(OTish) Bikes, scooters and emissions ...

[Jethro_uk]

Well given the state of Brums roads, they must cope better than you'd think.

Maybe the length of them and way the forces are distributed means you simply can't get flung over if you hit a pot hole ?

Where they really are a menace is when you are trying to emerge from a side road, and one shoots across in front of you on the pavement where you aren't expecting to see something/one doing 15mph.

In times gone past, they'd have parked up for the winter and hopefully never be seen again. But this climate change malarkey seems to have made the milder autumn and winters a scooterists paradise.

[Pancho]

I've seen them going over 25mph, on the road. Powerful little beasts. The pothole thing does perplex me, I suppose I should Google it.

Why would winter stop people. Generally it's the rain, rather than cold, that makes cars appealing. I guess you must mean black ice, that is lethal for bikes, but scooters have a lower centre of gravity...

I think Clive Sinclair's dream is finally coming true.

[nightjar]

My gardener, who lives about 7 miles away as the crow flies, has no other form of transport. He can't afford a car and uses my tools for the gardening.

[Paul]

This is how you get around in winter.

Not my cup of tea.

Part of the problem with biking on salted roads, is it takes an hour to clean the bicycle properly when you get home. The chain and cables need oil to give them some protection. But if you drive like that year round, eventually the bicycle rusts out and there is too much damage. Takes about four years to destroy a bicycle that way.

This has got the "soft iron" flanges on it. When your rear axle snaps, the flanges bend. You bend them back. But if you do that a few times, eventually they get too weak for safety.

Paul

[Chris Green]

I most definitely used to cycle to work for many years when I worked at BT Labs (Now Adastral Park), it was a very pleasant four mile or so tootle on tracks and lanes. There were certainly many others who cycled to work there as well.

[RJH]

I think Another Dave meant they used their bike for leisure only. Most don't IME.

[ARW]

[Dave Plowman (News]

They are illegal. Unless hired. But that won't worry cyclists.

[Andrew]

I thought these days they were supposed to approach the platform at walking pace and then move slowly along the platform. They certainly do at Tube stations immediately outside large hospitals like Whitechapel.

[Jethro_uk]

Possibly, I haven't lived in London for years. This would have been in the 1980s. Just as they were doing work to ensure trains always stopped in position so the cameras/mirrors gave a clear view.

Apparently there were (still are) little offshoots in the deep underground network where defective trains could be parked and repaired, rather than having to clear an entire run of line to the surface.

[Paul]

You will find all kinds on a bicycle trail. And it all depends on how effective your public transit is, as to how desperate people get.

The commuters on the trail here, start at 4:30AM. Those individuals roughly correspond to the people lining up for public transit at 5AM. The commuters are the ones who put lights on their bicycles.

Even mental people drive bicycles :-) No, you *don't* want to meet them. Trust me.

Paul