News

How much responsibility do head teachers have for our children beyond the school gates? Should they ask parents to confirm their child is in bed by a reasonable hour? After all, lack of sleep has been shown to slow educational development. Should they ask parents to confirm to the school that their child has not been fed a high-sugar...

We are great fans of upcycled shipping containers. After all, what will become of the world’s estimated 20 million shipping containers? Many spend their lives ferrying items from China to Europe and beyond to fuel our consumer lifestyles – their return journeys frequently carrying more than a third of the waste plastic and paper collected...

Iceland has become the latest country to use paint to create a 3D illusion in order to slow drivers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szJbz-z7iJw In Britain some speed bumps are flat, but painted to appear three dimensional. However, in Canada they have gone a step further. Cricket fans have become used to seeing the pitch printed with...

When I reach 94, I want to be like Ernest Slade. Not only is he blessed with a large and loving family, which extends to a great-great-grandson, but he leads such an active lifestyle that he regularly cycles four miles to a local lake where he sails a dinghy. We are proud to say that Ernest is our oldest cycle insurance customer. He came to...

Should Halloween 2017 herald a full-blown zombie apocalypse, remember to avoid cars as they attract attention and rely on expensive petrol. Instead, try customising your bicycle as it doesn't rely on oil, allows you to easily exorcise and is stealthy (it's a well-known fact that zombies are attracted by noise). Our Halloween bicycle is...

Magistrates heard this week how a driver failed to see the cyclist waiting in the middle of the road to make a turn – only becoming aware of the cyclist’s presence when he was sent flying over the windscreen leaving him with injuries requiring four days in intensive care. District Judge Stephen Nicholls described the incident as a...

This was the week we were blocked on Twitter by The RAC. The motoring organisation had been posed the following question by one of their followers. The advice given by The RAC to cyclists is to always wear high-vis clothing and wear a helmet. We joined the conversation to point out that research on the efficacy of high-vis is far from...

With little over a week before the clocks go back, it's time to check your lights are up to the job ahead. The advent of LED technology has revolutionised cycle lighting. Cheap, robust and bright, the lights are being used in ever-more creative ways. LEDs can now be found incorporated into gloves, jackets and now embedded into bicycle wheel...

Perhaps it’s because so many of us pay more attention to screens than anything else or perhaps because large flashing spheres and huge bands of black and white road paint are seemingly so hard to spot, but a group of engineers has devised a stretch of road that’s effectively a TV screen. The interactive pedestrian crossing responds...

Parking charges and residents’ permits rarely, if ever, reflect the real estate value of the land or road space occupied by the car. And yet, it’s an issue that drivers feel extremely strongly about. Earlier this year we built a fake skip in which to store bicycles, but so angry were some drivers that we were temporarily replacing a single...