"Please train your drivers better" cyclist tells DPD after tailgating courier traps bike under van (+ DPD promises "further action"); Ineos plot audacious Remco transfer; RideLondon entries open; Marginal games; Ned's PM patter + more on the live blog

That's exactly what I was picturing only with maybe a small tractor unit. Cheers!

Probably also worth applying a bit of intelligence to the route-planning side of things too, to make the routes and time-tables "dynamic" to suit demand.

Case in point:

I used to live in a village adjoined to the South-East of Cheltenham, there was a bus route (the B route) that went more-or-less from the village to the centre of Cheltenham town. There were (from memory) something like 14 bus stops on this route within the boundary of the village – pretty much every 75m for the whole route. If you stood on the village green in the centre of the village you could hit about 12 of them with a tennis ball. Also, two of them were the “timing” stops, where if the bus was ahead of schedule (which it always was because it was empty) it would stop for a while – one of these stops blocked a residential street, the other (due to the modern bus being twice the length of the ones when the bust stops were installed) blocked a mini-roundabout in the middle of the village.

The busses that Stagecoach used to service the route were enormous (they get a little bigger every few years, and are now just compact coaches), and would take up the whole width of the road and the front-wheel over-hang would take up the pavement when turning (I’ve posted stories on here before of how I’ve had to dive into someone’s front garden to avoid a turning bus). These busses were also almost entirely empty save for school kick-out time. Every 20 mins, a massive, smoke-belching behemoth would plunge into the village causing absolute chaos, purely for the benefit of the driver.

I never understood why Stagecoach never:

• Made most of the stops part-time so that the bus only went into the village mornings/evenings for students/commuters and only used the stops on the outskirts for the rest of the time.
• Adjusted the frequency of the busses so that there was a service every ten minutes for the schools, but one every hour or the rest of the day.
• Only used the massive coaches for busy periods, reverting to smaller vehicles for the rest of the week.

Which would have resulted in less congestion, fewer pointless miles driven and less pollution.  

Stagecoach you say (link from a long time back)?  Doing things primarily for the benefit of the customer, or even the environment?  As opposed to, say, driving a rival out of business?  What a curious notion.

https://twitter.com/nedboulting/status/1575099253948645377

Ah, great minds think alike, made the same joke in 2020 with the same sign at the same spot.

brooksby wrote:

OT, but if Truss gets ousted for ever so slightly f-ing up the economy (after how many days in office?), does that mean we end up with Johnson back again or does Govt get paralysed again while they choose someone else...?

I'm no fan of Starmer, but we should have a general election.

I read it as "we will tell the driver if it happens again he'll lose his job"

What I didn't read was "we will carry out a review of driver training and operating instructions to ensure the highest standards of driving from our staff"

The truth is that these companies simply don't invest in their staff and they don't see that what their drivers do on the roads should be governed by health and safety best practice / risk assessments - something that they will certainly do in their warehouses. eg if a forklift driver came in to their warehouse with a valid licence would they really just go "that's great off you go" or would they check that he was fimilliar with the site rules and the machine he was going to drive.

I once contacted DPD to complain about one of their drivers. Although I gave them the exact place and time they couldn't do anything without the registration because why on earth would they fit the vans with trackers. Anything DPD say is utter BS.

hirsute wrote:

Wimped out at lunchtime - no shorts.

Off to sell the £ now which I believe is mandatory for all roadcc forum users being left wing Corbynista, anti-eu and anti-Johnson (and pro science).

Grauniad had a story yesterday that The Day Today sketch about the pound having been stolen has been going viral on Twitter.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/sep/27/day-today-pound-stolen-ske...

Daveyraveygravey wrote:

The Giro is back in Abruzzo!  That TT might be along the new bike path, the Via Verde...

It certainly is ... this from the press release: "The opening stage will be an individual time trial of 18.4km on the Costa dei Trabocchi, starting from Fossacesia Marina to Ortona, almost entirely along the cycle path."

Similar to the 2015 start on the old railway line bike path in Sanremo, though that was a team time trial, not an individual one.

I hadn't heard of this bike path, definitely looks worth a visit some time.

[Edited to add profile]

Simon_MacMichael wrote:

Daveyraveygravey wrote:

The Giro is back in Abruzzo!  That TT might be along the new bike path, the Via Verde...

It certainly is ... this from the press release: "The opening stage will be an individual time trial of 18.4km on the Costa dei Trabocchi, starting from Fossacesia Marina to Ortona, almost entirely along the cycle path."

