A fresh, thick tuna steak, seared around the edge, raw in the middle, served with a simple rocket salad with truffle oil new potatoes, is one of the finest meals I have eaten.

On that note, one of the problems with the pre-packed tuna steaks sold in supermarkets is that they are just not thick enough, e.g. only 15mm or so. Consequently it’s difficult/impossible to cook the outside while keeping most of the interior rare: I think the steaks need to be 25mm-30mm thick to get the best results.

A couple of suggestions to jazz it up a bit:

1. Some balsamic vinegar dizzled over the rocket or blended in the olive oil dressing, plus some shaved parmesan on top, gives the rocket salad a boost. You can shave the parmesan with a fancy mini-mandolin or a peeler.

2. Fennel butter works well with tuna: pound a teaspoon or so of fennel seeds with a mortar and pestle. Melt some butter in a small pan and add the crushed fennel seeds. As soon as the tuna is done and on the plate, turn the heat up under the butter, and when it is foaming pour the butter over the tuna.

What proportion of the vehicle speed limit do you think the bicycle speed limit should be set?

What I think is that the vehicle speed limit, which is just that – a limit,- obviously applies to all vehicles, but equally obviously every road user must travel at a speed appropriate to the conditions.

For cyclists that means if there are pedestrians on the pavement, it is likely to mean that the appropriate speed is lower if the cyclist is in secondary position than if they are in primary position.

Similarly, if the road is so narrow that a car driver has to drive within, say, 50cm of the pavement and there are pedestrians close to the edge of the pavement, then their appropriate speed will be lower than where they can maintain a clear gap of, say, 1.5m between themselves and the pavement.

That is quite a leap you’re making there given the level of road casualties in this country for incidents not involving motor vehicles.

Possibly, but in general lower speed does equal safer, by virtue of reduced stopping distances, more time to react, and lower collision speeds.

Have I read that Thule link correctly: £80 for a single pannier?!

That’s appalling value for money considering that you can buy a pair of Ortlieb Back Roller Classic panniers for £95 from the likes of Spa, which are considered the best available, whereas panniers are not a Thule core product. I suspect Thule just sub-contract out the manufacture to some company in China, and are using their brand name to sell an inferior product to Ortlieb at a ridiculously higher price.

Thanks for your agreement – though I’m not sure if you realised what you are agreeing to. I note I didn’t suggest that he chose not to move to the left.

Moving to the left would not have been mutually exclusive with initially covering the brakes and then braking: they are all appropriate actions, and if he could not brake sufficiently, then moving to the left would have compensated for that.

On a more general note, when I used to commute on a bike, I did so in ordinary clothes on a heavy touring bike with a 5/6 speed wide(ish) ratio freewheel and rather slow Michelin World Tour 32c tyres (and it was not in a very densely populated city). Consequently, although it had drop bars, my progress was relatively sedate. Many people are commuting now in full lycra etc. on very lightweight road race bikes, or on sportif bikes which are very similar, and they take full advantage of the speed at which they can ride these bikes. I cannot help feeling that in many cases when I see videos posted on Youtube etc. of incidents and near misses, that many of these cyclists are riding too fast for the road conditions in many urban areas.

A comparison is often made of the cycling infrastructure in the UK vs. the likes of Holland, and how many cyclists in Holland do not wear helmets. However, when you look at photographs of them, they are typically riding heavy upright or touring/hybrid style bikes and are wearing ordinary clothes (as opposed to lycra etc.), and their speed will reflect that. So I think to some degree cycling in places like Holland is safer not just because of of the infrastructure for – and societal attitude to – cycling, but also because of the behaviour/lower speed of their commuting cyclists in general, which greatly reduces the risk to themselves, as well as to fellow cyclists and pedestrians.

Which isn’t an unreasonable decision, particularly given the amount of time he had to process and make such a decision.

I strongly disagree. The moment he saw a pedestrian either in the road or stepping into the road should have rung alarm bells and triggered an immediate sequence of defensive precautionary responses, starting with covering brakes and slowing down, and escalating to harder braking when it was becoming clear that the pedestrian would still be only a step or two away when he drew level with him. As I have said, the bus stopping ahead of him should already have put him on the alert for pedestrians attempting to cross the road.

