Category: Blog

Your podcast catcher not showing in links above (black circle with three dots)? Loads more on PodLink. Show is also on Spotify. and Google Podcasts.

Monday 25th January 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 265: Desert Skies, Warm Showers and Church Bells

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Donna Tocci and Sylva Florence

TOPICS: Solo cycle touring. Donna and Carlton chat with Sylva who — among many other bike trips — rode solo from Berkeley, California to St. Augustine, Florida on Adventure Cycling’s Southern Tier Route. Carlton was in Newcastle, Donna was in Boston and Sylva was in — as you will hear thanks to some melodious bells — a small town in Italy.

LINKS:

Sylva’s website: The Sylva Lining

Sylva on Instagram

Warm Showers hosting

“Penny” — Sylva’s bike, a Dahon Tournado

“Dirty South”

242km Tour des Stations, Switzerland

Everesting

Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge

Carlton’s Kickstarter tips for crowdsourcing a book or other projects

Our show sponsor: Jenson USA

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to episode 265 of the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast. This show was published on Monday 25th January 2021

David Bernstein 0:24
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast. For shownotes links and all sorts of other information please visit our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now, here are the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:08
I’ve got a good mic but have yet to fully soundproof my home office so if you listen carefully you may be able to hear, as the white noise beneath my voice, birdsong and the distant rumble of traffic but later in this not-quite-an-hour-long show you won’t be craning your neck to hear a wonderfully different smattering of extraneous audio. I’m Carlton Reid and on this episode of the Spokesmen podcast you’re going to hear — for a wee while at least — some Italian church bells. They’re the sweet sweet background noise that comes as a package with my guest Sylva Florence who’s an American living in a small Italian town near Bologna. Joining me to quiz Sylva about her solo cycle touring is show stalwart Donna Tocci.

Carlton Reid 2:03
Hi to everybody. It’s another recording of the Spokesmen. It really isn’t the men today. It’s it’s the spokes people very much. And I’m outnumbered In fact, very happily to say I’m very outnumbered. We’ve got one guest who is a regular, who you’ll have heard many, many times over many, many years. I can’t say how many years but a good number of years. And then we’ve got a complete newbie to the show. So that person who is the old hand, but I haven’t talked to for ages. I’m afraid to say it is Donna, Donna Tocci over in Massachusetts.

Donna Tocci 2:40
Hi, everybody. I don’t know this old you said old like five times. And I’m not really sure that what that means. But yes, Carlton and I have known each other for a very long time.

Carlton Reid 2:52
It’s not so old that you can get a vaccination that we know you

Donna Tocci 2:57
No, I’m not that old. And we haven’t known each other that long. But yes, Hi, everybody. I’m so excited. I thought we would do more spokesmen, you know, with everything going on in the world and everybody being in their home, but we haven’t. So it’s really great to be back

Donna Tocci 3:12
with us. I know that’s so cool.

Carlton Reid 3:16
To be fair, and to give an explanation that is just still so difficult to get everybody you know, it’s herding cats stuff, it’s getting everybody in the same place at the same time, even though every is in the same place.

Carlton Reid 3:29
By by law almost. It’s still difficult to track people down. So Hi there, Donna, it’s good to hear you again. And the new guest who who we want to bring in today and who we’re gonna kind of like semi interrogate is Sylva Florence, hi Sylva.

Carlton Reid 3:48
You’re American, but you’re not in America.

Sylva Florence 3:51
No, I’ve been living in Italy now for almost three years.

Carlton Reid 3:54
So why Why are you in Italy? And where are you in Italy?

Sylva Florence 3:59
I am very close to Bologna so northern North Central Italy, but I’m in a town called Faenza, which nobody knows about. And most people confuse with the, with Florence — Fiorenze —, which is more more known.

Sylva Florence 4:16
I came here first in 2009 to be a cycle tour leader. But it was always kind of like

Sylva Florence 4:25
seasonal work. And I kept going back and forth but I had something that kept pulling me back to Italy. So eventually I decided okay, it’s time I’m gonna come here and study language and and try and stay so

Sylva Florence 4:39
I’ve been here about almost three years in May now.

Carlton Reid 4:43
And which which companies, if any, we are actually doing bike tours for?

Sylva Florence 4:48
The company is called Experience Plus, and our clients are mostly Americans, Canadians, some, some Brits and some Australians, but largely English speaking people.

Sylva Florence 5:00
So, obviously in the last year, we didn’t have anything we had no seasons. So

Sylva Florence 5:07
yeah, yeah, but I do like a lot of English speaking people over here in Italy, I do a lot of things. So I’m very fortunate that I’ve been able to still kind of

Sylva Florence 5:18
make ends meet even though I haven’t had any, any bike touring over the last year.

Carlton Reid 5:23
So we are gonna be talking very much bike touring so so Sylva got in touch with me and gave me her backstory, which is fascinating about that the cycle touring, which will go on to, but I’m now going to drop Donna in here and just say, you know, drop her in it really is have you done any cycle touring Donna? Have you read any cycle touring? What is your connection to cycle touring, so if any?

Donna Tocci 5:46
Sylva is my new connection to cycle touring

Donna Tocci 5:54
and she’s in Italy, so when we can travel again, I am all on board. But I love I can totally understand the pull of Italy. Obviously, my last name means that I have an Italian heritage. So I was wondering, actually, I would like nothing better than to tour around Italy. Um, that would be wonderful. But no, I do not have any prior cycle touring experience, but very happy to hear about it and learn about it. And

Carlton Reid 6:25
let’s go to Italy. Well, let’s let’s get your Italian background then. So how far back is your, your heritage there? Ms Tocci?

Donna Tocci 6:35
Um, my great grandfather and great grandmother both were from Italy. So not that far back and down near in Naples.

Carlton Reid 6:46
And

Carlton Reid 6:48
and have you been Do you do do you go back and have you been back?

Donna Tocci 6:51
No, I have I have only been to Italy once I am sorry to say it was actually on a press tour for Kryptonite. So there we go with the mic but and and we were we’re in a couple of different cities but then spent the weekend up at Lake Garda for there was happened to be a mountain bike festival up there at the time, and went up there and hung out with mountain bikers for the weekend. And yeah, it was beautiful. I mean, I it’s always been on my list to go back and especially go back to that area.

Sylva Florence 7:22
It’s beautiful.

Carlton Reid 7:22
So for sure. So one of the theories that many people are touting and certainly in the tourism sector is that there’s going to be such an aptitude for travel, after these lockdowns have finished and that could be travelling all sorts of different forms, including bicycles, but certainly people are going to be wanting to get out of their four walls. And, and travel. So don’t Is that something you are? Definitely, if you’re thinking about that right now? Yes, we are absolutely thinking about the first place we will go.

Donna Tocci 8:01
When we’re done. And I think for us, it will be it won’t be Italy, unfortunately. But fortunately, it will probably be Ireland because my better half.

Donna Tocci 8:10
And the bigger cyclist in this family is from Ireland originally. And his family is there. So we will probably go there first.

Carlton Reid 8:20
You might be racing your president.

Donna Tocci 8:23
What’s that?

Carlton Reid 8:24
You might be racing your new president because he’s he’s got Irish ancestry and he looks like he’s gonna be going to Ireland pretty soon.

Donna Tocci 8:31
He does. I know. I’ve seen that and a cycling president. Well, yeah. But with the the big controversy now is is peloton in the White House.

Sylva Florence 8:42
See what happens?

Donna Tocci 8:43
I know.

Donna Tocci 8:46
Yeah. Yeah. So where will you go, Carlton?

Carlton Reid 8:51
Uh, I don’t know. I mean, I have got a very, very hard cycling ride to do in the Swiss Alps in August. So touchwood I can get out there but not touchwood. It’s going to be absolutely brutal. It’s basically every tough climb in Switzerland. 280 miles or something [NOPE – 240kms] . It’s just crazy. So hard to do it and then half of me doesn’t want to do it, because it’s a tough one.

Carlton Reid 9:23
But yeah, that’s that’s that’s kind of like what my goal is to maybe get to Switzerland. So so that even though you’re now living, and you have lived in Faenxa near Bologna, for three years, you’ve done some cycle touring, and you went across America. So when when did you do that? That that trip?

Sylva Florence 9:44
So I did that trip. I started in October of 2017. And I ended in February of 2018. And that was the longest cycling trip, second bike touring trip that I’ve done alone.

Sylva Florence 10:00
But I have done other ones alone. And I’ve done other bike tours in other parts of the world. But that one was particularly important because it was one that I did by myself across America. You did all by yourself no support vehicle or anything? No, it’s just me how, yeah, just me

Carlton Reid 10:21
in what kind of accommodation at night times.

Sylva Florence 10:24
So I brought a tent and I bought a stove and I bought everything. So I had, I was very self sufficient. I was able to stop wherever I wanted more or less,

Sylva Florence 10:34
which I did for about the first month.

Sylva Florence 10:38
But then it obviously because it was over the winter, even though I was going, I went from

Sylva Florence 10:44
Berkeley, California to Florida, so it was very far south. But we still had a little bit of winter weather I ran into like a blizzard in Louisiana, which was incredibly strange, and not normal at all.

Sylva Florence 10:59
But I ended up using the Warm Showers network a lot. Are you guys familiar with that?

Donna Tocci 11:04
No.

Carlton Reid 11:05
Donna is not. I am but you explain it. I’ll tell you why I’m familiar with it in a second.

Sylva Florence 11:11
Yeah, because you ‘ve bike toured too I think I read right, Carlton?

Carlton Reid 11:17
Many, many years ago in a previous life when Warm Showers did not exist. fantastic to be able to hook up. The internet didn’t exist when when I was cycle touring.

Carlton Reid 11:28
Computers had only just been invented, you know, it’s like

Sylva Florence 11:34
Hey, bike touring his bike touring no matter how you do it. So for sure. So yeah, it’s a warm shower. Isn’t it really cute. Thank you. Yeah, but basically warm showers is like, if anybody knows couchsurfing.

Sylva Florence 11:47
It’s very similar to couchsurfing. And that it’s a hospitality based website, which people offer for free their homes and you never know like, maybe you’re going to be putting a tent up in their backyard, maybe you’re going to be sleeping on their couch, maybe if they have an extra room, you can sleep in a bed. And then like the name suggests, you’ll get a hot shower. And then part of the culture is that usually you share dinner together or and or breakfast. And so you get to know the people that you stay with, which is really cool. You feel like you’ve walked into a family or something. So I use warm showers a lot and it was a really enriched my my trip. It was it was a really beautiful part of it.

Carlton Reid 12:31
I know why people use it but alone woman using it. Do you have any extra worries when you’re you’re hooking up with somebody? Or you’re thinking ‘I’ve got to go with a couple I can’t be going with this …. You know, do you have an antenna for thinking ‘I’m not going to go to that one. I’m gonna go to this one’. How do you cope? That I wouldn’t have to think about these things. But But I’m presuming you you would have to sadly.

Sylva Florence 12:55
Yeah, it’s true. It’s a little bit different for a woman still, unfortunately, I’m just kind of the way the world is. But honestly, it’s not as scary and dangerous as everybody thinks like them the 95% of the experiences and the people that I met were positive and were helpful and curious and wanted to in some way help me out.

Donna Tocci 13:19
But as far as warm showers,

Donna Tocci 13:22
I’d lucky or we’re all lucky because there’s kind of

Donna Tocci 13:25
a system in place. So when somebody stays with you, you leave them a review, and vice versa. So I could go on to these profiles of people I would hope to stay with and I could read reviews about them. And if they didn’t have any reviews, maybe I would choose a different one.

Carlton Reid 13:44
For example, that had so it’s kind of like Airbnb, but you’re not you’re you’re not paying for it. This is given gratis. And then I’m presuming that’s bells in the backgroun. And it’s not your strange

Donna Tocci 13:55
I love that.

Sylva Florence 13:56
Oh, that’s my house.

Sylva Florence 13:59
Can you hear that?

Carlton Reid 14:01
Yeah, totally cute. I mean, normally we say can you turn your phone off? You’ve got strange Italian

Carlton Reid 14:06
bell ringing as your your your ringtone is like no, no, no, that’s, that’s where you live. That’s cute.

Sylva Florence 14:11
I didn’t even notice because it happens like several times a day. I live like very close to a church. So beautiful. Yeah, yeah, it’s nice. I like it to actually kind of like a nice soundtrack to my life.

Carlton Reid 14:25
And how often do they go off? Are they you know, that soundtrack to your life is how frequent?

Sylva Florence 14:30
Well if you’ll notice right now it’s it’s 5.18pm so they go off at really weird times. Like actually my neighbour and I laugh about it because it’s never it’s never on the hour like on the quarter hour it’s always like a weird time so it’s it’s Sunday though so they go off maybe like three times a day on Sundays.

Carlton Reid 14:49
There’s something I’m presuming it’s religious then it’s like as in not a time thing is like taking you to Vespers or something I don’t I’m not religious.

Sylva Florence 14:56
I don’t know but I don’t know either cuz I’m not religious.

Donna Tocci 15:00
I feel like yeah, I feel like it’s connected. Because it’s Sunday. So, yeah, strange time.

Donna Tocci 15:05
5.18? I mean, that’s just an odd. It’s not like five o’clock or even 5.15 or 5.30.

Sylva Florence 15:13
I mean, I feel like there’s something about like six o’clock. So maybe it’s like, go quick get your coffee because you’re Italian and then go to Vespers.

Sylva Florence 15:24
I love living here. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 15:27
So it’s still going on. So it’s quite,

Donna Tocci 15:31
it will go for a while.

Donna Tocci 15:34
So, Carlton, have you done any bike touring around the US, like when you were here for maybe Interbike, or Sea Otter or anything like that?

Carlton Reid 15:43
Yeah, for many, many years, well, every time I came, I’d always try and fit in a bike tour. So sometimes I’d hire a car. So I’ve done a lot of desert trips. So I would hire and get out somewhere, getting a bike out, do some trips around, then getting the car go somewhere else when I was connected to, to

Carlton Reid 16:03
the kind of the schedule of doing trade shows, but even before that, I would now this is now in the 1980s. So he’s now dating me very much. So then I would fly in, and I would just do American deserts and spend a month. So every every

Carlton Reid 16:20
university holiday I had, after I’d already I’d already spent two years cycling around, and and just doing stuff on a bike somewhere in the world, generally in the Middle East. And then when I went to university, I then spend one month, every year, somewhere exotic, and it would either be the Sahara

Carlton Reid 16:41
or I then went to the Kalahari Desert. And then I decided to do some of the American deserts so so went out and spent time doing solo bike touring, or sometimes with an Israeli friend In fact, who I had who we did the

Carlton Reid 17:01
we went into Mexico and so did some of the the deserts that part of the loss I’m very much a desert cycle tourist. That’s what I like the best is, is getting really dusty.

Sylva Florence 17:12
Deserts awesome. Why do you like it?

Donna Tocci 17:14
Yeah, why?

Carlton Reid 17:17
I’m, I’m British, I get rained on a lot.

Carlton Reid 17:24
Going for the opposite. Let’s go somewhere the opposite to where I am. Okay, deserts.

Carlton Reid 17:30
I just I just absolutely loved, literally getting dusty.

Carlton Reid 17:36
riding along. So I’ve done lots and lots of deserts in my time and even took so that’s why my son Josh, that’s why he then graduate become a cycle tourist. So we used to do some pretty adventurous trips, including to Iceland. So Iceland, you might think of as a like a snowy, you know, ice place, but it’s actually the biggest desert in Europe, in that there’s no there’s no rainfall, very little rainfall at certain times of the year. And enormous expanses have in effect volcanic sand. So Iceland is a is a place we went to, and spent time in with my son. So in fact, teaching him desert

Carlton Reid 18:21
survival techniques, even though it wasn’t a hot desert, it was a cold desert. But I would go to the deserts wherever they are. Even now.

Sylva Florence 18:31
They’re pretty awesome. There’s something about the desert, like there’s like a silence in the desert that you find, especially at night that I’ve never found anywhere else. I guess

Carlton Reid 18:40
Yes. So I’m looking at this guy as well, the sky, it tends to be amazing in deserts. Obviously not going to get clouds. And so you just lie back and I’d lie back in the Sahara and literally the Sahara and I’m in a in a sleeping bag. And just look at the amazing amazing sky which I’ve never seen anywhere else apart. You know the desert you just see just masses of stars. It’s just incredible.

Carlton Reid 19:07
Anyway,

Donna Tocci 19:08
no, I would think you would have to prepare very differently for a desert tour rather than what Silva did. You know, going from coast to coast. I mean, where there’s a tonne of cars and people and all of that what would be the differences in preparing?

Sylva Florence 19:28
Well actually went through the desert through from from Eastern California until until midway through Texas was all desert pretty much. So

Carlton Reid 19:41
cute. Nice service stations. So you can just pull in and getting a coffee and a donut in in the middle of the desert, which is just kind of cool.

Donna Tocci 19:53
Did you find that a healthy way

Donna Tocci 19:59
when you’re cycling

Donna Tocci 20:00
You need a lot of calories. So it’s true. And caffeine never hurts.

Carlton Reid 20:05
And I found that American deserts were less populated than deserts elsewhere in the world. So Kalahari, the Sahara, there’s, there’s probably habitation every 5 or 10 miles. Whereas in an American desert, it’s literally how far you can get in a car.

Sylva Florence 20:24
You know, that actually devastations would be, actually, so I was I went, because most when you cycle as you know, you don’t take the main routes, because they’re traffic up. And maybe not. Because when usually when you travel you, you look to kind of enjoy what you’re going through. Like, some people do want to ride as much as they can in one day. But I’m, I’m not necessarily one of those people. I tried to cover some distance if I can, but I really like to also enjoy what I’m going through. And the route that I followed took me away from interstates unless there was no other road, sometimes I had to read on an interstate. But the the towns were actually about maybe 100 kilometres 60 miles spaced apart, because it was where the train used to stop. Mm hmm. So So between those those 60 mile 100 kilometre points, there was absolutely nothing. And some and sometimes it was there was a town on the map, but it wasn’t actually a town, it was like a ghost town.

Donna Tocci 21:29
And so you really had to think about water, you really had to think about carrying water, enough water for the day or even the night if you’re going to camp or something or you didn’t know. And really getting, I asked a lot of people because sometimes there was like a faucet maybe behind like the library or the post office or something. So I could fill up water. But other than that there was nothing. So it was it was logistically interesting for sure. Now

Donna Tocci 22:02
what what’s that? I’m sorry, sorry. Go ahead. Carlton.

Carlton Reid 22:06
Donna said How did you plan the route? And my question was about clothing through a few different climate zones. So how are you planning? Were you jettison clothing and mailing it back? Or do you carry everything? So planning and clothing?

Sylva Florence 22:20
So okay, so for planning, I started in Berkeley, where my brother lives, and I rode to San Diego. And then I followed what’s called the Southern Tier Route, which is the American cycling associations route that they’ve kind of already come up with. And it’s, like, well known enough in in cycling culture, I guess. So they give you the route, but they don’t tell you where to stop. So you have to you have to figure it out on your own, where you’re going to stop where you want to stay that kind of thing. So, after a while, I kind of just got into a pattern where I was contacting warmshowers hosts on the road ahead of me, maybe, because I discovered that they appreciated you know, a few days to a week of notice. So I tried to contact them with some notice if I could, and I was also contacting churches and fire stations and police stations to ask them if I could camp or stay

Donna Tocci 23:20
there, too, to save money because it was almost a five month trip. Um, and then as far as, as clothing and things that I brought, I brought everything because I started in October and I finished in mid February and so I kind of needed I needed everything honestly.

Donna Tocci 23:41
When I started in in California, I was dealing with heat waves, like over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, which I think is like 35 maybe Celsius.

Donna Tocci 23:54
And then when I got to Louisiana, I had a blizzard. So I needed everything and had absolutely everything. So I carried it all with me but luckily having done this for many years I have kind of accumulated a lot of the gear so I’m very lucky. Like I had everything that I needed light like gear. So

Carlton Reid 24:17
you’ve told us why you started in Berkeley because your brother Why did you end in Louisiana?

Sylva Florence 24:24
I ended in Florida,

Carlton Reid 24:26
Florida, Florida sorry Florida. Why did you end in Florida?

Sylva Florence 24:28
No problem. Um, because that because I was going coast to coast. I was going from the the Pacific to the Atlantic basically. And I was I was following this already more or less established route even though I went off of it a few times, which started in San Diego and ended in St. Augustine, Florida. So I basically just followed it until the end till till Florida.

Carlton Reid 24:54
Mm hmm.

Donna Tocci 24:56
It’s something I always wanted to do this this Southern Tier trip.

Carlton Reid 25:03
I don’t want to get too rude here and you can, Americans can absolutely stop me here if you say you can’t say these sort of things, but

Carlton Reid 25:12
it’s the states you are going through are very rudely called flyover states. Yeah. And and are you gonna stop me here now? Or should I

Carlton Reid 25:23
pick on flyover states for a reason? Whereas, you know, obviously, people go from one, one American coast to the American coast, and then don’t go in to the hinterland. And in elearning, see the comments we’re gonna get for this. Go ahead. Well, especially where I’m going with this. So the hinterland

Carlton Reid 25:47
also has a reputation for certain kind of politics. When you were going through, did you see any massive changes in politics and how you were treated? Why? I don’t know how you can skirt around these things, or whether you even never saw any of this, because because it just didn’t come up. But describe how, where I’m going here and what you think I’m talking about, and how the political how people view politics can maybe even change how they view a stranger coming into their midst?

Donna Tocci 26:28
Or a cyclist. I mean, we all know that, in, in every part of the world, there are folks that are very accommodating to cyclists, and that there are other parts that are very much not. So did you encounter any of that as well?

Donna Tocci 26:47
These are very interesting questions. And actually, Yeah, seriously, we’re not answer. So no, I’m happy to. Okay. So I, when I wrote in, I told Carlton that I wrote a book about this trip. So I bought a wrote a book while while I was writing across the United States, which I’m now trying to pitch to editors and things and decide what I want to do with it. But I talk about this kind of stuff, because, for example, like going into the Dirty South, as we call it, like it’s not, it’s not necessarily a place that people think would be like, Hey, I would love to go like ride my bike through

Donna Tocci 27:26
the Dirty South because there’s not, in general, a lot of infrastructure for cycling, and for cyclists. And when you ride through some of these areas, and I didn’t even really understand it. So I’m really grateful to have experienced this so that I understand my own country better our own country. But when you go into the south east, and in particular places, for example, like Baton Rouge, which I wrote through

Donna Tocci 27:55
a bicycle is kind of seen a bicycle as seen as either maybe like, not not probably by everyone, I’m generalising but as a as a rich person sport, or as something that people do when they when they’re really poor, and they can’t afford a car.

Donna Tocci 28:14
And so I was kind of like, in the middle of this so like a weird like, what what in the world is this girl doing? You know? So they were I have a lot of problems with traffic and had a lot of people with not not giving me space, like really brushing me very close. Like a few times, I was almost knocked off the road and things like that.

Donna Tocci 28:35
But I think it wasn’t it wasn’t a point of like them trying to be mean or aggressive. It was more like they just didn’t understand where I fit into the scheme of things. Like I wasn’t, I wasn’t a super poor person. And I wasn’t like somebody on a fancy road bike. I was like this weird girl going through with a pirate flag and bags. Because I had a pirate flag on my bike. Hired flag I found it on the side of the road in eastern California and I just like couldn’t help myself. I I flew it all the way to Florida. So the Kenny Chesney fans would love that.

Donna Tocci 29:09
It was the pirate ship and my back was the pirate ship.

Carlton Reid 29:14
Tell me about your bike. What kind of bike are you talking about here?

Sylva Florence 29:19
Well, I’m one of those weird people who likes to name everything. So her name is Penny because she’s the colour of like a penny. A US one cent

Sylva Florence 29:30
and it’s a it’s a Richey bike but it was like Richey made it for Dahon the the brand Dahon but it’s a Richey. It’s a Ritchey Tournardo basically. And it’s coupled so it comes apart and you can put it into a suitcase. Basically, it’s made for this kind of stuff. Thank you, Richey.

Carlton Reid 29:50
Is that the s&s couplings. It’s that that thing?

Sylva Florence 29:52
Yeah, yeah. Mm hmm. And then like the brake cables come apart and it’s got it’s like suitcase and

Donna Tocci 30:01
I carry like a collapsible cloth bag which I had my brother send me from Berkeley and I had him send it to my warm shower hosts in St. Augustine so that I could bring it to a bike shop and have them put it helped me put it into a bag, but you’ve got to like take a cardboard box apart and make a sort of an internal frame for the for the box. It’s a bit involved, but you can do it.

Carlton Reid 30:27
And then you old school with like panniers, do you have a trailer or are you like new school in that it’s bike packing.

Sylva Florence 30:36
I’m I’m a little bit half and half I guess because I’ve done bike packing. And so I’ve got what’s called a sweet roll which I absolutely love for my handlebars where I put my tent and my fuel and a couple other things. And then I have panniers on the back.

Sylva Florence 30:52
And I often also use a front rack with panniers but it broken right before the trip and I didn’t have time to to buy a new one and get it all figured out. So I’m I guess I’m like middle school.

Carlton Reid 31:05
I’m older. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever works, really? And is that bike, the collapsible bike, something you’re still riding is that your like your go to bike.

Donna Tocci 31:17
I brought it over here to Italy. And actually after the first after the lockdown that we had that ended in June, I rode

Donna Tocci 31:26
18 days, I think by myself from where I live to very southern Tuscany. So I use that bike as well. So yeah, it’s it’s still in action.

Carlton Reid 31:37
A pretty flexible machine that if you can take it apart, that’s a good bike to bring with you from America into Italy. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So it’s very much in use. I have I have four bikes, if I’m going to be honest. So

Sylva Florence 31:53
with you that just in life in general. With me now with me now. I have four bicycles.

Donna Tocci 32:00
Every bike person has more than one.

Sylva Florence 32:03
Brava. So I would say yes.

Donna Tocci 32:08
So I have a question, Sylva. So you did this all by yourself, which is amazing. And Awesome.

Sylva Florence 32:15
Thank you.

Donna Tocci 32:17
Did you know where you were going to end? And did you have to some days because I’m sure some days it was like, Yes, this is fantastic. I love this. And other days were probably a little bit of a slog like, okay, I just want to get through the miles today. Did you did you use any visualisation to like, I know exactly where I’m going to end? Or did you not know where you’re going, and you just knew you were going to end on the coast of Florida?

Donna Tocci 32:44
Well, because I was followiong this route to St. Augustine, Florida, I knew that I was going to end there. And honestly, I didn’t. I didn’t want to stop riding. When I arrived in St. Augustine, I was so happy with bike touring and, and just the feeling of being on the road and being so free to an autonomous will all the stuff that I had, I would have loved to continue. But by that point, while riding, I had already planned my move to Italy. So I kind of had to return to my parents house or had my stuff in the interim and start getting my visa and everything together to move to Italy. So

Carlton Reid 33:26
I suppose Yeah, maybe maybe I’m wrong here Donna. But maybe the question was a daily thing, even though you had your your your eventual

Carlton Reid 33:35
target. Did you know each day where you were going to stop? Like was it just literally you just rode until you stopped? Was that? Would that be right? Donna?

