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you have 33K deaths in cars every year, mostly due to head injuries. Seems to me it's the folks in cars that should be wearing helmets. It's the #1 cause of death under the age of 30! Where are you on that one AAA? Mandatory helmets in cars would save tens of thousands of lives every year.
Next: LAB teams up with DOT to ask motorists to wear fireproof jumpsuits
To celebrate National Bike Month, the NHTSA teamed up with AAA to ask cyclists to ride safely. Together, they've started Roll Model a campaign reminding parents and caregivers to set positive examples that encourage children and teens to ride safely, this month and every month. Why AAA? Don't th...
Sorry about killing those people, but what I was distracting myself in a socially acceptable manner so there's only a small fine (or no fine at all) and no charges.
Negotiations on Vehicular Homicide Stall in Maryland Senate
Delegate Luiz Simmons (D-Rockville) and Senator Brian Frosh (D-Bethesda) were unable to agree yesterday on a possible amendment to enable House Bill 363 to reach the Senate floor. The bill, sponsored by Simmons, would create a new crime of negligent homicide by vehicle for drivers who kill some...
I bike all my trips EXCEPT going to work (too far away). Guess I don't count then.
Gary Imhoff, still wrong
The bicycling-movie-ignorant Gary Imhoff focused like a laser beam on one part of Tim Craig's Washington Post article on biking in DC - the fact that only 2.2% of DC residents bike to work. First of all, he's unaware of how that number is generated. 2.2% is the percentage who primarily bike comm...
"bike commuting rate dropped from 2008 to 2009. Theories?"
how about gas prices? $4.26 / gallon average for regular, July 2008. $2.64 / gallon average July 2009.
Tuesday Morning Ride - Post-Vacation
Back to the grind. Here is some of what I missed (and didn't). Chat with DDOT Director Klein today The WSJ covers folding bikes Somehow, DC's bike commuting rate dropped from 2008 to 2009. Theories? Portland and Minneapolis saw drops as well. LAB notes that there is a wide margin of error. Arli...
every time I read that there is a pedestrian or cyclist death that's in the suburbs, I check to see if it happened near the intersection of a cloverleaf highway exit and a shopping mall. Because 9 times out of 10, that's exactly where it happened.
Guess what - rt.214 & rt. 202 cloverleaf at the Kettering/Largo shopping center is the next intersection over. and 95/495 w/ 202 is the next intersection over from that. Imagine that!
Putting a shopping mall next to a cloverleaf is aparently a cyclist/pedestrian machine of death.
Maryland Senate Candidate in Critical Condition after being hit by an SUV
It is so important to wear lights and reflectors when riding in the dark. And to stop when you think you hit something with your car. Natasha Pettigrew, 30, of Bowie, the [Green] party's nominee for the seat currently held by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D), was transported to the Prince George's Coun...
yeah, DC and Montreal don't have a problem with mass car-burnings either. On the other hand we do have a much higher murder rate....
Paris has a very high unemployment rate disproportionately shared by poor minorities who live on the outside of the city - this has made mobility a major issue of protest for the poor. Paris also has a culture of protests that involves property destruction.
In North America it's usually the other way around - with the poor living in the more urban areas, so it's a different dynamic.
This time the Vandals invade Paris
The NY Times has an article (thanks to Jeff) that updates the problems Velib has been reportedly having with vandalism and theft. This is a rehashing of the same story from last winter. At that time Streetsblog claimed JCDecaux was just claiming problems for negotiation purposes. Not sure if tha...
I think people like to pretend that the helmet thing is a rational decision, but really it's a cultural decision. More than anything it's a statement about how we think cycling is viewed in society. It is an image that we have been sold on by bicycle shops run by racers as well as by concerned family memebers.
In Nascar auto racing, the drivers wear helmets, special clothes, shoes, gloves, etc.. However the same drivers do not wear helmets and fancy outfit when they are driving to the supermarket down the street - even if they will be going 70mph on the highway, still no helmet or fancy clothes.
If the Nascar driver wore his helmet when he drove to the supermarket, people would have a different expectation about the way he would be driving, and he would also have a different expectation.
Suppose he also make his daughter wear a helmet when she drove a car to the supermarket. And his perents, etc. His family would then have a different expectation about driving.
Suppose that the only people who have been drivign for the last 50 years or so have mostly been racers from Nascar. And suppose anytime these Nascar people went to the dealer or repair shop for their car, they were sold on racing helmets and racing clothes, shoes, gloves, etc. that you must use anytime you are driving. Everyone who drives would say you are crazy not to wear a helmet. but of course everyone on the highway is driving like a Nascar rally.
It's not a rational decision, it's a cultural cue. you don't need a helmet and fancy clothes to go to the supermarket. It might be safer, but it's not practical and it changes the culture.