I’m not entirely sure he reacted at all though, as what might have avoided the collision would have been to move further to the left, which seems the most obvious reaction.

Agreed.

You lot are assessing the cyclists actions with the benefit of perfect hindsight – he had about 2s between the ped stepping off the kerb and the collision; in order to do anything effective he’d have had to be acting at least 1s before the collision which is before he’d have effectively processed the pedestrian stepping off the kerb. We’re not talking about just reacting here, we’re talking about decision making. I doubt very much he intended to pass that close, it’s just he didn’t manage to do anything else.

I accept that he might not have been able to slow sufficiently to prevent the collision, but it appears that his speed was constant right up to the moment of collision. Two and a bit seconds is not much, but if he had his hands on the hoods, then he should have moved to cover the brake levers and should have been able to start emergency braking before the collision, even if it would have made little difference to the outcome.

As far as I can see, he decided that he did not need to cover the brakes/slow because he assumed the pedestrian would be out of the way by the time he drew level with him.

As for hindsight, I can say with confidence that I have braked far more quickly than within 2s in an emergency. Moreover, the fact that there was a bus stop ahead at which a bus had stopped was something which he should have registered prior to even seeing the pedestrian, and prompted him to expect pedestrians who had alighted from the bus crossing the road.

The pedestrian almost clears the bus lane, then a second before the cyclist would have passed him, does a 180 and steps back infront of the cyclist.

I’m all for “assume everyone is an idiot and trying to kill you”, but that only works upto a point, you can’t assume that every road user is about to do a 180 and crash into you, you’d never be able to go anywhere.

We want car drivers to give cyclists at least 1.5m clearance when they overtake, and preferably more, to allow for errors, wobbles and the unforeseen. This is no different: the cyclist should have shaved his speed (or if he did brake at all, then he needed to brake more), so that the pedestrian would be further away by the time he drew level, and so that he had a comfortable margin of safety to protect him if the pedestrian behaved unpredictably.

In Risk management “Hazard” is usually the source of the potential damage/adverse outcome not the likely victim of it. using “Hazard” as a term for vulnerable road users is a partial responsibility shifting onto the victim.

This is silly. You are trying to shoehorn road safety into fitting the perspective of the work related safety industry and its precise definitions. To suggest that this is victim blaming is nonsense. The key point is that as a road user (or a pedestrian) you only have control over your own actions, and the best way you can protect yourself and others, is to view other road users and pedestrians as being potentially unpredictable and a hazard to you and themselves, and the best way to mitigate the risks to yourself and them is to give yourself a good margin of safety at all times wherever possible.

Fairly safe to assume he’s goimng to carry on

No it isn’t, as the video demonstrated. The only thing you should assume is that every other road user, man, woman, child, animal is a potential hazard, and you should always try to ensure a sufficient margin of safety (speed and distance) to protect yourself from their sometimes unpredictable behaviour.

Interesting, in that situation I’m not sure there was much time to react. The pedestrian changes direction in a completely unpredictable way with very little reaction time possible. I’d have been aiming for between the pedestrian and the curb and I’m not certain I’d have avoided that collision.

The pedestrian steps into the road at around 49s-50s, and the cyclist was around maybe 8m from him. Maybe the video is deceptive, but it seems to me that at no point did the cyclist reduce speed as a precaution: they were expecting the pedestrian to have continued moving on just enough for them to pass by without colliding and without slowing down even slightly.

I am not suggesting that I have not made similarly poor decisions on occasion in the past, or that I will never do so again, but that was poor cycling.

I’ve always just said ‘Excuse me’, not loudly but firmly, and if the pedestrian has had to move to allow me through then I will say ‘Thank you’ as I pass.

I’ve never had a problem with grumpy gits muttering about having bell. I used to think that was maybe because I am not young, and possibly because of the way I project my voice to make sure they hear me (as I say – ‘firmly’).

However, I now suspect that the reason why I don’t have any run ins with grumpy gits, is because in any interaction with a pedestrian the grumpy git is me. I am, as it were, an alpha grumpy git, and pedestrians somehow sense this.

