Category: Biking Elsewhere

By NICK WINGFIELD, New York Times
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Video from these cameras has begun to play an invaluable role in police investigations of a small number of hit-and-runs and other incidents around the country, local authorities say. Lawyers who specialize in representing bicyclists say they expect the use of cameras for this purpose to increase as awareness of the devices goes up and their prices, now starting at around $200, come down.
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“It’s a fact of life that on American roads that you get punked, cut off purposely, harassed, not once but on a regular basis,” said Bob Mionske, a former Olympic cyclist who is now a lawyer representing bicyclists in Portland, Ore. “If motorists start to hear about bikes having cameras, they’re going to think twice about running you off the road.”
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Mr. Wilder said, “Most cyclists don’t use cameras so Mr. Diehl may have assumed he could assault and drive away anonymously.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/technology/bicyclists-using-cameras-to-capture-accidents.html

BY WILL DOIG, Salon
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One study diagrammed the shrinking distances that four generations of one family’s kids were allowed to stray from home: six miles in 1919, one mile in 1950, half a mile in 1979, and 300 yards today.
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She says the “Popsicle test” is a convenient way to use free-roaming kids to gauge a city’s health. “If an 8-year-old child can go get a Popsicle from the store by themselves and finish it before they get home, that city is probably thriving,” says Skenazy. Such an act is possible only in a walkable, reasonably safe environment that has a good pedestrian infrastructure and where retail and residences are relatively intermixed.
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Compare that to the U.S., … the Pittsburgh dad who was charged with child endangerment for letting his 9- and 6-year-olds play in a park; the Florida community that banned anyone under 18 from being outdoors without a chaperone.
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It says something that we perceive walking down the street to be a greater risk to kids than speeding along in two tons of steel and glass, when in actuality, four-fifths of kids killed by cars are in those cars. No parent, however, is going to be accused of endangering their child by driving them to school, but the parent who lets them walk might be
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https://www.salon.com/2012/07/21/paranoid_parents_kill_cities/

Continue reading “The benefits of cycling (infograph)”

Some good advice here: https://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/15523/you-can-make-your-bike-harder-to-steal-easier-to-recover/

For those looking for a good summary of the federal transportation law: https://t4america.org/blog/2012/07/13/ten-key-things-to-know-about-the-new-transportation-law/
A worthwhile quote:
"Even as some House Republicans were claiming that the tiny share directed toward safe walking and biking was the reason that our roads and bridges were crumbling, they were pushing to eliminate the repair program to fix our roads and bridges. The bill they negotiated ends up being as blasé about funds for maintenance and repair is it is about the safety of people on foot or bicycle."

B’ Spokes: May I assert the other 10% also have an active life style. To find your stats: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18770328
I found this site via: https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/the-couch-potato-goes-global/?smid=fb-share
And to highlight a bit from that article:
The latest figures suggest that the world’s population has become disturbingly inactive. According to the researchers’ calculations, 31.1 percent of the world’s adults, or about 1.5 billion people, are almost completely sedentary, meaning that they do not meet the minimum recommendation of 150 minutes of walking or other moderate activity per week, or about 20 minutes a day.
Teenagers are faring even worse. More than 80 percent of young people ages 13 to 15 worldwide are not getting the hour a day of vigorous exercise recommended for their age group.
Unsurprisingly, North America and Europe lead the world in not exercising, with 43.3 percent of Americans and 34.8 percent of Europeans not reaching the low recommended threshold. But the world is catching up or, rather, joining us in sitting down. More than 30 percent of Russians are inactive nowadays; ditto in the Middle East; and about 27 percent of Africans are sedentary.
Read more: https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/the-couch-potato-goes-global/?smid=fb-share

B’ Spokes: In this article https://www.commutebybike.com/2012/06/14/in-search-of-good-psas-about-bike-lanes-and-sharrows/ Ted Johnson explores some of the material out there that explains bike lanes and sharrows.
In an ideal world all engineering would be intuitive and instruction manuals would be a thing of the past but we are far from having an ideal world. And I am still amazed that we are putting this stuff down on the pavement with little to poor educational material out there so people know how to use this stuff properly.
I am still amazed at the effort we had to do after the Nathan Krasnopoler crash (https://www.baltimorespokes.org/article.php?story=2011030413431398 ) and I am appreciative that the Baltimore Sun picked up on some of these points to help get the word out but still I don’t like the idea we need a serious crash to get attention on the lack of education.

B’ Spokes: In this Non Sequitur comic by Wiley Miller he seems to get at the nuance of the walk signal that still allows motorist right and left turns… with or without the walk signal it is still cross at out own risk.

B’ Spokes: I just discovered this blog called Bickeyface, it’s really cute, here is a sample (click the pic for the original page):