Cycle Speed Limits on a normal Cycle Path?

[Clive George]

"Tom Crispin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

>>Did you get the job?
>
> No. And glad of it. I am not a fan of sectarian schools.
>
> My comments had nothing (probably) to do with me not getting the job.
> The clincher was my answer to the question, "If we offered you this
> job, would you accept it?" Which begged the follow up question, "Why
> the f*&$ did you bother applying in the first place?"

I'm intrigued - do tell...

cheers,
clive

 

[Alan Braggins]

Paul Boyd wrote:
> Some people seem to have
>difficulty in understanding the fact that a human does not have built-in
>speed measurement devices so we need speedos, but we do have built-in
>alcohol measuring devices, so we don't need breathalysers.

What rubbish. We have a rough sense of how much our ability has been
impaired by alcohol (a sense which can itself be impaired by alcohol),
and we have an ability to estimate speeds by eye.
Neither is adequate if you want to remain very close to but under the
legal limit (I do not suggest that doing so is a good thing).

 

[Will Cove]

John B <[email protected]> wrote in news:[email protected]:

>> Has anybody here ever been breath-testing whilst on a cycle?
>
> i was after being knocked off by a moronic driver on a roundabout.
> Of course I hadn't been drinking at all, but the PC said it was now
> standard practice to breathalyse everybody involved in a collision.
> He made it quite clear that if I didn't comply I'd be taken off to the
> station.

Do the police have a right to breath-test cyclists and pedestrians (or to
take blood or urine samples for that)?

I know that they have the right under the Road Traffic Act to require the
driver or suspected driver of a motor vehicle to submit to a breath test -
but that only applies to motorists, not to pedestrians or cyclists. So, is
there general legislation that permits breath testing? If not, I suspect
that the officer in John's case was exceeding his authority.

 

[Alan Braggins]

In article <[email protected]>, Tom Crispin wrote:
>
>My comments had nothing (probably) to do with me not getting the job.
>The clincher was my answer to the question, "If we offered you this
>job, would you accept it?" Which begged the follow up question, "Why
>the f*&$ did you bother applying in the first place?"

So (taking the '"beg the question" doesn't mean that/yes it does now language
changes over time' argument as read), why _did_ you bother applying in the
first place?

 

[Tony Raven]

John B wrote on 08/02/2007 11:46 +0100:
>
> [email protected] wrote:
>
>> Has anybody here ever been breath-testing whilst on a cycle?
>
> i was after being knocked off by a moronic driver on a roundabout.
> Of course I hadn't been drinking at all, but the PC said it was now
> standard practice to breathalyse everybody involved in a collision.
> He made it quite clear that if I didn't comply I'd be taken off to the
> station.
>

If you had been you could have had a nice case for wrongful arrest.


--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

 

[Paul Boyd]

Buck said the following on 08/02/2007 10:38:

> I had the old "don't shout at me what's wrong with your bell?" line from
> a ped the
> other day, I said "I rang it three times but you ignored it", "oh" was
> the reply.

Oh yes - I've had that, and my bell is hardly the quietest on the block.

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

 

[Phil Cook]

LSMike wrote:

>On Feb 7, 5:37 pm, Buck <[email protected]>
>wrote:
>>
>> Isn't there a 10mph limit in Hyde Park as well?
>
>15mph on the Serpentine Road I believe...

I once broke my arm breaking that limit. Actually there wasn't a limit
when I did it. A skater suddenly did a U-ey in front of me. The crash
was, I am told, rather spectacular. :-\
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the "Westminster Gasworks"

 

[Paul Boyd]

Roger Merriman said the following on 08/02/2007 10:34:

> if country lane or simular, riding over any usefuly places leafs twigs
> etc works well i have found it alerts with out intruding.

I do that, but on urban paths the sound of tinkling glass in lieu of
twigs has a rather unfortunate side effect ;-)

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

 

[John B]

Tony Raven wrote:

> John B wrote on 08/02/2007 11:46 +0100:
> >
> > [email protected] wrote:
> >
> >> Has anybody here ever been breath-testing whilst on a cycle?
> >
> > i was after being knocked off by a moronic driver on a roundabout.
> > Of course I hadn't been drinking at all, but the PC said it was now
> > standard practice to breathalyse everybody involved in a collision.
> > He made it quite clear that if I didn't comply I'd be taken off to the
> > station.
> >
>
> If you had been you could have had a nice case for wrongful arrest.