So maybe some of you need to work harder on cultivating your own inner grumpy git. It may help you in your dealings with pedestrians and other cyclists. However, it may also make you a right miserable git.

I’d say my cx brakes would have at least twice the stopping distance of road brakes. In fact in the wet coming down the haylie brae I can’t even get the bike to a standstill at the lights at the bottom without putting a foot down … they are that bad.

Are they set up to maximise mechanical advantage and with good blocks?

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/cantilever-geometry.html

You can’t appeal because the prosecution presented evidence that you didn’t bother to debunk at the time. The opportunity was there and wasn’t taken.

New evidence that couldn’t reasonably been brought at the time of the original conviction would be needed if you want to challenge the testing.

I don’t think that is correct. There have been cases where expert witness testimony was fatally flawed, but was given in court and the defence failed to spot and expose the erors in the expert witness testimony during the trial. When the errors were exposed after the trial and conviction, it resulted in appeals and the conviction being overturned.

The most famous one I can recall was Sally Clark, where the expert witness stated that the probability of two child deaths in the same family as a result of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was 1 in 73 million and so the deaths must have been murder, but it was later shown that that where there had been a Sudden Infant Death Syndrome child death, there was a much higher statistical probability of further such deaths in the family, and the figure of 1 in 73 million was completely wrong.

Whosoever, having the charge of any carriage or vehicle, shall by wanton or furious driving or racing, or other wilful misconduct, or by wilful neglect, do or cause to be done any bodily harm to any person whatsoever, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and being convicted thereof shall be liable, at the discretion of the court, to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years

The harm must be caused by the wanton or furious driving, wilful misconduct, or wilful neglect. If the accident and harm would have occurred even if a front brake was fitted, either because

a) it could not be said beyond a reasonable doubt that using a front brake would have prevented the collision and injury (hence the importance of the highly dodgy results of the police tests of stopping distances), or

b) a competent cyclist on a fully braked bike in the same situation would have done exactly what the defendant did, and swerved (rather than braked),

then the harm was not caused by wilful neglect. That leaves wanton and furious driving, and that does not seem to apply given the reported speeds etc., or wilful misconduct, which also does not seem to apply.

EDIT – I suppose it’s possible that the jury deemed the behaviour of the defendant in the brief period between the pedestrian steeping into the road and the collision to be wanton and furious, inasmuch as he he shouted and swore at her to get out of the way. That shout could be interpreted as implying an attitude of cavalier arrogance, and suggesting that he was not going to make any concessions because he had right of way. However, that would be a huge assumption, and the words used could just as easily have been shouted in panic (and fear of a collision where he would probably have been more likely to come off worse than the pedestrian).

Specsavers’ business model is essentially franchises combined with own brand frames.

The franchises will probably vary somewhat, but are unlikely to be significantly worse than a given small independent, and very possibly may be significantly better than a given small independent, since the Specsavers group will have minimum standards for its franchises to meet, and there will not be similar requirements imposed on an independent.

The big question therefore is probably whether the choice of Specsavers own brand frames is sufficient for you. For example, if you particularly want an Oakley frame (sports or otherwise), then Specsavers is unlikely to be the place to go.

I imagine that if Charlie Alliston’s lawyers wish to appeal the verdict on the grounds of the flaws in the police tests, then the burden of proof will now be on them to show that the test results were flawed, and also that correct testing would give results that would materially undermine the prosecution case.

In other words, now that the jury has seen and apparently accepted the police tests and given its verdict, it will no longer be sufficient for the defence simply to raise doubts about the tests. I suspect that for an appeal to be allowed/succeed, they would now need to undertake their own tests, and for those tests to give decisively different results compared with the police tests.

I presume that Charlie Alliston’s defence was paid for by legal aid. I doubt that the legal aid pursekeepers will be willing to fund such testing now (after the trial) on a speculative basis, and I suspect that Charlie Alliston lacks the means to pay for it himself (and his unlikeability will not encourage anyone else to pay for it).

you wonder why the defence wouldn’t perform trials with experienced fixie riders (or even the accused) to show what the stopping distance is relative to properly braked bikes if it was a major line of their defence.

