Cycle Speed Limits on a normal Cycle Path?

Paul Boyd wrote:

On 07/02/2007 20:32, GeoffC said,

Nope, I disagree. You can hear a car coming up behind you but a bike is as
good as silent. If I am walking along a cycle path I would rather be warned
by a gentle "ding " than surprised by the slipstream of a passing bike.

Can't win really. I often ring my bell, and they think I'm using it in
the same way as a car horn - i.e., "Get out of my way". The trick when
deciding whether or not to ring is to try to work out what sort of
people will give which reaction :-)

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

roger

On 2007-02-08 10:28:59 +0000, Tony Raven said:

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.

*http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2004.12.020

I had thought the same as you Tony, probably heard it on TV. Maybe that
News Years day
ride was not the most sensible thing to do.

--
Three wheels good, two wheels ok

www.catrike.co.uk

On 2007-02-08 10:34:29 +0000, (Roger Merriman) said:

Paul Boyd wrote:

On 07/02/2007 20:32, GeoffC said,

Nope, I disagree. You can hear a car coming up behind you but a bike is as
good as silent. If I am walking along a cycle path I would rather be warned
by a gentle "ding " than surprised by the slipstream of a passing bike.

Can't win really. I often ring my bell, and they think I'm using it in
the same way as a car horn - i.e., "Get out of my way". The trick when
deciding whether or not to ring is to try to work out what sort of
people will give which reaction :-)

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

roger

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.
--
Three wheels good, two wheels ok

www.catrike.co.uk

JonMcD wrote:
Closest I have seen to a general limit on cycle paths is in some
government publication saying that if you want to cycle faster than 18
mph on a cycle path you should consider using the road. Can't find a
source for that though.

Maybe you mean:
As a general rule, if you want to cycle quickly, say in excess of
18 mph/30 kph, then you should be riding on the road.

Annex D of Dept of Transport Local Transport Note 2/04: Code of Conduct
http://www.dft.gov.uk/consultations/...tnoticefor1688

Hope that helps,
--
MJR/slef

Tony Raven 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.

--
Helen D. Vecht:
Edgware.

Buck wrote:

On 2007-02-08 10:34:29 +0000, (Roger Merriman) said:

Paul Boyd wrote:

On 07/02/2007 20:32, GeoffC said,

Nope, I disagree. You can hear a car coming up behind you but a bike
is as good as silent. If I am walking along a cycle path I would
rather be warned by a gentle "ding " than surprised by the slipstream
of a passing bike.

Can't win really. I often ring my bell, and they think I'm using it in
the same way as a car horn - i.e., "Get out of my way". The trick when
deciding whether or not to ring is to try to work out what sort of
people will give which reaction :-)

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

roger

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.

i used to have that with door bells etc as a postie why didn't you
ring/knock?....

noticed posties on the bikes round here (hampton) very quaite heh. way
way too hilly and to honest you'd never fit 100KG+ mail on to a bike,
might get the weight i guess but that is a lot of bags...

roger

On 2007-02-08 10:43:30 +0000, MJ Ray said:

JonMcD wrote:
Closest I have seen to a general limit on cycle paths is in some
government publication saying that if you want to cycle faster than 18
mph on a cycle path you should consider using the road. Can't find a
source for that though.

Maybe you mean:
As a general rule, if you want to cycle quickly, say in excess of
18 mph/30 kph, then you should be riding on the road.

Annex D of Dept of Transport Local Transport Note 2/04: Code of Conduct
http://www.dft.gov.uk/consultations/...tnoticefor1688

Hope

that helps,

How fast was Daniel Cadden going as a matter of interest?
--
Three wheels good, two wheels ok

www.catrike.co.uk

Tony Raven wrote:
(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.

Well, in that I was still assuming 24 hours was plenty, only partially
correct!

The things you learn on urc.

Indeed!

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.

Anthony

in message , Don Whybrow
') wrote:

Roger Thorpe wrote:

see http://www.classiclightweights.co.uk/gallery.html for more pictures
and info

Interesting forks in this one:
http://www.classiclightweights.co.uk/racingbates800.jpg

Were they bent like that to provide some shock absorption?

Yesish.

You weren't at one period allowed to have the makers name on a bike which
you raced, so makers liked to make their bikes look distinctive (main
reason for the 'flying gate' design, for example). But more curvature in
steel forks does give more resilience.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; An enamorata is for life, not just for weekends.

On Feb 7, 9:57 pm, Ian Smith wrote:
On 7 Feb 2007, naked_draughtsman wrote:

PS already sent them the speeding question to see what they say!

What question did you ask?

Their reply was that you can be charged with "wanton and furious
driving" instead which apparently applies to any form of transport
including cyclists (as well as dangerous cycling)

peter