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Local cyclist Simon Williams has failed to access his favourite website this morning after it asked him to identify which images of a street contained traffic lights.
Williams, a keen cyclist who regularly commutes to work on his bike through busy traffic, is currently unable to access a cycling forum due to the anti-spam Captcha system repeatedly asking him to prove he is not a robot.
He told us, “I don’t get it, I’m not a robot. I know this because here I am talking to you on a satirical website, but the system keeps showing me photos of the street asking me which squares contain traffic lights – how can I do that when none of the squares contains traffic lights!
“Every single square is a road that you could just drive down or a junction where you can pull out whenever you feel like it. Is it some sort of trick question? Am I taking part in a Turing test?”
Captcha developer Gary Matthews told us, “Every set of images includes at least one set of traffic lights, it’s not a trick question.
“Maybe he can’t see them because all the lights are showing as red?
“But we have taken on board his feedback, and it does appear that a large number of cyclists are being locked out of websites because they simply can’t see the traffic lights that are right in front of them.
“We’re trialling a new cyclist-friendly version of our Captcha solution using images of potholes because it seems they can spot them from bloody miles away.”