The defence would not have needed to get its own tests done. The first thing it should have done is identify a suitable expert who could review the police evidence. Based on the comments on this thread, it looks highly likely that such an expert would able to completely tear apart the police testing.

There would be no need for tests from the defence, if they could simply cross examine the police witness in court and completely destroy the credibility of the evidence they presented. For example, if the speed gun recorded the speed at a different point the barrister simply needs to ask the question “What was the speed immediately prior to braking?”, which the police witness could not answer.

If that evidence had been discredited, then the prosecution case might even have collapsed there and then.

My reading is that wilful neglect only applies if the injury occurs because of that wilful neglect.

Correct. Without their being an injury I think the strongest charge that could be applied is dangerous cycling, with a £2500 fine. My reading of that charge is that there couldn’t be an effective defense from someone riding a fixie without a front brake. [/quote]

But what is the wilful neglect? If it’s the lack of a front brake, then I would have thought that the same verdict would have to be given for both the manslaughter charge and the wanton and furious charge.

The ‘effective defence’ would be that the harm was not actually a direct result of the lack of a front brake.

Is there a pic from the other side? Would be interested to see what sort of gearing was being run.

Most of the other media images are a side on image and low resolution, but I doubt you could estimate the gearing given the potential variation in sprocket size.

it looks like he’s wearing police issue boots/ no foot retention

The bike had flat pedals, with toeclip and straps on the non-drive side pedal only.

To me it shows a front braked bike (which doesn’t look much like a MTB) stopping in about 6m (brakes applied about 3m before the cones).

My error (apologies). Looking at the video again, I’ve realised that the first bike looks like a fixed gear bike with both front and rear brakes (although conceivably the rear could have been disconnected for the test).

Does anyone know how a speed gun like that used in the test works, i.e. how does anyone (including the user) know that the speeds shown were indeed the speeds at the precise moment before braking?

I’m guessing that the gun shows a speed reading all the time the button is pressed by the user, but that the recorded speed shown on the screen after the button is no longer being pressed, is the highest speed reading that was measured throughout the period the button was pressed. So it was not necessarily the speed immediately before braking.

The testing looks to me to be potentially riddled with errors and unreliability, and yet is probably the key piece of evidence used to get a conviction which may result in a prison sentence.

The video only shows the MTB stopping in 3m from 15mph and the fixed gear bike stopping in 19m from 16mph. Presumably there must have been some other tests, since I recall at least one report of a test using a fixed gear bike with front brake.

Hard to believe he’s a lawyer.

Right now Charlie Alliston is probably thinking exactly the same thing about his barrister.

As much as Charlie Alliston sounds like an unpleasant arrogant jerk for whom I have no sympathy, I can’t help thinking (based on admittedly limited second hand accounts from the media) that this may be a miscarriage of justice.

Thanks to the poor and sometimes inaccurate reporting by the media, we still do not know exactly what the expert evidence was in respect of what the stopping distance would have been with a fixed gear bike with a front brake, but as has been discussed in this thread, it sounds like that distance may have been very close to the 6.65m distance identified by the defence from the point when Charlie Alliston swerved.

I think this is crucial to the whole case: whether the defendant would have been able to stop, say, 20cm before the collision, or would still have collided albeit at a much lower speed, is not the issue. The issue is that if the stopping distance would have been so close to 6.65m (whether more than 6.65m or less), then a competent cyclist on a fully braked bike would not have known for certain whether he could prevent the collision by braking. The reports suggest that the fatal injuries were not dependent upon the collision speed, and so might have occurred even at a very low collision speed, such as might have occurred with a fully braked bike.

Swerving was probably the better choice, regardless of brakes: with 6m separation it should be fairly easy for a cyclist to swerve around and avoid an object as narrow in profile as a pedestrian. Unfortunately it sounds like the defendant, having committed to his swerve, was surprised by the pedestrian stopping her forward movement (probably because of his shouted warning) and stepping back into his path.