Donna Tocci 33:44
That’s kind of the question. I’m kind of how you’d write every day. But how do you motivate? How did you get that motivation every day to go out on the days that were hard? Because there have been some days where you were sore? Or you just kind of didn’t feel it?

Donna Tocci 34:00
Maybe? I mean, in five months, there’s had to have been a couple of days that were not your favourite. So did you do any visualisation? Or did you just say no, I just kind of grit through it and got to do it.

Donna Tocci 34:14
I think I don’t know. I think it’s probably a bit of both. I’m really a very stubborn person. And I’m, I’m rather determined. And so when I when I see something that I want to do even I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to do it or figure it out. I kind of keep looking at that and saying I’m going to do that. And so there were definitely some days that were really rough like I had had a lot of I mean as any long bike tour anybody that ever goes on a long bike tour, there’s all sorts of things that happen to you. I had back problems I had blizzards, landslides, heat waves, knee problems, like everything imaginable, which is kind of normal and but

Donna Tocci 35:00
For me, it actually became kind of a joy to, to problem solve and to say, Okay, I’ve got this problem, but how am I going to figure it out? And then, like not seeing it more as, as a problem or as like a fun challenge or something? And definitely there were some days where I was like, What am I doing this is so stupid. But then the next day would be completely different. Or some or I would meet somebody that would just pick my spirits up in like a second.

Donna Tocci 35:32
It was, I don’t know, bike touring is is one of those things that it’s like, incredibly hard, but it’s also really rewarding. And so by the time you get to the end, you look at the whole thing as being something more rewarding than it was punishing or hard.

Donna Tocci 35:50
Because you’re changing. Sorry. So do you feel like your 18 days to Tuscany was like, going around the corner for milk?

Donna Tocci 36:03
I mean, actually, at the end of that, too, I didn’t want to stop either. But I had some bureaucratic stuff. I had to come back and go to the police, that deals with immigration, so

Sylva Florence 36:18
but my friends were laughing at me because I could have just gone the easy way. And I could have, like, not climbed like 1000 metres a day, but I chose a route in which I really pushed myself and climbed a lot. So I made it not necessarily very easy for myself, but it was incredible.

Donna Tocci 36:39
So you and Carlton with the mountains?

Sylva Florence 36:42
Carlton, you like to climb too?

Carlton Reid 36:45
Yeah, that’s my favourite. My favourite is climbing bags on so yeah, it’s nice to go up in a nice you know, incredibly light, light road bike, but it’s also really nice to go up with really heavy bags.

Carlton Reid 37:00
Sharing you and and and cars to be stopping and, and that kind of stuff. So that that’s also cool.

Carlton Reid 37:09
No, you go first Donna,

Donna Tocci 37:11
I might have missed it, Carlton, how long is your event in the summer in Switzerland?

Carlton Reid 37:18
Well, that’s a one day thing. So that’s 280 miles in a day over every single mountain. So that’s why I was going Oh, it’s not it’s a tough one. Wow. Cool. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s the tourist action, if you go over every

Carlton Reid 37:36
Swiss ski resort, in effect in the summer, and it’s an interesting thing as well. So it’s new for this year. So you’re definitely doing the height of Everest, in your in your day of punishing climbs. So they’ve extended the distance of an already brutal course. And how dare the Tourist Board invite me across for such a punishment?

Donna Tocci 38:06
How are you training for that?

Carlton Reid 38:10
I’ll start soon.

Sylva Florence 38:12
And how will you train for it?

Carlton Reid 38:14
I’ll do hills.

Carlton Reid 38:18
I can get out and do some hills.

Sylva Florence 38:19
You have some good hills where you live?

Carlton Reid 38:22
Yeah, yeah, it’s okay. I can do some elevation. But you’d so tough to do a trip like this, because it’s just Hill after Hill after But on the plus side, you’ve also got down hills, plenty of downhill. So it’s not the whole way.

Carlton Reid 38:38
So my question, Sylva it was was

Carlton Reid 38:41
was going to be you’ve talked about where you’ve been or what do you haven’t talked about every one of your your places you’ve you’ve been to. But one of the things we started talking about in the beginning was all about how are our dreams about lockdown? So have you got dreams about cycle touring? independent cycle tours coming up? Have you got stuff planned?

Donna Tocci 39:02
planned, planned now because it’s just really difficult here. Like I don’t know how the lockdown stuff is where you guys are. But here we have just kind of a seemingly never ending series of regulations that right now where I live in Emilia Romagna is in what’s called the orange zone. So we have kind of tiers of yellow, orange and red and we’re in orange,

Donna Tocci 39:26
which signifies that we can’t leave our towns.

Donna Tocci 39:31
And we can’t and we have a curfew, which we’ve had since the beginning of November at 10pm. And a lot of different other things bars and restaurants, clothes, blah, blah, blah. So it’s very difficult to actually plan something because we don’t know when it’s going to end. But you know, like those of us that travel and they love this kind of stuff. We’re always dreaming and we always have like four trips in mind. So what I would really like is to ride from here to Spain, because I’ve got some friends there and

Sylva Florence 40:00
I’ve never been to Spain. And so I would absolutely love to ride from Faenza to Spain, by myself.

Carlton Reid 40:08
Mm hmm.

Carlton Reid 40:11
by yourself. So that’s that. I mean, that is one of the things I also do get asked loads of times is about the solo stuff. Why? Why do it solo? So that was gonna ask me, I’ll just ask you why? Why solo?

Sylva Florence 40:27
Um, for me, um,

Donna Tocci 40:31
well, a lot of the people that I talked to, especially a lot of other women and Donna, I’m not saying that you’re in this group, I don’t know what your experiences are. But there’s a lot of women who don’t feel comfortable travelling by themselves, because they really are afraid of

Donna Tocci 40:48
I hate to say it like men and just the way that the world is. But

Donna Tocci 40:53
I guess I don’t necessarily see that for myself as a barrier. Because I, I trust and expect that like good things will come my way. And they always do. And I’m very, I’m very aware, I’m not going to be naive. And if I feel something weird, I’m not going to go to that person’s house, I’m not even going to necessarily talk to that person. But I love to travel by myself, because I feel like it really opens people’s influence people’s doors, it opens people’s minds. And it opens people’s hearts. Like it’s a very, you meet a lot of really cool people.

Carlton Reid 41:29
That’s my answer as well, that as well. Because it’s the people think, oh, you’re just so low that you’re not, you’re just being horrible, you’re not you’re being incredibly social, because I found that when you’re, I don’t know how it’s, it’s for you. So when you travel with two or more people, you’re in that little clique, you’re in a little bubble, and you can’t miss stuff, because you’re with somebody else, when you’re by yourself, you see everything, and you are open to talking to anybody. And people also come to you more, if you’re in a group or if you’re in just even just two people, a lot of people just won’t come up and talk to you, because you’ve got a friend, you’ve got somebody to talk to you No need to go and talk to that that strange, exotic person over there. When you’re by yourself, that strange exotic person is all of a sudden, very approachable, because it’s only you. So that that was my fight wasn’t an anti social thing. It was actually the opposite he, you’re more likely to talk to people, if you’re by yourself.

Sylva Florence 42:23
Sure. And you’re free to for example, say you meet somebody who’s really cool. And they invite you to say come to this town. That’s maybe not the direction that you would plan to go. But you’re the only one that decides if you’re going to keep going left or if you’re going to go right. So if you meet these people, and they say let’s go right, then you can go and it completely changes your experience. It’s really cool. It’s like going with the flow.

Carlton Reid 42:49
Huh? No, no, I I it’s all flooding back, Sylva.

Carlton Reid 42:56
I am mad. I haven’t done solo for so long. That I haven’t been asked why do you do solo Tours by now remember why I did solo tours? Yeah, for that reason that you’ve given as well. So thank you. Thank you for the memories.

Sylva Florence 43:08
You’re welcome. Anytime.

Sylva Florence 43:11
Coming.

Sylva Florence 43:14
Donna, you’ve got to get out there by yourself.

Sylva Florence 43:17
would you do it? Donna? would you do it? a solo tour?

Donna Tocci 43:21
Sure.

Donna Tocci 43:24
I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s me. I would go out for solo rides? Sure. I don’t have any problem doing that. I have done that. So and I think you’re right. I think just in general, no matter how you’re travelling, that if you’re by yourself, you’re more approachable to others. I think, you know, like you said, If you already have a friend with you or two friends, somebody’s not going to come up and talk to you necessarily, but when you’re by yourself. Sure people feel like they can approach you more.

Donna Tocci 43:54
So a solo bike tour? I don’t know. Just because I have not done it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t but but bike garage or Absolutely. I have no fear about that.

Carlton Reid 44:08
So but also, this, I guess to many people, this would sound odd but

Carlton Reid 44:14
because because most people would think of bicycling in the boondocks as an inherently dangerous thing to do. I mean, you probably don’t don’t think that but many people do. But do you think actually as a solo woman, actually a bicycle is actually a really good way of being a solo woman because actually, it’s easier because you are absolutely in charge of the vehicle that’s taking place. Whereas if you’re a solo woman on a bus, on a train, there’s potentially actually more

Carlton Reid 44:49
dodgy

Carlton Reid 44:51
connections with with people who might not be as nice as you think. Whereas on a bicycle, you can just go well, there’s somebody up ahead, I want to see them. I’ll go that way. instead.

Carlton Reid 45:00
Do you see a bicycle as actually a means of, of a very good way of of a woman travelling, for safety reasons?

Donna Tocci 45:07
I will take that I will say not only travelling, I do a lot of walking in the summertime, because I try, I actually trained Carlton, you might want to train for that whole thing in Switzerland. But I train for doing a marathon walk every year for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute here in Boston. And when you’re walking, I’m very much more aware of my surroundings, and who’s around me and all of that, as I’m walking, you know, 15 miles on a day and all of that. But when I’m on my bike, I, it’s not that I worry when I walk, I live in a safe neighbourhood, but I do look at all my surroundings and all of that a lot more. But when I’m on my bike, I, I don’t it’s not that I don’t pay attention to cars, and people and all of that. But there isn’t. There’s just another element that’s not there. So I think you’re right. Yeah, bike is, I think a little safer. In some ways. I don’t know.

Carlton Reid 46:03
Same same question to you than Sylva. Yeah, I mean, I think that when you’re definitely when you’re on a bike, you have the decision of where you’re going to go because you’re in charge of the vehicle.

Donna Tocci 46:14
And also in your bike touring, as you probably know, Carlton, like you don’t go through main avenues so much are kind of on the periphery. And so you kind of you kind of seek by things, like if you don’t really want to be seen, you don’t have to be seen, like, and so for me, I would just really use it as like a tool of exploration. And I would go where I felt good and where I didn’t feel good, I would kind of choose another route. And I encountered a lot of people that were really afraid that would ask me like, well, aren’t you afraid to be doing what you’re doing your I would never do, I would never be able to do that. Because with the world as it is, or whatever, but

Donna Tocci 46:55
I don’t I don’t really see the world as being that way. And so

Donna Tocci 47:01
I don’t know, like I found such good experiences. And this is like, not only this trip, but over almost 10 years now like touring. And so as a solo woman, there are some places where I probably maybe I wouldn’t go by myself or maybe like the Middle East, perhaps I would want to have another girlfriend or somebody with me. But most places also in Italy and Europe, I would feel comfortable going on my own on a bicycle is such an amazing place a way to see the world. I agree.

Carlton Reid 47:34
I think we’re gonna have to wrap up for today. But by doing so, I’d like to ask somewhere where can people who are listening to this where can they find out more information and and perhaps how they’re going to be able to find your book eventually? How are you on social media where you can tell people where your books can come from? And

Carlton Reid 47:53
where do people find you is what I’m trying to say?

Sylva Florence 47:55
Sure. Yeah, I have a website which is thesylvalining.com so my name s y l v a lining dotcom. And my Instagram is also thesilverlining. And Facebook, thesilverlining everything is the silver lining,

Carlton Reid 48:13
Does your Instagram have tonnes and tonnes of bike touring pictures or is it your life in general.

Sylva Florence 48:19
I just started a new a new Instagram for specifically for to promote the book and just my life experience in Italy and that kind of thing, which is the silver lining. Otherwise, if you want to see some pictures of the trip, it’s Silvana Firenze, which is kind of my name translated in Italian. So

Sylva Florence 48:41
So yeah, and I’m not exactly sure how yet how I’m going to get the book out, but it’s ready and I’m just trying to find the best, the best course for it.

Carlton Reid 48:52
How about self publishing.

Sylva Florence 48:54
I thought about that too. Mm hmm. If I can find enough people who would be interested in it as as an audience I would absolutely self publish it as well.

Carlton Reid 49:04
So right now it’s research talking about experience there and that I’ve done to crowdsource books

Carlton Reid 49:12
which in how much American money well 25,000 pounds now that a book well first one’s 15,000 pounds second one was 25,000 so there is definitely an audience for books out there even niche niche urban Cycling is nicche, niche books.

Carlton Reid 49:30
So I would I personally I’d recommend

Carlton Reid 49:34
rather than waiting for the world to come to you on this one get out there and get it self published and and perhaps crowdsource it to begin with.

Sylva Florence 49:44
I guess we should have a chat off, off podcast.

Carlton Reid 49:49
totally happy to help. Yeah. And Donna where where can people find you at the moment and your dog?

Donna Tocci 49:58
Oh, my dog.

Donna Tocci 49:59
You can always find me on Twitter at DonnaTocci, and you can find me on Instagram and that’s what Carlton was talking about. That’s more my dogs and my life and all of that. But it’s all there at Donna Tocci as well on Instagram.

Carlton Reid 50:15
Beautiful. Well, thank you both ever so much for chatting today and and Sylva, thank you for getting my memories flooding back.

Carlton Reid 50:27
After after lockdown I’ll definitely have to get out and do more solo bike touring. Yeah and Warm Showers this time.

Carlton Reid 50:35
Wasn’t able to in the dark ages when I was last cycle touring, but I’ve got that to look forward to. So thank you ever so much for being on the show. And thank you to for Donna for asking some great questions too, and for keeping the conversation flowing.

Carlton Reid 50:51
Thanks to Donna Tocci and Sylva Florence for today’s cycle touring chat. This has been episode 265 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. Links to things we were chatting about — such as Warm Showers, the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge and the Southern Tier Route and more — can be found on the-spokesmen.com. I’ve also provided a link to the Tour des Stations — I just looked it’s not 280 miles it’s 242kms — I was scaring myself. But 242 Kms is the thick end of 150 miles so still brutal, and still with 8,848 metres of ascent, or the height of Everest. No doubt I’ll do a podcast on it. A very huffy puffy podcast Anyway, tomorrow I’ll be talking with mountain bike legend Gary Fisher and then the following day I’m booked in with the Guardian’s political editor Peter Walker — both have got great new books out which I’ve now got to read. Meanwhile, get out there and ride.

Your podcast catcher not showing in links above (black circle with three dots)? Loads more on PodLink. Show is also on Spotify. and Google Podcasts.

Wednesday 30th December 2020

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 263: Loading close pass videos to the cloud with a smart bike dashcam that looks like a cute Pixar character

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Crispian Poon and Liz Yu of Pelation, maker of the Rebo smart bike light and dash cam.

TOPICS: Pelation is a UK-government backed start-up that is to soon produce for real the Rebo smart bike light and dashcam video combo — it looks like a Pixar character and has been trialled successfully by a courier company Pedal and Post of Oxford.

LINKS:

Pelation website

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 263 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This episode was engineered on Wednesday, 30th December 2020.

David Bernstein 0:24
The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast. For shownotes links and all sorts of other information please visit our website at www.spokesmen.com. And now, here are the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:08
It’s nearly over. 2020. The first few months of 2021 still look grim but with the vaccines being rolled out — my doctor wife has already had her first Covid jab — we could soon all get back to normal. I’m Carlton Reid welcoming you to the last episode of the year. As regular listeners will know, the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast is a US stroke UK co-production, with my co-host David Bernstein joining in from Utah. And for the final show of 2020 my guests are another US stroke UK co-production. Crispian Poon is English and Liz Yu is American — they joined forces to create Pelation. No, not peloton, we get on to the naming thing in the show itself – Pelation is a UK-government backed start-up that is to soon produce for real the Rebo Smart bike light and dashcam video combo — it looks like a Pixar character and has been trialled successfully by a British courier company. I met the pair at an expo in London just before the first lockdown in March, and wanted to get them on the show as soon as they had something concrete to talk about. Well, that time is now …

Carlton Reid 2:42
Crispian, Liz. you’ve now got to refresh my memory because I met you at a Move conference exhibition at the ExCel Centre in London, when was that? When did we meet?

Liz Yu 2:57
I think that was earlier this year in February, at Move 2020.

Carlton Reid 3:02
So that’s basically 12 years ago,

Liz Yu 3:05
Now appears to be normal.

Carlton Reid 3:10
When we could actually physically meet in person, which was a it’s a fond memory. So you had at that point you had what you had a product in prototype. You’re now it’s still in prototype, you’re sending it out but with with with couriers and Oxford and stuff, but tell me exactly what product you’ve got. So what is the Rebo? Am I pronouncing it right first of all? Yeah, that’s correct. Okay, so I don’t know how you’re gonna do work this out Liz and Crispian who’s who’s gonna be talking me through first?

Liz Yu 3:44
I think I can give it a quick intro. So the repo is what we’ve been working on. And we as installation, Crispian and I in our team, and word cycle technology company, and we’re in our goal is all about getting people from point A to B seamlessly on a bike in cities. At the moment, there’s a big safety barrier. So rebo is a smart bike light and dash cam. And we’ve designed it to reduce the amount of near misses and record incidents to increase availability of kind of the cycling data in an industry. So there’s a couple parts to it. First of all, I think we like to talk about, we tried to design it with a preventative design, and we can talk more about this later. But we use kind of a unique design that tackles behavioural psychology so people move safer around cyclists. Second of all, this dash cam comes with a handlebar bookmark. So there’s a button on your handlebar. So anytime any cyclist runs into any incidents, whether it’s a infrastructure issue or something on the street that’s unsafe, or you know, potentially a near miss. They can click this handlebar bookmark and what it does is it captures any details at that point of the ride. So the video footage, the location plate numbers, and more. So you Just have to keep writing. And you can review this information seamlessly later. What happens is when you get get home, this uploads through cloud, so you don’t need to touch your device, you don’t need to mess around with SD cards and you have a dashboard to view everything that’s happened. And you can submit it to authorities if it’s something serious, or you can simply just have the recording to share. And what happens? Yeah, and so that that collects in our database. So we have a database of all the most dangerous areas that cyclists feel that there is in the city, and we use this information to contribute directly to data and insights of the infrastructure changes.

Carlton Reid 5:45
So it is a cute looking product. And you you touched on why it’s a cute little looking product a second ago, we can talk about why it’s a cute looking product later on. But first of all, I’d like to find out about you to and where you’ve come from and your background. And I guess why you’re doing this. So first of all, as we haven’t heard much from Crispian. So let’s Crispian you go first, wherever you come from. And I’m why Rebo and why Pelation?

Crispian Poon 6:16
Yeah, so I’ve been an electrical engineer. In most of my career, the first company and the last company I worked for was building electric vehicles. So as in the electric mobility space, building hybrid electric, taxis. We’re actually running trials in London for over two years for a project called Metro cab. Basically, we’re trying to make cities cleaner, safer, using electrify technologies. But I saw on problems when we actually, there was still congestion, people are still stuck in vehicles. We weren’t moving people very efficiently. There are only a couple people in taxis at a time. And they’ve always had an interest in bikes. So when I finished that and went to Imperial to do our MBA together with Liz, we started looking at the sustainability, space and mobility. We both cycled, we both saw that there is a problem in the cycle space and want to do something about it. So we went on lots of design research talk to hundreds and hundreds of cyclists. And the main problem that came up with was cycling near misses, lots of people, we’ve talked to talk about their stories about how they, you know, ran into cars on turnings, or, or having close calls with cars passing too close. And we just saw, there’s nothing on the market that could solve the problem. So we came together, probably has together and started working on rebo to really find a solution to near misses, which weren’t being tackled, either by the authorities or just by, you know, the authorities, in general in terms of enforcement.

Carlton Reid 8:10
So when we met in February at the ExCel centre, how long have you been working on the project already by then? And how fresh was the product? Basically?

Crispian Poon 8:22
Yeah, well, we’re

Crispian Poon 8:23
actually on a, a DFT funded grant project called T-TRIG. So it’s actually right over between December to the latter part of this year. It was a feasibility project to build a prototype out to see what kind of name as technology name as prevention technology we can build out. And the first part of that prototyping stage was where we met, met you move 2020 we got a very rough already prototype out to meet customers, I get some initial feedback. And that was really successful, because then we went on to develop our second iteration of the product, which went on to deploy with occurs in Oxford.

Carlton Reid 9:05
So that was like you mentioned T-TRIG there. So let me just, that’s transport technology, innovation grant

Liz Yu 9:12
transfer technology research, innovation grant.

Carlton Reid 9:17
Okay. Right. And that was January, and that would have ran out a couple of months ago then.

Liz Yu 9:26
So that kicked off in January, but and because of all the delays with COVID. It’s actually gone on till around end of September.

Crispian Poon 9:36
We had lots of issues, you know, we couldn’t were the hardware company and we build physical products, and we need physical parts. So we’re very dependent upon the supply chain. So we walked around a lot of problems actually, with supply chains from overseas and actually insource a lot of development in house but inevitably those delays because we had To switch around our entire operation, we still got there in the end.

Carlton Reid 10:05
Okay, and now Liz, we need to find out where you’re from and and not just where you’ve come from in this space, but I guess geographically where you’re from. So where’s where’s your accent from? Liz?

Liz Yu 10:19
I am from California. But I’ve grown up, you know, all over kind of all over the place in Taipei back in California. And I’ve lived in Singapore for a few years. And I moved to London to complete my MBA. And that’s as crispian said, where we met. So my background actually is previously in hospitality industry, but doing business development and such. So working for hotel brands, like Starwood Hotels, and other luxury hotel groups, so quite, quite a change. For me, and after my MBA, I’ve joined a startup to add tech startup to help lead and grow the startup before. This was, you know, this was for us. At first, a bit of a side project we started during, kind of during the NBA, we started talking about it, we started working on it, and yeah, it just turned into a full time. Full Time project for us. Full Time gig.

Carlton Reid 11:20
So let’s describe it physically. I know that’s very hard, because we’re talking audio. But there’s a there’s a definite look to this thing. And it’s it’s it’s kind of computery futuristic, with eyes. So it’s meant to have eyes. Yes. This this this handlebar camera. Oh, yeah. It’s a light. So the light for the eyes? Yeah.

Liz Yu 11:48
Yeah. And I think I think generally, it’s smaller than than what people imagine it’s about the size of your palm, maybe a bit smaller than that. And it fits at the front or back of your bike. And yes, it’s not a fundamental I design, which we, we like to include, and we like to talk about, because it’s, it’s what we believe can true one of the one of the things we believe in truly make a difference, changing the behaviour of people that are actually around the cyclists to make people feel safer, and be able to then choose cycling as kind of their first choice of transport.

Carlton Reid 12:25
So the way I kind of describe it is if Pixar was to design a bicycle light, you know, it would look a bit like this. So it’s, it’s, you know, a futuristic ii computery kind of face. So tell me about the psychology of why a face.

Liz Yu 12:48
Yeah, so this is something called the watching eye effect. So what it what it is, is it uses I design elements in there, there have been lots of kind of reports about this, the psychological effect of when there is some sort of image of an eye, people tend to feel like they’re being watched. And so they either have more positive behaviour, or safer or so through various examples. And papers are such as littering. Like if there’s a photo of an eye, somewhere nearby, people are a lot less likely to litter, even if it’s just a photo. So we see this used in kind of the surveillance industry and the transport industry. If you’ll notice, TfL has bus ads. And on the back of the bus ads, there, there’s been a few versions that has just an image of an eye saying something along the lines, watch your speed. And similarly in the surveillance industry, there’s there’s an eye in areas but I you know, that one’s a bit more self explanatory. But what it does is it Yeah, subconsciously prompt positive behaviour,

Carlton Reid 13:59
and then helps a cause just with their headlights. They kind of look like faces. Yeah,

Liz Yu 14:05
yeah. So So I think the new the new, autonomous vehicle that Jaguar Land Rover is testing us is kind of AI to communicate safety, intentions and friendliness.

Crispian Poon 14:18
Yeah, I think whenever there’s a product or imagery that that evokes more humanization people tend to respond better because that’s part of their subconscious. You know, people seek out eyes, people sneak out gazes. And that’s why this effect is so effective is because, you know, people already know this. Since they’re born. They’ve been looking at people’s eyes means that, you know, people can humanise cyclists better as I hope we have the product bite also seek them out easier. Because it’s something so natural.

Carlton Reid 14:56
Hmm. So tell me about the the actual implementation of this this product, so you’ve given some of these units, the Rebo units to a courier firm in Oxford called pedal and post, yeah?

Liz Yu 15:11
Yeah, that’s correct. So, um, but this element is just a small part of it. The main, the main, kind of what we are focusing on right now. And you know, the AI element, we’re doing different iterations, we’re testing with the most effective version. So what we’re working on now is, we ran a pilot with, yeah, as you mentioned, put a pedal and post in Oxford. And what we did is distribute these cameras to them. And their riders, you know, are riding more than an average commuter, they, they deliver, they deliver items about, you know, eight hours a day, five days a week, rain or shine, probably seven days a week, actually. Yeah, and they bookmark any area that they feel, and you know, these are writers that are trained, and really, really know how to ride you know, no beginners, they’ve, they’ve been, they’ve gone through proper safety training. So they bookmark areas that they feel are unsafe, or that they’ve had incidents, and, and then we get this, we kind of get all this footage, and it compiles into a bit of a heat map of dangerous areas, sorted by categories of what type of incidents

Carlton Reid 16:18
and the rider themselves after the ride categorises the incident, as you know, that was a close pass that was a, an obstruction, is that what happens? How do they physically bookmark these things?

Liz Yu 16:35
So so they bookmark the handlebar button, so the button that comes with the device, all they need to do is click it. At the moment we are with the writers input, we’re sorting these categories. So whether it’s a close pass, or it’s a left hook from a car that’s coming from the head, it’s usually quite apparent. So we’re able to sort them into different categories. But with the writers input, sometimes it’s something that’s a little bit more specific. But yeah, with individuality of just automating this whole process, is kind of our next project. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 17:12
And then when you could get your adventure, we’ll talk about the commercialization of this. But eventually, there’ll be a map because on the on your website here pervasion. Co, UK, where you’ve got the the description of Oxford, I’m scrolling through it here now. So there’s a there’s a map Box Map, where you can click in and you can see the incident itself, and then you can actually see the video of the incident. So is that eventually how you would envisage all these this data getting out there in that every single eventual owner of a rebo. Any incidents they have, would get logged on to a data, great big map where every incident can be clicked through?

Liz Yu 17:56
Yeah, if they choose to, riders choose to share it, for instance, you know, our next project is, I keep calling them projects, but kind of what we have in the pipeline is with the government of Jersey, and they have a couple of these, quite a few of these units running around the island of Jersey and their writers will bookmark, bookmark the dangerous areas, and we send, you know, report to the government of Jersey, of where these work, sorry, where these points are. And you know, they’re able to go in and view the video. And what they choose to then do with it is, at the moment, it’s up to them. But there’s many kind of mini kind of ways you can present this data other than just on this map.

