baltimorespokes

By jtitus, WABA
The federal government is withdrawing its long-standing claim that bicycle helmets prevent 85% of head injuries, in response to a petition filed by WABA under the federal Data Quality Act.
In 1989, a study in Seattle estimated that helmets prevent 85% of head injuries. Efforts to replicate those results during the 1990s confirmed that helmets reduce injuries, but not nearly as much as the Seattle study suggested. Yet public health advocates, government web sites, and the news media have continued to repeat the 85% factoid to the point that it has become a mantra.
Bad information can cause problems, even when it is promoted with the best intentions. If people think that helmets stop almost all head injuries, consumers will not demand better helmets, and legislators may think it makes sense to require everyone to wear one. So we asked two federal agencies to correct the misinformation, and they recently agreed to do so.
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https://www.waba.org/blog/2013/06/feds-withdraw-claim-that-bike-helmets-are-85-percent-effective/

– Sir Charles Bressey, 1937: “remarkable manner in which new roads create new traffic.”
[B’ Spokes: While we have such modern proofs that more roads cause more traffic delays such as Braess’s paradox and the Downs–Thomson paradox but what strikes me about this article is how long we have adopted the philosophy of “Building more roads to prevent congestion is like a fat man loosening his belt to prevent obesity.”
Why am I sharing this? Think about it, Maryland just raised the gas tax to build more roads while miles traveled by automobile has leveled off and is on the decline. I think it’s about time we rethought our transportation goals to be less car centric.]
https://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/induceddemand/

by Tanya Snyder, Streets Blog
His claim to fame is that he retired at age 30. He swears that you can achieve greater financial freedom too, if you follow his example by eliminating unnecessary expenses and investing wisely. He calls himself Mr. Money Mustache. And he says nothing is more essential to his philosophy and wealth-building strategy than riding a bike.
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https://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/05/22/mr-money-mustache-on-retiring-at-30-by-riding-a-bike/

[B’ Spokes: There are a lot of surprising results in non traditional road engineering vs the old car-centric with emphasis on speed approach to roads and this is one of them. One thing that needs to be emphasized here: “We need to experiment on what works and what does not work rather than rely on some so called expert whose calculation (using out dated standards) says we can’t accommodate bikes or pedestrians on some road because of the adverse effect on traffic.” There are a lot of options open to us that have little to no adverse effect and in some cases traffic flow is improved and general road safety is improved as well.]