This suggests that not only was there not a strong direct link between the lack of a front brake and her death (ergo no manslaughter conviction), but also that there are no actual good grounds for the ‘wanton and furious’ conviction. In other words, if you accept that the lack of a front brake could not be said beyond a reasonable doubt to have been the cause of the death, and that a competent cyclist with a fully braked bike might reasonably have acted exactly as Charlie Alliston did in swerving etc., then what exactly was ‘wanton and furious’ about his riding? (You could argue his speed was wanton and furious given the absence of a front brake, but – as with the manslaughter charge – that seems questionable if the lack of front brake made no difference to the outcome.)

As I said, I am not shedding any tears for Charlie Alliston, but this judgement seems to suggest that cyclists will be held to far higher standards than any motorist. If – rather than braking – you swerve to avoid someone who steps into the road in front of you without warning, and when they become aware of you they panic and step backwards into your path, and are injured or killed as a result, then this case suggests that you could similarly be charged and found guilty of wanton and furious cycling, and receive a prison sentence.

My very first thoughts on reading of the conviction were – like many of the comments above – that it was a fair judgement. Having reflected, I now have a horrible suspicion that the jury have ignored the evidence, the law and the facts in order to deliver the verdict they felt was right, and that those feelings were driven by prejudice.

the specific charge we all assume he is being prosecuted under

No need to assume – confirmed in this news article:

My Wyeth added: “I’m not criticising Mrs Briggs.”

He also suggested it was unlikely that a driver in Alliston’s position would face the same charge: “If you drove your car really dangerously and at very high speed, you might get prosecuted for what’s called gross negligence manslaughter. You might.

“But this defendant is not getting prosecuted for gross negligence manslaughter. He is getting prosecuted for unlawful act manslaughter. As drivers, the prospects you would be prosecuted for unlawful act manslaughter are very slender.”

If you read this thread you’ll see that most of us have come to the conclusion that the crucial bit is the first clause, the direct link between the illegal act and the death. The defence case is that the death would have happened even if he was on a fully legal bike.

What has been reported of the court case has been inevitably very limited, and some of the reporting has been very poor and even misleading. However, I am surprised that we have not heard that the defence made a stronger argument that the choice to swerve instead of brake was a perfectly valid/reasonable one (and possibly even the more appropriate choice). I would have expected that point to be have been emphasised far more strongly, and yet it seems not from the reporting, e.g. of the defence’s final statement.

What do you hope to get from a custom frame that you can’t get in an off the peg frame?

Unless you are a very funny size / shape, I don’t really see the point in getting a custom frame.

This. Unless you have,

a) Very unusual body dimensions, or
b) Very specific essential requirements that current off the peg frames and bikes simply do not offer, or
c) It’s a once in a lifetime purchase from one of the great framebuilders, e.g. Pegoretti, Seven, Richard Sachs etc., and nothing else is an acceptable substitute,

then it makes litle sense to go down the custom route. As some of the posts above and elsewhere on this forum show, there is a significant risk of disappointment because something is not done how you wanted or specified (or failed to specify), or the finished article just isn’t what you expected it to be in how it rides or looks.

If you can identify an off the peg frame or bike that gives you a good fit, the ride and handling you want, and all or even most of what you are looking for in terms of things like braze-ons etc., and you have the opportunity to test ride one as well, then I think you would be taking an unnecessary and expensive risk in trying to get a custom frame that would even match it. It’s probably even less likely that a custom frame would improve on it.

In that case, life is short, you know what you like and what you want, anything less will probably be a disappointment (‘if only I had got a…’).

Give Mr Mather a call now or send him an email and get in the queue.

Incidentally Tubus make some fancy titanium racks, so maybe with one of those your ideal audax bike will be including a rack, rather than minus a rack.

You’ve specified a lot of requirements which collectively greatly limit your choice of available off the peg bikes and frames. Moreover, some of your requirements are irrational/aesthetic, and limit your choice even further (I like horizontal top tubes as well, but when push comes to shove all that matters is the positional relationship between your backside, hands and feet: the tube angles are irrelevant (except inasmuch as a longer and/or narrower seatpost will potentially flex a bit more and give a bit more comfort, and a sloping top tube gives a bit more standover clearance).

