Comments

11 responses to “Velorution, off the rails?”

1. 2008/07/15

   Neil

   Yeh, I was a bit concerned about the tone and words used. There may be a point about differing standards of driving and expectations for road users between cultures / countries, but even then is that the main reason?

   The piece was a rant and not measured or thoughtful in any way and didn’t propose any sensible solutions.

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2. 2008/07/15

   Tim Foster

   Yow. I see what you mean.

   That said, there’s still good stuff out there about bikes.

   My favourites are citycyling.co.uk – a web magazine that almost reads like a print one (gorgeous layout I think), and velovision.org – of which I’m a print subscriber, also an excellent magazine – one for Sunday mornings with breakfast I think.

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3. 2008/07/15

   Neil

   Velovision is very good (I hope they have my re-subscription) if somewhat infrequent.

   http://citycycling.co.uk/ is nice, but no RSS feed to announce new issues (or for anything else) and therefore I normally forget about it.

   If it’s not in my Google Reader it doesn’t get checked regularly.

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4. 2008/07/15

   anna

   I think your spidey sense is working just fine, Alec.

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5. 2008/07/16

   Carolyn

   It makes me uncomfortable, too, Alec, but, to paraphrase someone we both know, I don’t have time to be a crypto geek. I read the original.

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6. 2008/07/16

   Carolyn

   Alec, you didn’t piss me off (with your crypto) as badly as that Mitsubishi driver did.
   These days you can’t get away with shooting an aggressive driver on the roads in England or in the US. Allow me to join your club of handing that MF driver the fickle finger of fate award.
   🙂

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7. 2008/07/16

   TK

   I happen to be a dark skinned immigrant who happens to have black tinted car windows. I happen to live in Central London and have a love of Bromptons, of which I have a reasonable collection in different styles and colours.

   The day before Andrea posted this blog entry, I spent £957 in Velorution on my latest in a series of acquisitions, which no doubt have been more profitable for Velorution than for me.

   I only discovered this blog entry (and in it Andrea’s inner views) because I went to his website to look up prices for an expensive new order.

   INow ‘m not going to give him that order and he’s also lost me as a customer. I wish I could take back all the business I’ve ever given him.

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8. 2008/07/17

   Carolyn

   Alec, and TK. My apologies. Alec’s use of rot13 distracted me from the main point Alec was making. Not just once, but twice, I missed the point.

   I don’t live in the UK, I am not that sort of cyclist, and I don’t do business with this person. That sort of went over my head until TK pointed it out in terms of their doing business with this person.

   Re my second comment, I had partly deciphered (not entirely) Alec’s post, and zeroed in on “aggressive driving”. Not the “send the dark-skinned immigrant home” portion of the post Alec questions.

   With Alec newly celebrating “just turned two” after an accident that nearly killed him, my focus was on bad drivers, period. I don’t care what color you are or where you came from if you are a bad driver.

   As my younger brother “BC” repeatedly points out to me, sharing the road is a social contract. You expect everyone to obey the rules. Stop when the light is red, and so on. Not everyone does that. My one and only car accident is because I trusted “the social contract” and went through an intersection when the light was green for me. They ran the red light. I got hit.

   As a prominent local businessman here says, “Trust, but verify.” At every green light, I check to see if someone looks like they stopped, or intend to stop. I am lucky to live, but unfortunately I learned it the hard way.

   An aggressive driver should be taken to task. To single out any identifying demographic of people as the culprit is ludicrous and ridiculous.

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9. 2008/07/17

   Erik Sandblom

   London is a cosmopolitan place where an international mix of people is considered an exciting asset.

   But I agree that cycling is partially a cultural issue. I think London’s mayor is making an excellent statement by cycling himself. Too many people think that cycling is only for the poor and disadvantaged, or something done purely for sport and not transportation.

   I’ve read that people are more ready to adopt new transport habits when they move to a new home. So it’s a good idea for municipalities to reach out to new arrivals to encourage them to make use of the sustainable transport facilities available.

   Sadly it seems cycling for transport is still only common among a subset of the population. I would love to see more diversity on bicycles!

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10. 2008/07/18

    Andrea Casalotti

    A clarification has been posted:
    http://www.velorution.biz/?p=1453

    Reply
11. 2008/07/21

    Neil

    Better than the original post, but not really satisfactory and fails to appreciate that the language and tone of the original post was very inflammatory and not at all aimed at “intelligent debate” as claimed.

    Reply