Crispian Poon 18:41
Yeah, and the beauty of our system is that we’ve reduced so much of the friction in allowing the user to submit these namelessness report. At the moment is very manual process, you have to get the SD card, extract the footage, right? Find the place where the incident is, and then make a manual submission to the police, or whoever. But we’re automating all that you press one button, you get 60 seconds of footage automatically uploaded to the cloud. And it gets put on the map. And the infrastructure planners who want to look at this data to really fix the near misses at the core. They can take the videos and watch the videos themselves and see why these near misses are happening. I mean, that’s an unprecedented capability. Because at the moment they use hearsay from people who talk to counsellors or just raw data that doesn’t really explain why near misses are happening. This gives them a first person view of why incidents happening and really generate the corrective corrective action that they need to take to fix these issues.

Carlton Reid 19:55
Eventually, on the website, it says 2021 next year in effect Very shortly, you’re going to go out to Kickstarter for this product. So how close are you to, to realising that?

Liz Yu 20:07
um, I think, I think right now we are focused on the plan is always to go down the Kickstarter route, there’s a big cycling market there, there’s a big kind of support and community there that we think will be very interested. It’s the people that would be very interested in our product, the same people that have already, you know, signed up for our beta trials and to purchase a beta version of this product. But I think at the moment, we want to make sure we are proving this to be useful, because you know, otherwise, it’s just another camera and dash cam, we want to make sure we have everything set out and kind of the path ready for this to be able to actually make a difference and the future of creating a cycle city in different areas.

Carlton Reid 20:59
Do you have a ballpark price? rough price?

Liz Yu 21:03
I guess what we always say is around £100. That could change.

Carlton Reid 21:08
That’s not shocking. I mean, that’s like that’s, that’s actually okay. Yeah, I’m in this kind of space. £100 pounds is or there abouts is not? I didn’t follow my chair, basically. You know, you’re just no more than that.

Liz Yu 21:25
Yeah, but it’s still as Crispin said, it’s still there early. As we’re still at the moment, the prototypes are, you know, retail value would be more than £100. But, you know, it’s still a bit early for us to tell. We are, you know, if it includes it includes, you know, we’ve we’ve had actually conversations with, with, for instance, London Cycling Campaign when these are ready, you know, maybe we could run a few, you run a few of them on writers for you know, two full weeks of London and see what kind of data we get that that type of project will take more, you know, analysis time and a bit more data crunching and things like that. So, at the moment, we’re not quite sure yet, but I’m hoping for around that price range.

Carlton Reid 22:17
Let’s let’s talk some tech because if there’s any camera geeks on here, who you know, we’ll base all of their purchasing decisions on and it’s not 4k it’s not it’s not 1080 it’s not there’s not that it’s not there’s Why is only looping for this amount of time. So tell me about the actual tech what what is the camera on board? How good is it? How long you know, does it loop forward? Give me all the really nerdy stuff

Liz Yu 22:43
Over to you Crispian.

Carlton Reid 22:46
Yeah.

Crispian Poon 22:49
Well, um, so so the camera was actually an HD camera, we’ve got a wide angle lens, which actually it’s related to after a couple of weeks of testing with pet on post when they were capturing tonnes and tonnes of incident had to gather more evidence of close passes. So we’re actually calibrated the wide angle lens for that particular use case. So the there’s internal storage on board there is 128 gigabytes so we can actually record for about three days straight of constant eight hour shifts usage the device itself has a battery life between five to eight hours so enough for shift because you’re not cycling all the time when your career but it depends on you know whether you turn the camera on full brightness or you doing all sorts of harsh writing in hot sunlight. But our cameras can cope you know, they’ve been out in the streets of Oxford in daylight, rain, sunshine, hail, you name it.

Carlton Reid 24:01
Any stabilisation onboard digital or not?

Crispian Poon 24:04
we try to keep the hardware as simple as possible. So we went back to the fundamentals. So the stabilisation is really about reducing mechanical operation, get it as tight to the frame as we can. Because what we see on the market is lots of cameras using very flimsy mounts, which induce a lot of vibration. Well, that means you have to use electronic stabilisation, which is kind of a plaster on a fundamental one. Our petition is good. We can capture number plates, we can see the road details quite clearly. And most importantly, we can see the incidence the second by second and seeing everything that’s going on during this

Carlton Reid 24:50
and you said before I think was Liz actually was saying that that you can you could put it on behind as well is that is the same unit or you’re talking about a different a different iteration.

Crispian Poon 25:01
Yeah, it’s the same unit. So we’ve got universal mounts for the front of the bike back on the bike, and even the same mount on some of the cargo bikes. It’s a really flexible system, you can clip it on clip off, there’s a locking mechanism.

Carlton Reid 25:17
But then when the lights be white on the back, or do you have like a filter goes across?

Crispian Poon 25:22
Yeah, so we’re working on that at the moment. For the trials, we just have the camera running, when it’s on the back by the pilot to have some kind of filter system to cover the lens. So you have a red light on the back and a white light in the front. Huh.

Carlton Reid 25:42
And then I asked you before about the price I don’t think we actually got and maybe what the when is, so when when might you potentially go to Kickstarter?

Crispian Poon 25:56
I think what, we have a mailing list. So if you sign up, you get all the latest updates. We’re running lots of projects at the moment to de risk our development. But I think the answer is soon not too soon, but soon

Liz Yu 26:11
crowds and yet like right now, our main focus is actually to develop capabilities to automatically identify and analyse the near misses. So, you know, bringing some machine and learning into then applying that to the footage that we captured. So we’re working with a lot of councils right now, in terms of actually developing this part of the software. So when this part of software is ready, and we’ve proven it, then I think we will go back and focus on the actual Yeah, manufacturing of the hardware product. And that’s when Kickstarter, and everything will kick in. But at the moment, yeah, we’re trying to make it so that councils have a tool to be able to, you know, what they have, what they see right now is cycling data, but sometimes just like they know where some of the dangerous areas are, but it’s hard to connect the dots from there to then you know, what caused it. And we’re trying to use these these, like footage on the data points to help with that part of it. So it is, it is this bit is our first focus. Because until we can do that we’re you know, we’re quite focused on like, what will actually improve cycling and will will actually help with more safe cyclestreets. So once we’ve worked out kind of this, this area, and we will go back to launching manufacturing and sending these out.

Carlton Reid 27:40
Okay, and then an awful lot of police forces are now making it much easier for motorists and cyclists and motorcyclists anybody who’s got a dashcam to upload their, their footage. So is that something that you can make? easier? Can you like lock into these systems? And it’s just, you know, a one button upload? And what are you doing for like the not that the council side of it, but the police side of it? Yeah,

Liz Yu 28:10
yeah, we’ve been, yeah, there’s like the dashboard over where people can update at the moment, or you know, our footage automatically. So if you’re writing, and you bookmark this incident, when you get home, you can then get a link of just those two minutes before and two minutes after. So there’s really no processing kind of in the middle, you just have to click that button when it happens, or a little after happens. So at the moment, it’s a link that they can apply to upload, but I think in the future, you know, we’ve we’ve tried to with the the TfL funded London cycle safety team, as well. I think it might be a bit complicated kind of linking the system just because you’d have to kind of link the portals, but we do have plans to make as easy as possible. It’s easier than Yeah, at the moment, a link that basically they could just paste on to any sort of reports they want to report. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 29:08
And then you’re riding through Oxford, and it’s just a such a lovely day that they’re not only motors around, it’s like, oh, I really enjoyed that ride. I just like to post that to social media, just the whole of that ride. If you can do that as well without having a you know, press that button to save that’s the bit I want. Can you go in afterwards? In other words, and get just a nice ride?

Liz Yu 29:28
And and and upload it so yeah, absolutely. We um, you know, we’re all about promoting the fun of cycling as well. We don’t like to promote kind of the aggression on the road that people might have with each other. It’s not always about instance, but sharing the joys of cycling. So you can so yeah, you can still press that button, and you would just, it just wouldn’t be tracked as it wouldn’t be captured as an incident. It would just be something you can then click Share, and share the link to social media. We see that Yeah, we see that all the time people, especially with our team members, you know, they like to date they like to share their their coolest ride or, you know, the most pleasant ride that they have. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 30:13
And what about overlays on the video, you know, like the location data, all that kind of stuff that is behind the scenes in the zip file. But do you have any plans for toggling on and off, you know,

Crispian Poon 30:27
data above, totalling data, but potentially, I mean, it’s part of the development roadmap, we adding information like GPS data, so we have tracking of the location of the bookmark bookmark instance. So you can refer back to the map and see exactly where the instance happened. But in our future prototypes, we have accelerometers and jarra data so you can really see what’s going on on the bike in terms of swerving, acceleration, heading direction, change and stuff. But, I mean, this camera is tailored for safety. First and foremost, it’s really about making the entire process for making safe cycling easier. And better. So yeah, but like I

Liz Yu 31:23
said, as well, like the users can choose to share this information or not. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 31:33
And with with the UK, you could talk us through this, this blog posting on Oxford. So clearly, a bunch of couriers, yes, they’re expert cyclists, but they are also going to be going into pretty much the same locations all the time. And it’s going to be, you know, city centre locations mainly. So it will be different to when eventually consumers get get that hands on this. But what what have the what are the kind of things that have really been highlighted to you from the Oxford paddlin? Post data? What what is what is what, looking at this map, and all these different incidents that have happened? What’s your takeaway from them?

Liz Yu 32:16
Um, I think, I think there, there were a few. One thing was, it seemed quite straightforward to pinpoint, you know, the key problematic areas, and you know, as you might predict a lot of common incidents like illegally parked cars, for instance, that were captured, or cars, and then kind of like a lane that they’re not supposed to be, we’re in city centres, because that’s tends to be where, you know, there are parking issues. And so some of those quite straightforward initial findings. And then we also, we also see specific roads that near misses happened the most often. And these tend to be roads that, you know, again, don’t have cycle lanes. But I think what kind of this map gives extra is to be able to click through to the video. And just because you could say, you could see a point, this is near miss on this road. And that will give you that information. But you know, what this map adds is that, then you can click through and watch what actually happened. And then you could see that, wow, okay, that happened, because this roads tend to be, for instance, very empty at this time of day. So people tend to drive by very quickly without being aware of cyclists. So little, kind of extra details like that could be added through through these videos for fueling the actual footage. Those are kind of like

Carlton Reid 33:52
is it been tested anywhere else apart from Oxford in this kind of? depth?

Liz Yu 34:00
We’re planning?

Liz Yu 34:01
Yeah, so we, you know, we have something launching in Jersey in the month, actually, less than a month. So that would be interesting to see, especially since we are less familiar with kind of Jersey cycling infrastructure, which would be exciting to have a look at what kind of footage we capture there. You know, we have internal trials that we’ve ran throughout London, and, you know, being, you know, us being like living in London. Those are always more interesting to watch because it’s interesting to see exactly which road you kind of sympathise with, with the same issues that you run into and you know, I’m on my daily commute. And then we Yeah, we’re potentially launching in Edinburgh as well. Next year, there was a quarter company that we’re working with, but we kind of need to Yeah, we kind of are rushing to keep up with the quarter companies that are interested In working with us, so hopefully that can be early next year, something we’ll be able to see as well.

Carlton Reid 35:09
And ready to place and come from obviously some peloton going on there, but tell me more about the word

Liz Yu 35:16
we’re absolutely not related to.

Liz Yu 35:21
Yeah, we’ve been getting that a lot. So you know, we might we might go through we’re kind of having conversations of undergoing a potential rebrand but yeah, Crispin.

Crispian Poon 35:33
Yeah, yeah. So pelation the word has, it really embodies the values that we hold, which is we want people to have fun when they cycle and really see cycling as an everyday tool or a means to get around everywhere. So when you get on a bike, we want people to feel happy and elated. And that’s why pollution came along. It’s about Okay, okay, okay.

Carlton Reid 36:02
Got it. Got it. Okay. All right. And then the peloton, not peloton is in the company peloton, but just the word, peloton and so it’s peloton and elation together. Am I am I in the right area now? Yeah.

Crispian Poon 36:21
Yeah, yeah. And elation. No. So

Carlton Reid 36:24
okay. Okay. Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. Okay. So pedal elation. See, I’m coming that from a Pro Cycling point of view. So Rebo? Were does repo come from?

Liz Yu 36:38
repo is actually something, a name that we had during development. It was never intended to kind of mwant to be the actual product name. Um, but yeah, it just kind of stuck. And everyone on the team really liked it.

Crispian Poon 36:57
Yeah, that’s meaning to the word. It just sounded good. We started using it.

Carlton Reid 37:04
So that that kind of Wall-E, Pixar Disney type aesthetic. Is that the Is that likely to be the finished product? Or are you still going to go through some iterations on how it looks?

Crispian Poon 37:16
I think there’ll be market testing. And we want to get more feedback from people. But we like the initial approach. We’d like the friendly kind of kids friendly as well. style of the product. easing eyes as the focal point of our design. Yeah, let’s see. I think more

Carlton Reid 37:39
and it’s Sorry, it’s other lights. Are they street legal light, so they could use this as your only lighting setup from Yeah,

Crispian Poon 37:48
yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s why we designed the light into the device is that we don’t want people having a light on the camera, and everything else on board, extra battery or whatever. It’s all in one, you just put it on and is ready to go for your ride. frontlight camera done?

Liz Yu 38:06
Yeah, the one feedback we get from cyclists is generally just that there are already too many things to put on your bike. I’m guessing you can put them as fellow cyclists so a common combining them all into one?

Carlton Reid 38:23
Yeah, you need to have a bell on there, you’re gonna have to put a GPS, you know, a Strava dev unit on there. And what else can you

Liz Yu 38:31
well, so doing more testing because we are aware that as a breed cyclists are very picky about many cyclists are very picky about what what they put on their bike bike, so there needs to be Yeah, so we need to do a bit more you know, kind of customer testing, but in general, you know, it’s small, it’s portable, and you instal the mount on so it just slides in and out so it’s a very easy seamless process

Carlton Reid 39:00
and do you have to have in the finished product where you always have to have the button that you press for marking incident is that always gonna be separate to the the actual light camera unit doesn’t have to be separate

Liz Yu 39:15
at the moment and it’s separate because the unit can be applied to both the front and the back of the bike. So you can use the same unit up to you get one for the front one for the back. But yes, at the moment, it’s separate but the button is small. It goes on snaps onto the handlebar really easily.

Carlton Reid 39:36
And it’s Bluetooth.

Crispian Poon 39:38
Bluetooth, yeah.

Carlton Reid 39:41
Okay, and then let’s do a Dragon’s Den here. So is this is this something that you can you can make a living at? Can you can you have you looked at the size of the handlebar, dash cam bicycle, camera light market and you can see a nice Where you can get into there? And you can you can make a business from this. So do me Give me the elevator pitch of, of how you’re going to make yourself into?

Liz Yu 40:11
Um, yeah, so we, I guess on top of, we haven’t had gone through those numbers for a long time. But on top of the growing growing kind of cycle assessment market with with the amount of cycles in cities, you know, growing at a very fast pace and the cycle assessor market being a big one, we are, we are big on looking at the infrastructure market. So this is we’re kind of focused on kind of the data sell of this product, eventually, you know, this is information on cycling that is currently unavailable. So anything that has to do with infrastructure is councils up to, you know, sit, yeah, city planning and even up to autonomous vehicle, you know, they’re there. The AV industry is growing, but they’re having trouble identifying cyclists, they find cyclists like cyclists to be the most unpredictable object on the road. So you know, these are all of these can all feed this information can all feed into, you know, this is just initial thinking, of course. This can all feed into kind of that market. So yeah, it is, it is kind of I don’t have the numbers on me right now. But yeah, it is, it is kind of a couple different areas, the quarters are just a small, kind of our beachhead market, they want to protect their riders, they want safety for the riders. Eventually, maybe perhaps these companies employing you know, like deliver, we see Uber Eats, they’re running into issues on the street when their riders get into an incident. It’s a big kind of liability for them. So their job is to think, okay, what’s the best way to protect our riders, before they ride and after if something happens to them. And then on top of that, yeah, individual cyclists. And then kind of the whole infrastructure planning side of things.

Carlton Reid 42:07
You’re going to say something there, Crispian?

Crispian Poon 42:09
Let’s say, you know, with a lot of local deliveries, last mile deliveries, especially of bands clogging up in the cities, we’re seeing a lot more startup cycle logistics company popping up, for example, in the Edinburgh company, they just popped up a couple months ago. And it’s really filling in the space up. And there’s a lot of driving in the government as well, in especially the high level strategy to push forward more low carbon. So micro last mile, transport delivery logistics networks, to consolidate all the deliveries and also make delivery trips more efficient as well. So we definitely see a potential there. And also, with the infrastructure planning side, there’s a lot of push for, as you know, emergency active travel funding. And that’s why we’re getting a lot of interest from councils, governments, to really see how we can do a data driven approach to planning infrastructure, because there hasn’t been a data driven planning approach to solving especially like near misses. It’s been using very raw, very unrefined data like collision data, which really don’t show the problem before serious incidents happen. For example, like incidents, you can have a couple 100 of actual collisions in the space, but you can have 10s of 1000s of near misses. And I think lots of councils are saying that they’re seeing the missing data that they’re not using in their business cases, when they put for these funding proposals. They’re not seeing the near misses that are part of the whole planning process to see where the issues are, and where they need to put the fixes into get more people cycling. Using a data driven approach.

Carlton Reid 44:18
Great, lovely. Tell me now or tell tell the listeners of there’s a bit on your your website says join our movement. So where can people sign up to join your movement? Liz? Yes,

Liz Yu 44:33
so pelation.co.uk/sign-up. So if you just go to our website, click Join our movement. Basically,

Carlton Reid 44:43
what are people gonna, what

Carlton Reid 44:44
are they signing up for them, they’re they’re signing up for an announcement of when you’re going to be launching your case,

Liz Yu 44:51
as well as just you know, kind of what we’ve been up to. We’re always looking for more beta users to test our product. We like to build a product that’s Not just you know, built by us, a community of cyclists. And we have a lot of kind of users are in regular regularly in contact with. We love feedback from cyclists. And we’d like to hear you know, everyone’s new ideas. So if you’re interested in what we’re working on to sign up on our website,

Carlton Reid 45:21
social media, what you’re doing in social media, yes,

Liz Yu 45:23
we can find us on twitter @pelationtech. And you can find us on Instagram, pelationtech as well. We regularly we regularly kind of update these two platforms, but also on, you know, LinkedIn and Facebook as well. If you want to chat with us. We’re always you know, Crispian and I are the founders. We have a small team. We’re always keen to chat with anyone that you know, is into cameras or likes, likes to talk about buy or likes to talk with, you know, have campaigners that want to tell us you know, what their biggest issues are when you know, when looking at

Liz Yu 45:59
kind of campaigning in the space or just anyone kind of a narrow we’re always up to have a chat.

Liz Yu 46:07
Yeah, get in touch.

Carlton Reid 46:10
Thank you to Crispian Poon and Liz Yu for talking through their pedalling elation project. This has been the last episide of the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast for 2020. We’ve been getting you at least two a month for some time now and I don’t see that changing for 2021. Have a safe and hopefully Covid-free New Year and we’ll kick off again in January 2021. Thanks for listening and for sharing about the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast on social media – show notes, including full transcripts, can be found at the-spokesmen.com Meanwhile, get out there and ride.

Your podcast catcher not showing in links above (black circle with three dots)? Loads more on PodLink. Show is also on Spotify. and Google Podcasts.

Thursday 26th November 2020

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 261: Faster, smaller, cleaner: data analysis shows why delivering by cargobike makes sense

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Ben Knowles and Nicolas Collignon of Pedal Me, London

LINKS:

Spokesmen interview with Pedal Me’s Ben Knowles in 2018.

Nico’s blogpost

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 261 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Thursday 26th November 2020.

David Bernstein 0:24
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast for shownotes links and all sorts of other information please visit our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now here are the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:09
Hi there. I’m Carlton Reid and today’s episode is about the significant logistical benefits of last mile delivery by E-cargobike. Joining me from London is Pedal Me boss Ben Knowles and calling in from Copenhagen is Nicolas Collignon who is a Pedal Me rider during the day and the firm’s data scientist at night. Nico knows his stuff. His PhD was in computational cognitive science. And over the next 20 minutes or so, we discuss Nico’s fantastic new blog post that demonstrates with data why dense urban areas are best served with deliveries by wwift, nimble, planet-friendly cargo bikes, cargo bikes that can be loaded up with pretty big payloads. Okay, so this morning or today I have with me two people. Ben Knowles, who’s in where are you saying you’re you’re in London as a market there, Ben, wherever you are?

Ben Knowles 2:15
I’m sitting in Exmouth market, which is one of the very pleasant, low car spaces in London that’s well utilised for commerce. And so you might hear some bikes coming past you might hear some shoppers on their way to COVID-secure buying. So apologies for any of the background noise.

Carlton Reid 2:39
Well, you might hear dogs or a dog in the background of my one as my dog wanders in and out. And also in Copenhagen, which is a fantastic place to be is Nico so it’s Nicolas, I’m gonna murder your name here. Sorry. Is it Nicolas

Unknown Speaker 2:57
Collignon?

Carlton Reid 3:00
Oh, I got it. Right. Actually, I got it. Right. Fantastic. So just to set this up. You’re Nico. You’re a data scientist for Pedal Me? Yes. And you also ride for Pedal Me?

Nico Collignon 3:15
Yeah, that’s correct.

Carlton Reid 3:16
And Pedal Me. Let’s go. Ben, you will last on the show on the spokesmen podcast back in 2018. When you are going for your first round of funding. So just bring us up to speed on where you are and how many riders you have now. That kind of stuff.

Ben Knowles 3:33
Yeah, so I think we were around about 15 staff members then. Today, we’re about 55. Staff members, a lot more advanced in terms of tech and operations. We, we’ve moved to our own system, other than kind of like an A white labelled external system. That’s much better suited for for what we do. We’re doing a lot more large scale logistics. And we’ve done some amazing bits of work, including there’s one project that Nico has written an article about, as well, where we delivered 10,000 packages across Lamberth covering something like 20,000 kilometres I believe it was. So we’ve grown a lot since we last spoke, Carlton.

Carlton Reid 4:26
So you had two funding rounds. Is that right?

Ben Knowles 4:29
Yes, we’ve done to two equity based crowdfunding rounds. And yeah, we’ve put that money into growing our fleet. So we have 56 bikes today improving our tech, which is an incredible amount more advanced today than it was and then the latest features, we have an API, so Companies can plug in directly to our tech system for fulfilment of orders. Also, next next week, we’re starting to move into our first warehouse. So we also do some sort of third party logistics stuff where we hold people stock for them, and then do their deliveries on their behalf as well. Or by bike. Apologies for the beeping in the background. The inconvenience, right because I

Carlton Reid 5:36
yeah, that’s good. That’s my bicycles. Your bicycles don’t have beeping when they when the reverse No,

Ben Knowles 5:42
no, but maybe they should do for the trailers.

Carlton Reid 5:47
Nico is this a wild stab in the dark thinking you might be in Copenhagen because of the bikes you ride with?

Nico Collignon 5:56
knows that my my I grew up in Copenhagen. So I’m visiting my family for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, so

Carlton Reid 6:06
Okay, but you’re French?

Nico Collignon 6:07
Yeah, I’m

Nico Collignon 6:07
French, but grew up in Copenhagen.

Carlton Reid 6:10
Interesting, Nico, how come you’re working for Benjamin there? How come you’re working for Pedal Me?

Nico Collignon 6:18
So I finished my PhD in February. from Edinburgh. I did my PhD in computational cognitive science. And I wanted to take a bit of a break from academia and use my skills on a project with impact. And I believe that cargo bicycles have this potential to change things for the better in cities. So I wrote to Ben and then he replied very quickly, and then I jumped on the bike a couple of days later,

Carlton Reid 6:51
So, Nico, you are riding as well as being the data scientist, is that right? So you’re like, you could be on call. You could be going out like everybody else in the team.

Nico Collignon 7:00
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Carlton Reid 7:03
So Ben, I don’t know how much of this will be talking to you. Because obviously, Nico is the data scientist, and he’s the one who’s put some of this data up. But obviously, pitch in whenever you think you need to, but let’s go to Nico because this this, this blog posting and Twitter thread that was put up has gone viral. It’s fascinating because well, you can tell me why. But basically, it’s showing the incredible efficiency of, of cargo bikes, and we’re gonna say this is like London, is this London during the pandemic is that all the data has been captured in that period.

Nico Collignon 7:44
So the data we’re looking at here was just for the month of September. So that was outside of any lockdowns. And I think that the traffic was actually quite, quite high in September.

Carlton Reid 7:58
So first of all, tell me the speeds. So that’s that’s how fast as a normal van or car motor vehicle go in London, and how fast do you guys go?

Nico Collignon 8:09
Sure. So the so one of the problems with this study, so I wanted to do a van versus cargo bike comparison is that I don’t we don’t actually have access to van data. But to the best numbers I could find were from a report from Transport for London, from 2018. That said, the traffic speed in central London was 11.4 kilometres per hour. And in inner London, so a bit outside of Central that was 18.7 kilometres per hour. And that’s between seven in the morning to seven in the evening.

Carlton Reid 8:48
And what are you guys doing? What are the what are the cargo bikes doing?

Nico Collignon 8:51
Sure, so he speeds that I found looking at 19,000 kilometres from 37 of our bikes were 15 kilometres per hour in central London. So that’s 3.6 kilometres per hour faster than the vans and then in inner London, it’s 16.4. So that’s a bit slower, but it’s like it’s averages for two quite big zones. So I think what it really shows is that the more dense area we’re in the faster the faster the bikes and then yeah, I think that if you’re within three or five miles of the centre of London, then the cargo bikes have a definite advantage. And then

Carlton Reid 9:34
you’ve got to factor in for a van driver, you’ve got to factor in somewhere to park Yeah, to then make your delivery whereas you can well what do you do? How do you avoid parking spots?

Nico Collignon 9:46
Well, it’s not that we’re avoiding the parking spots we also have to park but like the bikes are, I don’t know if five times smaller than a than a van. We can also like move a lot more freely. So is just something that’s not not a concern when I’m out and about on the bike doing deliveries.

Carlton Reid 10:07
So this this data that you’ve captured at Ben and Nico, this is all with the new IT system that you have. So this is all logged on riders phones, where’s where’s the data log?

Ben Knowles 10:22
So we’ve got a couple of sources of data. So yes, we have tracking through the riders phones, actually, through a couple of systems that we use. One for the one for our radios, and another for running the running jobs directly through an app. But we also have ways of track we have trackers on the bikes. And I believe that that’s where Nico pulled this data from.

Nico Collignon 10:54
Yeah, that’s correct.

Carlton Reid 10:56
Okay, so you’re using, you’re putting this data through into open street mapping, to show that the bike base trips are actually shorter than the equivalent for a van, is that right?

Nico Collignon 11:08
So yeah, so for this, I looked at the data for more jobs suggest the pickup locations and the drop off locations. And then I looked at the routes that openstreetmaps would give us for bike routes, and then for comparative to car routes. And any and what I what I found is that the bike trips are consistently significantly shorter.

Carlton Reid 11:37
is the reason for that shorter distance that bikes can use bike paths and shortcuts. What’s what what do you put it down to?