It might be worth telling us a bit more about the commute, i.e. the distance and the nature of the roads and terrain.

Also, I think it makes a difference to what bike is most suitable, if you will ride to work every day in all weathers and conditions, or if you will use your discretion and maybe drive if the weather is very bad (heavy rain or snow), or use the car once week or more to transport clothing to work.

Applying standard statistics in order demonstrate with 95% confidence and 80% power that the failure rate for brakeless fixies failiure rate is 20% better than general vehicles you’d need to record 35.5 billion km if considering fatalities or 435 million km if considering injury crashes.

I’m confused by this. Would you need to record so many fixed gear bike (without brakes) miles as that to make a statistically meaningful analysis? Presumably there will also be an overlap with car vehicle miles, since many fatalities and injuries associated with fixed gear bikes without brakes will involve a car as well (and it may be that the car driver is wholly at fault and the lack of front brake is irrelevant).

I suspect that the great majority of fixed gear bikes without brakes are ridden in London and major cities, which might distort the picture (much higher general traffic levels and greater risk).

Lastly, to state the obvious, I would expect the overwhelming majority of the people killed and injured, to be the riders (usually the most vulnerable road user in any accident). The fact that this court case is unusual in that a pedestrian was killed, and a manslaughter charge brought, is what has made it so newsworthy.

Zokes, one other comment I would make is to say be careful you don’t overdo it. You are likely to find that the speed and responsiveness of the bike encourages you to push yourself all the time. To state the obvious, you cannot batter yourself every time you go out, otherwise you will end up stale, over-trained and burnt out. Similarly, be careful about using computers, power meters, heart rate monitors, Strava and the like, and make sure you don’t become a slave to such tech.

Even if you are very fit, and you can sustain high speeds for the whole of your rides, make sure you also fit in some easy slow rides where you can just relax, enjoy the views and enjoy being out; even better if it involves a cafe stop.

A 42t inner? I don’t think he’s planning to time trial it…!

52/36 and an 11:28 on the back is a pretty standard combination that a lot of road cyclists use

It depends upon the rider, their fitness, the terrain and the duration and intensity of the ride.

Put simply, whatever the ring sizes on your bike, if you find that you are in the small ring and small sprockets (and/or big/big) for much of the time, or that you are frequently making simultaneous double shifts (front and rear) on non-rolling terrain, that suggests that your gearing is not ideal for you/your circumstances (although that may change with improving fitness).

In that event, one of the options is to fit a smaller big ring, e.g. 50, 48 or even 46. That is what I would do (and have done) when I want gearing for longer rides and was not bothered about losing the very high gears.

However, if you are only going out for an hour or so and there are no steep hills, then you might find a 39t or 42t inner gives a better range of lower gears.

If I were in the OP’s shoes, I would wait and see how I got on with the existing gears, but if I did find the 52/36 unsatisfactory, then I would be very tempted to have two chainsets: 52/42 for the quick blasts, and a smaller chainset which I could fit for any long days with big hills, e.g. 50/34 or even 46/34.

That looks a very, very nice bike, and I am sure you should get a lot of fun from riding it.

I do suspect that you might find the 52/36 chainset is too large a jump. I would suggest you see how you get on with riding the bike: if you are so fit and going out for such relatively short periods that you are able to ride comfortably in the big ring most or even all of the time, then it doesn’t matter (and I envy you).

However, if you find that you are using the inner ring a fair amount and that the drop in gearing from big ring to small ring is too much (even with a simultaneous shift at the back to smaller sprockets), then you might find a 39t inner, or even a 42t inner, to be better. You could still fit the 36t for any big long day rides or rides in hilly terrain.

39t rings are fairly inexpensive, but if you were to decide that you wanted 42t, I think you might only be able to get a Dura Ace version (or an after market TA ring), which would be more expensive (but still nothing like the very high cost of the Shimano outer rings).

Vicky, it sounds like you are in a much better place that when you posted previously, which is great to hear.

