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Comment by sleavey | Hacker News Reader

Didn't they get banned or there was a campaign to ban them after someone was killed by someone riding a fixie, in London?

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You're probably thinking of Charle Alliston who killed someone on Old St and got 18 months for it - to be road legal, fixed-gear bikes must still have a front brake, and have at least since the fifties, A fixed gear counts as a back brake but you must have two for redundancy.

This. Most cyclist fatalities in London are caused by Heavy Good Vehicles illegally overtaking and then turning and therefore trapping the poor cyclist in the blind spot. Nothing to do with the wheel hub design or bicycle braking system.

Charlie Alliston should have been using a front brake, but a few things got lost in the media frenzy:

- More pedestrians are killed by motor vehicle than bikes in London BY FAR

- More cyclists are killed by motor vehicles than bikes in London BY FAR

- More motorists are killed by motor vehicles than bikes in London BY FAR

It was incredibly depressing to watch people spend so much attention on one (pretty rare!) case rather the real sources of road danger in the city.

On top of that, the associated pollution kills far more people, contributes to climate change, and causes tons of respiratory illness.

It's not news when dog bites man. And based on Wikipedia, it seems that men bite dogs more often than cyclist kill other people in accidents.

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