Category: Biking Elsewhere

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Put the brakes on bike larcenies

From the Arlington Police Department
In 2010, 390 bikes using cables or chains as locks were stolen. The cables can quickly be cut with a rechargeable cutting tool and the padlocks are easily broken.
To prevent your bike from being stolen:
1) USE A U-LOCK. Properly secured this offers the best protection against theft. Secure the frame of your bike to a solid object, preferably one weighing more than the bike. And if you have a releasable wheel, it too should be secured with the frame.
2) ALWAYS LOCK YOUR BIKE. No matter what its value.
3) REGISTER YOUR BIKE with the Police Department. [WC: while I think this is a fine idea, it won’t keep your bike from being stolen. And registering with one of the two National online registries is a good additional – if not preferable – suggestion]
Bike registration is easy and free and you can do it online at www.arlingtonva.us. Go to Online Services and click on Register your Bike. You must use the serial number engraved on your bicycle, not from a receipt. You will receive an ACPD decal in the mail within 7 days to place on your bicycle which, when visible, is a definite deterrent to theft.
AND IF YOU DO BECOME A VICTIM:
Stolen Bikes: File a report online immediately. Go to www.arlingtonva.us/police and click on Report a Crime. Include brand, model, color and serial number.
AND REMEMBER — AN ABANDONED BIKE MAY BE A STOLEN BIKE
Abandoned Bikes: Call 703-228-4057. Report it immediately. Leave your phone number and a description and location of the bicycle.
Heather Hurlock, Lt. APO
Crime Prevention Specialist
Special Operations Section
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GAO: Trucking the least efficient mode of freight shipping

from Greater Greater Washington
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The Government Accountability Office published a study finding that the costs of freight trucking that are not passed on to the consumer are at least six times greater than the equivalent rail costs and at least nine times greater than the equivalent waterways costs.
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"When prices do not reflect all these costs, one mode may have a cost advantage over the others that distorts competition," writes the GAO. "As a consequence, the nation could devote more resources than needed to higher cost freight modes, an inefficient outcome that lowers economic well-being."
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[B’ Spokes: note the contrast with AASHTO asking more "support" (money from tax payers) to expand roads to handle more freight trucking as that’s "vital" to the economy.]
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Two highways were having a drink in a bar …

-> "Putting entertainment centers in automobiles does not contribute to safe driving. When you’re trying to update your Facebook or put out a tweet, it’s a distraction."
— Ray LaHood, U.S. Secretary of Transportation
https://tinyurl.com/4su5qvo
-> "Strolling through the international Toy Fair at the Javits Center in New York City last week was like walking through the brightly painted halls of a children’s hospital — at once cheery and sad. Cheery were the shiny bikes and busy ant farms. Sad was the way the marketers made it sound like they were peddling early intervention in a box…"
Via Streetsblog Capitol Hill: https://tinyurl.com/4fct4e6
-> "Two highways were having a drink in a bar when a piece of pink tarmac walked in. The highways dropped to the floor and cowered under the table. The pink tarmac had a drink and then left. The highways got up and resumed drinking. ‘Why did you guys hide from that piece of tarmac?’ the bartender asked. A highway was quick to respond, ‘Are you kidding? That guy’s a cycle path!’"
— Source unknown
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.

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‘Vulnerable user’ law would protect bicyclists, pedestrians

Dan DeWitt, Times Columnist
This seems like a natural for the most lethal state in the country for walkers and cyclists — a "vulnerable user" law.
I received an e-mail on this subject in response to Sunday’s column about Brad Ash, the Pasco County middle school teacher who was killed after being hit while riding his bicycle on St. Joe Road.
Like many other such drivers, the woman whose car struck Ash received only a minor traffic citation: careless driving. It was a charge that suited the action — briefly taking her eyes off the road — but not the consequence, thereby creating a legal puzzle.
The solution? Maybe a vulnerable user law.
Ash died mainly because, like all cyclists and pedestrians, he was traveling without the protection of what Portland, Ore., lawyer Ray Thomas calls a car’s "steel ectoskeleton."
Other aspects of law have long recognized that certain populations, including children and the elderly, are more susceptible to harm than others, said Thomas, who helped pioneer vulnerable user legislation in the United States.
So why don’t traffic statutes do the same for walkers, people in wheelchairs and on bikes and, ideally, motorcyclists? The idea is not to make criminals of drivers who hit them — just to make sure these motorists reflect on the potentially grave results of distracted driving and spread that word to others.
Before the passage of the 2008 Oregon law, based on similar ordinances in several European countries, the maximum fine for a careless driver who caused a death in that state was $750. Now, if the victim is a vulnerable user — as they often are when minor slip-ups end tragically — that amount is $12,500.
Drivers can greatly reduce this fine by taking traffic classes and doing community service, usually giving talks about their experience. The drivers in these fatal crashes "of course feel terrible, and this gives them an opportunity for reconciliation," Thomas said.
In doing so, of course, they increase public awareness of the danger faced by cyclists and pedestrians. So did just passing the law — the state giving its stamp of approval to a legal shield for these folks.
Since then, Thomas said, the law has received lots of publicity, including in this month’s trial of a Portland bus driver who was convicted of striking five pedestrians, killing two of them.
Said Thomas: "Law enforcement people aren’t as likely to think, ‘What is that goofy guy doing riding his bike on the road? Doesn’t he know he can get killed?’ "
Some enhanced penalties are already in Florida law.
Tuttle, for example, could lose her license for as long as a year and be fined as much as $1,000; if there was no fatality or injury, she’d keep her license and probably face a smaller fine. Another provision allows judges to impose as much as 120 hours of community service, though they rarely do, according to lawyers to whom I spoke.
"I’ve never seen it. Never, ever, at all," said J. Steele Olmstead, a Tampa personal injury lawyer and cyclist.
Bike and motorcycle groups in Florida have lobbied for tougher penalties for careless drivers who cause deaths — and gotten nowhere.
Which is too bad, and not only for the main reason — that people’s lives are in danger — but because scary roads are expensive.
People who, say, liked to ride their bikes to hang out at a coffee shop or play a game of basketball at a park will now drive. That puts more cars on highways and eventually more burden on us to pay for widening projects.
And the roads in Florida are more than scary; they’re terrifying. Not just recently, and not just because of the dozen cycling deaths in the Tampa Bay area since late July. Year after year, more cyclists and almost as many pedestrians die in Florida as in California, which has twice our population. Mike Lasche, a longtime cycling activist from Sarasota, found that between 2001 and 2008, Florida ranked among the top three states in per-capita cycling and pedestrian deaths.
Nowhere else came close, certainly not New York or Delaware, both of which followed Oregon’s lead and passed vulnerable user laws last year.
Can anyone seriously argue that Florida should not do the same?
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