I have this sense that if I get depression again in the future then it’s because I’ve failed

This sounds very similar to some of things you said in your previous thread, about which I made the following comment back then:

It’s sometimes said that depression is an illness of the strong, rather than the weak. Your comments about “fight, fight, fight to stay afloat” and “I’m feeling under huge pressure to stay well” sound like you are putting a lot of responsibility and pressure on yourself to cope/keep on going, and I would be concerned that that in itself may exacerbate things.

Read what you have written: even in your treatment to improve your well being, you are exhibiting the same traits of pushing yourself to meet and exceed the target, and getting anxious about the possibilty of ‘failing’ and ‘needing’ more talking therapy (as opposed to thinking of it as simply you benefitting from some more talking therapy). Those traits probably make you a very high achiever at work and home, but they also have the potential to be very self-destructive.

The fact that you are still putting yourself under such pressure to perform is concerning. If that is so ingrained in your personality and fundemental to who you are, then maybe continuing but less frequent talking therapy for the rest of your life might indeed be a useful tool for you to help you keep yourself feeling well and at your best (think of it as a performance aid).

PS I am hoping you’ve booked a holiday or two (or three) for next winter to look forward to when it starts getting darker.

The Spa TD cranks might be your answer.

My own perspective on the (very slight) risks when flying is that I cannot control what happens, and so worrying about what might happen is a waste of mental and nervous energy. Obviously that is a rational perspective, and just because I think that way does not make me right or clever – it’s simply the way I am (and a bad flying experience might completely change my attitude).

I raise the issue of being ‘in control’ or able to influence the situation, because I know that some people cannot stand being driven in a car, but are quite happy when they are the driver.

Obviously BA are not going to let you sit in the co-pilot’s seat. However, I wonder if for someone for whom the usual course offered by BA etc. has not been successful where the course is focused on the passive experience as a passenger (and so not in control), whether the opposite approach might work. In other words, would someone with an extreme reaction to sitting in a passenger seat be better able to cope and overcome those feelings and fears, if they had even a little experience of flying a plane?

I am not necessarily suggesting this for Kryton57, but I imagine that it would be possible to spend quite a bit of time in a flight simulator learning the basics, before going up with an instructor in a training aircraft, and the experience of being in control and flying the aircraft might make it easier to adjust to being a passenger in a jet.

don’t forget about reaction time

Do forget it. Reference point is when he started swerving, not when he started thinking. Only one of those points can be determined from CCTV footage… [/quote]

I don’t think it’s necessarily that simple, but rather that the prosecution do want the jury to see the timeline/chain of events in very black and white terms, and to focus on the actions, times and distances that they have identified in the CCTV, and to accept the prosecution’s assertions of what the defendant should have done and when, and what the different outcome would have been as a result.

Consequently they have examined the CCTV footage and identified a particular point at which the defendant swerves, and have sought to reduce everything that happened to a simple binary view of the whole case: if the defendant had had brakes and used them at that point, the woman would still be alive, he didn’t and swerved instead, she was killed, ergo it’s manslaughter.

That may be a fair way – and possibly the only reasonable way – of presenting the prosecution case, and the jury may accept it and convict.

However, I think people’s actions and thinking processes are a lot more complex and messier in a real life emergency. The defendant was not having to make decisions just about his own speed and direction, but also simultaneously watch the woman, who reportedly moved across the road and then back and stopped, and so consequently he was continually having to process her movements, and factor into his own decisions not only where she was at any given time, but also try to anticipate where she would be when he would draw level with her. This is something car drivers generally don’t experience: their speeds are such that the HC can reduce them to simple thinking and braking time distances, as opposed to – in this case – woman steps into road to cross it, think, react; woman stops, think, react; woman steps back, think, react.

It’s a big assumption that a competent cyclist, or any of us, would not have similarly swerved at that point rather than use brakes, and only concluded maybe a second or so later that swerving was not going to prevent a collision and only then decide to brake instead. Equally many/most/all of us would probably have been reducing speed much earlier on (the defence barrister did put it to the police witness that the CCTV shows the defendent leg braking at some point). If anything, as an 18 year old, his reaction times are probably better than any of ours.

