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Friday Roundup: Cycling Odds & Ends

courtesy Uber
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Uber admits its self-driving cars have trouble with bike lanes – While we’d love nothing more than being able to sit back and let the car do the driving while we post more goodness on Bikerumor, the challenges to full robotic chauffeurs remains. Uber’s self driving test fleet apparently has trouble recognizing bike lanes, but at least they’ve recognized the problem before bad things happened.
Besides the threat of our robot overlords, there are always plenty of things to get us on the bike over the holidays and into the New Year…


Training

  • The biggest virtual cycling competition in the world is back with Bkool –
    After the success of their Summer Cup with riders from over 30 different countries, Bkool is back for more. The Bkool Winter Cup is running now (from Dec 12) until April 9, 2017, giving every Bkooler around the world the chance to compete head-to-head inside the Bkool Simulator. For the Winter Cup, Bkool has organised various stages from top early season competitions on the circuit, including sections from the Tour Down Under, the Tour de Qatar, and more. Bkoolers.com

Events

  • 31st Tour of the Gila opens registration for 2017 – It’s time to start looking at what goals you’ll set for next year. Registration for the 31st running of the amateur Tour of the Gila categories just opened up. The 5-day stage race runs April 19-23, 2017 with categories open for Cat 1, 2, 3 men and masters, as well as the 4-day version starting April 20 for Cat 3, 4, 5 masters men, Cat 4, 5 men, and Cat 3, 4 women. The Tour draws in competitive cyclists both amateur and pro from around the world, with an event designed to give the opportunity for aspiring cyclists to participate on much of the same course and terrain as the UCI professional men and women. BikeReg.com

  • Ice Ice Baby: White Style kicks off the FMB World Tour 2017 – The world’s best slopestyle athletes and mountain bike fans around the globe can look forward to the 11th edition of White Style. The unique event set in the Austrian Alps of Leogang welcomes the FMB World Tour on Jan 27 where riders will be battling it out on snow for the first win of the year. 20 athletes will be showing off all they have worked on during the winter break and sending their biggest tricks on the snowy alpine course. Bikepark-Leogang.com
  • Science of Speed’s Champions Ride in Tallahassee this March – New for 2017 the Champions Ride will raise money for local non-profit Hang Tough Foundation, featuring 67, 28 & 7.4 mile course options out of the Centre of Tallahassee, FL. Each and every registrant will become a Hang Tough Champion just by signing up thanks to helping raise money for the nonprofit. The event will take place on March 11, with registration now open. ChampionsBikeRide.com

Gear & Wrenches

  • Scope teams up with Low Bicycles to bring their new wheels to more in the US – Scope Cycling, the Dutch wheel company whose new carbon tubeless disc brake road wheels were just announced a month or so back, have partnered up with premium American aluminum framemaker Low. Low Bicycles already takes a unique path of building with aluminum in the US so they can offer top performance at a reasonable price point. Scope is kinda aiming to do something similar, developing affordable carbon clinchers for road racing.
  • Velofix as an escape from the 9 to 5 sales drag – Entrepreneur magazine brings a bike industry success story into the broader press. Francesca DeRanzo left years of fun in the cycling industry to get a sales job that turned into a drudge. Deciding she’d had enough with work that she wasn’t passionate about, she came back to her years as a bike mechanic and turned to a mobile shop franchise. Now you’ll find her wrenching out of her van in St. Louis. Entrepreneur.com
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22 Comments
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Lemond Rider
Lemond Rider
7 years ago

Is society so advanced that we REALLY NEED self-driving cars?

Chris
Chris
7 years ago
Reply to  Lemond Rider

I can think of some blind and elderly folks who think self driving cars are a pretty awesome idea.

mudrock
mudrock
7 years ago
Reply to  Lemond Rider

people kill themselves all the time: drinking, texting, eating, talking on the phone. Yes we need them.

mudrock
mudrock
7 years ago
Reply to  mudrock

Since I’ve lived in my little town (Ithaca NY) 4 cyclists have been killed by distracted or elderly drivers. Any a few pedestrians.

JBikes
JBikes
7 years ago
Reply to  Lemond Rider

How do you advance society without advances?

Chris
Chris
7 years ago

I’d trust a self driving car over a human driving car any day of the week.

