Welcome to Friday’s live blog, with Jack Sexty, Alex Bowden and the rest of the team.
Live blog:
Government will update law on mobile phone use at the wheel but won’t consider ban on hands-free devices
A driver filming with their phones can currently argue that it is not being used ‘for an interactive communication function’.
Spalding man was ‘spaced out’ on cocaine when he hit cyclist – and says he ‘sold his car’ to avoid future temptation
Christopher Storm was handed a 13-month driving ban for driving under the influence of drugs after he hit a cyclist with his wing mirror and knocked him off in Spalding in May, reports Spalding Today.
57-year-old Storm was driving a Renault Clio when he knocked the cyclist off his bicycle in Park Road at 4pm on May 11 and admitted to police he had taken cocaine the previous night.
The sentence? A 13 month driving ban, £120 fine and £117 in court costs. In mitigation, Beris Brickles said Storm’s wing mirror had caught the cyclist causing him to fall to the ground, and that he has now sold his car to avoid temptation to drive under the influence of cocaine in the future. Even so, Storm could be back on the road in December 2020.
Apple co-founder has ‘given up’ on fully self-driving cars
The reality of current self-driving systems doesn’t match up with consumers’ expectations, says Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak.
“What we’ve done is we’ve misled the public into thinking this car is going to be like a human brain to be able to really figure out new things and say, ‘Here’s something I hadn’t seen before, but I know what’s going on here, and here’s how I should handle it,’ ” he said.
Automotive News Europe reports that Wozniak had hoped Apple would be able to build a fully autonomous vehicle that would read and react to the road like a human, but he now says that there is too much unpredictability on roads for a self-driving car to manage.
“I’ve really given up,” he said. “I don’t even know if that will happen in my lifetime.”
Wozniak said that autonomous vehicles would fare better, “if we were to modify roads and have certain sections that are well mapped and kept clean of refuse, and nothing unusual happens and there’s no road work.”
Track Cycling World Cup timings and results
Just a flimsy excuse to publish that photo again, to be honest.
Car-free Edinburgh (for an afternoon)
Hope/Lotus track bike makes first public appearance at Rouleur Classic
The bike everyone has been talking about was shown off on stage at the Rouleur Classic last night, with British Cycling saying it will give their track cyclists “a huge psychological advantage” going into Tokyo 2020 – just in case you were in any doubt that it’s super fast.
Find out more about the bike here.
Anyone else get a Zwift dinosaur?
Don’t hold onto the back of lorries: road etiquette for cyclists, 1936 style
These cycling sins ‘make drivers mad and could make cyclists silent forever’ according to British Pathe news in 1936.
Fiona Kolbinger becomes 7Mesh ambassador
The German doctor who took a remarkable overall victory at this year’s Transcontinental Race has kept a pretty low profile ever since, but has inevitably picked up a few sponsors for her efforts. The latest is apparel brand 7Mesh, and Kolbinger actually wore the one pair of shorts from the brand for the whole 4,000km Transcon ride. She said: “I’ve always liked things to be in a certain order. I was obsessed with getting everything right for TCR.” That included shorts: “I bought several pairs of shorts – one of which was from 7mesh,” she recalls. “The bib from 7mesh was the only one that did not have seams around the pad. That changed everything.”