Nico Collignon 11:45
I mean, yeah, maybe you can you can? Um, well, yeah, one of the reasons is that, yeah, we have shortcuts with bike paths. But there’s also like, there’s bus lanes, and then cars are sometimes allowed on single way. Roads, too. There’s a Yeah, there’s a bunch of reasons.

Carlton Reid 12:09
And then they’re just that the amount you can carry on a on a bike. I mean, that’s, that’s obviously something that you you push on social media. Yeah. That, but you can’t carry what a truck can carry. So where are the advantages for a client to using you if they’ve got tonnes of stuff to cart around?

Nico Collignon 12:30
Sure was one of the main goals for writing this piece was that it’s, it’s clear that there are misconceptions about cargo bikes, and one of them is how much cargo bikes can carry. So our bikes can carry up to hundred 50 kilos. And if you add the trailer, it’s 150 kilos more. And, yeah, that’s quite a lot. And the thing is that we can ride these bikes at at full speeds. So which is significantly faster than vans in central London. But then the second thing that is maybe not so intuitive, is that the fact that we can’t carry as much means that we can be more efficient in terms of logistics, because the loads are spread between more vehicles. And that can lead to more efficient routes.

Carlton Reid 13:22
So that I’m looking at the the data science here on the pedal me with this the blog, basically, or the article that was written. So this is using, like routing, you know, analysts analysis of like nodes and and different routes that you’ve, you’ve used, and you’re basically showing that cargo bikes are just incredibly more efficient than vans. Is that is that what you’re showing here with all of these different graphics? Which fabulous.

Nico Collignon 13:58
Yeah, so yeah, basically, is trying to give an intuition to what the last mile delivery looks like, which is a lot of drops quite densely distributed in the city. And the Yeah, the point is that, because they’re quite spread out around the city, if you were just to have all your drugs in one van and trying to link them all up, your route might be longer than if you were instead dividing it by let’s say, three vehicles, and then sending a vehicle to each of the patches. Does that make sense? Hmm. So it’s really trying to give an intuition using data and from clients that we work with for what last mile delivery looks like the last mile logistics.

Carlton Reid 14:46
So on here, it’s talking about a pedal a cargo bike can carry up to 36 packages, that’s like or 70 drops in a day. Yeah. So is that also just much more than ever van would normally do?

Nico Collignon 15:02
So I think you’re the point again is to Well, I mean, the bikes can’t really carry more than the navan. But the point is that in for last mile delivery, you’re limited by the time of the driver, you’re probably not going to be driving more than eight or nine hours in a day. And that limits the numbers of drops that you can do. And that means that most of the time your your van will be running or driving itself capacity because you like you don’t have enough time to fill up the van with deliveries, if that makes sense. And I was reading this study that was done in, in Delft in the Netherlands, where they analysed or they looked at the content of all vans coming in and out of the city in a day. And they they found that only 10% or less of vans would have been needed for the trip because like they’re just rarely used it for capacity.

Ben Knowles 16:03
And then, and that backs up some slightly older deep data from London that TfL had, which indicated that something like 67% of all fan trips were the vam is running at 25% capacity or less. So we’ve we’ve used that two thirds figure as an estimate of what logistics we can feasibly do within London. So we think that you know, like two thirds of the logistics that’s going on now would be more efficiently done by cargo bike.

Carlton Reid 16:48
Now an awful lot of cities will be looking at making their their fleets that they use into electric, in which case, you know that the pollution that you’re you’re not creating. But But yes, standard internal combustion engine vans and cars are using, you know, that’s an advantage now, but in say two years, three years whenever when all cargo fleets are electric, you lose that that advantage. So is your advantage, mainly going forward going to be efficiency? Is that? Is that where you’re pitching this? Because in the future, you can’t really pitch pollution as something that is going to be in your favour.

Nico Collignon 17:37
Yeah. So I mean, I’m talking here from Copenhagen work and see bikes from my window. And I think that one of the things that is not so obvious for people that live in a city like London, is the is the damages of car culture or motorised vehicle culture. And I think, yeah, it goes beyond just the pollution. So I tried to put together all the all the facts, but yeah, the one of the points was about the the sheer amount of space that that vehicles take the and then the dangers of having vans on the roads. And these are things that are not going to go away just because you have electric vehicles instead of combustion engines.

Carlton Reid 18:24
And that question for sorry, Ben, for you. You’re still London. And everybody always asked, I’ve certainly asked, and they’re just saying, Look, when are you coming to a city near me? So what’s what’s your expansion plans with this incredible efficiency, it can be done in other cities. So when could you expand?

Ben Knowles 18:46
Well, I guess that’s a question for me. Real realistically, we need to get to a scale where we’ve got the tech operating really efficiently. And we have we start to grow this network of quite sizable business partners that operate in multiple cities, that will make it very easy for us to go and tackle other cities. I guess, for me if things went well. And we got the right funding, and we start to come out of this pandemic period, which has been really quite disruptive because the type of work has been changing all the time, and we’ve had to be have a lot of organisational capacity on coping with those changes. If we can come out of this period, then something and then like the next year to 18 months, we can be coming to other cities. But to be honest, there’s also there’s so much work for us here in London. I don’t want to lose sight of that, because we think that there’s a billion pounds worth of work every year for us here in London. And we’re doing, you know, at the minute, we’re doing about a million pounds of work a year. So we were lucky left less than a 10th at like a 10th of a percent of the capacity of the market here, as well. So I don’t want to lose sight of the potential for expansion right here in London either,

Carlton Reid 20:34
Yeah. Good point. So this this blog posting by by Nico, this this fantastic information on how efficient these bicycles these cargo bikes are, that is going elsewhere than just on social media. This is something to be sent fleet managers, what are you doing with this information? How are you? How are you going to tell people about this?

Nico Collignon 21:01
Hmm. So we’ve we’ve been in touch with people in academia last week to see how we could push that forward. There. But yeah, otherwise? I think we’re people have been reaching out, but it’s Yeah, we don’t have a set plan. Apart from that, I think.

Ben Knowles 21:22
Yeah, I mean, I think, in general, as a company, what we try and do is, you know, we’re thinking beyond, just like the commerce, we’re not just thinking about our place in society as a business, but also where we can add value. So yeah, the company wasn’t just set up to be a money making machine, but it was also set up to deliver a public goods. And this information being in the public domain, even if we don’t directly profit from it, although I suspect they will bring interesting leads our way and interesting opportunities. That will still be, it will still deliver value in a wider sense. If that makes sense to you.

Carlton Reid 22:10
Yes. I mean, I’m just looking at the the, the tweet that I read originally did this so that I mean, it’s at 735 likes it said, 304 retweets. I know a lot of the people who I follow on Twitter, have been retweeting it and and bigging it up, because it is something that’s really, really important to get a certain class of motorcar and van off the road and for bicycle to take over.

Ben Knowles 22:39
Sure, I mean, I just in in general, I feel that the use of motor vehicles in cities is just so screamingly stupid. It’s such a waste of everyone’s time, that anything that helps people understand that and understand why that is, will help push, push the conversation and allowed more dramatic changes to our cities that will help make those more viable and more practical alternatives, easier. cycle tracks, local ship, low traffic neighbourhoods, more road user charging for, for those that do use motor vehicles in the city. And we, as a company were set up to help push that conversation along and help those changes to happen.

Carlton Reid 23:33
Let’s talk about low traffic neighbourhoods. You mentioned it there. So one of the things that people say is, Oh, I can’t get my deliveries. You know, the van can’t get through. You’re having no problems. I’m as human with low traffic neighbourhoods you can get through.

Ben Knowles 23:49
Yeah, so we did have a problem yesterday, when we were carrying a two seater sofa on the front of one of our bikes. And that did make getting through some of the the filters a bit challenging. But in, in general, yeah, the low traffic neighbourhoods, I mean, we can get straight through even with the trailers. And it it’s one of those things that it also makes working a lot more pleasant. Because you’re extricated from being stuck in traffic. You know, motor vehicles are the main thing that slows down. And so allowing us to move on routes that are parallel to the motor vehicles, and to enjoy pollution free spaces while we’re at work. It makes working a lot more pleasant and a lot more fun. As and, and also it saves us time because we’re not, we’re not entangled with the motors, when when they’re sitting there taking up all their space not going anywhere. We’re just extricated from all those problems, right.

Carlton Reid 25:00
Well, thank you to you both for for talking me today. And let me know. I mean, I will put in the show notes. I’ll put the link to the to the blog posting but Ben just just tell me where that website is and tell me any social media connected and I’ll ask the same question from Nico.

Ben Knowles 25:19
Cool. Sorry, what would you want from us in

Carlton Reid 25:22
Your website. So just Just give me a website and and and your Twitter handle that kind of stuff.

Ben Knowles 25:27
Okay, great. Yeah. So people can find us at peddleme.co.uk. And on Twitter or Instagram, on at pedal me at PDLME ATP.

Carlton Reid 25:44
Okay, and Nico, do you have somewhere where people can get hold of you on social media?

Nico Collignon 25:49
Yeah, sure. I’m on Twitter as well. I’m @nccollignon. But also through the Pedal Me Twitter.

Carlton Reid 25:56
And I haven’t been on there. That’s right. I do not follow you. But I’ll go check on you in a minute. And do you talk about cycle stuff on there? Or is this what do you do on your Twitter?

Nico Collignon 26:06
Yeah, quite a lot about cycling, then. Yeah. Then Oh, yeah.

Carlton Reid 26:13
It makes sense. I’ll definitely go and follow you then if you if you talk about cycling. Cool. And well, thank you so much, guys, for for talking to me today. And you’re very, very different locations. Thank you to Ben Knowles of Pedal Me and to Nicolas Collignon, also of Pedal Me and, and his fantastic PhD from Edinburgh University there. And let me just go across to my colleague, David before I wrap up the show.

David Bernstein 26:41
Hey, Carlton, thanks so much. And it’s it’s always my pleasure to talk about our advertiser. This is a long time loyal advertiser, you all know who I’m talking about? It’s JensonUSA at Jenson usa.com/thespokesmen. I’ve been telling you for years now years, that Jenson is the place where you can get a great selection of every kind of product that you need for your cycling lifestyle at amazing prices and what really sets them apart? Because of course, there’s lots of online retailers out there. But what really sets them apart is their unbelievable support. When you call them you’ve got a question about something, you’ll end up talking to one of their gear advisors and these are cyclists. I’ve been there I’ve seen it. These are folks who who ride their bikes to and from work. These are folks who ride at lunch who go out on group rides after work because they just enjoy cycling so much. And and so you know that when you call, you’ll be talking to somebody who has knowledge of the products that you’re calling about. If you’re looking for a new bike, whether it’s a mountain bike, a road bike, a gravel bike, a fat bike, what are you looking for? Go ahead and check them out. JensonUSA, they are the place where you will find everything you need for your cycling lifestyle. It’s Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. We thank them so much for their support. And we thank you for supporting JensonUSA. All right, Carlton, let’s get back to the show.

Carlton Reid 28:07
Thanks, David. And thanks, of course to you for listening to Episode 261 of the spokesmen podcast, show notes and more, including links to Pedal Me’s website and Nico’s Twitter account and it can be found at the-spokesmen.com. Our website also has all of the subscribe details you could ever eat and details on the previous 260 shows. But meanwhile, get out there and ride …

Your podcast catcher not showing in links above (black circle with three dots)? Loads more on PodLink. Show is also on Spotify. and Google Podcasts.

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 259: Cyclist Detection Tech With Tome Software CEO Jake Sigal And History of Road Equity With Historian Peter Norton

Monday 26th October 2020

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Jake Sigal of Tome Software and historian Peter Norton, author of “Fighting Traffic: the Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.”

Cartoon by Richard Hedman, 1970.

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 259 of the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast. This show was engineered on Monday 26th of October 2020.

David Bernstein 0:23
The Spokemen Cycling Roundtable Podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.theFredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen Cycling Roundtable Podcast for shownotes links and all sorts of other information, please visit our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now, here are the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:08
Hi there I’m Carlton Reid and on today’s show I’m discussing the detection of cyclists by the driverless cars of the future and the partially autonomous cars of today. My two guests are coming at this from two very different angles. First I talked with Jake Sigal, CEO of Detroit’s Tome Software and in the second half of the show I chat with historian Peter Norton.

Carlton Reid 1:35
Jake is a serial entrepreneur and, as he explains on the show, he sold an earlier tech company to automotive giant Ford enabling him to create Tome Software. Tome works with the auto and bicycle industries to create cyclist detection technologies for an increasingly digitally connected world. When every lampost, every road junction, every bit of street furniture, broadcasts its presence — and many already do — won’t cyclists be safer if they ping robot drivers and human ones too letting them know that they’re around the next corner? Jake and I discuss the upsides but also the potential equity and technology downsides to such an automobile-centred near-future, and for all my earlier worries about bicycle beaconisation — that cyclists need to be detected not connected — Jake reveals that Tome is also working on technologies that won’t need Bluetooth bursts or other kinds of proximity pulses. Jake is a passionate cyclist, off-road and for commuting, and he tells me that he wants what we all want: safer roads. In the second half of the show I discuss similar equity and technology issues with historian Peter Norton. Peter’s been on the show a couple of times before and many of you will already know that he’s the go-to guy for the social history of how automobile interests—what he calls motordom—successfuly turned roads meant for people into roads exclusively for motorists. His classic book — “Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City” — is a key tome, you could say, about the creation of jaywalking as a concept and soon thereafter a crime in many states, a creation that deliberately and cynically favoured one road user over another. In this episode of the Spokesmen cycling podcast Peter uses history to evaluate whether using technology to detect cyclists and pedestrians is the fairest and most effective way to keep them safe. As I said, it’s a long show, so strap in and let’s get straight across to Tome Software CEO Jake Sigal

Carlton Reid 4:03
Tome software, I mean, I know you because of the the kind of the work you’ve been doing on bicycles, and bicycle detection and cyclist detection, I should say rather, let’s use the agency here rather than the the form of transport. But what does Tome Software actually do away from cycling?

Jake Sigal 4:26
Well, we are a software services company based in Detroit, Michigan. And historically, we’ve worked with our clients on mobility projects helping with delivering packages or software that would help vehicles communicate with connected objects or people outside of the vehicle. So that’s been our basic model. And one year we were working we also had a client in the bicycle industry. We built some some connected cycling software products for for bike companies, and where they kind of married up as one could imagine. We’re at a bike conference and one of the folks from Trek Bicycles that based in Madison, Wisconsin, approached me and heard I was in Detroit and knew about our background with autos and asked about, you know, if we had the ability to work on getting with car companies to make safety products between bicycles and cars. And that’s kind of how it started. So outside of bikes, where we still do a lot of software for the automotive industry, we have some non automotive clients as well. And we are always interested in helping our clients understand how to create either cost savings or quality improvement. Sometimes it’s from new revenue for digital transformation, or formerly Internet of Things, IoT products. But a lot of our focus now is within connected vehicles and writing software applications for automotive and bringing it into a consumer electronics, which includes bicycles and environment.

Carlton Reid 5:51
So Jake, how long have you been going with Tome? What were you doing before Tome? So where did Tome come from?

Jake Sigal 5:58
Great question. So previously, my business partner and I, as well as our Director of Engineering, were a part of a company that was acquired by Ford in 2013. And that company helped connect apps and cars, this is now part of the Ford SYNC programme. After we did that, after after the sale, we around at Ford for a while, and then we’re thinking about what we wanted to do next, it just seemed very logical to take our experience and passion around connected car and bring it into things connected outside of the car. So the the old company was about connecting apps in your phone to the car, the new company at home is about a vehicle and connected to everything else around the world and anything else in the area. And that’s really how it started. So Tome is the company name, it’s an old English word for a book of knowledge. And we have this all-knowing owl buddy, which is our mascot, and it’s really fun. I’d say we’ve been at it since 2014. So great team. It’s it’s a it’s really awesome, we we have a strong focus on having people pursue to be the best version of themselves both both in work and in life. And it’s, it’s a great, great team atmosphere. I mean, even during the pandemic, as hard as it’s been for everybody, we did not lose any of our projects and maintain happy customers and just still able to keep a great culture. So we tell them, it’s a business that we started with a mission of making the world a better place around the automotive ecosystem. But I it’s not VC backed, like our previous company was was VC backed this one we own and we’ve got a few investors, but it’s, it’s, it’s really a company we built for the long haul. And we’re really excited to work with some of the best companies in the world. I mean, having Ford and Canon, the camera company’s one of our clients. We’ve done some project with NASA, I mean, there’s like so many cool projects with cool companies and just great engineering teams on the client side that we get the opportunity to work with. And that’s that’s basically Tome.

Carlton Reid 7:59
And how many people are in that great team of yours in in Detroit or spread around Detroit now, I guess on Zoom and stuff, but how many people have you got in the team?

Jake Sigal 8:07
So there’s 15 of

Jake Sigal 8:08
us full time. And then we’ve got a set of contractors as well that that work on various projects. So it’s a mix of that full time a contract, so a small company, and typically, we’re working side by side with engineering groups within our client side. So it’s a great business and, and you know, we’re able to be really nimble and fast with our size. So I don’t have to deal deal with a lot of overhead and clients. I think, like the fact that I’m involved on many of the projects or my business partners involved in the ones are not so we are able to really get hands on and solve problems for our customers in the industry.

Carlton Reid 8:43
And how did you get into that particular sphere into connected apps in thebeginning. Where’s your actual background from?

Jake Sigal 8:51
So I have a engineering degree, a systems engineering degree, and I worked in the consumer electronics industry and professional audio equipment and then consumer electronic audio, which led to a job at in Detroit, where I was product manager for cellular radio at the time, there was XM and Sirius in the US, two separate and then they merged. So a lot of background in audio. And we started the first company Livio, we were making desktop radios for Pandora and other automotive app companies and then and then started writing software. So eventually when the smartphone came out, like in 2008, when the iPhone one came out, it wasn’t a device, there was like the iPod functionality of the phone. But it wasn’t really it was not at that time a streaming media device. It wasn’t until about 2009 when, 2010 really, when people started really streaming audio from the phone, internet radio sort of started to take off. So one thing led to another and then we realised that the consumers didn’t need the hardware and that’s when we started getting into software. So it was very natural progression and all that transpired at the Consumer Electronics Show and was 2010 and we’re situated between the iPhone accessory group people section and then the automotive section. I mean, we’re literally physically between the two sections. And it was kind of like a lightbulb moment. And we’ve we’re still very focused on software that touches hardware. And that’s one of the things that makes us unique is we’re not just making apps. It’s apps that get get involved with hardware and Bluetooth and things like that. But yeah, just kind of solving the same problems, just different technology available to us to use our disposal.

Carlton Reid 10:31
And did you personally move to Detroit because Detroit obviously is, you know, the global automotive capital, or are you from Detroit?

Jake Sigal 10:43
I’m from Ohio, just just a state south of Michigan. And I was living with my now my wife or girlfriend back at the time, we were living in Rhode Island. So yeah, we moved back to the Midwest. And it’s not far away from where I grew up. And same type culture for any listeners that are familiar with the Midwest and United States. So a very natural fit. And I we when we moved to Detroit was right when the great recession started. So it like we were here at pretty much the downswing and now it’s become quite a vibrant community really fell in love with the area, just the amount of cycling and the culture of the parks. Other than December, January and February. It’s an amazing place to be in fact, I always joke with my friends that I don’t I don’t go and I don’t travel even for business between Memorial Day, Labour Day. So unlike the late spring, summer and early fall, this is where the only place I want to be. But when it comes wintertime we we jettison, so it’s when it’s five degrees outside, it’s not ideal, but for nine months out of the year, it’s fantastic.

Carlton Reid 11:45
So describe to me Intelligent Transport. So that kind of connected of things. So lampposts, traffic signs, traffic signals, they’re all now or many of them, no beaming out stuff. And cars, passing bicycles can now potentially be recognised as well. So it described that, that ecosystem of things that we don’t really think about these things, beaming information, but there’s things out there street furniture, beaming stuff, right?

Jake Sigal 12:18
Yeah. So I think that for the listeners, what’s important is to have technology that provides an increase in safety, but it’s still transparent to the user, it’s not something that you have to turn on or press a button. And the original technology to cross the crosswalk would be you have to press the button and then wait or be on a time system and hope that it would, the light will change. And with vehicles there, there used to be technology still in some lights where they have these sensors that would be embedded in the road to detect a vehicle. But those sensors were not able to detect a pedestrian or bicyclist or some other scooterists in the roadways. So a lot of that technology is already been installed. And you wouldn’t know that because you don’t have to download an app or do anything for it to use. So what we’re looking at and is ways for increasing safety while still maintaining the ability to not require users to have to press a button. And if for example, there’s been some technology out that was released I think it’s called Project Greenlight, not our company, but it would allow a traffic light to wirelessly recognise that a biker scooter is approaching an intersection to trigger to the traffic light to turn green when you know that you’re there. And as a cyclist, I can tell you that I can tell you the routes I ride and where that where you have to ride to the sidewalk, get off your bike and press the button otherwise, you’ll never get a green light or you’re you’re given that choice of trying to play Frogger across the road. So a lot of these technologies that we’re interested in involves something called signal phase and timing or SPAT and then separately there’s wireless technology which is coming with cellular V2X also known as C-V2X or CV2X which can communicate from sign to sign or car to sign or sign to car. So once that is set up and enables messages to be transmitted between the devices, so are companies really thinking about the applications so so what is like the so what factor like why would somebody care that these signs are connected? Well, if it’s a streetlight, it would want to know when it turned on at night so so it can be you know, not under the daylight or, or be able to fluctuate when there’s there’s people that would need to have access to that light and not create, you know, any sort of light pollution or other issues. But for safety features, we’re thinking about how to leverage these types of connected infrastructure for sending just very simple messages so that safety systems on vehicles can do a little bit better job or have a little better confidence for things that they can’t see in front of them.

Carlton Reid 14:55
And how much if this kind of Intelligent Transport Systems, that’s what it’s ITS? Yep. How much of this is absolutely 100% necessary for these famous — and we haven’t got them yet and they’re always touted — driverless cars? And how much is the the cars that are going to be like coming along in the next three, four years? Or perhaps even now? So how much is of this infrastructure necessary for the driverless cars? And how much is it just as necessary for the piloted cars today?

Jake Sigal 15:30
It’s it’s really a balanced approach with the technologies and the value of the technologies. So there are driverless vehicle systems that do not rely on any wireless messages from signs. So one could argue that none of it is necessary. But I think that there, I think that everybody would agree with more information is better. Now what you do with that information? Do you trust that information? Is the information accurate? And is it timely? Those are the key questions that we’re getting into. But just to be clear that driverless cars are level five autonomous vehicles like no steering wheel. Right now, there’s a lot of cars that have safety systems called ADAS systems that are level two or level three autonomous vehicles that do have a driver and have a steering wheel. So things like emergency braking, or the adaptive cruise control or lane departure warnings, those are really relevant, because it’s now looking forward in the future about what you have to have on vehicles, it is going to be a function of the driving speeds and the location. So for trucking that are on an interstate going from state to state, it’s going to be a different set of requirements than manoeuvring a dense urban environment. And I think that those teams are still evaluating how to continue improving safety, I would say that I always have people asking us a lot is your how would you feel if there was an autonomous vehicle behind you? And what I tell people is that at this point in time, and they actually have about a year and a half ago, I feel safer having a robot behind the wheel, when I’m running, when I’m personally riding a bike, then the average driver because I don’t know if the average driver is distracted. And if you’re riding a bike around rush hour, there’s also an issue where you have a lot of obstructed vision. So a autonomous vehicle or a tonne of safety system in a vehicle that with a human driver, I think will be another set of eyes, another set of resources to see me while I’m out riding. And that wasn’t the case five years ago, but now I would say that the safety systems are great. And there’s always going to be edge cases and use cases. But I think we’re at a point now where it’s it’s clearly increasing safety. And yeah, you’re going to see the reports of, of tragic incidents that happen. But I’ve met with a lot of engineers working on these systems, and they’re doing it because they’re on a mission to make make the world a safer place and reducing injury and death. And that’s, I think we’re at a point now in the technology where it’s better now than the average human driver. Again, just my opinion, but I’ve seen this from the inside and outside. I know what sort of technologies are there and you know, the just even the the reaction time to recognise it’s a cyclist versus just some object up ahead. I mean, those are things that, that with the right technology can really help a human out that’s behind the wheel.

Carlton Reid 18:27
At the humans who are not behind the wheel, there’s some jargon here. So this is not it’s not your jargon. This is just the jargon and the industry. But it’s kind of you understand this. So VRUs so vulnerable road user is the jargon for a pedestrian, somebody on a scooter, somebody on a bicycle. Now, in the future in your technology, or just this the general connectivity, technology that’s coming are VRUs, are vulnerable road users, are they going to have to use a smartphone is that smartphone going to have to be turned on? What’s the technology that a VRU is going to have to have?

Jake Sigal 19:10
No. So we are very, we’ve been very clear, our 20 companies on our advisory board, have been very clear that that we need to support vulnerable road users, pedestrian, bicycle, scooter riders that do not have do not want to have or their battery is dead and their electronics that we have, we have two very distinct groups, which we call an unequipped VRU or someone that doesn’t have any electronics, or they’re choosing not to broadcast electronics, even for privacy reasons. And then if you have the electronics, whether it’s built into a shared bike that you get on and ride so as a user, you just ride the bike, you don’t have to do anything it’s built in or all the way to an app on your phone that can provide some level of identification – or device classification in other words- letting a car know that you are a pedestrian versus a like a… For example, let’s say you have a bike on a bike rack on a bus. Well, if you accidentally left your your ebike on and the motors on, it’s not spinning but it’s on the bus, we wouldn’t want a vehicle to think it was about to run over a cyclist when the bikes on the front of the bus and you’re riding the bus going down the street. So we really think that there are two paths, there’s the unequip VRUs as someone that doesn’t have the electronics and whether for a number of reasons, including equity reasons, they may not be able to afford the technology that we need to make sure they’re protected both from vehicle systems as well as protected from the ITS, the signs and infrastructure. Now, if there is an opportunity to have a low cost, wireless transmitter that can transmit anonymous information, things like ‘I am a bicycle, I’m travelling north, I’m going 15 miles per hour or 20 kilometres per hour’. That is useful information that helps because GPS does not work very well for tracking a bicycle or scooter. So I imagine many of the listeners, you had an experience in a city where you had the little blue dot on your map and it kind of bounces around a little bit or you’re driving using the Waze app or Google on your car and you’re like on the freeway, and then it thinks you’re on a side street and it jumps back to a freeway. That’s in GPS, this happens where it gets a little bit out of sync, because it’s pulling information off the satellites. So getting direct information off a bicycle or scooter like electronic compass, a speed from a wheel spinning, just some basic information even saying I am a scooter and I am moving that that is some really useful information on a low cost sensor that the having that information. While it’s not enough for a car to slam on the brakes, it is enough for a car safety system to include that information provided it’s trusted, so that the car safety system can do a slightly better job or be more confident in the decision that it’s going to make to help help avoid an incident or alert a driver. So that’s kind of how we look at it is that, that there are some opportunities there. The the opposite of this would be let’s put a $200 doodad on every bike and scooter. And that’s just not gonna happen. So it’s just not gonna happen. I mean, in vehicles, there are basic safety protections and those increase over time, so seat belts became mandatory. And there were lap belts. And then you have the cross strap seat belt then airbags were optional feature. And now they’re mandatory than others. Now you can get vehicles that have 20 airbags and increased safety systems. So like Lane Departure warnings, backup cameras, I mean, all these things are optional, they come in standard features. So I do think that there’s a really good precedent set that if you’re a cyclist and you want to increase your safety, you can buy a helmet, you can buy a bike light, you can buy a reflector reflective armband, or straps. So you look more like a human being and not just flashing light out there. So there are a lot of options on this and start to be a little long winded with this. But I want to make it very clear that that we want to provide options for people, but not leave anybody behind. So there will be more benefit if you’re having electronics. But at the same time it’s we can’t just say okay, now everyone on a bike has to have this electronic device. That’s just not not feasible. And we look at this as finding solutions for all riders regardless of their ability level, their age, their economic status, whether it’s their own bike or share bike, or a scooter or E powered bike or a regular powered bike. For us the Vulnerable Road User includes everybody, we got to make sure that everybody is included in our work.

