GV27

Heck, did you watch the ARCA race last weekend? That happened like every 5 laps! LOL Some girl broke the wall too......

Fast Cloud

Which brings us back to the world of professional cycling!!!

Seriously though, should we not allow them to go over 40mph down the side of an Alp just because they could be killed or their bike might take out a bystander??

top506

I don't think so.
Just that happened at Le Mans in 1955: 300 SLR Benz into the crowd at speed; dozens killed.
They still race sports prototypes and GTs at Le Mans.
Top

TejanoTrackie 

First off, were are talking plain ordinary amateur cycling here, and I've descended at up to 50mph down a mountain on a completely ordinary non-aero standard bicycle. So the UCI regulations have no bearing on this discussion.

20grit

Ban Tires!!!!!! Tires fly off cars into the crowd at races and have killed people. My grandfather was at Indy and saw it happen.

GV27

Mentioned that in a previous post. As a result Mercedes pulled out of all racing until the '80s and didn't go back to sports cars until the early '90s (or was it late '80s? - German 'Junior' squad back then teamed future F1 stars Karl Wendlinger, Heinz Harold Frentzen and Michael Schumacher). They got another scare in '99 when Mark Webber and Peter Dumbreck both back-flipped CLRs at LeMans. (see video link below) Cancelled the program on the spot, haven't been back.

1955 was an entirely different era when risk and human life were considered in completely different terms. They didn't even stop the race when that happened! Think about it - with everything being safety, safety, safety, safety these days - if a Stock Car traveling 200+ mph went into grandstand packed with tens of thousands of people it would kill dozens, it'd kill hundreds. Think about that the next time a cyclist is blamed for his own death under a bus for not wearing a helmet or you're strip-searched trying to get onto an airplane. That's not even worth talking about - a scenario like that would certainly mean the end of NASCAR and probably a lot more than that.

Imagine if this car had landed in a grandstand instead of out in the woods (didn't hit anyone and believe it or not Dumbreck walked away...). You really think people would've just shrugged and said "that's racin'"? Think about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3rxq7U1mA

Fast Cloud

Were we?? I thought we were talking about the UCI...and you've failed to answer my question.

TejanoTrackie 

The UCI regulations that were the original topic of discussion before you got sidetracked into all the car stuff pertained to limitations on bicycle designs which are used in timed events. These limitations were design to provide parity in timed competition and have little to do with safety or limiting maximum speeds that can be attained in mass-start events such as road races. Time trial bikes with aerodynamic features which increase average speeds during TTs are not used in road races, and would be of little benefit. As far as your question regarding the limiting of speed I assumed it was purely rhetorical.

Fast Cloud

Well I better get on the phone to those guys over at the Tour de France, Giro and Vuelta and tell them they're not supposed to be having those TT and TTT stages...

And no...my question was a very serious one. Last year a woman was run over and killed by a motorcycle covering the TDF. Should we ban that? At what point does it all end? My question was a very real possibility and I want to know at what point do we draw a line in the sand with the safety nannies.

TejanoTrackie 

Well, I really don't understand your sarcasm, however, I can tell you that I was in a criterium race about 30 years ago that was conducted on a closed course and completely controlled to prevent car or pedestrian traffic. During the final sprint an elderly man stumbled onto the course and was struck by a rider going nearly 40 mph and was killed. The city was sued and there were calls to stop having bicycle races on city streets. Nowadays promoters, and I have promoted races myself so I know this, must carry hefty liability insurance coverage for these events which cover not only themselves but the municipality and any sponsors. The fact is that just about any sport can be dangerous to both participants as well as spectators. Nonetheless, the only outcome is that sports tend to emphasize the use of better protective equipment for participants such as helmets (when I started racing we used leather hairnets which were utterly useless). I don't think the UCI is being a safety nanny by requiring that riders wear helmets.

Fast Cloud

Ahh...it's all clear to me now. You've gone over to the dark side. The bureaucrats have finally beaten the racer out of you and turned you into one of them. My sympothies...

tatfiend 

The UCI, and predecessors, have always been quite conservative as far as track and road racing bicycle designs are concerned. Their excuse has been that bicycling is supposed to be a test of riders, not equipment. In the 20s or early 30s they banned recumbent bikes from track racing and they did not allow the use of derailleurs in road racing before approximately the mid thirties IIRC. They still have a ban on recumbents for any form of UCI racing and have established two categories for the one hour record depending on the design of the bike used.

To me the major disadvantage of this has been to discourage innovation in bicycle design. Materials have changed but the basic design of a road frame is recognizeably directly related to an 1890s diamond safety bike frame. I personally would like them to turn the engineers loose. The current situation is about like a racing regulatory body having frozen aircraft basic design at about the 1918 level.

RFC

Excellent discussion, including the race car analogies.

To my simple mind, the answer seems clear. Allow for a number of races for experimental bikes with the limitation (hopefully rarely exercised) of safety. Winning designs (by analogy to the very significant introduction of aerobars and tri specific designs to triathalon) will prove themselves and eventually, though slowly, push their way to mandated UCI acceptance.

