BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news

The Taiwanese company with an assembly plant in Wales is to produce mid to high-end bikes from a factory 40 minutes from Ho-Chi-Minh City. The factory in Wales stays.

The EU Fifth Motoring Directive aims to harmonise car insurance laws across Europe, and would mean UK drivers would be deemed to be at fault in any ‘accident’ involving cyclists or pedestrians. Bikebiz.co.uk carried a story on this important directive in June, when it was launched, but only now has the mainstream media caught up. The kneejerk reaction of the motoring lobby (and the government!) was the front cover story in yesterday’s Observer and a major inside story in The Sunday Times, and there’s further vitriolic incredulence in today’s Guardian and in most other newspapers. A Daily Mirror columnist said: "Bicycles are for children...[they are] like masturbation - something you should grow out of. There is something seriously sick and stunted about grown men who want to ride a bike."

Highways chiefs want to make permanent a temporary ban on cyclists using a four mile stretch of the A40 in Gloucestershire. Is this the start of a piecemeal process to exclude cyclists from "dangerous" roads nationwide? Will cyclists be forced to ride on cycleways, even though they may be strewn with glass, badly designed, incomplete and longer than the road route?

Ison’s Lloyd Townsend was at Evans Cycles, Gatwick, last week. He had with him one of his Identiti 666 frames. It got driven over by mistake yet was not damaged…

ACT president David Wilsher was in London yesterday wrapping up a deal to let ACT members take part in a pilot scheme for the insurance solutions offered by Cycle Claims Management, as revealed last week on this site.