Carlton Reid 23:29
Everybody’s included, Jake, but is it not the very fact that this could be two tiers of road user, vulnerable road user, in that you’re going to be equipped or not equipped? And this is purely hypothetical. I’m sure you’ve come across this before I’m sure all your workshops with with bicycle companies this has been broached. But in for instance, in a future litigation, where a cyclist and this happens with helmets, this happens with high vis this happens with lights already in in a court case where a motorist hits a cyclist. A lawyer at some point will say, ah, but that cyclists wasn’t equipped with this latest Bluetooth beacon. That’s why the crash happened. And what then happens is that the whole blame isn’t apportined to the cyclist, but a certain part of blame is apportioned. So then it becomes absolutely two tier road system. So how can that be? How can that be kind of like stopped before it’s even started?

Jake Sigal 24:38
Yeah, I understand the point. I don’t fully agree with the point about the two tiered system. And let me let me talk a little about that. So in our opinion, these cyclist does not want to get hit by a car any more than a driver wants to hit a cyclist. So it’s not just about responsibility. It’s it comes down to accountability. So, for example, if a cyclist is riding the wrong way on the road, in a vehicle lane and is breaking the law, he or she’s responsible for taking that action, just like if a driver of a vehicle is driving in the bicycle lane, which we’ve seen that happen, that that driver is then responsible, and especially for commercial vehicles that we double parked and other types of situations. So I definitely understand and see that point that comes up quite a bit. But from our work and experience, we’re really focusing on the use cases where everybody’s doing the right thing. So if everybody’s doing the right thing, there shouldn’t be incidents happening anyways, except for some really limited circumstances where the driver has obstructed view, like coming up in over a hill, or you’re driving West at sunset and you’re, as a driver looking straight into the sun and you’ve got the visor down, it’s really hard to see those types of limited use cases or areas where we think the technology can really help. So if a cyclist doesn’t have this technology, and there’s a litigation around, should the cyclist have had this? I think it’s going to come down to what every governing body whether it’s a state by state, or municipal level, in the US, we’ve got federal, state and local regulations and requirements on this is just going to be me based on the vru style. So it’s very possible that for example, if you have a moped like an actual motorised vehicle, like a motorcycle, you are regulated and having certain things like having lights having a licence plate, I don’t think a pedestrian should or whatever have any of this, I personally don’t think that a bicyclist, whether it’s powered or not powered, should have any of this or any scooter should. But ultimately, it’s up to each group to decide what should be there and what the use cases are. So what I wanted to just kind of put a little colour on this is that this two tier road system, we don’t see it that way, it certainly is possible. But what we see is dense urban environments having a three tier system where one is vehicle only. So in New York City, you’ve got the West Side Highway, or Second Avenue, and it’s I think it’s Seven Av that’s car only. And then you’ve got bike and VRU, Bike Share plus Car Share areas. And then separately, you’ve got bicycle and VRU-only areas and in Europe, that’s pretty common, as well as having these bikeways that are that are developed. And then there’s rules and regulations for the bikeways. So being a proper user of a trail or road. That’s not a new thing. I think that’s going to continue. But trying to say that because technology to make you safer exists means you have to wear it. I mean, that’s not something that we engage on. I mean, our mission is to increase safety and make sure that we can increase safety for both equipped and unequipped. The argument of should helmets be mandatory. I mean, that’s that’s not that’s not our fight to fight. I mean, I’ve got my personal opinion as a rider. But I mean, ultimately, that’s that’s, that’s up to local state and federal jurisdiction on that. So I see your point there, but we kind of see this a little bit differently. And I hope that hope you understand that from our standpoint, we’re just trying to increase safety and make sure no one’s left behind. And there will be some questions asked on this. But ultimately, if we’re increasing and saving lives, I think that it’s it’s worth having these harder conversations about these types of issues if we’re ultimately reducing the serious injury and death count with the technology we’re working on.

Carlton Reid 28:41
So what do you say the technology then is it like an equivalent to you know, all day running lights or wearing a helmet or the hi-vis, in fact these are all optional things. You don’t have to have these things. Many cyclists don’t have these things, but it just increases how visible you are to motorists. So if you’ve got the you know the standard, you know, Bontrager type, you know, always on, yeah, daytime running lights, you’re going to be that much more visible to motorists. You don’t have to have them. But you know, it’s your own. If you want to save your skin, then then it makes sense to have them.

Jake Sigal 29:21
Yeah, so personally, I always ride with high visibility, reflective and daytime running lights and a helmet. I wanted one day during the pandemic, I went to pick up some food and I didn’t put a helmet on I’m just going a few blocks down the street and I felt naked like I was like, I literally forgot something my helmet on and that’s just that’s me, that’s me is personal. That’s That’s me as a cyclist, but it’s not my decision to make for how other people look at this. And some people, rightfully so I would say that as a cyclist. They should need to do this in order not to get run over by a car they just shouldn’t be getting run over. And how I respond to that is that I understand and your rights as a cyclists in your country in your city in your state. I mean, that’s, that’s, again, what we talked about earlier. But if I can make this safer Is that a problem. And I think that where we draw the line is that if we make technology that’s mandated and somebody is left out of it because of cost reasons or some other factor, that that’s not a good thing. Because then in a way, we’re creating a false sense of security for some riders while we’re leaving other people behind. So I agree personally, when it comes to the choices that I make, and why I make them, but I also respect that other people may not agree with that position and might feel differently. So as long as we’re providing options for people I that’s why our team is on mission and doing this and I believe that bike companies are aligned with this is providing options and making sure we’re covering both equipped and unequipped vulnerable road users out there.

Carlton Reid 30:50
Because you know Bontrager daytime running light $80, $90 You know, a lot of people are riding around on bikes that are worth $60. And they’re the ones not going to be you know, protected. They’re kind of like the kind of like, called, they’re invisible cyclists in that, you know, huge mass of people are out there on bikes, but they’re crummy bikes, they’re not very good bikes. But there’s lots of people out there, and they don’t tend to have any safety equipment. At the moment.

Jake Sigal 31:18
You know, I tell you that in Detroit, I see a lot of people that are riding and I’m you know, since they’re not wearing Lycra like like I’m sometimes I’m assuming the ride to work or home from work. And they do have a safety vests on and they have reflectivity, and they’ve made that decision. So I think that there are a lot of different ways to be more visible. And with the type of work that we’re getting into it just I think education for the cyclists is really important. And we’ve worked very closely with Ford Driving Skills for life, which is funded by the Ford Foundation for driver education about how to look for cyclists and how to properly approach slow down and pass a cyclist in Michigan, we have a three foot passing rule. And it’s almost like you could take one of those, the swimming pool noodles off the side of your bike. And that’s how far away that the driver supposed to pass and create some awareness, there’s been more signage about owning like taking a full lane as a cyclist when it gets a little sketchy on a bike. So a lot of these things are happening at a advocacy level and education level, which we fully support with our company, we are really involved on the tech. So understanding the behaviour of cyclists, how cyclists ride, and we’ve also started to take a look at the type of cyclists so road bike child on a children’s bike, looking at share bikes, what sort of acceleration and deceleration how fast they go, how fast are they stopping, and looking for these types of trends so that we can make the vehicle system a little smarter. But like I said earlier, that from our standpoint, we’re trying to find ways to make cycling safer, and we don’t want anybody left behind from like, what should cyclists be wearing? I mean, I’d encourage all cyclists to put a helmet on have some form of lighting or reflectivity, neon lights during the day it the stats show, it’s going to make you safer and everyone knows me, I’m like Mr. Neon going around during the day. But you know, some people think that looks so cool. But you know, it’s it’s a obviously a personal choice and if we can make technology to help help think cars See you when even when you’re beyond line of sight and that’s a good opportunity.

Carlton Reid 33:26
And what do you see the technology? How do you envisage eventually getting out to the market so things like you know, the Garmin radar product which they’ve got your that could be like beefed up with more tech like See Sense. I know See Sense is on your your website? Yeah, as you know, Northern Ireland company that makes some great technology. Yeah, you know, their lights, they’ve got some clever electronics in there. So are you thinking in the future, then how long in the future but there’ll be like, augmented products out there? So it’s not gonna be like a like a transponder that you fit to your bike? standalone, it’s going to be integrated in other electronic devices. Is that is that the way you think it’s gonna go?

Jake Sigal 34:09
Oh, absolutely. And like I said earlier, the technology needs to be transparent to the user. So it’s not some black box that you turn on when you’re riding it’s it’s built in. So we’ve talked to a number of companies about putting it into ebike drive systems so electronic bike it’s got a big battery already has wireless connectivity makes a tonne of sense. We’ve talked to car companies about being able to connect a sign so that if a sign sees any cyclist without any electronics that that message can be received and determining what the safety messages we have a white paper on our website for engineers on topic. We’ve talked to university researchers about this and we held a our first annual conference last year we had a postponed due to the pandemic of course this year but on same topic is like what are the dynamics what how are these things moving? How are the devices moving people on scooters scooters by ebikes different types of other VR use wheelchairs, that sort of thing. A lot of different options that go into this. So I think for us, it’s, it’s really about making the technology as seamless and transparent to the cyclist and the driver. And our companies are really looking towards that I don’t envision there being any black box that’s that’s put on your seatpost. That doesn’t mean it would be incorporated into something that is already on the bike or something you need. Now, of course, you’re going to retrofit so if it’s an a helmet, if it’s on the handlebar, if it’s in a bike light, these are all areas that we’re very interested in. And I can speak for my experience working with the bike companies is that this is not something that they look at as competitive technology, they look at this as creating global standards for how to communicate their presence and and let in such a way that that protects consumer privacy keeps the cost down, and can be really driven into mass volume for, for adoption across all cyclists. So that that’s kind of the area that we’re looking at is different products as this can fit into. But while maintaining that there is a trust level from the auto company that when they get a message from one of these devices, that it’s a proper message and see sense of I want to give them a plug has been absolutely fantastic to work with, as with our other core groups and our prototyping Working Group. But it’s just been really good talking to companies about ways to see where the technology can go, and then find ways to really keep the cost down to get into more more more saddles and more more riders in the world

Carlton Reid 36:37
Is going to be cheap, basically? So people that adopt it?

Jake Sigal 36:41
I would say that if we do this, right, it would be built in to products that you’re already buying. So it’s a very cheap, affordable incremental upgrade for them for some basic protection. So where it gets really expensive is if this turns into a vehicle to vehicle trusted message. So I mentioned earlier, if a bicycle is transmitting some basic information, that’s pretty affordable to generate deliver, if we had to generate the same messages that a vehicle generates, it becomes very expensive, very quick. So I would be very surprised if that’s the direction this goes because it would put sensor requirements on a on a bicycle or on a wheelchair or something that are well beyond what the cost of the bicycle or wheelchair would be for the average rider. So we’re really looking at ways that not only are technically feasible, but also feasible for the market. And that’s not our call to make at Tome that’s why we brought on board the best bike companies in the business. And I want to point out that in addition to having Specialized and Trek and Giant as part of our group, we also have the Excel group and other companies that are working on like Dorel Sports that work on bicycles that are found in department stores and other entry level bicycle programmes. So it’s not limited just to the high end bicycle market, which really helps us make sure that what we’re working on is feasible. And then on the auto side, same thing, making sure that the technology we’re working on would be feasible to bring into a car. So we come up with something that’s super cheap and does something but the auto guys wouldn’t trust it for a good reason, then that’s not going to work either. So that’s a balance between the two industries is something that we have a lot of experience with working at Livio, or previous company with ABS and cars. And, you know, we’re doing that same playbook going in to tell them with with this, and it’s not a Tome technology. By the way, this is technology that will be industry standard. It’s based on SAE automotive industry standards, and working on the same playbook that the auto companies have been doing for the last 20 years. So for us, we’re really facilitating and organising the effort, but it is a industry is a cross industry, open standards effort where it’s not proprietary tech, you’re not gonna see at home our logo on your bike any day, this is really about making the world a safer place and agreeing on global standards. So any startup any large company, any auto company could could access this.

Carlton Reid 38:58
So you mentioned the kind of the packages of information that gets sent out there. And I noticed from our email conversation we had to begin with, there was something called BSM, so that’s basic safety message, and then there’s PSM personal safety message. Are they the two different expensive and or cheap versus expensive? What are the what are they? What are those two things?

Jake Sigal 39:20
Well, messages. So they’re two separate messages. They’re very similar. And the basic safety message is what’s been adopted by automotive companies. The personal safety message has been submitted as part of the SAE [Society of Auto Engineers] standards, but it hasn’t been fully adopted and fully adopted, there’s a bit of an asterix there. And you might be what was that mean? Or what what that means is that we just need to do some more research and really determine what’s in the message. messages are free, by the way, like it doesn’t cost anything to send a message. It’s like typing an email that’s free, but generating the information that’s in that message and then having a wireless system to send that message that that’s where the cost comes in. So they are related. So what’s in the message If I say, here’s my location, but I’m using a GPS receiver, it can be challenging because if you’re in a city, that location may be wrong. So can you trust that location, or if you’re pulling it off a mobile phone, and your phone’s in your pocket, what sort of signal coverage you’re going to get in your pocket your backpack versus having your phone mounted on your handlebar? So the real interesting part for us at Tome is defining the message requirements. So like, what are the like, How fast are we sending this message? What’s the accuracy level, and then the performance requirements of the sensors that are generating the information. Now the sensors could be on sign, could be on a vehicle, or it could be on the bike, or scooter or other VRU itself. So for an unequipped VRU, someone that doesn’t have a phone or doesn’t want to use it, it’s one of the minimum requirements, you have to put on a sign or a vehicle to then send other signs and vehicles that there’s a bike out there, and that bike is heading north and the bike is going at the speed. So that’s really where the challenges so between the the basic safety message and the personal safety message, we’re all working together on like, what is what vehicles need. And we might find out that we need to create a different message and take a light version of the basic safety message or reduce version specifically for vulnerable road users. We’ve had tremendous support from SAE, we’ve had great support from the Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership, which is a group that GM and Ford created 20 years or so years ago. And there’s got to be 15 automotive companies participating in that. And they’re also partnered with the US Department of Transportation Federal Highway. So we have some really great [adversaries] talking about just the work that needs to be done for a long road user and a playbook to pull from. So I think when it gets down to BSMs, and PSMs and the message formats, I wouldn’t get too hung up on that, at this point, what’s important is understanding and balancing feasibility cost, and what’s the minimum set of information that a car needs to know in order for it to do something different that it can trust, and it’s got the right accuracy level within the message?

Carlton Reid 42:02
And how much of this is North American lead? Because you can imagine, you know that that scenario you said before where you know there’s a light is the sunlight is is low? There’s a cyclist over the brow of a hill. And then there’s one cyclist, you kind of you can you get that information, the driver gets the alert, and you’re golden, because you’ve spotted the cyclist. If you’re in Copenhagen, if you’re in Amsterdam, you’ve got 20,000 BSMs or whatever. Yeah, coming at you like crazy. Yeah, so how much of this technology is like a North American mindset versus like a continental Europe where cycling is you know, like, you know, vacuuming your carpet and brushing your teeth. It’s so normal. Yeah, it’s, you know, you Dutch person would say you want me to do what? You know, with my with my, my phone or I need to have what equipment in my bicycle? What, are you crazy? So how much is North American compared to European.

Jake Sigal 43:07
So we are coordinating with COLIBI, which is the European cycling organisation. We’ve talked to a number of companies out of the Asia Pacific region in Japan and Korea, and there are different use cases. So congestion of cyclists, fortunately, makes cycling safer. Now the more people that ride bikes, if you take a percentage, the more the more number of incidents you’re going to get. But from a percentage standpoint, it’s safer numbers. So what we’re finding and talking with different groups, and even if you look at downtown, like looking at New York City versus a rural area, in the Midwest, with dirt roads, you have these different use cases. So from our perspective, we’re really interested in finding the areas where there’s a high likelihood of a serious injury or death and defining that vulnerability. So we don’t define the vulnerability there’s research out there that defines the vulnerability or in layman’s terms like a danger that you’re at any given time. So not only do you have to feel safe riding a bike, you have to be safe riding a bike, and the vulnerability indices that have we looked at as a six different sources. We’ve modelled this with the US Department of Transportation’s model for vulnerability, that’s those are the areas we got to watch out for. So in a massive area, we’re not saying let’s have 100 bikes in Copenhagen send out 100 messages and that situation we look to a science say let’s let the sign detect that there are a lot of bicycles in the area, and then adjust the signal appropriately when the bicycles are crossing a major road, which is a lot different than in a suburban or rural area by letting a bus know that hey, there’s a cyclist up ahead. And if it’s after sunset, then that may be a different indication to the driver than than if there is like five bikes around and it was in a bike lane. So the situation that the cyclist is in It’s not so much about the part of the world they’re in, it’s really around the density and congestion of the VR use. And also want to point out that we are not looking at alerts for drivers. If you got an alert, every time you saw a bicycle, even in Detroit, you would turn off that notification in five seconds, because they would ding you every every three seconds, it just be, it’d be super annoying. But what’s really useful is looking at those really tricky areas where there’s high vulnerability, and also having the right amount of information for a safety system. Same thing with autonomous vehicles. I mean, we, I think, many of us if you’re around the space, you’ve seen this, where if you’re driving in New York City as a human driver, and this comes up with autonomous vehicles is that pedestrians will stand right at the edge of the curb, and you have to slowly move out and go through on the green light, pedestrians will do what they’re supposed to do. And it’s kind of how it works in New York City. When I was in Asia, same thing. I mean, it’s, you’ve got just people and VRUs, and it’s everywhere. So like the use cases, there’s going to be areas where our technology does not make a lot of sense, because it’s an extremely dense area. But then there’s other areas where it also might be so rule that you need a data connection in order for it to transmit messages. And that doesn’t make sense either. So we’re still looking at finding the sweet spot of where this goes. But for anyone that’s riding in mass numbers, I’d say that this is not like you get an alert or for that you made the comment like the person in Europe says I’m supposed to do what well, the basic idea here is that you’re not supposed to do anything, you’re supposed to ride your bike and vehicle drivers and the vehicle safety systems, we’ll get some awareness where you’re at. That’s the we’re not asking anybody to do anything at this time. It’s really just finding ways for for infrastructure and existing bike products to help help keep people safe.

Carlton Reid 46:51
So before we talked about a hypothetical court case, where it was the lawyer was, was going at the cyclist for not having the right equipment, could we maybe flip that and say in the future, potentially, if this technology becomes ubiquitous for both bicyclists motorists, pedestrians, and motorists, it then becomes incumbent on the motorist that they have been given all this information. And the lawyer could then say, forget, there’s sunlight blinding you that will no longer you can’t use that excuse anymore. You were given that information, there was a cyclist over the brow of the hill, you chose to ignore that information. So it could potentially this technology actually flip that kind of court case where cyclists tend to be squished. And the driver, you know, just comes up with some lame excuse. And then you know, with with a jury of murdering peers, they get off with it. So in the future, could they no longer they won’t get off with it.

Jake Sigal 48:01
I couldn’t comment, I’m not an attorney. And obviously, it varies by area, I just go back to, from our perspective is people want to do the right thing. And if we provide information for a computer system, and there’s no notification of the driver, it certainly eliminates that type of a situation. But for a lot of pedestrian identification systems are out there now they’ll have an LED that pops up and and then kind of creates that awareness that there are pedestrians in the area. I know that that one auto company even does a simulation to show you pedestrians and bicyclists that are around you while you’re driving. So this already is existing and production. And these types of questions always come up. But I try not to engage too much in hypotheticals because in some in some respects, I look at this and say, well are what what are we supposed to do are supposed to just stop making the world safer? No, we have to come up with making the world safer. And we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it on some of the other issues. And maybe there’s some use cases that need to be taken out because of liability issues or confidence issues. More importantly, that, that we think something’s there, but we’re not sure. And that’s not new, that’s what the industry does today. And if we can find a way to save one life with our product, it makes it worth it. So that’s how we approach this and apologise to be a little bit evasive at the base of the question. But I mean, from our standpoint, it just really comes down to look we’re making, we’re making it safer. And we hope that by doing what we’re doing, even if there was a court case that came out of this, we would be saving lives and in my mind that makes it worth it.

Carlton Reid 49:41
Yeah, and I apologise to you as well, because it was a hypothetical. And it basically has to be case law. So at some point in the future, I’m sure case law will will grapple with these issues. These things will come up because it’s no longer there’ll be some excuses, you won’t be able to use anymore both both, probably both, all road users will no longer be able to say, you know, they couldn’t see you. Because it’s like, well, the electronics were there, of course, you could see then you chose to ignore that. So that’s case law. That’s hypothetical. So final question, Jake. And then I’ll let you get away, because I’ve taken up a lot of your time. Thank you. And that is when maybe this is another impossible question for you to answer. But when might we see this technology? When can we go into a shop? Do you think and and get, you know, a light a helmet, or whatever, with this equipment with this, with this technology in.

Jake Sigal 50:39
So our vision is, in the next three to five years, this technology will be saving, will be increasing the safety on VRUs on the roadways in the next three to five years, there are some things that need to happen for that to go. So and also with the pandemic, it’s it’s hard to say with some of the timelines, but with our relationships with the auto companies, our understanding of the technical readiness levels needed for the sensors in the broadcast system, this is three to five years out, which in auto terms is fast, by the way, but this is not next year. But we’re not talking about Jetsons flying cars, we’re not waiting for autonomous vehicles. This is much sooner than that. And again, I want to just stress that this is not going to be only for new bicycles, or only for new cars, I mean, this will be something that would be able to be rolled out not to all vehicles. So if you have a car today, it probably won’t be included on the vehicle you’re driving today. But at some point, these will able to be software updates. And we’re really excited about just the opportunity. So in auto terms, I’d say it’s we’re following the right steps in next three to five years, we’ll have really clear safety methods for in vehicle. And for infrastructure. It’s already started, I mean, infrastructure already is working on and including bicycle protection in some areas in the United States. There are pilot studies going and they’re doing connected corridors, and it’s already begun. So I hope that a cyclist would never look at this as a as a green light to blow through traffic lights or stop signs that That’s not at all what this is not what it’s there to do. It’s there to keep people that are trying to do the right thing a little bit safer while they’re doing it. And for both drivers and cyclists, because at the end of the day, we’re all there together. And we just want to have a safe, safe journey and enjoy the ride.

Carlton Reid 52:26
Yeah, hallelujah to that. Jake, thank you ever so much for for talking with us today. Give us a shout out for your for your website. Where can where can people find more information on this technology?

Jake Sigal 52:36
Yeah, great. So you can check us out at Tomesoftware.com and we have a bicycle vehicle page. I’d also would encourage you to like or follow our Tome Software account on LinkedIn. If you’re in the industry, and you look for information, we’ll talk to you but we have some white papers published. And there’s also an email list to stay updated on on some of our upcoming news announcements and things. So really excited to talk about this. And you know, this is personal for me around bike safety, and we’re very proud of the team has been just fantastic to work with on our side, as well as all the cycling car companies, scooter companies, it’s it’s just great seeing everybody come together. So check us out online and really appreciate you putting this together.

Carlton Reid 53:20
Thanks to Jake Sigal of Tome Software but before we transfer across to Peter Norton here’s my co-host David Bernstein with a commercial interlude.

David Bernstein 53:31
Hey, Carlton, thanks so much. And it’s it’s always my pleasure to talk about our advertiser. This is a long time loyal advertiser, you all know who I’m talking about? It’s Jenson USA at Jenson usa.com/thespokesmen. I’ve been telling you for years now years, that Jenson is the place where you can get a great selection of every kind of product that you need for your cycling lifestyle at amazing prices and what really sets them apart. Because of course, there’s lots of online retailers out there. But what really sets them apart is their unbelievable support. When you call and you’ve got a question about something, you’ll end up talking to one of their gear advisors and these are cyclists. I’ve been there I’ve seen it. These are folks who who ride their bikes to and from work. These are folks who ride at lunch who go out on group rides after work because they just enjoy cycling so much. And and so you know that when you call, you’ll be talking to somebody who has knowledge of the products that you’re calling about. If you’re looking for a new bike, whether it’s a mountain bike, a road bike, a gravel bike, a fat bike, what are you looking for? Go ahead and check them out. Jenson USA, they are the place where you will find everything you need for your cycling lifestyle. It’s Jensenusa.com/thespokesmen. We thank them so much for their support. And we thank you for supporting Jenson USA. All right, Carlton, let’s get back to the show.

Carlton Reid 54:57
Thanks David and we’re back with episode 259 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. Earlier in the episode we had the technology half of the show, now here’s the history half with Peter Norton, the associate professor of history in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia, USA.

Carlton Reid 55:20
Peter, autonomous vehicles, they get rid of the driver, that’s fantastic. And by all sorts of 360 degree vision tech and sensors, they can see around corners, so isn’t that surely better than being on the roads with drivers who we know, often distracted, often on, on high and all sorts of things, and aren’t really paying attention. Computers pay attention, Peter.

Peter Norton 55:50
Computers are amazing, they never lose attention. They don’t mean, apart from any sort of processing delay, they may have. They can pay attention, 360 degrees around them, they don’t get tired, they don’t get distracted. They don’t, they’re not emotional. So they have enormous advantages. And a lot of the tech people are very quick to point all of those out to you and conclude right away, well, this makes them better than a human driver. But on the other hand, they have a lot of disadvantages compared to human drivers that the tech sales force tends to ignore. In other words, they add up all the benefits, and then don’t subtract all the disadvantages. And the disadvantages are major. In particular, the sensors and the processing systems that the data go through, generally are very poor at telling what they’re looking at, they’re very good at identifying the likely predictable things like the car in front of you, the car beside you, the limits of the road. But they’re very poor at detecting unusual objects. This is what people are good at. They have a very hard time figuring out what they’re looking at when there’s a bicycle right in front of them. And while they’re trying to figure out what they’re looking at, they have to decide do we do we brake automatically? Do we steer automatically, but if if their confidence on that is low, then you in the in the in the vehicle are going to have a bad experience with this car braking and turning unnecessarily constantly.

Carlton Reid 57:40
So that’s the level five, the fully autonomous system. So that’s that’s, you know, as we know, it’s always five years away. Whenever tech talks about it, it’s two years away. But generally, no matter where we have been in history, it’s always five years away. But there is an awful lot of tech on cars at the moment. So this this tech is out there. This is not in the future. This is this is now. So isn’t it good that human drivers are? As you said, sometimes not as as fantastic as you like, isn’t that good to give them supplementary information supplementary guidance.

