News

What value should we put on street space?

October 31, 2022

It costs a little over £1,500 per year to rent 17 cubic metres (600 cubic feet) of storage space in Greater London. Alternatively, you could spend £400 on an old caravan, pack it full of stuff and park it on the road outside your house without any further expense. Lots of folk would object to having residential streets lined with caravans...

Cycling

Let's call time on changing the clocks

October 28, 2022

Sunday's one-hour lie-in comes at a heavy price. It's estimated there would be 100 fewer deaths and a reduction of 200 serious injuries on the roads each year if we stopped putting the clocks back in winter. The UK has already tried year-round BST - once during the war to maximise daylight working hours and again between 1968 and 1971. The...

Cycling

We built our own zombie-proof bike

October 26, 2022

Halloween or no Halloween, British roads can feel like a horror show when you're on a bike. It got us thinking about how a trusty bicycle might fare should the worse happen. Bikes are already the quickest way to get around town, but the chronic shortage of petrol following a zombie apocalypse would render cars all but useless making pedal...

Cycling

Cycling zones: Making it illegal for cars to overtake bikes

October 26, 2022

How do you create a bikeable town or city without the need for costly infrastructure or additional road space? The Belgian city of Bruges this week transformed 90 of its streets into a cycling zone - an area in which all motor vehicles must yield to bikes. In the zone, cyclists not only have the right to ride in the middle of the lane, but...

Cycling

Puncture-proof tyres or roadside repair? You decide

October 24, 2022

Staying puncture-free is the Holy Grail of cycling - and for good reason. You can try your best to remain free of flats, but whether or not you fit reinforced rubber, apply slime or run the correct pressure, the puncture fairy is always lurking. And infuriatingly, flats are like buses - you stay puncture-free for many hundreds of miles and...

Cycling

E-bikes: Riders get as much exercise as on regular bicycle

October 21, 2022

The old trope that e-bikes are a cheat never rang true with anyone who'd actually taken the time to ride one. And now scientific research has stepped in to reaffirm the numerous benefits electric bicycles have to offer. Research published by sciencedirect.com has found that e-bikes are used for longer trips compared to conventional cycles....

Cycling

Thieves now cannibalise cars as well as bicycles

October 19, 2022

As a cycle insurance provider that covers the theft of bike parts, we've noticed a steady increase in this type of crime. Perhaps it's to do with the increase in prices over recent years or it might be that we're all getting better at locking our bikes properly, but thieves seem content with pinching a saddle or shifters if they're unable...

Cycling

Pay-as-you-go driving - Transport policy is doomed without it

October 19, 2022

Transport policy without road-user charging is doomed to fail. Essentially this is because roads are free – and when anything is free there's a tendency for it to be overused. In the case of roads, this leads to congestion. It's clear motoring taxation needs to change in a way that is fair and sustainable. Pay-as-you-go driving is simply a...

Cycling

Knog Scout - not the loudest bike alarm, but maybe the cleverest

October 18, 2022

There's no alarm that'll stop a determined bike thief, but that doesn't stop folk from developing new takes on the idea. We even had a go ourselves with the Bike Mine. When tripped by a thief, the device detonates a 150 dB blast of sound; more than enough to startle a thief and raise the alarm. It's not intended to replace the need for a...

Cycling

One has a speed limiter - guess which?

October 14, 2022

Why is it that electric bicycles here in the UK are limited to 15mph while no restriction at all is imposed on cars? It's possible to buy an e-bike with a motor powerful enough for the law to consider it a motorbike, but very few of these so-called speed pedelecs are being registered here as motorcycles. Our European cousins have recognised...

Cycling