Similar to the 2015 start on the old railway line bike path in Sanremo, though that was a team time trial, not an individual one.

I hadn't heard of this bike path, definitely looks worth a visit some time.

[Edited to add profile]

 

Thanks for the info Simon, I was typing my post and trying to get more info all at the same time, very exciting.  The path will eventually be 42km long, it's a stunning coastline, and Abruzzo is a fantastic part of the country.   When the path gets to Francavilla, you will then be able to take on the coast to mountain ride, 50km from the sea to the top of the Blockhaus at 2200m.  The section of the path that is open is seemingly very popular, lots of bike hire businesses springing up along its length.  Some of them you can hire for as little as €3 an hour, my wife has even said she *might*  be tempted to try it, and believe me, that is a massive recommendation!

The old fishing platforms (the trabocchi) are nearly all restaurants now, I haven't eaten in them because they are pricey, and for me, the beauty of eating in Abruzzo is so many places are good value, and the food is brilliant. 

I was wondering about this - I think it's fair to say any commercial use of the road, whether it be parcel delivery, or food delivery, or taxis, there is almost always a commercial incentive to get it done faster. Possibly in recent years with the growth in online shopping and the rise of the "gig economy" it has got worse.

But when thinking about political choices that have contributed and how to improve the situation, the obvious solution always seems to be the simplest: enforce the existing road laws better, with more widespread enforcement and higher fines, especially for repeat offenders. If the likelihood of a fine is high enough and the fine itself is big enough, then the commercial incentive switches to ensuring maximum compliance with the law (and it doesn't matter whether that's coming from top-down management or individual self-employed "contractors" making that decision for themselves). 

Yes there are other issues with the gig economy etc. that this won't help with, but it should help the situation on the roads. 

Agree - a good start would just be enforcing existing road laws.  At least to the extent that there's more than a vague chance of getting caught.  From what I see the compromise goes that there is more vigorous enforcement at one or two places.  Or selected times.  Outside of that the odds favour the scofflaw.

Although there's corporation tax and taxes on vehicles and fuel many companies get a great benefit from the public road infrastructure.

I do think there's quite a bit of room for improvement.  However I wonder about the cost-benefit of doing this to a really effective level?  How large would fines need to be to make a difference or even fully pay for their implementation?  Given that some firms already pay bribes, unless enforcement was really strong would these fines just be dismissed as an informal extra tax rather than making a change?  If costly enough to be effective would there simply be mass disobedience?  I say that knowing that plenty of well-established companies take a creative approach to 'within the law' and more casual enterprises don't give a fiscal and take their chances.

If there was enough political push here would it lead to the removal of the politicians who set it in motion - and a resumption of the status quo, or worse?

A bit like the exam question of "parking on double-yellows should be punished by execution as that will ensure it doesn't happen; discuss".

OnYerBike wrote:

I was wondering about this - I think it's fair to say any commercial use of the road, whether it be parcel delivery, or food delivery, or taxis, there is almost always a commercial incentive to get it done faster. Possibly in recent years with the growth in online shopping and the rise of the "gig economy" it has got worse.

One of the reasons underlined by London Cycling Campaign for why such a disproprtionate number of skip lorries and tipper trucks are involved in cyclist KSIs in the city is related to this too - drivers are often independent contractors paid by the load, so there is huge pressure to get it done quickly, which inevitably leads to taking risks and cutting corners (often literally as well as figuratively).

Seems to be a classic case of a moral hazard - those who benefit most (everybody above the hapless gig worker) from the risk taking are not the one who suffer the consequences (the victim, and to an extent the gig worker). So until directors go to prison, nothing will change.

Seems we are moving to be more aligned with US business practices (albeit - as of today anyway - with higher taxes and much shorter average working hours).  The thing is in the US if a businesses is called to account they absolutely do lock senior management and company officers up.  Here...?

Drivers: Cyclists are renegades and dangerous and don't obey the rules.

Also Drivers: Hit a woman out riding with a trailer, breaking her pelvis, likely leaving her screaming in pain on the road and don't even stop at the scene, an offence which carries up to 6 months in prison, implying they believe they either won't get caught or were committing a greater crime at the time of the incident. 

Not got the link to hand but this popped up in the comments recently: also driver - kill someone on the pavement and don't go to jail.

Wasn't that a few years ago ... driver was crossing a pavement to get to an illegal carpark .. if its the same one.