Peter Norton 58:22
There’s no question that it can be useful to have some supplementary information when you’re the driver. There’s a couple of important questions that that raises up though. One is, are you going to get the supplementary information you need for example, if it’s a bicyclist and the vehicle has a hard time detecting that it’s a bicyclist Are you going to find out in time that this is a bicyclist. And even I think more important consideration is anytime you supplement automated attention with to human attention, you don’t get the sum of those two, you know, one unit of human attention plus one unit of automated attention does not equal two units of attention. And the reason is human beings are cognitive misers. They want to limit unnecessary effort. And the tech is telling them that they can the tech is saying you may be a little sleepy, but that’s okay. The tech is here watching out. So you don’t have to pull over and take a rest. This is an old phenomenon that goes back long before digital automation where anything the engineers do to make the road safer the benefit is offset, to some extent at least, by human beings; turning that safety benefit into a convenience benefit. And the tech really can ramp up that effect drastically. In fact, you can, as people will listening to this may know, you can go to YouTube and watch videos of people driving their Tesla’s with autopilot, sleeping playing games sitting in the back seat in these are extreme cases that are indicative of a much bigger problem that affects to some degree all drivers.

Carlton Reid 1:00:27
If bikes are going to be equipped with beacons so so whatever kind of beacons they are, whether it’s the phone that you’ve got on you, whether it’s you know, a little tag that you’ve put on, or whether it’s, you know, tech that goes in helmets, tech that goes in bike lights, or is even embedded on the bike, however, the tech is is done, or if autonomous or semi autonomous systems are going to recognise cyclist in some other way. How reliable would all of this have to be, for it to prove to be at least as safe as today’s humans only system?

Peter Norton 1:01:12
This is a very good question. So I mean, there’s a lot of possibilities here. If we have bikes equipped with devices, some kind of transponder that the vehicles around them can pick up. And these vehicles have some kind of odd automated driving systems in them, then the vehicles can, you know, to be much more reliable at detecting them and and taking appropriate action. However, the minute you introduce this possibility, you kind of have to either have an all or nothing situation. In other words, if you don’t have 99%, something like that of the bicyclist equipped, then those that are unequipped are actually at greater risk. And the ones that are at greater risk could I mean, besides the fact that we care about them as individuals, this will also diminish the the overall safety benefit. So then the tricky question becomes do you require cyclists to have this equipment and if so does this start off with say, all new bicycles must be equipped, then of course, you’re leaving out a really decades worth of bikes. My own bike is over a decade old, that are going to be unequipped for years ahead, as soon as drivers have some confidence that cyclists are equipped, their behaviour will change this to the extent that the change depends on the driver, their awareness of the tech and their own safety calculations. So we know already that when a driver sees a cyclist with a helmet on, they’ll pass them by a smaller margin. If a driver sees a cyclist with a child seat on the bike, they’ll pass it by a greater margin. These are behavioural effects. They’re generally entirely unconscious or almost entirely unconscious. And once drivers think that cyclists are equipped with beacons or transponders that their cars are automatically adapting for, we will see the same kind of behavioural consequences. In other words, drivers on average, will give cyclists a smaller margin. And if we have a situation in which actually, not all cyclists have these this equipment, whether it’s 50% or 90%, then you’re going to have some cyclists at least who are exposed to a greater risk thanks to this tech than they would otherwise face.

Carlton Reid 1:03:55
I’ve been speaking to Tome Software and they’ve said yes, it chances are it won’t be beacons, it won’t be transponder tech, it will be, you know, cyclists and pedestrians. The phraseology, as you know, is VRUs, vulnerable road users. They’ll be spotted without any form of technology. So how likely is that and, well, doesn’t that then answer your issues?

Peter Norton 1:04:18
Well, I have a hard time picturing how we get automated driving systems, forgetting about levels of autonomy, just basic automated driving systems that reliably detect bicycles that are not equipped with anything. Just because we know from the research that detecting cyclists is one of the hardest things that autonomous vehicle developers and automated driving systems developers have had to face. So I don’t see how these systems protect bicyclists. And I think they may indeed increase the risk for cyclists because if they give drivers the message that the car is watching out for the cyclists for them, but the car is actually not doing that particularly well then we actually make the situation for cyclists more dangerous, not less dangerous.

Carlton Reid 1:05:15
But if you’re Trek, and their micro brand Bontrager, if you’re Cannondale, if you’re all of these, you know, high end brands, or you’re Garmin, and you’re going to equip, because they’ve got the Garmin, they’ve got like radar cameras in some of them right now. So if you’re going to equip the cyclists, the rich, in effect, the rich cyclist of the future with this kind of tech, well, they’re going to they’re going to do that. Why wouldn’t Cannondale and Trek, you know, produce this tech because they produce and they’re already advocate for, for instance, you know, daylight running LED lights, they all really advocated that advocate made that advocate for helmets. So come bike companies want to sell more things, they will sell more things, if cyclists survive into old age, because they’ll be able to sell them bikes for forever. So bike companies are going to be doing this aren’t they?

Peter Norton 1:06:18
I assume they will. I mean, this depends in part on what the tech really proves it can do and whether cyclists are convinced that it does deliver these promised benefits. But let’s assume that the tech does work fairly well, then certainly there are going to be some cyclists who want it. If it’s fairly expensive, as I think probably will have to be, then not all cyclists will have it. Already we have a situation. And I think it’s it’s what we would naturally expect, where cyclists have different risk calculations and different budgets and arrive at different conclusions about how much protection they want. Do they want a helmet? If so, what kind do they want hive is? Do they want lights? You know, a lot of times the calculation is a convenience calculation. My bike is not, does not have lights right now, but it’s dark, but it’s a short ride, I’ll take the chance, I’ll just be careful. These are normal human risk calculations. And I think the tech will become a part of that normal risk calculation. Now it gets complicated, of course, when systems get designed around assumptions, such as whether a cyclist has certain equipment or not, whether cars have certain capabilities or not. And if we have cyclists who are equipped, and we have road design decisions, and driver decisions that respond to the assumption that we have cyclists who are equipped, then we’re changing really what begins as an individual choice by an individual cyclist to get the high end bike with the high end safety tech. And we’re now involving the other cyclists who have an older bike who have a budget. And their safety exposure has changed through no action of their own. Because road networks, traffic cycling are all components of complex systems. And no individual action within a complex system is taken in perfect isolation.

Carlton Reid 1:08:38
But Peter, I’m safe. Who cares about everybody else? I’m, I am on a $5,000 Super Deluxe, fantastic roadmachine. I’ve also paid $1,000 for the latest in bicyclist detection. I’m saved, who cares about anybody else? What is the problem with that?

Peter Norton 1:09:02
Well, I don’t think I have any objection to an individual cyclist who wants to put out the money for this this high tech safety equipment, that’s fine at an as an individual choice. What concerns me is the systemic effects. And I’m not making the individual cyclist here responsible for those because now we’re talking about policy. We’re talking about law. We’re talking about engineering standards. Could you know things like lane widths, how you separate bike lanes, if at all from traffic. And it’s at that level that that kind of tech has some serious implications, implications that the individual cyclist who has a big budget, I know may not be their concern. And I don’t have a quarrel with that. But it is a concern of the society that we live in and the people who make the decisions about that society. So for example, if the tech turns out to actually make cyclist cycling safer for those who have it, but more dangerous for those who don’t, does that become grounds in policy for requiring all cyclists to have the necessary equipment for cars to detect them? If that does, then we now have problems about access to cycling among those with budgets, or deterring cycling in a society where we need more, not less for lots of reasons, including sustainability and public health. So these are where these these developments become problematic. We are not protecting these unequipped cyclist when we have equipped cyclists, and we are in to some degree making their situation more serious as drivers come to expect cyclists to be equipped. And eventually even road designers. Road authorities start to assume that cyclists should be equipped, perhaps even the law may begin to expect this such that, you know, an injured party in a courtroom may have a weaker case, legally, if they didn’t have this tech that, you know, nobody had just a few years earlier. This is not speculation. We’ve seen this with bicycle helmets where once the bicycle helmets are out there, some authorities have decided that all cyclists must have them. And there have been court cases where the cyclist who was one who did not have a helmet was at a disadvantage after an injury because of not having a helmet that could take on a new life with the safety tech that we’re talking about.

Carlton Reid 1:12:02
You’re talking from a like a dystopian point of view, basically, historian, and you’ve seen this happen, though your your dystopia is based on what actually has happened in history?

Peter Norton 1:12:17
Oh, yes. Yeah, you know, experience is your best teacher in history is just a sort of systemic study of human experience and the lessons that come from it. I mean, the most elementary lesson about road safety from history is that safety is not some linear measure that is neutral in its relationship with people. Safety is always: safety for whom? Safety is always a question of priority. Safety is always a question of recognition. So there’s there’s a sort of official favour that safety confers but also sort of unofficial recognition. If a say a pedestrian is in a roadway, in conflict with the travel path of a motor vehicle it appears obvious from our early 21st century point of view that the pedestrian has it as a task, and that is to get out of the way. That’s a point of view that did not exist a century ago, when when the prevailing notion was exactly the opposite. And so this means we can’t talk about safety without talking about power without talking about priority without talking about the inequality really between categories of road users. I heard you use the term vulnerable road user a few minutes ago. And the term connotes a road user who is in some way less than optimal as a road user. But we could have a different vocabulary where we have road users, like pedestrians, like cyclists, and then we have dangerous road users or DRUs. Why is it that we have VRUs but not DRUs? These are all questions that history can help us be alert to and it’s really worth being alert to them because, you know, for a lot of reasons, number one being climate change. We are overdue for a rethink about how we’ve chosen these priorities and who we should favour in these conflicts.

Carlton Reid 1:14:44
So, priority and prioritising. I do hate using the term, absolutely, it’s an ugly term VRUs prioritising pedestrians and cyclists with that actually, if that has And say we live in a perfect world. And that happened. The oldest tech actually prioritised cyclists and pedestrians. That’s that’s that’s the beautiful thing where we’re holding out for Peter. If that happened, would that then make it incredibly hard to sell cars to people? Because we’re going to be prioritising these people who have never been prioritised before?

Peter Norton 1:15:21
The answer is definitely yes. And I can say definitely, because we had that dilemma before. We had that dilemma when the question of who do we prioritise between motor vehicles and pedestrians first arose over a century ago? And the answer was, if you prioritise pedestrians, as was universal over a century ago, then drivers’ driving experience is diminished, you can’t go fast, you have to yield frequently. And certainly the driver’s experience is worse. Now, their experience as human beings may not be worse, because in such a world, they may find that actually, they don’t have to drive as much. So a driver is not existentially a driver who can be nothing else. Every driver is a potential pedestrian or transit user or cyclist. And so maybe not everywhere, maybe only in some places, maybe only in cities or relatively dense areas. And maybe not even on all streets in such areas. We can reimagine what streets are for I think it’s worth doing because we have to find some way to have a sustainable future. That’s going to require less driving. And I think that, while that may sound scary in a car dependent world can look attractive in a less car dependent world. I mean, frankly, it’s a lot like how not smoking sounds scary when you’re addicted. But it feels liberating once you’ve stopped smoking for a while. So Ah, yes, the answer to your question is yes, it could be a bad experience for drivers if we prioritise pedestrians and cyclists in some areas. Another reason why we don’t have to speculate about that, by the way is that there are places where drivers can drive but are not prioritised. Where streets are shared shared spaces, or streets in the Netherlands, where cars are, are admitted as guests according to the terminology there. And in such shared spaces, people can and do drive. It’s a different experience. It’s not necessarily much worse, depending on you know, how much of a hurry that driver is in. And such techniques don’t have to be used everywhere, but they can be used somewhere. And some places they they can be a beautiful

Peter Norton 1:18:15
possibility that we haven’t seriously considered enough.

Carlton Reid 1:18:19
What would be your advice to bike companies who are looking at this technology? Do you think it’s it’s something they ought to clear off? Or do you think they’re also tech companies and bicycles are tech? Do you think they they are absolutely going to go with this anyway, no matter what somebody like you says, so let’s let’s what what should they be doing?

Peter Norton 1:18:42
Well, I think that’s gonna depend a lot on on the particular markets, there probably are markets these are the markets where the cyclist is still not something drivers expect to see. This is, of course, practically ubiquitous in the USA, but many other countries as well. In such environments, there’s certainly going to be interest in this tech among cyclists, and perhaps even eventually, among road authorities of various kinds. I think cyclists as consumers need to be careful about what they’re being sold. They should be sceptical if they’re, if they’re if the messages that this tech is sort of automatically protecting them. I mean, after all, the overwhelming majority of cars on the road have no means of picking up the tech that may be in the bikes, so they can’t expect drivers to be automatically adjusting through some sort of technological, some sort of signal between the two vehicles. It’s frankly not clear to me what the tech in the bike will do for the cyclist, until the vast majority of cars have the tech on board to adjust accordingly to the cyclists. That’s a piece I don’t really get, I don’t see how we get from the where we are now, where the vast majority of cars would have no means to detect anything in the bike to a world where the cyclists can expect that any car passing them, or approaching them, is detecting the bike automatically. So I don’t know how we get to that point, it may be that I’m even misunderstanding something about how this tech is supposed to work. I’ve been confused by it, in part, because the messages I’ve been getting from the tech companies has been conflicting on this point. But to return your question, should should bike companies do it? Well, yeah, I mean, if, if they’ve got a market that’s interested in paying for this stuff, and the cyclists knows what they’re getting, and is not misled into imagining they’re getting more protection, than it’s worth. Sure, I just have a hard time seeing that the technology can deliver the safety benefit that would be necessary to justify the expense in the bike right now.

Carlton Reid 1:21:28
You’re almost saying that if it was just a transponder that was talking to a driverless car or an equipped human driver car, that’s one thing, but then what’s actually going to cyclists gonna have, and they’re going to have, like, you know, a heads up display to tell him that there’s a threat coming for the variety of ways that this tech can be sold to the cyclist, if it’s going to be just something that keeps cars away from you. Well, that’s one thing. But if it’s all gonna say out, but you can actually see when there’s a car about to run you over, you can jump off the road. That’s also something that’s you know, you need more things on a bike. To do that, you’d have to have a display, you’d have to have haptics telling you look, you know, in 15 seconds is this motorist is going to hit, you’re going to have all this kind of stuff. So it’s you’re making cycling into, you know, Judge Dredd.

Peter Norton 1:22:23
It’s very hard for me to imagine any cyclist — and I’m speaking as one who would have any use for information coming in from some kind of sensor system — that could possibly be anything but a detriment to the sensor system that every cyclist already has, namely, their vision and their hearing. So a cyclist in a busy environment, your vision and your hearing are on high alert. And any sensor system that tries to crowd that high alert, personal sensor system with more data, it’s going to be an annoyance. It can’t tell you much that your senses can’t already more reliably tell you. I mean, you might have some kind of threat map on your handlebar, that tells you what’s up ahead. But the attention you’d have to give to that screen would be a distraction in itself. And the reliability of what it was showing you would have to be very poor, because this would be real time data coming in from perhaps actively transmitting vehicles as well as whatever the sensor system on the bike is picking up. I can’t imagine a voice or haptic system or audio signals or visual signals that would be reliable enough and relevant enough to a cyclist in a busy environment to be anything but a nuisance.

Carlton Reid 1:24:04
I’m wondering how much of this technology is North American in in it just almost everything about it is because you know, a you put you’re going to prioritise the motorist and not the cyclists and pedestrians but I was speaking to Tome Software and one of the scenarios that they gave, which is which sounds sensible is, you know, if you’re a motorist, and you’re coming and you’re like on a rural American road, and you’re coming up the crest of a hill, you can’t see maybe there’s other reasons why you can’t see and it might be foggy and you get this extra information that there’s actually a cyclist the other side of that hill, then that’s got to be a good thing. But then I put to Jake of Tome Software, who’s the CEO, I said we get Isn’t that like a North American way of looking at that. It is in that if you are in In the Netherlands, you’ve got 1000 cyclists over the brow of the hill, and you will just naturally be going slower anyway. So how much of this all of this this beaconization tech? How much of it do you think, comes from an North American worldview?

Peter Norton 1:25:18
Well, certainly, yeah, this this tech is sort of based on the assumption that you as a cyclist are the anomaly and almost everywhere in North America that is, that is a fair assumption. So you know, of course, it’s perfectly fine if a company wants to cater to a North American market. And of course, there’s plenty of other places in the world where, where this is the the norm as well, you know, Australia is a good example. So sure, the tech could be of particular use in environments where cyclists are anomalies and rare and still be worthy. I have to say, I still wonder, do I really want a bike that’s trying to alert me to another cyclist coming? Or do I really, if I’m, if I’m a driver? If will I start depending on my vehicle to respond to a cyclist automatically, such that I am paying less attention as a driver. I have a hard time picturing this tech actually delivering a benefit either to the driver or to the cyclist. Except in such, you know, idiosyncratic situations as as to be too rare to justify the the tech.

Carlton Reid 1:26:46
You’re a historian. You’ve seen how this has played out before. The tech companies do you think they could do with attending one of your courses? And and actually getting a background in the history of

Carlton Reid 1:27:05
technological misuses? Or the history of privatisation on roads? Do you think that that potential if that’s what they’re missing, they’re missing? They’re missing quite an important indicator of how their technology, however benign they think it might be now, and oh, it’s going to save cyclists isn’t that great thing,’ but how that technology might be used in a non benign way by actors who don’t have cyclists’ interests at heart?

Peter Norton 1:27:35
Certainly. So, you know, every tech innovation is a disruption and a balance of power, you know, balances of power. It’s a familiar term in international relations in military standoffs. But they’re ubiquitous in everyday life. And innovation, shifts the balance, you know, the cell phone, suddenly your boss can call you on weekend, you know, or email or whatever they can, they can. Your weekends are no longer sacred, right? That’s a shift in the balance of power. So every innovation and safety also shifts, priorities, shifts, balances of power, sometimes in dramatic ways. And I’m actually somewhat sceptical about the tech companies that profess that they are merely interested in improving safety. I’m not sure that the deficiency there is that they don’t know that tech shifts balances of power, or they just rather not get into that, because it’s inconvenient. In the history of road transport, I mean, it’s it’s packed with these effects. So if you think about what makes roads and streets safe, you could have roads and streets safe if vehicles were equipped with speed governors that made it impossible to drive faster than 25 miles an hour. Well, that was the preferred ideal safety technology of a century ago. When thousands of people in every large American city were on the record favouring speed governors for vehicles. I mean, I’m using a case from Cincinnati where we have the data. But Cincinnati being a fairly typical American city, we can extrapolate that to other cities as well. There was a sense that the way you make a road safe is to limit the maximum speed of the fast vehicles. Well, of course, it’s also quite possible to make the road safe in the sense that you have fewer casualties. If you banish pedestrians, and in effect in most of urban and suburban America, pedestrians are banished from the vast majority of street space, the vast majority of time at the time. And while this is far from perfect, in fact, the pedestrian fatality rate in the US is is pretty disastrous. To the extent to which we keep pedestrians off the roads, we actually do successfully prevent pedestrian casualties. But we do it by creating a class of road users who are practically like illegal aliens in their own environments. And it’s an important question to ask is that the right way to do it? Now, beacons and bicycles are analogous in the sense that they implicitly suggest that the cyclist is the anomaly the cyclist is that around which the system has to adapt so that it continued to prioritise those that it prioritises. And there’s nothing wrong with prioritising in the abstract, but we need to think about who we prioritise prioritising is inevitable, it’s necessary. There’s no way you can have an absolutely level playing field. This means that we have to think carefully about who we favour and under what circumstances. Right now, to use the North American example we favour the motorist in making this number up, but something like 99.9% of the time.

Peter Norton 1:31:26
And we should be asking is that the way to get safety to return to the tech people. If they’re talking about introducing safety technology, to systems that already prioritised drivers everywhere, then their safety technology becomes another reinforcing component of that system. Another thing that makes that system continue to prioritise and perpetuate the priority of the dominant road users. But tech can subvert these prioritizations as well. So tech can shifts balances of power in surprising ways. Tech can enable the people who have been subordinated we to use the North American example again, we know that video that the web, that handheld cameras, phones with video capacities, really brought attention to a problem, you know, that’s been around for over a century, namely, the violence that has accompanied the arrest by police of people of colour in the USA. Well, technology, to a degree, at least has helped to shift that balance of power by exposing what’s going on. I’d love to see the tech people that you’re talking to find ways to use technology such that it doesn’t merely help the cyclist or the pedestrian survive in a car dominated system, but may help the cyclist or the pedestrian turn the tables to some degree on on the motorists. I’d love to see the tech people working on that problem. I think they would have a big market for it.

Carlton Reid 1:33:28
Well, there is that kind of tech out there. And I think Tome has actually been working with the Give Me Green people which is a system involves equipping, stoplights traffic lights with with this technology. And I guess it’s similar to what happens in Copenhagen with the you know, the green wave technology in that if you’ve got a bicycle equipped with this transponder that basically turns the lights green for the cyclist. Of course that would lead to merry hell from motorists say well hang on, we’re stopped, you know, every traffic light by the cyclist. But that basically is what you’re saying. That’s technology that puts the power to a different user. You can turn lightly.

Peter Norton 1:34:20
This is this is a great example. And I I’d love to see more attention in that direction. The predominant attention I’m hearing about is automated detection of cyclists by motor vehicles so that drivers can continue to assume safely that they have no cyclists in their path. Now, they already do that to a great degree. This technology would enable them to continue to do that. But I agree and I’m I’m encouraged that we’re talking about tech that may prioritise cyclists under some conditions. This, of course, immediately raises as, as you’ve already suggested, political questions about whether this would be feasible in any jurisdiction, given the powerful influence of motorists voices in this kind of arena.

Peter Norton 1:35:20
But it’s a great start, and I applaud it.

Carlton Reid 1:35:24
But a pandemic has shown that many cities I mean, Paris is a fantastic example. Many cities and many, many leaders of the cities on that actively trying to get rid of cars in cities. Now some one of the ways of getting rid of cars in cities, of course, is just prioritising cyclists by giving them closing off roads to the vehicles, opening them, allowing them to stay open for questions. And so that’s one way. Another way would just be to always make sure that cyclists get green. So motorists always on red. And then motorists may go hang on, what’s the point of me driving through the city, I’ll just get a bike.

Peter Norton 1:36:05
Yes, that’s that’s the ideal. And yes, the pandemic has really helped us see what’s possible as sidewalks have been widened into roadways, as people who were driving or people who are riding in buses are turning to bicycles to avoid the crowding. And in the in the bus. This opens up a lot of possibilities, and makes possible alternatives that didn’t look practical. Just a year ago. Paris is a wonderful example in that regard.

Carlton Reid 1:36:43
Peter, that’s been absolutely fascinating, as always. You’ve been on the show before, you have also been on the War on Cars podcast recently, you’re getting around. Now I’d like to finish by going back to a question I put to you before, which I don’t think I’ve got a full answer on and this is not your fault. But I didn’t get a full answer on this because you could have plugged your book here. So I asked you whether those tech companies is tech people who are doing all of this work on on transponders, not transponders, whatever they could actually gen up on on what’s happened previously in history. So one way is yes, they could listen to the 45 minutes of you talking today, they could listen to when you’ve done the show before, you could go to the War on Cars podcast, or and here’s where you plug your book, Peter, or they go for, they’re not gonna go for a full on course, they go for a book, which tells them all this, and what book might that be?

Peter Norton 1:37:43
“Fighting traffic, the dawn of the motor age in the American city.”

Peter Norton 1:37:48
I am happy to plug it. But I also, you know, I rejoice at being one voice in a beautiful chorus of voices that are saying essentially the same thing: namely, that the car dependent places many of us live in, including nearly all of us in the USA, are not inevitable, they are not the product of mass demand. They’re not the product of a free market working according to the laws of supply and demand. They’re not the product of a cultural preference for individual vehicular mobility. These are versions of history that have been packaged and sold to us by people who have a stake in this history. So I mean, besides studying the history of, let’s say car dependency in the USA, I’ve also studied the history of this history. In other words, who’s been telling us this history. And this has analogues worldwide, but I’m, by far best informed about the US case. And in the US case, the first people to tell us the history of the automobile in the USA, were the people who sold the automobile in the USA. They told us a version of history, whereby the car dependency that we now have is the product of a car culture of an American’s love affair with the automobile, of a mass preference for individual mobility in vehicles. And one of the reasons why this version of history has been so successful in its propagation is that it’s by no means false. it’s it’s a it’s a half truth, and half truths are much easier to pass off then, you know, flagrant falsehoods so the half truth is cars are nice to have. They are convenience in many circumstances, and driving for many people is or can be a pleasure. But, you know, the car domination we have now has a lot less to do with people’s preferences than with the circumstances in which people have to make their choices. Now, circumstances were quite possibly your employer set up a new suburban campus out of town away from bus routes with vast free parking lots, such that if you want to get there and you don’t want to make it into a daily burden, you’re going to drive there and the the entire system that gets you from your home to that destination has been redesigned around the assumption that you will drive there and redesigned around the assumption that there’s no other way to get there. And inevitably, people will start to conform to that. And you end up with a system that people find it very hard to escape, or to question. History reveals that people were questioning this en masse, relentlessly from the early days in the 1920s, right through the era that we tend to call the automobile age here, namely the 1950s and the 1960s, when, particularly the one car family was still the norm, and typically the husband monopolised the car, and the women were left stranded at home. And they continued to protest car domination in ways that have been really completely ignored by the people who tell us the history of the car. They protested by illegally blocking streets to slow vehicles down to demand lower speed limits to demand stop signs and traffic lights, such that they end the children they were minding could safely use the street still, as what we now call vulnerable road users.

Peter Norton 1:42:16
The bicycle companies interested in marketing their bicycles today might have something to learn from that history. Because they would be huge beneficiaries. If we have a future that returns to a less carbon dominated model, a future where cycling isn’t something that you engage in only if you have high risk tolerance, the market of people who would ride a bike if they just felt safe, riding a bike is enormous. And I don’t think you’re going to reach that market optimally with tech on the bike that is supposed to protect you. I think you reach that market optimally by creating environments where you don’t need that tech. And the the incentive for the cycle manufacturers is that they can now sell this bike to people who would not want to ride even with the tech close to fast cars, but would take real joy in riding in a safe environment. So there’s a lot of possibilities for our future. I’m disappointed that a lot of the tech that we’re imagining is predicated on the assumption that that automobile domination is a given. I recognise and celebrate the fact that some of the tech does implicitly question this. I’d like to see a lot more of that.

Carlton Reid 1:43:52
Thanks to author and historian Peter Norton there. And thanks also to Jake Sigal for giving the technologist’s point of view. If you enjoyed today’s episode, it’d be really helpful for us if you could like subscribe and comment on this Spokesmen Cycling Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you are listening to today’s episode. Shownotes transcripts and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. This is Carlton Reid signing off and suggesting you get out there and ride …

Your podcast catcher not showing in links above (black circle with three dots)? Loads more on PodLink. Show is also on Spotify. and Google Podcasts.

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 257: What’s the Plural of Moose: Moose, Meese, or Mooses?

Sunday 13th September 2020

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: David Bernstein and Jim Moss

LINKS:

NBC Gold Tour de France

Sturgis rally super-spreader event

Prudhomme positive

Sunday’s Tour de France stage

New doping product?

