[atourgates]

In a somewhat related practice, some roads in the Tour de France this year have been painted with "white shit" (rider Tom Pidcock's words) in order to combat the asphalt melting in the heat, with the unfortunate side-effect that it seems to be slippery and several riders (including Tom Pidcock) crashed going around a corner when the lost traction.

Coverage here: https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-racing/tour-de-fran...

But of course, this was done in response to past serious crashes that occured because the asphalt melted. So, it's sort of a damned if you do damned if you dont scenario for the organizers.

[Animats]

Pepe's Towing in Los Angeles reports asphalt collapses where loaded semitrailers are parked with the landing gear down. On hot days the concentrated load of the landing gear sometimes punches through the asphalt.[1]

This is why truck dock areas are usually paved with concrete.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBrULmCGJfc

[jordanb]

Years ago Chicago started putting concrete pads on the road at bus stops because the busses stopping in the exact same spot repeatedly was carving ruts into the asphalt.

[superb_dev]

A city I used to live in did the same thing when they refurbished all the major bus stops. I always wondered why

[bombcar]

Also if a vehicle is stopped and the driver turns the wheel (with power steering this isn't hard) - it will eventually drill holes in asphalt - you can sometimes see this in house driveways where someone turns around.

[toasty228]

You can even see the asphalt "waves" pushed by the buses stopping here over and over again

[cwillu]

Yeah, my city is currently going through every bus stop in the city, redoing the pavement in concrete. Construction season has been nasty for us this year :p

[Breza]

I've lived in Washington DC for 20 years and I never realized why the bus stops here are concrete! Thank you for this.

[andrewflnr]

Motorcycle riders also report their sidestands sinking into asphalt on very hot days, to the extent that many of them carry some kind of wide weight-spreading thing to put under the stand. Apparently a face plate (?) for an electrical junction box works great.

[pacbard]

Usually, a crushed soda can is good enough to prevent the kickstand to sync in the pavement. You can usually find a can in a random parking lot. That, or find a strip of concrete. That's why sometimes motorcycle park on the sidewalk in front of big box stores on a hot day.

[MrMember]

Yep, I use a soda can and have never had any issues.

[esseph]

My bicycle did this as kid in the summer

[Dah00n]

This isn't a new thing in the Tour and it is normally not a problem, but since someone crashed on it then it must be the "white shit" that caused it. Not one of the hundreds of other variables - like the rider.

[atourgates]

Several riders independently crashed in the exact same spot, including Pidcock who is a famously good descender.

These are literally world class professionals at riding their bikes downhill around corners without crashing. If they say the white shit caused the roads to behave differently than they expected, I'm going to believe them.

[throw1234567891]

Paint is usually slippery. There are special standards for how slippery a paint painted on the tarmac can be. But it’s calculated for cars, not racing bicycles with teeny-weeny tires. Could have been easily the paint.

[NetMageSCW]

Perhaps they should have used some type of traction paint.

[throw1234567891]

There are other problems with that in wet conditions.

[olyjohn]

I mean, one of the first things they teach in motorcycle safety classes is that the road stripes are slippery and could cause a crash, especially in the rain. Even if there us a standard for how slippery it can be, it still doesn't match the traction of the road surface.

[thaumasiotes]

> But of course, this was done in response to past serious crashes that occurred because the asphalt melted. So, it's sort of a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario for the organizers.

Well, not entirely. You always have the option of repaving the roads with cobblestone or something.

[subscribed]

Cobblestones?

They're very slippery when dirty or wet. Seems like a much worse option.

[albumen]

Or just have the cyclists use fatter tyres.

[dgoldstein0]

That would also require fatter wheels. Which together have higher moment of inertia which makes for slower bikes (as more energy is required to get the wheels to the same speed).

Not exactly what people want in a race.

[adrianN]

You can buy faster bikes than what is allowed at the Tour, so the only concern would be making records incomparable.

[Dah00n]

And yet fatter tyres are faster than the slimmer ones they used to run. No-one run slim tyres these days.

[webnrrd2k]

I could be wrong, but it turns out that somewhat fatter tires with lower pressure are faster because less energy is wasted by deforming slightly and rolling over small bumps, as opposed to thin high-pressure tire "bouncing" over pavement. There is less wasted vertical motion with the wider tires.

[baq]

Fatter wheel is better than a dnf right?

[throw1234567891]

Not really. If you finish second, you are the first to lose.

[Wowfunhappy]

...I know absolutely nothing about competitive cycling, but it occurs to me:

1. Would the Tour de France have been rescheduled if it was raining that day?

2. If the answer to #1 is no, is the paint any more slippery than water would have been?

3. If the answer to #1 is yes, then they should also reschedule for extreme heat.

[atourgates]

1. No, they ride in the rain all the time.

2. It's not so much that the white shit (actually lime) is slippery, it's that it's unexpectedly slippery. Riders are generally quite good at going the right speed for the conditions. This just a new and unexpected condition they don't have experience with yet.

3. They did shorten one stage because of extreme heat, and there has been talk about rescheduling (both in terms of season, and moving the races into cooler parts fo the day), but the Tour is pretty tradition bound, so it'd take something quite exceptional to see that happen.