Jeff Wills

You don't need to juice, the human-powered vehicle hour record now stands at a bit over 56 miles:
https://www.recumbents.com/wisil/Ford...09/results.htm

As for the UCI/IHPVA/NASCAR/F1 debate: it's the rules that make the race. It's just as fun for me to watch a NASCAR race as it is to watch these guys:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMUNOLwW0io
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQwpGLCAMm4
https://www.youtube.com/humanpowerthefilm
Of course, the crowds are smaller at recumbent races.

repechage

Stock cars were for cheaters. for Development, especially Sports Cars, in the 60's and 70's was the CanAm series, Chaparral, MacLaren, Shadow, the Ti-22, Lola, Ferarri, great drivers many who were or were to become F1 champions, eventually almost killed off by Porsche and the 917/30, 1000hp+. Great concept for quite a while, two seats, spare tire, brake lights, some of the early Chaparrals even had license plates.

Charles Wahl

And live, moving, dangerous (preferably rabid) targets.

carpediemracing 

Just like many rules/laws, a lot of the UCI rules came as a result of a specific incident, or specific incidents. Some had to do with protecting morons from themselves, others to protect the masses from the privileged. Kind of a familiar thing, right?

Weight limit - riders/mechanics performing idiotic mods to their bikes to make them lighter. One of the huge factors - a mechanic milled out the inside of his rider's TT bike fork. In the TT the fork collapsed, causing massive injuries to the rider's face.

(I can't link, but it was a prologue or time trial in a major Tour - maybe Vuelta? - and the rider broke teeth, jaw, etc. I believe the modded bike was a Look bike under an ONCE rider, and I believe that the rider made it 8 or 9 km into the event. A similarly modded fork failed at 90 Nm or so, and a typical pothole exerts something like 300 Nm, hence the UCI rule about the fork being strong enough for such an impact.)

Wheel size - At first wheel sizes were "normal", like 24" front wheels for team time trials (and for a while twin 24" wheels - to get the riders closer together). Some riders tried unusual sizes even for mass start races, like Tony Rominger and his 650c wheels. Then they got weird - like Moser's one off 30-something inch rear wheel in his hour record attempt. They had to sew together a couple tires to make one tire. Anyway, to limit one off wheel sizes from becoming a factor in races, UCI stipulated wheel sizes.

Tube shapes - Again, at first you saw normal aero explorations, with tear drop shaped tubing etc. But then the tinkerers got weird - fully faired main triangles, beam bikes, and "weird" bikes. The epitome would be the Pinarello TT bike, which, based on principles as I understand them, probably wasn't that fast. But the bikes were becoming very expensive, one off, and more extreme by the year. Finally, with Look's super duper TT bike, the UCI called it enough. That frame had a huge fin extending down from the BB, fairing the rear wheel. Zulle and his ONCE teammates rode them, maybe once (Tour de France prologue?), won, and the bikes were immediately banned. UCI explored and instituted "standard tube format frames" (my quote).

One "good" UCI rule has to do with wheel fairings. The UCI, at some level, allows wheel fairings, those not-so-structural things that mimic structural aero wheels. So, for example, the HED6 is legal, just like the Stinger6. Mavic, HED, Bontrager, I think a few other companies have fairing type wheels, where, if you remove the fairing, you still have a wheel. Moser introduced the disk wheel in 1984 when he broke the hour record - his rational was that if you removed the disk's sides, you had no wheel left. Hence the disks were structural. Nowadays that's not the case with many wheels out there. USAC specifically allows wheel fairings so that riders can use the above named wheels.

I'm sorry to see the mini-mass-start aero bars go by the wayside - Spinaccis and Tirimasuu bars (was legal in Europe for two years, now illegal). Ditto Scott Rakes and Cane Creek Speed Bars (which are USAC legal but weren't legal in Europe for very long if at all).

Although I understand the various tipping points for the rules, a valid criticism is that the UCI doesn't respond to changes very quickly. For example, as a Cat 3, I can race on a very safe, very durable, and much lighter bike than a pro. That doesn't seem right. The UCI could explore reducing the minimum bike weight (and weigh all bikes at the finish line, when it counts, not before the start).

At the same time I'm fine with things like normal diamond frame configurations, equal size wheels, etc. Heck, I used to have 24" and 650c wheels in my arsenal. Now I just have 700c wheels.

cdr

TejanoTrackie 

Please explain.

Fast Cloud

fify...(I agree with the rest)

RFC

Excellent. Thanks

Jeff Wills

In the same regard- can you imagine a collection of team time trial bikes with 17" Moulton wheels? The riders could be 10 inches closer to each other, substantially reducing aero drag on the whole group. Talk about the "unfair advantage"!

Exit.

He's saying he doesn't have to abide by the UCI minimum weight regulations, because they never weigh bikes at Cat 3 races.