Skip to main content

Riding into danger?

A number of cyclists racing in Europe had a rather surprising entrant in their midst recently. As the riders pedalled hard along one stretch of road, they were temporarily joined by an army tank driving alongside at the same speed. The cyclists turned a corner and the tank meanwhile carried straight on. No doubt the cyclists were pleased to see the back of the large, heavily armed and armoured metal beast as it disappeared into a forest in a cloud of dust. Meanwhile in the UK city of Norwich, the Tour of Br
March 23, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
A number of cyclists racing in Europe had a rather surprising entrant in their midst recently. As the riders pedalled hard along one stretch of road, they were temporarily joined by an army tank driving alongside at the same speed. The cyclists turned a corner and the tank meanwhile carried straight on. No doubt the cyclists were pleased to see the back of the large, heavily armed and armoured metal beast as it disappeared into a forest in a cloud of dust. Meanwhile in the UK city of Norwich, the Tour of Britain cycle race temporarily descended into something of a farce. A number of the support cars following the riders turned the wrong way. This came shortly after an incident in which a famous cyclist crashed into a parked car, although he luckily avoided serious injury. And in Canada an entire peloton of racing cyclists took a wrong turn. This resulted in all of the racers having to complete a u-turn and head back the way they had just come.

Related Content

  • Call for Government action after first UK road casualty rise since 2003
    June 28, 2012
    Road Safety Foundation (RSF) director, Dr Joanne Marden, has urged the government to get road safety policies “back on track” after new official figures revealed the first annual UK road casualty increase for eight years. The figures, contained in a government report titled Reported Road Casualties in Great Britain: 2011, show that the annual number of people killed in road accidents increased by 3% from 1,850 in 2010 to 1,901 in 2011 – the first increase since 2003 despite a levelling off of vehicle traff
  • The UK’s road safety levels have stalled
    October 1, 2020
    Improvements in the UK’s road safety levels have stalled.
  • TISPOL 2017: Europe’s road safety record suffers as austerity bites hard
    December 21, 2017
    Police budgets are being slashed, staff numbers are falling and Europe’s long-term trend towards ever-fewer road deaths has ground to a halt. Does Europe’s road network face a far more dangerous future? Geoff Hadwick reports from TISPOL 2017 in Manchester, UK. Europe’s road safety record is under threat. Lower and lower funding levels have become a very serious, and very worrying, problem for the EU’s traffic police bosses. They know that they must find new ways to focus road users on changing their beha
  • Safer roads needed for the gig economy
    May 14, 2019
    Roads everywhere are becoming high-pressure workplaces for millions of gig economy workers, meaning traffic police need a new way to regulate how highways are used. Geoff Hadwick reports from Manchester, UK The way in which the world’s highways are designed, built and used needs to change fast as the gig economy becomes a global phenomenon. Millions of low-paid and badly-trained freelance drivers are now using road as their workplace, all of them working hard under huge amounts of pressure. The tren