I know, and I would have loved to have followed that line through, but tea
was on the table and I had to go out the same evening.

John B

 

[Paul Boyd]

Alan Braggins said the following on 08/02/2007 12:14:

> What rubbish. We have a rough sense of how much our ability has been
> impaired by alcohol

No we don't, which is why people under-estimate how drunk they are.
What we do have is the ability to count, so 1 pint is OK, but 5 pints
isn't. (I say OK in the legal sense - I personally think the limit
should be zero)

> and we have an ability to estimate speeds by eye.

As you said, not much good for staying just under the legal limit if
that's what you wanted to do.

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

 

[John B]

Will Cove wrote:

> John B <[email protected]> wrote in news:[email protected]:
>
> >> Has anybody here ever been breath-testing whilst on a cycle?
> >
> > i was after being knocked off by a moronic driver on a roundabout.
> > Of course I hadn't been drinking at all, but the PC said it was now
> > standard practice to breathalyse everybody involved in a collision.
> > He made it quite clear that if I didn't comply I'd be taken off to the
> > station.
>
> Do the police have a right to breath-test cyclists and pedestrians (or to
> take blood or urine samples for that)?
>

No they don't, but if you refuse they could make it difficult for you.
In my case teh over-zealous plod would have insisted I accompanied hm to the
station - which was 15 miles away.
No doubt he would have taken great pleasure in sloooowly filling in all teh
poaperwork and ensuring I was inconvenienced as much as possible.
He was *not* a nice man at all.

> I suspect
> that the officer in John's case was exceeding his authority.

I think he was stretching the rules to massage his ego.

John B

 

[Paul Boyd]

Anthony Jones said the following on 08/02/2007 09:21:

> Are you suggesting that a typical person can more accurately estimate their
> blood alcohol level than their speed? Excluding the case when they've
> consumed no alcohol (but then see below), I'd disagree.

No, which I don't think is what I said. As I said in another post just
now, the average person can tell the difference between drinking one
pint and five pints, even if they have no idea what how many mg of blood
are in their alcohol stream. If you've drunk one pint you can legally
drive, if you've drunk five pints you can't. Simple as that - the
"measuring device" could be the fingers. I'm not sure exactly where the
limits are because I work on a zero limit (polishes halo!!), but there
are widely published guidelines that anyone who does drink and drive has
access to - all they have to be able to do is to count units to quite a
low number.

I think I've run out of different ways to try to get this point across now.

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

 

[Phil Cook]

Alan Braggins wrote:

>In article <[email protected]>, Tom Crispin wrote:
>>
>>My comments had nothing (probably) to do with me not getting the job.
>>The clincher was my answer to the question, "If we offered you this
>>job, would you accept it?" Which begged the follow up question, "Why
>>the f*&$ did you bother applying in the first place?"
>
>So (taking the '"beg the question" doesn't mean that/yes it does now language
>changes over time' argument as read), why _did_ you bother applying in the
>first place?

Well I can think of job interviews where I have decided "I don't want
to work with these people" so Tom may have wanted the job before he
knew what king of people the head and govenors were.
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the "Westminster Gasworks"

 

[Ambrose Nankivell]

Tony Raven wrote:
> Anthony Jones wrote on 08/02/2007 10:14 +0100:
>>
>> (and drifting more off-topic, I was also under the impression that blood
>> alcohol decreases linearly rather than exponentially since the alcohol
>> dehydrogenase enzyme quickly saturates, but I'm not disagreeing that 24
>> hours is plenty of time)
>
> It seems you are correct and something I had read and carried with me
> for many years is wrong. The things you learn on urc.
>
> The range of elimination rates - 9-36mg/100ml/hr* would seem to make the
> 24hr rule unreliable after heavy drinking. You could still be over the
> limit 24hrs after being only 2 1/2 times over the limit.