Anthony McCrossan

Boa fit system

Cycliq

CatEye

SeeSense lights

Apple Watch fall alert

FROM GRAMMARLY: The only correct plural of moose is moose. … Moose derives from Algonquian, a Native American language. It kept the same plural ending it had in its original language instead of adopting the normal S ending of most English plurals.

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to Episode 257 of the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast. This show was recorded on Sunday 13th September 2020.

David Bernstein 0:24
The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast. For shownotes links and all sorts of other information please visit our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now here are the spokesman.

Carlton Reid 1:09
Weird, isn’t it — the cyclocross season has just started yet we’re only 2/3rds of the way through the Tour de France. And the Slovenian takeover of the Tour de France is one of the topics for the first half of our show today, recorded seconds after the end of Sunday’s stage from Lyon to Grand Colombier and yet another Slovenian one-two. I’m Carlton Reid and joining me are show regulars David Bernstein and Jim Moss. After chewing through some of the Tour highlights – and low lights – of the first two weeks we talk products which, really, is just David’s way of bringing tips to the show. It is Episode 257 of the spokesmen cycling round table podcast and we’ve got a microphone access for Jim we’ve we’ve improved his sound no end we’ve just been tweaking everything we’ve been tweaking you, Jim. You’re coming across loud and clear. There’s no more edginess to your voice in that was a few pops and squeaks and whistles the last time but now you’re good. So that means Jim, how are you doing?

Jim Moss 2:25
I’m doing great. After wasting 20 minutes your time getting this set up.

Carlton Reid 2:31
But and you’re still refusing you’re refusing to do what we’ve advised you to do. And that’s well, you know, and boy, you

Jim Moss 2:39
Yeah, spend $3,000 and buy a Mac look better than $3,000 in buying another bike. Although, take it into the garage somehow.

Carlton Reid 2:50
Yeah, good answer and the little giggling you heard that is is David David Bernstein. Hi, David. How you doing?

David Bernstein 2:58
I’m good, Carlton. It’s a happy July. I’m enjoying the heat of July. As we enjoy watching the guys go across the roads and mountains of France. Oh wait, it’s September, shoot. I’m just glad there’s a race.

Jim Moss 3:15
Hey, David, did you get the snowfall last week?

David Bernstein 3:18
Yeah. Sorry. Everybody has to get the weather report. Yeah, snowed here. And I know it snowed where you are and it life is good because it’s you know that gonna be back up in the 80s Fahrenheit today. And I’m already I’m already in my Fred cast kit ready to go out for a ride when we’re done.

Carlton Reid 3:35
Sweet, because we are having a mini heatwave here in the UK as well. So it’s kind of weird.

David Bernstein 3:40
You’re probably not getting the smoke that we have though, because we’ve got the smoke from the fires in California, Oregon and Washington. But it’ll get there eventually.

Carlton Reid 3:49
I yeah, I mean, they look dystopian Blade Runner type. Are you getting the Blade Runner effect or is that only in San Francisco and stuff?

David Bernstein 3:58
Yeah, no, I mean like the sunsets here. There’s just this this orange orb in the sky but it’s nothing like what you see in the pictures of San Francisco or my parents. You know, we’re in in Los Angeles, and you just can’t see two or three blocks down the road. It’s it’s dystopian is a good Well, I think dystopian is the word for 2020. So

Carlton Reid 4:17
and dystopian and the golden orb in the sky. I’m going to bring those two together, David because he wants to talk about NBC gold.

David Bernstein 4:25
Yeah, well, okay, so we got we talked about this last time. How I was going to bite the bullet and pay for NBC Sports Gold is 55 bucks or something like that for the year. And that gives you according to NBC commercial free coverage. And I think that NBC I wanted to use the word deceptive my wife told me to say no, just say that they oversold it. The expectation my expectation wise, oh, well, it would be you know, Phil Liggett and Bob Roll, doing their commentary. Fascinating, you know, Phil’s at home in England and Bob’s at home and you know, in New England, and they’re they’re not even in France, but I would expect it was it was gonna be Bob and Phil. And when they would go to a break, that it would just be silent and it would be commercial free and we’d still be able to see Well, that’s not what we’re getting. What we’re getting is Anthony McCrossan and Simon Guerin’s doing, basically doing commentary. I believe they are in France. And they’re doing it over the French television feed. I’m not much of a fan of Anthony’s style of commentating. So it gets by by two weeks in it’s getting a little bit grating, but it’s

Carlton Reid 5:50
Anti-English here?

David Bernstein 5:52
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, not at all. I’m just not a fan of his style period. Full stop. I just it’s just not my Am I right? Was he doing the English commentary at the Giro? When we were there Who was that?

Carlton Reid 6:06
Yeah, no would it be yeah In fact he was because in the in the in the breaks between when he could wander away that I was trying to him so yes he yeah he does these are frequently he’s he’s very often the English commentator lots of races. Yeah, I think I’m gonna take it as in you know, to the crowd who are physically there.

David Bernstein 6:26
Right We don and I, my wife Donna, not the spokesperson Donna, we were comment commenting about you know, an Eliot Viviani would win a sprint in the Giro and he would take Viviani it just, it’s stuck in our mind anyway, we’re no it’s nice to have commercial free it’s nice to be able to turn on the Apple TV or turn on the Roku and boom, you know, it’s just on and it’s it’s constant. So I do appreciate that. And that’s worth some some it’s definitely worth the money because I’m not chasing after my VPN and, and finding different feeds you know, from Australia. Or Belgium or wherever. I just think that NBC what they what they sold they oversold it so I just wanted to mention that I’m curious to hear what our what our listeners what is ad free?

Carlton Reid 7:13
They haven’t mis-sold it.

David Bernstein 7:17
it is correct. It is as it is. It’s exactly what they sold. It’s ad free. You know in that, Jim. are you watching the NBC coverage?

Jim Moss 7:27
No, I’m watching Comcast. Well, yes. NBC coverage on Comcast.

David Bernstein 7:31
Yeah. Watch it because when they when they complete a stage, you know, then they go to the studio and it’s Yeah, oh, shoot. I can’t remember his name. But there’s Christian Vandevelde and Chris Horner.

Jim Moss 7:45
Right. And,

David Bernstein 7:48
yeah, and they’re, of course not in France, either as they normally would be, I believe. Yeah, anyway, it’s I I there’s pluses and minuses to both I just think like I said, NBC oversold it. I got what they promised I got commercial free coverage. I just think that they they oversold it anyway. I’m curious to hear what our what our listeners think so that’s my my comment on NBC Sports gold, but, man, am I happy that the tour is on and that we’ve made it through two weeks and I hope that we continue to have negative COVID tests tomorrow from the peloton.

Jim Moss 8:23
Yeah, I was I would I have been totally caught off guard by how well it is run. And the fact that the vast majority of the spectators are wearing masks. The mean obviously the team the writers, as soon as they can breathe again or or, you know, two minutes after they’ve arrived across the finish line, someone’s putting a mask on them. And and I mean, I just did not expect the tour to even get this far. I figured that the virus would get there be all over and I’m amazed. totally amazed.

Carlton Reid 9:00
What a week one a kind of like a a one week, three week stage race is what I thought it’s going to be. So yeah, that’s pretty important. So David, you’re right, tomorrow is the rest day tomorrow is the day when they will then get tested again. So what do you think about the wiping the slate clean rule change so that was very convenient in that, you know, those four teams with a one strike and you’re out or to strike and you’re out lock against their name, they now haven’t got that they’re back to having nothing and they could stay in it as long as they stay clear. But do you think that that rule change was a bit shifty

David Bernstein 9:45
I don’t know about shifty. I think two things I mean, like with anything, you know, the fact that the that American football has restarted or you know that that American baseball restarted or that soccer restarted or cycling restarted I think with all of these things, there’s there’s several things going on here. One, I think every day that goes by we learn more and more. If we were having this conversation in April, we would, we would say, one thing that would be different from what we might say today. So I think that I think that with this virus and with this situation, we’re learning new things every single day. So, a rule change may or may not be shifted or it just may be the the, the adaptation to new learnings. On the other hand, and this is why I mentioned all those other sports. People need to make a living and people need to get back to work. And so Money Talks. And so when we talk about big money enterprises, like all of the sports I mentioned, including cycling, those, those the governing bodies of those sports and those who put on events are constantly trying to figure out more and more ways to ensure the success of their events and that they they will continue. So, football sorry except for NFL.

Jim Moss 11:13
No college. Oh, well, you know,

Jim Moss 11:19
I was spinning through channels last night and saw the Georgia LSU game with nobody wearing a mask and the stadium full. We’re going to be calling that the new Sturgis rally.

David Bernstein 11:36
And for those who don’t know, Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota, that became a super spreading event. Recently

Jim Moss 11:44
people in eight states with the disease now So

David Bernstein 11:47
yeah, I so so I don’t think it i don’t know i I’m normally cynical in this case. I think that they’re just making adjustments that are necessary for you know, adapt to new learnings and also trying to keep the race on the road, I’m sure I was shocked that none of the riders were positive less last week. I will be shocked if none of the riders were positive this week because especially earlier I think it was this week or maybe it was the end of last week when they were on the climbs and and the spectators were doing what they normally do, which is literally yell right in the faces of the riders as they go up these climbs. And so and there, I’ve seen enough people not in masks that I’m I’m I mean, I’m hopeful that nobody will be positive, but I will not. I will be very surprised if there are no rider positives.

Jim Moss 12:40
Of course, the classic that I saw the first week was a group of people not wearing masks together and one of them had on a USA t shirt. So I thought well, there we go. That’s representing you, idiots.

Carlton Reid 12:54
I mean, we could still get if two strikes happen to Team Tomorrow, they’re still out. Yeah. So it’s just just a few move that you know that. If they had one tomorrow, then they’re out so it could still the we could still see teams go home tomorrow, in effect.

David Bernstein 13:12
I wonder I wonder if after today Ineos is kind of hoping they would love to be sent home?

Carlton Reid 13:19
Yeah, I’ve got I’ve got a question about that late, okay. Okay, coming up for sure. So, um, Prudhomme, of course, famously, was positive. I mean, how ironic is that the actual organiser and he deeply ironic his policies, he had the prime minister in the car with him at the same time, who hasn’t, as far as I know, hasn’t come down with with a positive test so far, but pretty unusual circumstances.

David Bernstein 13:52
I think there was a certain amount of irony to prove I’m having a positive and thankfully asymptomatic you They were they said he was asymptomatic. I well, but I think that it, I think that it, it shows that the times that we’re in. And it was and there was a certain amount of, as I said, irony associated and then, as you said, Carlton, you’re right, you know, the day before he tests positive. He spends the entire day in the lead car with the Prime Minister of France. Now, every every picture that I saw every clip that I saw, they were both wearing masks. So, you know, hopefully the Prime Minister France didn’t didn’t catch whatever prodrome had, but yeah, it was. I think it was surprising that he was the one who had the positive and none of the riders. Mm hmm.

Carlton Reid 14:49
So let’s get into the actual racing itself. And you’ve already mentioned, the woeful what you’ve intimated that have the woeful tour. so far. Any ideas? Do you think? I mean, there’s two parts to this question. So do you think they kind of almost pre planned kit because they thought they knew that you move visma will be the strongest team. So they focus maybe more on prepping for the gyro. But should they have nevertheless still brought Froome and grant Thomas because they’ve been riding in the race to Reto adriatica and Thomas came third in that lap finish today, didn’t it? So they might not have been GC contenders in the tour. Those two but they could have at least helped last year’s winner on the climbs who was absolutely pasted today, but with with better support might not have been.

David Bernstein 15:50
First of all, I want to I want to now Now I have to say something that Anthony McCrossan said and I have to walk back at my previous comments. Yeah today in McCrossan-speak, Bernal was pedaling squares. He just and the look on his face he did not look but then again Quintana didn’t look that great either. It was funny before today funny. Before today I was planning on coming on and saying, Wow, isn’t it amazing that there are four or five Colombians in the top 10 and then a couple of slow I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s crazy. It’s here’s all these new cycling powerhouses in our sport. And you don’t see the Europeans top and you know, or pardon me, you don’t see that the French and the Italians and the and the Americans and the Brits. It’s it’s really it’s a new day. But then today was also a new day because clearly barnaul did not have the legs to keep up with jumbo visma but who does? And and I say this in gym. I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are on this because everybody knows that. at the gym, and I feel slightly differently when it comes to doping in cycling. But when I when I was watching, I’m not making an accusation, okay. It’s just the way my brain works and the way I’ve been conditioned, I watched the guys on the front from jumbo visma did and I thought to myself, Hmm, what are they taking?

Jim Moss 17:16
Yeah, I actually I sort of feel the same way, as long as we have professional, whatever, or high level amateur whatever we’re going to have doping. And so yeah, it’s it’s, what are they taking? But, but I also think there’s another difference in this year’s race. And I see it as coaching. And I know that sounds a little different. But you see so many teams that they set up their, their, their plan for today’s race, you know, and a few of me see the plans are like, well, we think this is going to happen, and this is going to happen with these other teams. And I think that what we’re seeing is is a little bit different in that coaches are more likely to change their plans mid race and reacting to what’s going on and who’s not going on. I mean, and when you I don’t know, it may be team strength or I think a lot of its team strength I don’t see yumbo Yes, but you know there’s no dominant team in the race but I just see things happening that seems to change mid race that make it very different race make it very chin.

Carlton Reid 18:31
Yeah. Jim on that point that that clearly is because the the team managers set on the cars are watching the TV so they can see what’s happening, listen to raise radio, as well of course, and then relaying all of that to their their team, which then says, well, radios, these earpieces are having a massive effect. I mean, it probably You’re right, this tour is probably more noticeable than in previous years, that res radios are having this massive effect. On tactics. So is that a good thing or a bad thing that we have raised radios? I know we’re kind of it’s a given we now have these things. But do you? Would you still prefer to see it? You know, old school?

Jim Moss 19:17
I am. I’m thinking, I’m Yes. Sorry. I’ll audio pause. Um, no. I mean, we make a lot more changes, maybe. But we still would have had a writer whose sole job was to talk to the car, race up and tell all the team riders. You know what the car just said, and drift, you know, and take water bottles. And so the information is probably changing more times, and it’s probably reacting faster, but we always got information to the people in the front who needed the information. We just did it fewer times and less dynamic, I think, and we burnt one guy out. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 20:02
Say, David, are you also in that frame of mind? You’re kind of not doing radios now.

David Bernstein 20:08
Know what my feeling. I mean, what would you ask what we would prefer what I would prefer is old school with no radios having, because I think that that that it’s no different than another sport. Well see okay in American football now quarterbacks have radio so that they can get the plays from the sidelines. But if you think of any other sport, the best you’re going to get is that is the coach yelling from the sidelines and maybe you can hear the coach or when you’re subbed out of the game, you come in the coach talks to you or when there’s a timeout, the coach talks to you. To me, that’s old school and we can do that in cycling as Jim said, you know, the car can pull up and, and maybe give a Domestique a message to give to the leader. And that’s really More like some of those other sports, whether it’s it’s soccer or football or hockey or what have you. So I would prefer that because you get more of the brains and the tactics of each individual in the team as compared to somebody in their ear telling them what to do so I think that it makes for a more well rounded cyclist and a more in some ways, exciting race. That said, I think most people know how I feel about technology, which is if I can solve a problem with tech, even if it costs more to do it. So the technology’s there that the horses have already left the barn. I don’t think we will ever pull back from radios so if I What would I prefer old school do I think we’ll go back to that never and that’s fine with me too.

Jim Moss 21:50
You know, yeah, I

Jim Moss 21:54
hear again, I’m thinking too hard and pausing sorry. I you know, if we don’t advance we Don’t move forward. I mean, in all honesty, if it wasn’t for technology, we’d still be using single speed bikes where you flip the wheel around to get a different speed. So yeah, we if we’re not going forward, we’re not going anywhere. I don’t care what that combination of good, bad or indifferent, it is the, you know, is the race more exciting nowadays? I think it is. I think it’s much more exciting. And I also think that there’s really shoe with T. I think that now, a few more people might understand the whole team concept and cycling. I mean, that’s the that’s the one thing that the non cycling community does and a lot of the cycling community doesn’t understand is why is it called a team sport? You know, in fact that today, one of the announcers said you know, it’s a team sport with one winner. Well, that just doesn’t make sense. Yeah, we have a winner, but you’d never see the team winner in anything except pure cycling magazines. But you’ll see the winner of some years The front page of The Wall Street Journal The New York Times or something. It’s a but it is a team sport and with race radios, I think we get more team out of it.

Carlton Reid 23:12
Are you getting team managers coming on to NBC? Or Comcast wherever you’re watching it, are you? Because I’m on ITV where I’m watching it the other day they went to a team car and they had a very long conversation in fact it was with sargans team so it didn’t actually didn’t make much difference yesterday anyway and that the tactics didn’t didn’t work radio, I know radio, but are you getting you hearing team car tactics?

Jim Moss 23:42
Yes. Now they’re also mean you know, the team cars have sort of, you know, they’re not shooting the straight, they’re, you know, fumbling around. Same thing like a coach does when he’s running into the locker room at halftime. You know, we need to try this a little bit harder. We’re gonna do this but what’s really going on? I don’t think you’re getting but yeah, we’re getting that.

Carlton Reid 24:05
Yeah, I like it when they interview the the managers afterwards and they said, you know, our plan worked perfectly. But probably every single team in there has got it pretty much the same plan. It’s just that that’s the one that’s worked because that’s the one who, who won. But yeah,

Jim Moss 24:20
the right group of writers that were able to pull it off at the right time.

David Bernstein 24:24
The question that bugs me every day you know, before the races they always say, oh, what what are your plans for today? And it’s like, yeah, like we’re going to tell you and then every day you know, we want to win so I hate that but my favourite is when they show the inside of the team car. of the racer of the of the team whose racer won the stage that day that’s my favourite because they’re just going back you know what crazy in their, in their, in their car and I just love that.

Jim Moss 24:57
With the motorcycle comes by and they’re able to shoot in in the backseat, and you see the mechanic sort of crammed through, jump out immediately and solve a problem crap, it takes five minutes to undo, you know, whatever. He’s got wheels and water bottles and sandwiches and whatever else in there along with the toolkit to be able to lead out the window or to jump out and do whatever. worst job in the world. Okay, john, you win today. You’re in the back of the team car.

Jim Moss 25:29
Please.

David Bernstein 25:32
Speaking of that, what, what are your thoughts today? Sorry, Carlton, I have a question today about Sergio Higuita’s crash. And then, you know, essentially, because of the crash being taken out of the race, Carlton, I don’t know if I mean, I’m sure you saw that. What did you think about that?

Carlton Reid 25:53
I thought nothing of that too, because I hadn’t watched it. Now. You’ve told me.

David Bernstein 25:57
Oh, I’m sorry.

Carlton Reid 25:58
No, I watched the last few minutes on the TV every night I watch on highlights. So so

David Bernstein 26:04
so it was it was fairly early in the in the race Bob Jungels goes like essentially pulled out of the front of the, of the group he was with. And he he sort of moved all the way across the road. And when he did that, his rear wheel took out his Higuita’s’ front wheel. Higuita went down, got back somehow on the bike, saw the race doctor, but then he had a problem using he basically had hurt his hand he couldn’t use his brakes. And he ended up having to to abandon the race. But Jim, did you see that because they were showing it on the highlights, you know, during the race today and I thought to myself, I wonder if this is something that young girls would be fined for?

Jim Moss 26:48
Well, I think Bob roll said it best and I really hate quoting Bob Roll that’s a little scary. young young has to go to the team bus and apologise People I’m sure you will. And you know, I think the only thing that showed was who’s who weighs more, because the heavier rider stays up and the lighter rider goes down.

Jim Moss 27:11
I mean, I never get knocked down by anybody.

Jim Moss 27:16
But I mean, you look over your right shoulder when you’re when you’re getting out of the way. Well, sure we do. Because, you know, well, you guys ride with people. But you can also look at as somebody was in the wrong plot space, maybe I don’t. I don’t think it’s a fireable offence because there was no intention. You know, it was it was purely an accident. And I think that, especially here in the US, we have really lost sight of what’s real and what’s an accident and what really deserves to be punished or fined.

David Bernstein 27:53
Oh, that’s a great lead in Carlton, take it.

Carlton Reid 27:56
Well, I’m still thinking about Jim in a bunch sprint. Sagan trying to, to kind of crash into and knock it off and it just bounces off that’s that’s in my mind. So

Carlton Reid 28:14
now what I would like to go to is they just the Slovenia. Slovenia is bossing this race to I mean, 2 million people Slovenia has 2 million people. It’s a city. It’s a big it’s a big city but it’s a city and they have two amazing right and then about anything could happen tomorrow Of course and the whole team could be thrown out. You could be out all sorts of things. However it does. Look at the moment you cannot see any way of of the current leader no longer being the leader in in Paris, please get there. But it’s just amazing that these young riders have come up from a population of only 2 million, so Slovenia is my question. My question is Slovenia question mark. But Jim, I’ll come to you first and when you see Slovenian riders winning a you, are you happy with that?

Jim Moss 29:13
I’m happy with whoever wins is just as you said earlier, what are they on? I know some Slovenia’s from the mountaineering world they’re the toughest climbers you can find you know they learn how to become a mountain near because and they did it the hard way they they had to round up the money and they had to get there and then they just don’t quit. I mean, in all honesty, if you want to get to the summit, follow Sylvania, but you got to be able to reach deeper than anybody in the world at the same time. Cycling has a lot of that into it, but it also just takes some pure skill and ability and I don’t know my, my, my younger, smarter, better looking brother found a new job. issue that he sent me about some new type of haemoglobin oxygen booster. H 7379 or hammy or globin, human, whatever, you know. And and he thinks someone’s doping. And it could be I don’t know, but I know there are tough people when it comes to mountaineering. All of a sudden out of nowhere it could pop up in cycling. They’ve been mountaineering for 70, 80, 100 years. I’ve never seen a Slovenian another cycle race.

David Bernstein 30:41
Well, I don’t think it’s fair to say that pretty much Rogic came out of nowhere. He’s, he’s, you know, this is this is a guy who’s a multi sport athlete who has really come up through whether whether it was ski jumping on or cycling and, and he’s he’s got some pomares. So I don’t think it’s fair to say that he came out of nowhere, Pope Paul gotcha. I don’t know if that’s a new name for me honestly. But when it comes to roglic he’s got the most dominant team in the sport, or at least in this race. And so it’s no surprise to me to see him doing as well as he’s doing. You know, it’s like the Colombians. I mean, if you want to talk about mountains, and you want to talk about being able to climb those mountains, the Colombians have it. And so, you know, yesterday, like I said before, yesterday, I wasn’t really surprised to see rugelach where he was, and I really wasn’t that surprised to see all the Colombians in the in the top 10 of the GCC. I think It’s great. And I think that seeing people from different countries that maybe we hadn’t thought of before as being, you know, some of the best pro cyclist I think it’s awesome.

Unknown Speaker 32:13
And I yeah, but at the same time, the American Sepp Kuss, lives in Durango and if you live in Durango and you want to go ride, you go up for down river and then you climb. And then you know, coming home zz getting out of Durango is tough. mountain biking, road biking, whatever it is. you’re climbing out of Durango. It’s in a river valley surrounded by mountains, some of the most beautiful mountains in the world. But Sepp’s mom, of many people know this is a kick-ass mountain biker who wins all the local races. So there’s more than just living in the mountains. There’s a little bit of genetics or maybe a A lot of genetics, there’s a mountain and road bike community in Durango that’s more active and as big as any other cities that may be the Denver Metro area. I mean, everybody in Durango has a mountain bike and a road bike and they ride. So there’s there’s, I mean, I’ve never seen a group. I’ve never seen a picture of Slovenians you know, writing. I, and I don’t want to I don’t want to denigrate anybody without facts, and I guess I am and more power to ’em, and I hope it works, but

Jim Moss 33:37
it’s still something we’ve got to talk about because it’s

David Bernstein 33:40
okay. But but but but Jim, Sepp is writing in support of Roglic, right?

Jim Moss 33:44
Right. I agree. Yeah. So,

David Bernstein 33:45
so so he’s using his, well, I don’t even know what the right word is DurangIonian bloodline to to be able to Help this guy win the race. So I, and he was up there today and he was taking his pose along with Dimoulin. So

Jim Moss 34:06
yeah, ever, like I said, on the flats, I mean,

David Bernstein 34:12
I just think it’s a really dominant team. And I think that it’s that it’s and and hey, so is Pogacar team so i i think it’s been I think it’s been a it’s been an interesting race and it’s been

Jim Moss 34:26
one of the best races we’ve had in a little while.

David Bernstein 34:28
Yeah, yeah. It’s almost reminds me of a Giro.

Unknown Speaker 34:31
Yeah, look what Sunweb have pulled off. Yeah, no kidding. You know, I mean, their attacking programme the other day was just unreal. They just some rider, after rider,

David Bernstein 34:43
a rider off

Jim Moss 34:44
the front and tore the, you know, the leaders up it was great and

Carlton Reid 34:49
technically very good. Now Slovenia, from Slovenia to Slovakia. Mm hmm. So I know that that absolutely. We can get this mixed up. But we Definitely no. We have a good rider from Slovakia and he’s been around for a good few years now. What do we think as the saint or sinner on that sprint the other day where he got demoted to last place? And is he going to get the green? Is he going to win a couple of stages this in effect sprint into into the lead it’s going to seems quite hard to do now but what do you think?

David Bernstein 35:28
I’m happy to go first. Go for it. And I was glad to see that you put that in our show notes centre centre from my perspective centre. And I will I’ll tell you why. I don’t buy the excuse about whether it was a selfie stick or or a spectator leaning in. What I saw was somebody doing the wrong thing. And if you say if if the The excuse is Oh, there was a spectator there. Here’s a guy who has been a professional for many, many years. A guy who has a lot of experience and knows what he can expect to happen when he gets close to the boards. And he needs to take the consequences for that and not interfere with another writer. And that was and and assuming that that’s the the truth that there was a spectator that was in his way. That’s not what I what I saw what I saw was somebody cheating.

David Bernstein 36:35
I

David Bernstein 36:37
have had a bad feeling about Peter Sagan for many, many years. Yeah, I everybody loves him and thinks he’s great. I remember when he groped to the podium girl. And I and I, I my my opinion about him hasn’t changed since. I think he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That’s my personal opinion. It does. doesn’t reflect the management of this station. I don’t like the guy. And so I hope he doesn’t win green.

Jim Moss 37:06
Have you talked to him? Have you met him? No. I mean, he Yeah. And your wolf in sheep’s clothing idea might be 100% Right on, but I’ve talked to him several times when he’s over here racing. And he’s a very nice, easy going, guys just in the last couple years. He’s even said, Yeah, I can ride. I mean, for then he, he was shy, you had to ask him to be able to take his photograph and he would try and smile. And I think that’s a little bit more than just an

David Bernstein 37:38
act. Well, I admit that I could be completely wrong and if so, Peter, I apologise.

Carlton Reid 37:44
Do you think if he just apologised, you know he did had but he did show the charge? Yeah. That the normal thing to do in that case, would it be inside look, I did this I was wrong. I’m sorry. And like, nobody would have faulted him for that. But you Yeah, just didn’t apologise. Yeah, it was kind of odd. Yeah, that that feeds into your wolf in sheep’s clothing. If that’s what you want to think of him, then that’s gonna feed into that.

