LETTERS | YOUR SAY
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‘Big Pedal is a firm fixture in our calendar’
How one local bike retailer got involved in the school cycle competition…
Dear BikeBiz
In the last edition you asked for information regarding being involved in the Big Pedal. We are very proud to say our two local
schools Dunbar Primary and Dunbar Grammar both came second in Scotland. They also finished seventh and eighth respectively nationally. We have recently started tweeting and it was great to get further involved with the Big Pedal using this medium. We awarded the class who pedalled the most in the Primary category with water bottles for their bikes, and we did that last year too. As they narrowly missed out on a prize (
...again!) we contacted Sustrans who very kindly gave us some of their promotional goodies to give out to some of the other children to say ‘well done’. We also donated ten free skatepark sessions for our local indoor skatepark
www.thespacenb.co.uk to the ten Grammar school pupils who pedalled the most. We all look forward to the Big Pedal, it’s a firm fixture in our local cycling calendar. Our town of Dunbar lends itself to cycling and people use it as such. This is one of the reasons we felt opening our shop back in 2005 would be of service to our community. We hope by offering a local service – one which offers a wide selection and attends to the various disciplines of cycling – we have maintained and strengthened the cycling ethos in our community.
Mandy J Cairns Ford Belhaven Bikes
www.belhavenbikes.co.uk www.twitter.com/belhavenbikes Safety issues
Dear BikeBiz In a full page interview published in the spring issue of ‘Advanced Driving’ (magazine issued to members of the Institute of Advanced Motorists), Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport, Mike Penning – responsible for road safety – starts: “This country can be rightly proud of its road safety record.” In March, the European Commission
reported that progress in cutting road deaths within the EU, significantly slowed last year. On Bolton’s roads last year 13 people, (more than double those in 2010), were killed, and the number of (UK) cyclists killed and injured showed an increase too. So what’s to be proud of? For me, it comes in the form of Chief Inspector Rachel Buckle of Greater Manchester Police’s special operations division! In leading a road safety campaign code named ‘Operation Dice’ (The Bolton News, April 21) she said: “It’s all about safe- guarding precious lives and saving family and friends from having to suffer the terrible devastation that losing a loved one brings”. Shouldn’t that make a great deal of sense to everyone smart enough to hold a driving licence?
Belhaven Bikes got behind the Big Pedal this year, helping more kids get on their bikes
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What doesn’t make sense is that in the
four-day campaign, only 24 drivers were caught breaking the speed limit, with one using a mobile phone. If I cycle between Bury and Bolton (in 24 minutes, not four days) it’s odds-on more than 24 vehicles will pass me breaking the speed limit. Also, I’ll see more than one driver on a mobile. A cyclist can’t win against law breaking drivers, anymore than an honest athlete can against drug cheats. If zero tolerance is right for the Olympics, where no one gets killed, then why not for our roads – the human race? When the volume of motor vehicles got
too much for officers on point-duty, traffic lights revolutionised traffic management. Hasn’t everything from cutting people out of smashed cars, to making artificial limbs; to blood donations and transfusions, been revolutionised by ‘space- age’ progress? Isn’t looking for life on other planets total madness, when ‘simplicity’ itself isn’t used to protect life on this one? Time for a ‘Road Safety Revolution’ is it not?
Allan Ramsay Roadpeace
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