The Helmet Thing
So I'm pulling this helmet conversation out of the comments of another post so that it doesn't overwhelm or confuse that issue. It started when old guy wrote Not wearing a helmet while riding on that road -- indeed any road -- is pretty dumb. Why don't folks understand this? Which led me to as...
two facts that don't add up - impact on the right side the car - but the cyclist was in the center of the lane. This would clearly indicate that the motorist was attempting to pass by crossing the double yellow. As this is the case, we can safely assume that she did see the cyclist prior to the impact. She passed to closely.
In addition -
Come on, you know hardly anyone goes 40 in a 40mph zone. Odds are she was going at least 45-50mph. or more!
Helmet isn't going to do you any good when you get mowed down from behind at 45-50mph...
What might have helped is a big LED tail light, like say the B&M 4D toplight. Plus a blinkey.
Also the shoulder is pretty narrow, but I would have used it anyway.
Maryland State Police on Leymeister Crash
An open letter from the commander of the Leonardtown Barrack To Whom It May Concern: This is in response to a number of e-mails and citizen inquiries following the death of Curtis A. Leymeister, who was killed while operating a bicycle on Clarks Landing Road on October 5, 2009. I would like to ...
the cycle tracks are going to have the noticable effect of getting women, people with kids, elderly, all the "other people" to bike places rather than drive who otherwise wouldn't - same effect they always do. This effect will only increase as the cycle tracks are extended and become more inter-connected. Especially when we get bikeshare at a higher density on/around the cycle tracks, that's when it's really going to start taking off. So much potential....
DC Going Beyond Bike Lanes
At the Bicycle Advisory Committee's Facility Committee meeting this week, bicycle facilities that are in the planning stage were discussed. M Street SE, SW from 6th St, SW to 11th Street, SE There are four options being considered, listed here from least to most expensive 1. Mixing zone (Like ...
Distracted Driver.
or excessive speed.
what other explanation could there be?
St. Mary's County Cyclist hit and killed
I hate pulling up the fatality category and this is the third time today. Ugh. A cyclist, Curtis A. Leymeister, 47, of Hollywood, MD, was riding on Clark's Landing Road near Scotch Neck Road when he was hit from behind and killed this morning. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of...
So much potential with Silver Spring in particular. Also a few protected bike lanes in Silver Spring would go a long way.
Dupont Down-under would be a slam dunk.
L'Enfant Plaza - also sensible I agree.
The Bike Station is Open! Where next?
The new Bike Station at Union Station is opening today [More on that after all of the hullabaloo is over]. So before we finish eating the cake and ice cream maybe we could talk about where to build another one. I have some ideas. 1. Dupont Circle - I've written about this before but the former...
it is quite interesting that not a single person can come up with a cyclist death where the bike had no brakes. The term "risk compensation" whereby individual people may tend to adjust their behaviour in response to perceived changes in risk. Other studies have shown that alertness vs. distracted driving (or cycling) has a greater effect on safety than any other factor. The other largest effect on cycling safety is safety in numbers... it is also possible that trendy fixies are phenomenon of higher-bicycle mode-share locations, where a greater safety in numbers effect is already taking place.
Washington Post Thinks Fixies are News
The Washington Post had a big article on the front page of the Style section yesterday on the fixie fashion craze. The title "Look Ma, No Brakes!" unfortunately focused on the fact that some fixed gear cyclists choose not to have brakes, which is true, legal and not the same as not having a mea...
the point of striping lanes is not to increase safety, but rather to encourage the road to be used closer to capacity. without the lanes drivers will naturally provide more buffer between vehicles. What is the goal in striping bike lanes? Striped lanes DO however make drivers and cyclist FEEL safer, and feeling safer means more cyclists, and more cyclists means more overall safety than if you had less cyclist... the number of cyclists is a more powerful safety tool than the actual design of the road... at least if you get enough cyclists to pass that minimum threshold. Now, just because you are striping lanes doesn't mean you can't also provide some actual protection like say bollards, jersey barrier, parked cars, etc... which would actually make the cyclists safer in their bike lane, on top of also making it more popular.
Study Determines That Bike Lanes Result in Closer Passing
A study done in the UK determined that when drivers pass a cyclist in a bike lane they don't give as much passing distance as when the cyclist is in the road. For the study the researchers mounted a camcorder on the rear rack of a bicycle and rode on three roads that each had sections with and ...
RE: ontarioroader
Yes
RE: ohmypolarbear
Yes
RE: SJE
pray
Is it me or does there seem to be less and less patience lately for bikes (especially beaters) locked up in public?
I've had the sema problem in Baltimore lately... except in Baltimore they don't do notices - they simply respond to any "abandoned bike" complaint by cutting the lock and sending the bike to charity without looking for the owner.
