about the riding that I do, can I really ever trust a bike again that's frame only has a one year guarantee?!! The company obviously doesn't trust it much.

I could still accept the frame and sell it on, couldn't I? No. If I can't trust the frame, how can I sell it on to someone else? How can I know that the person I'm selling it on to isn't going to ride it in a similar way to me? Being an honest person (I do try!) I'd have to be honest about why I had the frame to sell. It probably wouldn't be the best sales pitch.

That's it then. I'm stuck. I don't want to use the frame and I don't want to sell it, but Ribble have been reasonable. There is only one solution ....politely decline the frame and grin and bare the expense of another bike.

I've certainly learned from this episode. If a company only offers a one year guarantee on the frame, that bike is unlikely to be suitable for my type of riding. Sure, it might be fine for a rider going on the occasional winter training ride, but not a daily commuter, and certainly not in Glasgow with it's particularly potholed roads.

Perhaps, there is a bigger lesson here. Perhaps we, as consumers shouldn't accept bike frames that only have a one year guarantee. It really doesn't inspire confidence if the manufacturer doesn't have confidence in it.

So yes, I'm on the look for a bike. I think I've found one. I'm going against some peoples advice and considering an aluminium bike again. Am I mad?! Perhaps....but this one has a lifetime guarantee......

A little fatigued

It's been a hard time being a cycle campaigner over the last few weeks. Nice Way Code has taken up a lot of our attention, so we could all be forgiven for being a little fatigued. However, I didn't realise that this feeling could be transmitted to the bike....


It was a normal ride home. Nothing particularly unusual.....actually that's not entirely true. It was a little unusual, as at one set of traffic lights 3 cyclists came together at once.

Eh?

Readers from places like London, Amsterdam and even Edinburgh might be a little confused by my above statement, but anyone who cycles in Glasgow will know exactly what I mean. Cyclists are a scarce sight on the roads of Glasgow, so having three converge in one place at the same time, going the same way is cause for celebration.

We have our own wee peloton!

I couldn't help making a wee joke out of it. The two other hardy cyclists (again this is Glasgow) smiled, and we set off a short distance only to meet again at the next set of lights. One of the other cyclists at this point, upon arriving with 'the squeek' commented on his noisy brakes.


At least the cars will hear you!

That was my retort as we set off from the lights. I do love these little momentary conversations that you can have with other cyclists, something that I don't think I've ever seen happen when two cars pull up next to each other. Cycling really is an incredibly social activity.....except for the majority of the time in Glasgow of course.

Unfortunately for me things went downhill rather quickly from then on.

CLUNK!

It was a strange kind of clunk, but I put it down to a minor shifting issue I have with my gears at the moment, so I carried on.


That's strange....

Something wasn't right though. Something just felt a little odd in the bikes handling. Instead of pulling past the cyclist in front (I had been catching them up until that point) I kept my pace steady and started 'feeling' the bike in the hope of diagnosing the issue on the move.

The bike just felt a bit....bouncy. Yes, that was it, bouncy. That suggested to me that the rear tyre had a puncture and was probably in the process of deflating. I wasn't sure though, so I kept on going a bit, just to see if the tyre did indeed deflate. It didn't appear to, but I decided to stop anyway just to check. Perhaps I was just imagining things.

A quick stop and a quick feel of the tyre confirmed that the tyre was indeed fully inflated. Perhaps I was imagining things, so I shrugged and started pulling away again. That's when I could really feel something was wrong. As I started applying the pressure to the pedals it almost felt like the bike was waving from side to side. Very strange!

I stopped again.

Once again I looked at the tyre. Still fine. Perhaps the rear wheel wasn't seated right for some reason. Nope, it felt tight. Could it be the front wheel? No, that to was fine. I was puzzled. When all else fails in bike fault finding there is only one thing left to do.....bounce the bike of the ground a few times. So I did.

CLUNK! CLUNK!

Ooohh. That didn't sound good.

Something at the front did not sound to healthy, but what? Extreme situations, called for extreme measures. It was time to wobble the bike from side to side....

That's when it became blatantly clear that my bike had ridden it's last mile. I spotted this. 

Eeek!....or words to that effect.

Somehow my downtube had decided that enough's enough (blatant connection to my previous blog which is worth read!). It was sick of all the bumping and bashing it received from Glasgow's potholed roads and it wanted to split.....literally.

Thank goodness this didn't happen when I was speeding down the Clyde Tunnel only 10 minutes earlier!

I stood there, swearing slightly, and completely shocked at the full seperationism of it all. A segregated bike, if you will. I was only brought back to reality by two lovely cyclists who stopped, oooh and aahhhhed in all the right places and very kindly offered to give me a lift home in their car, as they lived just around the corner (see cyclists do have cars!). I declined as it would have been a fair distance for them to drive (probably about 6 miles) and walked in the light drizzle for about 15 minutes until I managed to hail a 'taxi of shame'.

Boo Hoo!