David Bernstein 38:10
Well, I noticed I had, I was writing one someplace where he was training and his. And he went by, and he there was not the usual cycling etiquette and I’m just going to leave it at that. Well, and so that that fed into that, that just bolstered my opinion of him. And so I don’t know, again, I could be completely wrong. That’s just my opinion. And my that’s my impression.

Jim Moss 38:41
We have to as also remember that a lot of how he’s responding was based on him getting thrown out of the tour a couple years ago for something he did

David Bernstein 38:49
not do. Yeah, he deserved that too.

Jim Moss 38:52
Holy mackerel,

David Bernstein 38:54
No, really. I think we talked about it then. And I and and yeah, he deserved that too.

Unknown Speaker 39:01
But he everyone admitted and that and even the commissar is the method that he didn’t do anything wrong that that crap who’s the guy that’s had his own autobiography three times and he’s always, you know, actually was not pushed by and did not get hit, tried something stupid and crashed who Cavendish yeah Cavendish Hmm. You know, to Peter Sagan got thrown out of the tour for something that he didn’t do wrong and Cavendish admitted that wasn’t Sagan’s fault. And yet they throw him out of the tour anyway. So I think if I’ve been thrown out of the tour one time, and I would be quiet Also, I’m not so sure I would try and defend myself because he defended himself pretty ferociously back then and bail.

David Bernstein 39:51
Let me ask you this. Do you think that he’s that that has he shown in this tour that he He has the legs to, to to keep to get and keep that green jersey because from what I’ve seen in the Sprint’s he’s not been there as much as he used to be. You can see guy like Caleb Ewan, or a guy like Van Aout I think that an N and crap helped me out Carlton, the Irishman in the green jersey,

Carlton Reid 40:31
Bennett. Sam Bennett.

David Bernstein 40:32
Yes. Thank you. I think I think that they they’re younger riders who are up and coming and I think that Peter is not up to them, at least in this race. I don’t think he’s shown that he’s up to the same level of fitness.

Carlton Reid 40:48
He normally doesn’t have to be because he’s not going for stages as such. He’s going for seconds and thirds.

David Bernstein 40:52
no No, no, no, of course.

Jim Moss 40:54
but he also has had the lead out men. I mean, how many times is up there again? Now, granted, that’s true. In the past, he has been, he is one stages of that lead out, man. I mean, he figures out who to follow. And yeah, as has done that, but I can’t think of a single stage I could be wrong where he’s actually had a lead out me. And sure, being said, by stage five, he had finally written more stages without the green jersey than he’d ever written with the green jersey. I think they announced that he’d only written five stages in the Tour de France wearing without wearing the green jersey. So pretty neat. Hey, Richie Porte made the podium. He’s up on third now.

Carlton Reid 41:46
Richie Porte is 35! Does that not that holds out hope for Froome that holds out hope for us even more 35 is good going for inefficiency. Come back. It’s Yeah, but it’s good to see what to put back. But it’s 35 beats. For nowadays that’s old. You know, if you look at the civilians, you know who are still in nappies. A 35 year old is, is getting on a bit.

David Bernstein 42:15
Well, there’s talk about Valverbe alright?. Who’s 40? I mean, he’s ancient, but he’s keeping up with the young guys.

Jim Moss 42:27
That’s the sixth.

David Bernstein 42:29
Huh? Wow.

Carlton Reid 42:32
So how are we liking the start of the late start? For Le Tour and because it’s now cyclocross season officially, the first cyclocross race was was today in Germany. So, are we liking the fact that it’s so late in the year?

Jim Moss 42:48
No, my schedule does. I have not seen as many races I’ve recorded all the races for the first time ever because I haven’t been able to catch them off my schedule. At this time of year does not allow Be to, you know, take the mornings off. And to you could see at the end of today’s race that the sun had been saying that a lot of places on the race that it was a lot darker than normal. And the commentators made some comments about it, that it you know, it was obvious that it was getting darker earlier because of the time of the year. Now it’s a little bit prettier in some cases, because you can see some trees have already started to change, you know, the fall colours. But I don’t know I sort of semi expects one of these finishes to be in snow. Hmm.

David Bernstein 43:43
I there’s a couple things one, it’s weird. I mean, everything’s weird right now, right? I mean, we’ve got cyclocross. We’ve got the Tour de France. We’ve got Toronto adriatico. We’ve got NFL football, baseball, hockey, basketball, it’s all going on at one so everything is too bizarre. I think for the riders, it’s probably better this time of year. It gets really hot in the Alps in July. And a lot of France in July So, so so moving it to September, probably is better for the riders. Now, with some of them. I think that it’s been hard for them to figure out how to get their fitness just right. You know, there’s some writers who train all year just for the tour. And now that it’s two months later, and there was no racing, you know, for a lot of time leading up to it. I think that it’s probably messed up songwriter. So I think that there’s pluses and minuses,

Jim Moss 44:40
but at the same time, there are a lot of riders that came into the tour and a lot better shape, though. And yeah, you know, now they might not have been as good as shape because they weren’t racing, but at least they weren’t injured. Yeah, you know, we didn’t we didn’t see any no shows based on injury, other than fro basically

David Bernstein 44:59
Carlton may be onto something you know, he may be it may have been, oh, we’re going to use this as an excuse, you know the injury with with from, but maybe they were feeling like well they didn’t quite have what they needed to to to deliver another victory for any of us granted yours and so maybe we’ll move Froome and Thomas over here where maybe we can do a little bit better.

Jim Moss 45:24
At the same time. It was also a little I can’t believe was leave our team we gave you wins there five yellow jerseys hanging on your wall. And now you’re leaving. Yeah, well, you’re not going to get another one with our jersey. I don’t

Carlton Reid 45:42
I don’t think Brailsford thinks like that. Brailsford is just he’s hardwired to win stuff, he will do what he couldn’t care personally. And that’s why he drops Brits and also he doesn’t care. He just wants a winner. So I don’t personally I didn’t think he would be that first about him leaving cuz that is also powerful. and parcel of professional sports, you know, cycle sport.

David Bernstein 46:04
And you got to give it to Sylvan Adams. You know, he is building what is going to be one of the highest profile teams next year. And he’s

Carlton Reid 46:14
got the money to do it. Let’s face Yeah, for sure. He could have the best team if you want it if he wants tomorrow, he got the best team.

Jim Moss 46:21
So So yeah. So here we are. Professional Football, professional basketball, professional baseball, it’s all based on money. And now most people are understanding had professional Cycling is based on money, perhaps even amateur Cycling is based on money. If you get to the right team, you don’t have to worry about your bike being ready, you know, versus you get up an extra hour earlier to check your bike before you get on a race. And it’s all based on who can sell sponsorships all the way up and down the line. Is that the way to race is that showing us who the best cyclists is the best team. We got more money therefore we can buy the right team.

Carlton Reid 47:06
You still got to have the permutations though, isn’t it me cycling isn’t just a money thing. You know, otherwise any of us would would be the best team this year. Probably the best funded team. So it is the mix. And that’s the fascinating thing about Cycling is just the mix of riders and certainly when you’ve got a huge crew that you could pick from, and then getting it right for each individual race and you have got to have, you know, your second tier riders are still doing some major races as we can see with the racer also went on to do today to run it. So that makes it not just money. It’s also savvy.

Jim Moss 47:46
savvy.

David Bernstein 47:48
And, and, and and yeah, Jim, I think it is still you know who’s the best cyclist I think that so many of the younger guys coming up, I’m talking about men cycling now, so many of the younger guys coming up in the sport are getting paid nothing. Literally nothing. Not enough to make a living and and they’re working their butts off to get to the pinnacle of the sport. And that’s how you tell you end up with some of the the people that we’ve seen. Look at the last couple of days with some of these guys who have been winning stages. It’s been really cool to see all these different guys winning and making some really great moves. And it’s because they’ve been coming up in the sport and they’ve been earning their their pomares and they’ve been been been doing the work and now they’re getting rewarded for it. I mean, that’s the way that it is in anything. So of course everything’s about money, don’t I mean?

Jim Moss 48:51
I think we should go look at all the winners in the last 20 years, and how much money their teams had the last 20 years. I bet you more than 70% of the winners were with the most well financed team. Well, of course.

Carlton Reid 49:09
David, talk about money. You can spend money

David Bernstein 49:14
or save money.

Carlton Reid 49:16
Yes. How can cyclists do you think? How could they spend money? And yes and save it at the same time? Do you have any ideas how how listeners to this podcast could go and spend their cash?

David Bernstein 49:29
It’s an excellent question. Imagine if you could spend money and save money and know that what you’re spending your money on was the right thing. That would be that would be cool, wouldn’t it chip?

Jim Moss 49:40
Oh, hey, I went to the website the other day looking for stuff. You did. I did it. The problem is that I’ve been I’ve been not paying attention to the podcast. I could type in the right website address. I was

David Bernstein 49:53
gonna say that to you in that email, you see because Jim wanted to go to JensonUSA, which is the right thing to do. And I told him Jim, you got to go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. And if you go to Jensenusa.com/the spokesmen, first of all, you’re going to be supporting us and we appreciate that. But more importantly, you’re going to be, as Carlton said, saving money and finding a great selection of products. And if there’s something you’re not quite sure whether it’s going to work for you, they have a really, really experienced team of what they call gear advisors, and they’re going to tell you, because they know because they’re cyclists themselves just like you and they, they want to make sure that you get the right thing at the right price and give them a call but be really, really helpful. So Jenson USA is the place where you can get and I’ve said this a long time, pretty much everything that you need for your cycling lifestyle. So you need a new bike, complete bike and it can be a gravel bike, road bike, a mountain bike a kid’s you can find them all at Jenson USA. Plus, you can get components and apparel and as I said virtually everything the You need for your cycling lifestyle. And the selection is is really great from name brands that you know people like Specialized and yes Colnago and just a whole wide variety of all of the best brand names that you already know. So go check them out. It’s a Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. And we hope that you’ll use that URL because when you do, what it tells them is that you heard about Jenson USA on our show. And what’s really cool when you go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen they pick out products on that page that they think that spokesmen listeners might be interested in. So check that out first, and then whatever else it is that you’re looking for, whether it’s a pair of shoes, or jersey or bib shorts, or perhaps I don’t know maybe you just need a new stem or a new headset or tires or whatever it is. They’re going to have it at Jenson USA, so go check them out. Jensonusa.com/Thespokesmen, we really sincerely thank them for their very long term loyal support of this show, the spokesmen, recycling roundtable podcast. And of course, we thank you for your support of Jenson USA. So there you go, Carlton, there’s the answer to your question. You can save money. And you can get the right thing. Oh, and by the way, one last thing, free shipping on all orders over $60. Okay, back to you, Carlton.

Carlton Reid 52:24
Thank you, David. See, I knew you don’t know the answer to that question. Now, you mentioned shoes there, huh? I did. Fantastic segue. Thank you very much for a holdover from the last show. So we should have asked this the last show we didn’t get around to talking about it, even though we had it in the show notes. And I know Jim wanted to talk about it. So I’m guessing he’s a fan of this particular system because it is a system it’s it’s how you fasten your shoes. So I’m going to come to Jim first and cuz he can I mentioned this I mean, you must want to talk about this Jim. So you’re you’re a Velcro. You can even laces Of course or Boa, Boa. Boa. Why why Jim, why are you Boa?

Jim Moss 53:13
Because it’s the ultimate laziness.

David Bernstein 53:20
Jim, I guess

Carlton Reid 53:21
that’s what the guy’s telling things. I

David Bernstein 53:23
guess, Jim any old age home, but he’s like, Oh, I need my shoes to have Bella.

Unknown Speaker 53:28
Right? Hey, I know a few more things. Boa is actually based here in Denver at Outdoor Retailer trade shows you could bring any pair of shoes in and they would have a system on the shoes. And I was thinking, you know, I’d hadn’t done a couple of set of my tennis shoes or whatever else and there was one fun, whatever. But I kept thinking, you know, I should get a set of wingtips with Boas.

Carlton Reid 53:57
They charge you this or the show or it’s just like shows fashion II

Unknown Speaker 54:01
but they quit donate kid yeah they quit going it was it was wonderful but let me tell you why I love Boa. The newest models I got the I have a new set of Lake cycling shoes which I think are wonderful because I have a wide foot I can walk on water and not know where the rocks are. And and you just spin them and they you can tighten them down. You can loosen them mid ride easily tighten them back up again whatever you need to do. And with velcro after about the 15th time you’re aware that it’s you Yang in the It’s same spot. So I’ve done a lot of my mountain bike shoes all at the top and I can’t get them any tighter I can get them looser, but I can’t get them any tighter. You know as the leather stretches or whatever because they stuck in this one Velcro spot. with Boa. You can just so fine tune so easily. Even while you’re on the ride and have the newest models, you reach down and you pull a little bit pop in there loosen those shoes are off. It’s just a wonderful system designed by a guy who used to take these kids out and who would take a half hour to get everyone’s shoes tied.

Carlton Reid 55:18
Oh Hmm. And David, what are you are you a proponent of one or other systems or you your last a fair you you you know, care?

David Bernstein 55:28
Oh, no, no, you know, but I always have an opinion. Um, so I’m not a Boa person. I I am funny. I’m looking at the website of the cycling shoe company that I prefer. And when my shoes wear out, I’m gonna be screwed because I can only get Polo. Now I have been wearing for years and years and years and years northwave shoes for road that I have. I cannot find a pair of cycling shoes. That that fits me just right Feels good other than Northwave. I’ve tried them all. We tried to and I, you know, sorry. Try leg. I will do that. Yeah, no, I definitely try it. So no, I’ve been using Northway forever. They’ve got a buckle, sort of a ratcheting buckle at the top. And then two Velcro straps. I would still be wearing the ones I bought, probably 15 or 18 years ago had a puppy not eating them. And that’s how my family knew that that that dog, that dog could get away with anything because I didn’t get upset. And then I bought another pair of northwave shoes. And I think I’ve had those now for about 12 or 13 years, and I just keep wearing them. They haven’t worn out. I still like them. I look at So Jim, I gotta ask you, and now everybody’s gonna know that I’m just the ultimate Fred. I look at the Boa system and I say that doesn’t look comfortable. It looks like it’s kind of break Tell me why I’m wrong.

Jim Moss 57:02
Well first of all, I’ve never wasted I did have one break after like four years but not on a cycling shoes. It was just on a pair of tennis shoes. So it was and it wasn’t the actual the cables sort of some I can’t believe Niall, it’s got to be steel. It’s so tough, but it it. it compresses over a very wide area. So on my site like cycling shoes, I’ve two up to Boa, one that covers about two inches and one that covers about an inch and a half. So it spreads that tension evenly over that area. I still have a set of Victorias that have the ratchet and the ratchet is wonderful because you can get right to the tightness. But you can’t reach down and loosen it up while you’re riding easily.

Jim Moss 57:52
And as or as easily as I think apologies.

Jim Moss 57:56
And so I think that that it’s great because it was the best For you, it pulls that one three quarter of an inch section and that’s it. Yeah, well it’s very wide. It’s two inches that you know so you and you can you know some days I’ll get a ride out just tighten up the top one and keep the bottom one loose. Although here again now I found some good shoes like you did a Northwave used to have white shoes too. I remember.

David Bernstein 58:22
Yeah. And I think that that’s that’s why I wear them Carlton, what do you prefer?

Carlton Reid 58:27
I as you can imagine, because I get lots and lots of freebies, with my kind of position. And I’ve got all sorts in my cupboard so I can and do use every system and I would say Boa is my favourite on Sony on road shoes. And I do agree with date with Jim on for a mountain bike shoes also because when you’re going into lots and lots of mud, in UK, if you if you’re not going through mud, then you’re You’re just not gonna go out on your mountain bike, then the Velcro does stop working. Where is the Boa? Doesn’t? Three so Boa for me? Yes for their laziness, yes for the width of it tightening down Yes, for the on the fly, on off tightening etc. And yes, for the for the longevity, it is of course more expensive. So if you look at the shoes in most companies ranges, then their bows are going to be more expensive then if you’ve got just one bow, and then some Velcro that’s like a mid level. So clearly the Boa is pitched at premium and is premium. So you’ve got to bear that in mind in that, you know, some price levels, you’re not gonna have a choice anyway, you’ve got to spend good money if you’re gonna be getting Boa, you don’t get cheap Boa in effect. So it is a premium product. So of course it’s going to be better in many respects because it is pitched Priced at that level.

Jim Moss 1:00:02
Remember though, when Velcro was a premium product?

David Bernstein 1:00:07
Well, I’ll give it a try when these were out because apparently I’m not gonna have much of a choice as I’m googling around as we’re all talking, but I’ll give it a try. I’ll see if I like it. But see, that’s, that’s how I I’m guessing that people ride by me and they look down at my shoes and they’re like, yep, he’s afraid.

Carlton Reid 1:00:28
What lights what lights do Freds tend to use then? Because David you’ve had an issue just recently, I believe.

David Bernstein 1:00:36
Jim, what do you use? Do you put your you have you have Fly6. Cycliq on your bike?

Jim Moss 1:00:41
I have a Fly6 in the back. I I opted not to spend the money for the 12 in the front. Well, way overpriced.

David Bernstein 1:00:51
How’s it working for you?

Jim Moss 1:00:53
Well, I’ve never had to use it.

Jim Moss 1:00:57
I mean, no, you know, thankfully.

Jim Moss 1:00:59
Yeah, I did. I did put a little sticker on it says video and clothes because you know I didn’t think that most law enforcement personnel would understand what that was. But it’s a great rear light I’ve yet to have it run out during any my rides. And I like it I also have two of them you know, because I think it’s a great idea but for the front it’s a lot easier just to mount a GoPro and a good light. And so if i if i riding the roads and I think that’s gonna be an issue that day, I just put a GoPro GoPro on the front of the bike.

David Bernstein 1:01:36
Hmm. What would like to have in the front

Jim Moss 1:01:40
depends on the ride. I have it I have all sorts of weather. My favourite light is a helmet light if I’m actually going out in the dark or mountain biking that I got from surface. I mean it blinds people, but it it lights up half mile. Um, I’ve got a couple cat eyes I can’t even tell you which one I like right now about rechargeable Cateye that just does a great job. So starting here another couple of weeks I’ll put it on and keep a charge just in case something goes wrong and I have to ride home in the dark. And why I like it though is is because it’s strong enough to get me home. But it’s easy enough if I have to take it off and use it to fix the tire because it’s so dark. You know I can I can hold it my mouth and shoot it the right angle to find the hole or fix the flat or whatever the problem is.

David Bernstein 1:02:34
Yeah, I am I’ve been using because we’ve we’ve, I think when we were doing tips. I think several of us have probably picked the Fly6 or the Fly12 as our as our picks and I’ve been using a Fly6 for a while and my wife’s got one on her bike and my daughter recently I think I said mentioned that she just bought a road bike and so she’s been riding so I was looking at getting a Fly6 for her, there was about that time that the battery on mine started to not hold up for more than about 45 minutes. And Donna was starting to have problems with hers where it would think that she crashed when she was just riding along, straight and level. And so I went to the to the cyclic website, and I saw that they had a new generation, a third generation, I thought, Oh, that’s great. They probably fixed all these problems that I’ve been having with so it said that they were going to ship in August. And so I placed my order to be in August and August came in when they didn’t ship. And I started emailing them and asking them about it. And I was getting no response. I mean, like for a week or 10 days, and I googled online and people are having this issue and I’m a little bit worried, and I don’t know what other people’s experience has been. So I basically wrote to them and I said, Oh, and then they changed it. They’re gonna ship in October, by which time I would get it in November because they said like middle of October I’d get in November cycling season’s over, it’s not even worth it. So I said just cancel my order. And I understand that they probably had a delay because they’re made in China and we all know you know, it’s been a crazy year when it comes to manufacturing. But I went out and I bought some Bontrager lights, and normally I don’t buy house brand stuff. For people who don’t know Bontrager, it’s Trek’s house brand, but I bought the Bontrager Ion flare. They’re these tiny little lights. And you know, I have one on the front, one on the back. And one of the first of all, they’re, they’re really bright. But one of the things I really love about them is first of all their prices significantly lower than the Cycliq Fly6. One of the things I love is it connects over ANT+ to my Garmin computer so that when I started riding, I press that start button on my my computer, the lights turn on, and when I press stop on my computer, the lights turn off. That’s the coolest thing in the world. Never I mean how many times have you been driving down the road with your car your bike on top of your car? And it’s blinking because you forgot to turn it off?

Carlton Reid 1:05:07
See, I see the ads for these things. I mean, who needs these features? It’s like Fred, David. Okay. Yeah. David has that feature okay.

Jim Moss 1:05:18
I don’t take your shoes

Carlton Reid 1:05:19
Connected to what?

Jim Moss 1:05:23
not that your friend but having your bike on top of your car with the light blinking. I think that’s a guarantee your

David Bernstein 1:05:30
I have done it.

Jim Moss 1:05:36
Interesting.

David Bernstein 1:05:37
Anyway, so I’m curious to see what happens with Cycliq like I I don’t understand, you know, and people on Um, I don’t know if I should be worried about the company or what’s I mean, the fact that it takes 10 days to get an answer to an email. seems strange to me. And a lot of people go out

Carlton Reid 1:05:55
but you went you went buying this and using this light for its light capabilities you’re using it for its video.

David Bernstein 1:06:01
Right. Okay, so that’s a great point and and, and, and I’m, this will be the first time this is the first time that I haven’t a video in the back of my bike in many many years I would love it if for instance Garmin makes a product called the Varia. Very expensive. Yeah very expensive. It’s it’s a but it’s but not as expensive as the sicherlich not as expensive as a fly six. Because in the back of your bike, it’s a it’s a taillight, blink a Blinky light like we all have, but it’s got radar. And so it tells you again on your your Garmin computer, whether or not there’s cars coming up behind you. I would love it. If Garmin and or sicherlich. Like added both of all three of those features in one if I can have a radar, a light and a camera recording on my taillight Here’s my credit card.

Jim Moss 1:07:00
Huh? What’s your what’s that number?

Jim Moss 1:07:06
I remember we found a guy at

Jim Moss 1:07:10
Uh huh. He had created a camera. And you get and I got one of those to looking at the screen and then running into things. Yeah. Which was quite interesting. Um, I’m not sure. I have either new Garmin 1030 I really do like it. And for the first time in in several years, Garmin has screwed up their own software. Although they did big time the other day, no matter wondering who how much money they paid ransomware to get their consistent back $10 million, isn’t it? Yeah. And seriously, Garmin is well known for doing a software upgrade that just crashes your your computer. But this one has a little thing on it that if you crash it sends out Notice to the people that are in there. Um, what I found lately is when I stopped at the end of my ride, it’s sending out a notice that Jim Moss has crashed. Oops.

Carlton Reid 1:08:11
Yeah, it was my Apple Watch does that really? My Apple Watch doesn’t like my bike so

Jim Moss 1:08:19
notice in my garage yesterday, but I did crash I was building a new bike and, and realise that I build everything except breaks in hit my garage.

Carlton Reid 1:08:31
It’s a little sad you the feature has worked on the lights of you if you tested it, it kind of like he crashed and it it texts. Oh,

Jim Moss 1:08:39
no. Yeah, I’ve gotten a phone call from my brother. You know, are you okay? Oh, yeah. Why? Well, I got to notice your Yeah. And I get home and I look at my emails and the three people you know, jail goes, yeah. You said you crashed. I saw you were still rushing. She tracks me on Google Maps. So she says I saw you I’m still moving. So I figured it out. was

David Bernstein 1:09:02
just what your note, Carlton, that we’ve now stealthily put tips into the podcast?

Carlton Reid 1:09:07
Yes, I’ve noticed that my tip was going to be then I would say Yeah. Okay, that feature on your Apple watch because it does work on Yeah, watch. And I mean, I’ve had this one for a good while, I’d forgotten that I’d turn this feature on and I crashed my bike. And lo and behold, it said no, if you don’t turn this off, we’re gonna bring the you know, the emergency services and so I turned it off. But it’s like, yeah, I mean, I have never had any false calls on this. This is just the one time I’ve crashed is the one time I’ve had this this go off so I don’t know what it’s like on I’ve got a set of lights that it does not difficult to use Iuc sense. And it does do that. I’ve never tried it on them. But on the watch it does that work. So my tip would absolutely if you’ve got this tack turn these features on Because Yeah, you will not get false positives. They are incredibly good. Guys we have we have not been going I do think we have to wind up here now we’ve been going for an hour and 1010 minutes. So we’re going to have to do that part of the show where we gladly we do not have tips even though we do have tip. But that’s part of the show where we talk about how people can can find us So Jim first how do we get in touch with Jim?

Jim Moss 1:10:28
recreationlaw on Twitter, recreation-law.com on the web, or recreation.law@gmail.com or if you just Google recreation law, you should find me

Carlton Reid 1:10:43
and if people are interested, finding mooses or what’s the plural for Mrs. Mrs. Mrs. Whatever in gardens, David, where can where can people follow you?

David Bernstein 1:10:54
That was a cool picture though, wasn’t it?

Carlton Reid 1:10:57
I love all your pictures. You have wildlife in your garden.

David Bernstein 1:11:01
Thank you. So yes, um, what was the question?

Carlton Reid 1:11:06
The question is that is the plural of mooses.

David Bernstein 1:11:09
is always at me. Yeah, here we say me, so I’m sure it’s mooses. But you know me sounds better. Um, yeah, best place to find sort of what I’m up to is on Instagram where my handle is Fred cast. If you want to rant and or rave about my controversial thoughts today about Peter Sagan or perhaps the Cycliq fly6, where there was something else I mentioned. Oh, yes. Anthony McCrossan. Feel free to send me an email at the Fred cast@gmail.com and Carlton, thank you for re energising and and getting getting Jim and I back on the show so that we can actually do roundtables again. I it’s fun. I enjoy this and I know that I can tell from from Jim’s voice he does too and I know that You do so thank you for that, Carlton. It’s appreciated.

Carlton Reid 1:12:03
Yeah. Well, thank you. Well, I’m just so glad that we’ve got Jim’s microphone. It’s taken a while, whenever.

David Bernstein 1:12:15
And where can we find you Carlton?

Carlton Reid 1:12:18
Well, I might be doing a Boa story on forbes.com shortly. And I have I’ve got lots and lots of things to go through in a Boa profile is one of the things I’ve got to go through. And I get on forbes.com sometime soon. So you can actually follow me on Forbes on all three. So I’m on all authory.com where you get my Guardian articles, my Forbes articles, all sorts on Twitter, so Carlton Reid, on Twitter. So this has been Episode 257 of the spokesmen Roundtable, as David said, roundtable podcast and thanks for listening for people out there. Listen to today’s show. And thanks also for subscribing and telling your cycling friends and family. I know you do this, about the cycling podcast here from the Spokesmen and the show notes and more can be found on the-spokesmen.com. And this is actually been the third show this this month. I do think it’s the final show this month, however, but we will have people hopefully roundtable back. You know, because of the Tour de France it being in normally in July, I was going to almost say August that as the following month. It’s just throwing everything out of kilter, hasn’t it? But no, it’s next month is actually October. How freaky is that? So but before then, and now, make sure to get out there and ride …