Yellow Bike at Corner of 13th & E, NE
From DPW We have received a complaint of a bicycle locked to the parking sign near the corner of 13th & E Streets, NE. If anyone knows who this bike belongs to please let them know if it remains it is likely to be tagged as abandoned and removed by the city. If it is being displayed as a memoria...
Somehow I get the impression that if the parking structure was larger, Cato would be writing the exact same article anyway. Their main sticking point seems to be that gov't money was spent on bicycles, as if that was somehow incompatible with Cato's ideological principles.
Cato Institute Calls Bikestation a $4M Bike Rack
On the Cato @ Liberty blog, budget expert Tad DeHaven (who used to work for the bizarro-Blumenauer Senator Tom Coburn) called the Bikestation at Union Station a $4 million bike rack. (tip) Whatever the figure, at a cost of $4 million, it comes out to around $25-$30 thousand per bike. And, y...
meanwhile in denmark...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16nine/2414569778/
...the simple act of parking a bicycle is elevated to a symphony of grace, poetry and elegance... (this is just a fraction of the bikes... large numbers of bikes left in public space is taken for granted... notice they don't even lock to a pole!)
Ghost Bikes Gone Again
photo.jpg, originally uploaded by Eric Gilliland. why.i.hate.dc reported yesterday that DDOT came and moved the bikes from the pile back to where they had been before but placed the "This bike has been reported as ABANDONED..." signs we sometimes see. Those signs say that the bike will be remo...
to me it wasn't about Alice after the first one. many ghost bikes in the past (and others even now) are not memorials to individuals, but rather simply reminders to watch out for cyclists.
It became more about cyclists wanting to see some progress at the intersection and not wanting to be forgotten. that is a fight that will continue. Someone should organize a ghost cyclist protest for more/better bike facilities... it can be ghosts of cycling future - the women and children and elderly who don't ride now because we haven't built the infrastructure to make it posssible yet.
Ghost Bikes Gone Again
photo.jpg, originally uploaded by Eric Gilliland. why.i.hate.dc reported yesterday that DDOT came and moved the bikes from the pile back to where they had been before but placed the "This bike has been reported as ABANDONED..." signs we sometimes see. Those signs say that the bike will be remo...
i'm amazed how much attention a pile of bikes gets. Embedded in that reaction is a circular argument for the status-quo arrangmenet of space for automobiles, bike, and cars. 22 bikes adds up to about 1/2 the space taken up by one SUV - since you can fit about 40 bikes into one parking space. to be fair should we not spend twice as much attention on each car that parks in dupont circle and/or disobays a parking regulation? the fact that the level of attention is not proportional highlights how out of balance the perception is.
the amount of space that is is considered acceptable for bicycles to occupy is at the very core of the public confrontation.
how much space is it acceptable for parked cars to use - and for how long? If every car owner instead kept 22 bikes out in the street in a big pile - it would still take up only 1/2 as much space as the cars do now.
Ghost Bikes have been piled up
21_27A, originally uploaded by m hoek. Why.i.hate.dc reports that all of the Alice Swanson Ghost bikes have been piled up into two piles. The locked bike that replaces the one DPW removed is still locked up from the photo. I suspect DPW is preparing to remove them, but that is just a guess. Da...
try that in copenhagen or amsterdam sometime - police report! there are spray-painted bikes all over the place! it must be some kind of protest! we try to remove them, and more keep showing up! hah...
If the city make the kinds of serious infrastructure changes for bikes that those cities have, then some day the city will look like this protest every day.
22 Ghost Bikes Memorialize Alice Swanson
If you, like me, have been out of the loop all day, yesterday's big story is that local artist Legba Carrefour erected 22 Ghost Bikes at R, Connecticut Avenue and 20th Street as a memorial to Alice Swanson (pictured below and here's a description of the police report for those who missed it) a...
for a second it seemed counter-productive and annoying, and then I thought about it for a second...
suppose in 1910 or so someone parked 22 cars out at the curb, painted white, in protest of automobile safety (which was just starting to be a big rallying cry at the time). They protested, and the infastructure got better. Now the curb is full of cars every day......
yes it's a bit annoying if you're not used to seeing that many bikes here, but consider this - if a lot more people were using bikes - as we'd encourage them to, the street would probably look exactly like this anyway.... and one day maybe it will.
the safety improvements like separated lanes are necessary in order to get more people to ride bikes, and when they do, it will look just like the protest here every day.
in light of that, it's amost amusing that there is a police report.
22 Ghost Bikes Memorialize Alice Swanson
If you, like me, have been out of the loop all day, yesterday's big story is that local artist Legba Carrefour erected 22 Ghost Bikes at R, Connecticut Avenue and 20th Street as a memorial to Alice Swanson (pictured below and here's a description of the police report for those who missed it) a...
love the handlebars.
very chic!
Happy Labor Day
Good time for a bike ride
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