Strava in the news

me-109

BBC website

VTech

Ive read a lot about this and there was something in the NYT about it a while back, always similar issues relating to road safety etc but as with all things that are innovative, people will look towards the negative as others to the positive.
I think its a great app, as being able to drive, some people will be good, some bad.

thefd

I don't care what negative publicity it receives - for me it is the best thing that could have happened to help my training!!

Pross

I'm still not sure why Strava could be deemed liable for some idiots racing through a red light or mowing down a pensioner. They don't even create the segments themselves and can hardly be expected to know which of the millions of sections of road people add are actually safe. I hope they win their law suit against the family of that one rider - they should be going for a Darwin Award instead.

adr82

I like Strava, but the biggest problem with it is the way that people will add segments literally anywhere. 100 yard "sprint" on a busy road between two big junctions with traffic lights? Why not, what could possibly go wrong there? :roll: My personal favourite was one that went through a enclosed shared bike/pedestrian bridge which had not one but two 90 degree corners that you can't really see around. Idiocy. If you're the type of person who feels the need to create a segment for every quarter mile of your commute you could at least make them private and not have everyone else going after them too.

VTech

adr82 wrote:

I like Strava, but the biggest problem with it is the way that people will add segments literally anywhere. 100 yard "sprint" on a busy road between two big junctions with traffic lights? Why not, what could possibly go wrong there? :roll: My personal favourite was one that went through a enclosed shared bike/pedestrian bridge which had not one but two 90 degree corners that you can't really see around. Idiocy. If you're the type of person who feels the need to create a segment for every quarter mile of your commute you could at least make them private and not have everyone else going after them too.

This is a great point and something that could easily be fixed.
I think garmin used to do something similar where you could input errors with software, likewise users could do that with strava if a section is deemed dangerous. It would be easy to realise that some people would attempt dangerous sections just to be on the leader-board risking themselves and others in the process.

adr82

To be fair to Strava they do have a way you can report a segment as "hazardous", which means the leaderboard becomes hidden (although you have to have ridden the segment first to do this). But there are just so many of these silly segments it feels like flagging a few of them is not going to make any real difference overall. And even if you do report a segment there's nothing to stop someone recreating it in the same place with a different name... ideally I'd love it if they could automatically filter out every single segment that goes through one or more sets of traffic lights or requires going through a junction where you don't have right of way, etc.

VTech

adr82 wrote:

To be fair to Strava they do have a way you can report a segment as "hazardous", which means the leaderboard becomes hidden (although you have to have ridden the segment first to do this). But there are just so many of these silly segments it feels like flagging a few of them is not going to make any real difference overall. And even if you do report a segment there's nothing to stop someone recreating it in the same place with a different name... ideally I'd love it if they could automatically filter out every single segment that goes through one or more sets of traffic lights or requires going through a junction where you don't have right of way, etc.

Maybe if they had a rule for 3 strikes etc ? then you cant repost the section again ?
I also agree about the traffic lights and one ways etc, anything that could be conceived as law breaking should be paramount to fix for them.

MountainMonster

This is always an interesting topic. I can understand why Strava could become under fire for this, but that does not make it right. I am a firm believer that Health and Safety prevails much more than it should, and I find it simply ridiculous that a company such as Strava can face legal action over something such as this when the victim decided to attempt these things at their own free will, and they are the sole reason they had problems. Oh well, welcome to the world these days!

VTech

MountainMonster wrote:

This is always an interesting topic. I can understand why Strava could become under fire for this, but that does not make it right. I am a firm believer that Health and Safety prevails much more than it should, and I find it simply ridiculous that a company such as Strava can face legal action over something such as this when the victim decided to attempt these things at their own free will, and they are the sole reason they had problems. Oh well, welcome to the world these days!

Im not sure strava should be held accountable, the claim game these days is appalling and ruining society the glove over. I think in general the people could fix this if strava allowed them too.

MountainMonster

VTech wrote:

MountainMonster wrote:

This is always an interesting topic. I can understand why Strava could become under fire for this, but that does not make it right. I am a firm believer that Health and Safety prevails much more than it should, and I find it simply ridiculous that a company such as Strava can face legal action over something such as this when the victim decided to attempt these things at their own free will, and they are the sole reason they had problems. Oh well, welcome to the world these days!

Im not sure strava should be held accountable, the claim game these days is appalling and ruining society the glove over. I think in general the people could fix this if strava allowed them too.

I hear you on that. I was talking to a friend yesterday, and he put me in a position where I had to tell him off, which is not what I enjoy doing. He was "proud" of his cousin. He slipped in Morrisons, even though they had 'Caution Wet Floor' signs and he had been told to be careful. He fell over, had a concussion and managed to weasel over £4,000 from them for the "accident for which they were at fault".

I find this absolutely astonishing.

VTech

It kills business, causes so much hurt to people and companies effected and all it really does is raise premiums.
The UK will soon be like the USA where you cant get affordable insurance (already is to a certain degree).

Oprah did a staged bus crash in new york city and within 30 seconds of the crash over 20 people jumped on board.
Make of that what you will !

MountainMonster

It all just boils down to one statement that people live by these days:

It is always someone elses fault. Depressing when I have to watch my costs rise because someone couldn't take 5 seconds to be careful at whatever they are doing.

VTech

I think people tend to be of the belief that no one suffers without realising that we all suffer for such idiotic claims.
The problem is, when genuine you end up having the insurance company trying to weazle out of claims.

I used to read crash data to determine possible get-out-clauses for insurance companies on the side (legal work) and once had a guy who had blown an engine but told the warranty company it had blown whilst driving on a road doing normal driving yet the car was doing a tad over 250kph ! Now in reality it should have been capable of those speeds so no reason not to pay but im not sure what happened with that case.