'Only'?

If you're at the bottom of the elimination rate scale, then surely 2 and
a half times over the limit would mean that you were exceedingly drunk.

A

 

[Paul Boyd]

Phil Cook said the following on 08/02/2007 12:56:

> Well I can think of job interviews where I have decided "I don't want
> to work with these people" so Tom may have wanted the job before he
> knew what king of people the head and govenors were.

Yes - I've been there. Applied for an electrical planning job on a
short-term contract, and at the interview they kept asking me questions
about mechanical drawings that I didn't understand. I think I
eventually got quite irate, and thought that there was no way I wanted
to work there if they can't tell the difference between electrical and
mechanical drawings

Got back home, reported back to the agency that that was a complete
waste of time. An hour later, agency calls back "Are you sure you don't
want that job?". "It's not that I don't want it, but I'm obviously not
suited to it". "Well, they've offered it to you!"

It turned out that the interviewers had no idea about electrical
drawings, so stuck to asking about what they knew!

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

 

[James Thomson]

"Dave Larrington" <[email protected]> a écrit:

> Back in those days, builders were forbidden from using time-trial results
> for advertising purposes, so a lot of them built stuff that was instantly
> recognisable by the cognoscenti, such as the Bates in question, the
> Hetchins "Curly" and the truly appalling (from an engineering standpoint)
> Paris Galibier:

A long, long time ago, I used to subscribe to the Classic Rendezvous mailing
list, where debates about minute differences in the body castings of 1970
and 1971 Campagnolo Record front derailleurs can rage for month upon month.

I didn't stay long, but I saved a few of the more interesting contributions
including this one from Hilarity Stone, he of the "very reasonable" eBay
reserve prices, one-time head honcho of Cycling Plus, and currrent editor of
the Veteran Cycle Club rag:


I don't really know how many times it has to be said that Britain's
RTTC ban in 1938 (which lasted effectively just two years) on maker's
names being clearly shown in photographs had no effect on frame
design in the UK. Most of the funnies (Hetchins, Bates, Baines, Sun
Manx, Saxon SWB, Moorson etc etc) had already been designed
and built prior to this and the ones that came after were not aimed at
time triallists (Paris Galibier, Sun Manxman TT­ road racers, Thanet
Silverlight ­ tourists). It is a myth that needs to be killed once and
for all.


http://search.bikelist.org/getmsg.asp?Filename=classicrendezvous.10011.0040.eml

http://search.bikelist.org/getmsg.asp?Filename=internet-bob.9904.0476.eml

http://search.bikelist.org/getmsg.asp?Filename=classicrendezvous.10010.0225.eml


> ... and the truly appalling
> (from an engineering standpoint) Paris Galibier:

Can you imagine a French bike called the London Wrynose Pass?

Tangentially, the French and the British have always had rather different
ways of getting things done. The British had Bill Hurlow, the French had
René Herse. The French had Jacques Tati, the British had Benny Hill. The
British had the Bickerton, the French had the Stella:

http://cgi.ebay.fr/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200068340141

The French had Brigitte Bardot, the British had Diana Dors. The British had
the Paris Galibier ... and the Raleigh Twenty, and the French had this
wonderful combination of the two:

http://www.reneherse.com/Schultz.html

Feast your eyes, ladies and gentlemen. Marvel at the secret pump compartment
with its little threaded cap:

http://www.reneherse.com/images/DSC_00384.JPG

Is it that a V-brake? A U-brake?

http://www.reneherse.com/images/DSC_00322.JPG

Are those really *three* brake cables?

Does the bell ring when you change gear?

http://www.reneherse.com/images/DSC_0028.JPG

Is that a 40t sprocket on a four-speed freewheel?

http://www.reneherse.com/images/DSC_00404.JPG

Why?

http://www.reneherse.com/images/DSC_00302.JPG

No, really. Why?


James Thomson

 

[Roger Thorpe]

Thanks for that.
Fascinating! that french bike seems to follow the Citroen design
philosophy of clever-but-complicated weirdness.
Interesting to read the story about the frame identity issue, I've heard
the popular theory so many times, even from people who "were there"
that I didn't even question it.

