Live blog: Poll – Would you care if your bike got stolen? Rule change scuppers World Champs ride, driver tells cyclist he hit "you were in the middle of the road", expensive bike breaks (not hols), more pavement fines, Belgian rides + more

The ex-pro goes in search of KoMs and tasty snacks while learning some Aussie-style English.

“Cycle theft is no longer seen as a priority: the feeling is that the public do not care if their bikes get stolen.”

In the final edition of yesterday’s Live blog we published a piece about the British Transport Police disbanding its dedicated bike theft squad to re-deploy resources to tackle violent crime. It was a decision that had angered members of the squad itself who see bike theft on the rail network as a major problem that will only get worse if not tackled. 

While it’s hard in these times of slashed police budgets to quibble about the BTP making an operational decision to target violence over bike theft the remark at the start of this piece from the officer explaining the rationale behind his superior’s decision leapt out at us, and it seems a great many of you too. It also set us thinking because it’s not the first time we’ve heard that sentiment expressed - it’s fair to say that there are as many different types of cyclist as there are people riding bikes and not all of them care as much about the bike ride as we’d imagine most road.cc users do. But even amongst enthusiast cyclists it’s not uncommon to hear the sentiment expressed that having a bike stolen is an opportunity to get a new bike. Maybe that’s just putting a brave gloss on a bad situation, but how would you feel if it happened to you?

Let us know by voting in our poll and in the comments below.

 

 

 

 

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After a Garmin 520 died thanks to an update, we wanna know; what’s the most expensive cycling item that has failed you? Points for every £100 broken Go!

A post shared by road.cc (@road.cc) on Feb 18, 2019 at 5:30am PST

It seems we're not the only unlucky ones, as tales of catastrophic mech fails, snapped seatposts and crack carbon wheels have all made it into our unfortunate round-up of equipment fails... what's the priciest bike bit that's broke on you? 

A bicycle bridge over a canal in the Netherlands has collapsed – thankfully with no-one hurt.

Eindhovennews.com reports that the bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal in the village of Best collapsed yesterday.

The wooden bridge had failed a safety inspection two months ago, leading the local authorities to ban all traffic from it and put diversions in place.

We reported last week that numerous local papers and news websites were up in arms about the drop in fines for pavement cycling - and Get Reading are the latest to jump on board based on figures from a FOI request suggesting incidents of pedestrians getting injured are on the rise - they report that 18 cyclists were fined for pavement cycling in Thames Valley last year. 

While cycling on the footway, other than designated shared use paths, is illegal, official guidance issued by then Home Office minister Paul Boateng in 1999 and reissued by former transport minister Robert Goodwill five years ago makes clear it should not automatically result in a fine. The guidance originally outlined by Boateng says: “The introduction of the fixed penalty is not aimed at responsible cyclists who sometimes feel obliged to use the pavement out of fear of traffic and who show consideration to other pavement users when doing so.

“Chief police officers, who are responsible for enforcement, acknowledge that many cyclists, particularly children and young people, are afraid to cycle on the road, sensitivity and careful use of police discretion is required.”