JBikes
JBikes
7 years ago

– also nice I don’t care if self driving cars can see bike lanes, but I do care if they can see bicyclist in a bike lane or not
– self driving cars will get better and better so today’s tech will not resemble tech in 10 years. Think about your phone from 2006 and now in 2016. Humans drivers will not realistically get better, and some may say are getting worse
– as previously mentioned, self driving cars solve a myriad of issues, but are especially helpful to the elderly, impaired (by choice or not) as well as peds/cyclists

bearcol
bearcol
7 years ago

death by robot

Pete
Pete
7 years ago

Yet another example of people not thinking things through. Self-operating vehicles will only replace one form of mayhem (distracted drivers) with another (misplaced trust in AI).

Lee Gresham
7 years ago
Reply to  Pete

YES, I heartily agree!

Robin
Robin
7 years ago

The issue with seeing bicyclists and bike lanes will be solved, and the roads will be much safer with self-driving cars. Will self-driving cars be perfect? No, perfection is, of course, an unobtainable goal. They will however be much better than humans. They won’t be distracted by people in the car; they won’t be distracted by texts and calls; and the odds that that a self-driving car won’t see will be several orders of magnitude much less than the odds that some human won’t see you. There really is no objective argument or science based argument against self-driving cars being better.

chasejj
chasejj
7 years ago

This another really dumb idea that is enthusiastically received by mostly liberals.
I find it amazing how many on these comments endorsing something they nothing about have such blind faith in these corporations who are developing these things. (I see them all the time in SF BTW).
It all is going to seem so cool to pay absolutely no attention to your journey and make your Instagram and Snapchat postings nonstop until you moe down a cyclist, motorcyclist or get beheaded by some unforeseen tractor trailer rig turning in front of your path.
Let the lawsuits begin so we can close down Google and Apple ASAP.

J
J
7 years ago
Reply to  chasejj

Wow, you really know astonishingly little about what you’re talking about. There is no great conspiracy wrt self driving cars like you allude to, classic low information American voter material. It is not in any company’s interest to produce an unsafe vehicle. They will undoubtedly be safer, and pedestrian and cyclist deaths will drop in proportion to their rollout.

Perhaps liberals are more enthusiastic about new technology because they understand it without reducing themselves to jingoistic tantrums about things they don’t understand.

lop
lop
7 years ago
Reply to  chasejj

The technology is politically neutral. I suspect you shoehorn “liberalism” into everything which makes you slightly uncomfortable.

JBikes
JBikes
7 years ago
Reply to  chasejj

So you think we should regulate these businesses…to death? Or…something something, the market will find a solution…something something?

The underlying irony of your post is hilarious. Merry Christmas!

QuickGeezer
QuickGeezer
7 years ago

We don’t need self-driving cars, we need way fewer cars.

Kernel Flickitov
Kernel Flickitov
7 years ago
Reply to  QuickGeezer

ding-ding-ding, and we have a winner!

Robin
Robin
7 years ago
Reply to  QuickGeezer

Until our society hops on the mass transportation or alt-transportation bandwagons, self driving cars will arguably be a better option than what we have now: minimally attentive humans trying to multitask while trying to pilot a couple thousand pounds of metal through traffic.

JBikes
JBikes
7 years ago
Reply to  Robin

And funnily, self-driving cars will be the thing that drives mass transportation.
First, you’ll have your self driving car. Then realize it doesn’t matter and will some type of hailed self driving car. At some point, you won’t care if that self driving car that picks you up has other people in it and looks like a bus as long as its a) cheaper and b) gets you where you want to be when it says it will.

Most are saying self driving will kill mass transit. I eventually see the opposite.

Robin
Robin
7 years ago
Reply to  JBikes

If mass transportation kills off individual energy intensive transportation, I’ll be chuffed. I’ll even dance in the streets.

haromania
haromania
7 years ago

(deleted)

Bob
Bob
7 years ago

“Uber’s self driving test fleet apparently has trouble recognizing bike lanes, but at least they’ve recognized the problem before bad things happened.”

Yea, after hundreds of San Francisco cyclists signed a petition to stop them. Uber started the tests even though they didn’t have permission. Real responsible company.

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