Roger

--
Roger Thorpe

My email address is spamtrapped. You can work it out!

 

[Dave Larrington]

In news:[email protected],
James Thomson <[email protected]> tweaked the Babbage-Engine to tell us:

> A long, long time ago, I used to subscribe to the Classic Rendezvous
> mailing list, where debates about minute differences in the body
> castings of 1970 and 1971 Campagnolo Record front derailleurs can
> rage for month upon month.
> I didn't stay long, but I saved a few of the more interesting
> contributions including this one from Hilarity Stone, he of the "very
> reasonable" eBay reserve prices, one-time head honcho of Cycling
> Plus, and currrent editor of the Veteran Cycle Club rag:
>
>
> I don't really know how many times it has to be said that Britain's
> RTTC ban in 1938 (which lasted effectively just two years) on
> maker's names being clearly shown in photographs had no effect on
> frame design in the UK. Most of the funnies (Hetchins, Bates,
> Baines, Sun Manx, Saxon SWB, Moorson etc etc) had already been
> designed and built prior to this and the ones that came after were
> not aimed at time triallists (Paris Galibier, Sun Manxman TT­ road
> racers, Thanet Silverlight ­ tourists). It is a myth that
> needs to be killed once and for all.

[snip]

Appypollyloggies - ISTR reading it in "Bicycle" circa 1983. As to Hilarity
Stone, I sold my Citroen CX to him in 1998. I like to think I got the
better of the deal

--
Dave Larrington
<http://www.legslarry.beerdrinkers.co.uk>
Me, I wanna be an anglepoise lamp, yeah!

 

[Buck]

On 2007-02-08 10:45:50 +0000, Helen Deborah Vecht
<[email protected]> said:

> Tony Raven <[email protected]>typed
>
>
>> Anthony Jones wrote on 08/02/2007 09:23 +0100:
>>> Simon Brooke wrote:
>>>> If you've drunk no alcohol at all in the past 24 hours you're legal.
>>>> Otherwise, you're winging it.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately this isn't the attitude of many motorists I've met,
>>> and in the
>>> eyes of the law, they're *not* winging it, because the legal blood alcohol
>>> limit is scarily high.
>>>
>
>> You would have had to drink quite a lot to be over the limit after
>> 24hrs. The average half life of alcohol in the blood is 6hrs which
>> means that after 24hrs it is down to one sixteenth of its initial
>> value. Five times over the limit is fatal to most people IIRC
>
> Alcohol metabolism does not have a half life (first order
> phamacokinetics, if I remember my ancient student teaching) but a fixed
> rate of elimination (zero order kinetics). The body can clear
> approximately one unit (9g) of alcohol per hour. Nothing can speed this
> up usefully.

Except for Iron Bru and a greasy breakfast.
--
Three wheels good, two wheels ok

www.catrike.co.uk

 

[Andy Leighton]

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 13:33:57 +0000,
Paul Boyd <usenet.dont.work@plusnet> wrote:
> Anthony Jones said the following on 08/02/2007 13:28:

>> I think you underestimate the variability with respect to blood alcohol
>> levels. Under some circumstances one pint could put someone over the limit
>> (small woman drinking strong beer on an empty stomach), and under others
>> five pints could leave someone under the limit (stereotypical rugby player
>> drinking weak beer on a full stomach). It's not a simple as 'counting
>> units' at all.
>
> Which is precisely why the limit should be zero - there can be no doubt
> then.

Yep all those people who have recently used an alcohol based mouthwash,
those who have eaten a bit of sherry trifle, and those who experience
endogenous fermentation would fail a breath test.

As driving whilst tired can be as dangerous as driving under the
influence (driving after 18 hours with no sleep is equivalent to
50mg/100ml blood according to some studies) are you as tolerant on
that? How tired is too tired?

I doubt a limit of 0 would be very enforceable and certainly wouldn't
have the support of the public. A reduction to 50mg/100ml which is the
usual limit for western Europe would have the broad support of the
public I feel (although not everyone).

--
Andy Leighton => [email protected]
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials"
- Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_