At the end of the day, reducing the whole case to that distance of 6.65m and the stopping distance with brakes, is probably essential to be able to make a prosecution case in a trial that only lasts a few days. From what I have read so far of the case and the comments on here, my own feeling is that it’s just not sufficiently clear cut to support a manslaughter conviction: the prosecution seems (based on the reporting) to have failed to prove unequivocally that the bike would have stopped before the impact if fitted with a legal minimum front brake: I would ideally have wanted repeated testing with measurements all showing that such a bike could have stopped within 75%-80% of the distance, to leave no room for doubt. Bear in mind that in such an emergency situation a cyclist does not have the benefit of knowing what his precise braking distance will be, so it’s difficult to say that a competent cyclist on a bike with brakes would have braked rather than swerved, even if subsequent testing in controlled conditions confirms that only braking, not swerving, would have prevented the collision. So I agree with aracer’s earlier assessment that the direct connection between the unlawful act of no brake and the death appears not to have been proven. But I’m not on the jury and have not heard the evidence first hand.

The CTC/Cycling UK thread on this contains some interesting information here regarding the stopping distances, from a Sun journalist’s Twitter account,

In short, it seems the 3m stopping distance measured for a MTB must have been based on a lower speed than 18mph, and can only be related to the stopping distance of the defendant’s bike at the same speed (whatever that speed was) which was measured to be 12m. Tests performed using the defendant’s bike at 17mph (i.e. close to the speed estimated in the accident) resulted in stopping distances of up to 21.3m.

Obviously this is only a very limited second hand extract of the evidence presented in court, and the defence must have had the full report detailing the various testing, presumably including the protocols, well in advance of the trial, and could/would have submitted it to an expert of their own for review.

I knew that’d come up, which is why I repeated the test on a more “normal” road bike with rim brakes – with very similar results to the disc braked mountain bike.

You were still using relatively ‘high end’ kit: Shimano 105 brakes are not what I would consider to be the baseline for minimum braking performance.

Anyway while the distances themselves are certainly open to debate what was a lot more convincing was that it took me twice as long to stop with just a rear brake (and a rear brake that I’m certain was a lot more effective than braking with just the fixed wheel on that track bike would be).

It’s not just a question of how much a front brake reduces braking distance compared with leg braking on its own. It’s also a question of being able to say (beyond a reasonable doubt?) that the bike that was ridden, if fitted with the legal minimum efficient front brake, would have enabled the cyclist to stop before the colllision, i.e. within 6.85m.

From what I have read, it seems that the speed of the collision was not decisive, it was the fact that she was knocked over and her head struck the road or kerb badly.

Your measurements are very close to that 6.85m distance: factor in potential error in the Garmin and other variables, and it starts to looks like the defence could make a very strong case that it could not be said with confidence that a front brake would have made the difference in the outcome.

the distance was 6.85m…based on my own testing it does appear to be true that I could just about stop any of the 3 bikes I’ve tried in that distance using the front brake… So for me the stopping distance thing is proven.

You are basing your assessments on (front and rear) hydraulic disc equipped bikes. The test needs to be undertaken using a bike with just a front rim calliper brake and similar tyres (possibly as narrow a section as 18mm if track clearances and tyres, with resulting minimal contact patch) and a similar bike set up. As peekay suggests, even then there are further variables (single pivot vs. dual pivot calliper and wide variation in the quality of brake pads), but I think that without going to ridiculous levels, the comparison test bike needs to provide the bare minimum of ‘efficient braking’ as required by the law, and no better than that (so no V brakes or discs, hydraulic or otherwise, and definitely not an MTB with MTB tyres).

EDIT – the emergency brake test should also be done using the hands on the hoods, not in the hooks where they could grab and exert much greater braking pressure. In an emergency there is unlikely to be time to move the hands from the hoods,

I am actually just browsing for a 110 BCD 36 teeth chainring for a Rohloff-equipped MTB.

I wasn’t going to mention it because my own personal plans are not necessarily indicative of the market for such rings, but I am planning on buying a 38t 110 BCD Surly stainless ring for a Rohloff build. Reading the Thorn forum, I do get the impression that 36t up to maybe 44t are the most common sizes used.

Sven, what 110 BCD cranks are you going to use?