The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), with the help of the SafeR organization, continues working to improve safety in cycling races for the season that is now beginning, according to a statement issued by cycling’s highest body. However, for the moment, there are several ideas on how to tackle this problem and few concrete proposals.
The various bodies that make up SafeR, the body created to improve safety in cycling competitions, continue to work to find the best solutions to achieve this goal. These bodies include the main players in cycling, from the leaders of the three grand tours: Javier Guillén, Christian Prudhomme and Mauro Vegni, representatives of the teams, the UCI itself and the riders, led by the controversial Adam Hansen.
Essential to their work was the data collected throughout 2024 when SafeR was created. These data indicate that in the last season 497 incidents were recorded in races between the World Tour events for both men and women, as well as the Pro Series for both sexes. Of these incidents, 35% are attributable to non-cyclist causes such as approaching complicated points, dangerous race conditions such as wet or slippery ground or poor road conditions.
This data collection has helped to look for patterns in crashes and the identification of dangerous factors such as crowd placement or improperly parked vehicles. Looking ahead to 2025, it is intended to expand the database with the monitoring of the yellow card system whose use the UCI intends to establish as definitive after the tests carried out in the races at the end of the season, which resulted in 31 of these cards.
It also seems that the variable protection zone between 3 and 5 kilometers is here to stay, which aims to reduce the tension at sprint stage finishes in preparation for the finish, and which is intended to offer extra protection in response to the increasing complications of finishes in cities with more and more obstacles in the form of speed bumps, speed bumps, narrowing, etc.
Protection measures in the stages with sprint finish to which is added the new calculation of the difference between groups so that, to determine the time difference between two groups will have to spend at least 3 seconds. With less than that difference both groups will be awarded the same time.
Precisely the sprints has been one of the points to which SafeR has paid more attention and after collecting the opinion of cyclists, this organization has found certain common demands such as requesting maximum consistency in the application of penalties in case of dangerous behavior in addition to concerns about the design of the finishes: placement of fences, location of the exit of vehicles, avoiding curves in the final part ….
Regarding the fences, SafeR is facing a second phase in which they intend to define a homologation to be met by the barriers to be used in the last 500 meters of the stages, which will define dimensions, mechanical characteristics, fixing system of both the fence and the advertising and the impact tests to be passed, a study that is expected to obtain results in the next 6 months.
In a next phase, the extension of these approvals to the rest of the protection elements that can be used along the route, as well as to the signaling and the creation of a software that allows the evaluation of the routes to facilitate the choice of the best route for the races would be assessed.
Source: www.brujulabike.com