Here is the video, if you'd like to see my pain

On close inspection at home, after my wife and kids ooohhed and aaahhed in all the right places it looked very much like it was a metal fatigue issue, probably propagating from the top of the downtube. I hadn't even spotted when I serviced my bottom bracket at the weekend.

Just one of those things?

Well, no. Yes it's done a lot of miles, and yes it's done a lot of weathers, but I only got it in December 2009, so it should have lasted a lot longer than that. I'll see what Ribble say. Mind you, I'm not entirely sure I can trust one of these frames any more. Sure I'll see if I can get a new frame from Ribble, but a few of the components are being used to destruction, and a few of those are close to it already. Worn components on a new frame when I don't have all the tools and time to take them off the old and onto the new?

So, at a time when money couldn't be much tighter (damn those kids and their birthdays, damn the house needing some urgent work to it, and damn the lounge TV going ping and needing replaced), a replacement needs to be found. I do have another bike, but it's a nicer bike and it would just get eaten up by the Glasgow weather (damn those kids again for taking up my bike maintenance time...)

That's confirmed then. I need a winter friendly bike that will last, that's not to heavy (I have hills and a bit of distance), and won't break the bank.   So which bike shops offer credit......?

Enough's enough.

Enough's enough.

That's what I said to myself after my last post about the Nice Way Code. I'd said what I needed to say. I finished  up recently with a video that demonstrated why the advice to 'ridicule' cyclists who cycle on the pavement was not only bad advice, but completely missed the point of why people often choose to cycle on the pavement.

 (Make sure you switch captions on, you may need to view it on YouTube itself)

I was going to leave it at that. Enough had been said, by enough people about this mess of a campaign.

Then @greendadtwit shared this picture on Twitter earlier today.

 I was literally gobsmacked, and said so on twitter.

This advert was in the Sunday Herald, a respectable Scottish Sunday paper.

So what is wrong with this advert (do I really need to write this!!). First off it contains an obscenity. OK, I'll admit, it's not the worst in the world, but it's not the sort of thing I'd want my 3 year old daughter coming across if she happened to look over my shoulder. (She does this surprisingly often for a 3 year old!)

What does that sign mean daddy?

But it's not really about the children, at least it's not about me trying to keep them sheltered from profanities that they will come across themselves soon enough. No, its the fact that this campaign is supposed to be encouraging us to respect each other more on the roads than we currently do. It's supposed to be teaching us all to live in harmony. Live and let live. Yet, here we have yet another advert from this campaign that is actively supporting the assertion that cyclists are angry. That cyclists are agressive. Cyclists are bad people.

Oh yes, I fully expect the NICE people to tell us that this advert, like every other advert, apparently, is not aimed at one group in particular. It's aimed at all road users.

NO IT ISN'T!!

It has hand signals in it, and I have never, ever seen a driver make any hand signals on the road...that is except signals similar to the third one. The only group that use signals like this are cyclists.....oh and wait a minute....horse riders as well....ah a connection......Hmmmm.


I'm going to hold my hand up and admit, yes, I have used rude signals when on the road, although I tend to use the much more refined coffee shaker hand signal. I try not to use them, and actually, I think I am pretty good at not using them. Why do I use then at all though? Am I just another bloody angry cyclist? Well.....let me write this in capitals just to make sure you don't miss it...


BECAUSE SOME W&NKER OF A DRIVER HAS JUST DRIVEN IN A WAY THAT NEARLY WIPED ME OFF THE ROAD AND POSSIBLY THE PLANET!!!!!

....and breath.....

So yes, I felt compelled to put finger to keyboard just one more time.

I could not be more disgusted with this campaign. 'Give me Cycle Space' was misguided and a bit misleading. However, at least it didn't set the image of cycling and cycle campaigning in general back at least 5 years and possibly more.

So, I think it is time to make a personal plea to a few organisations....

Sustrans, CTC (UK), the AA, and all the other supporting organisations of this campaign, please, PLEASE withdraw your support from this mess. We need to send a clear message out to the general public that this isn't right and that the messages that this campaign sends out are wrong. Please put aside your political allegiances and agreements and think about the damage that this campaign is doing. You have to do the right thing.

Nice Way Code: Just stop. Now. You've done enough damage. Enough's enough.

Scottish Government: ........

I've been really biting my tongue over this one for a while, but I think it's time that someone took responsibility. I say the following as an individual and not as a member of any organisation.....

Many of us have been saying that leadership has to come from the top. For transport that means that we need leadership from the Scottish Government....from Keith Brown. We haven't got any.....until now. The government are the ones who asked for this campaign. The government are the ones that are paying for this campaign and the government are the ones who have lead this campaign. We now know what Keith Brown's leadership looks like and frankly, it stinks.

I've come to the conclusion that we will not have a safer cycling in Scotland with Keith Brown as minister for Transport.

I for one ask that Keith Brown steps down. Enough's enough.

What do you think?