baltimorespokes

Letter to the Editor, by Bob Mionske
RE: “Santa Barbara cyclists have gone collectively insane.”
That was the conclusion readers of the Santa Barbara View were invited to reach, based on anecdotes involving exactly two cyclists. Do you see the logic? If two cyclists were doing something wrong, that must mean that all cyclists—at least in Santa Barbara—are collectively insane.
And since all cyclists have gone collectively insane, we can just ignore all of the cyclists who were riding lawfully on the same day that these two riders were behaving badly. If two cyclists were not riding lawfully. all cyclists are collectively guilty, all are “collectively insane.” Even the ones who were riding lawfully and courteously that day, and every day. Tar them all with the same brush, and let God sort them out.
By the same token, we can also ignore all of the drivers who were breaking the law that day. Speeding? Why that’s a driver’s sacred right, isn’t it? Sure, it’s the number one cause of traffic “accidents,” and virtually every driver does it, but why quibble over that, when we have far, far bigger fish to fry, like one irresponsible guy who was speeding on a bike?
Why point out that virtually every driver rolls through stop signs—the world-famous “California stop”—with a little “pretend-to-stop” tap on the brakes if they can be bothered, when we can look down our noses at a cyclist who wasn’t wearing a helmet? Sure, helmets are not required, and aren’t even designed to provide protection for collisions with cars. But if we don’t blame cyclists for not wearing a helmet, we might have to look at the real cause of cyclist injuries and fatalities, and we wouldn’t want to open that Pandora’s box. Just like we wouldn’t want to require drivers to wear helmets, even though head injuries are much more common for drivers than they are for cyclists.
What about drivers violating a cyclist’s right of way? No, we don’t want to talk about that either, even though it’s the most common cause of bicycle collisions, and has happened to every cyclist out there. Instead, let’s complain about the “cycling hell” of somebody getting some exercise once a month. Let‘s complain that some cyclist was wearing—Shock! Horrors!—cycling clothes while riding his bike.
And while we’re studiously avoiding the real issues, why not make up some imaginary laws that victimize drivers while we’re at it? In all my years of handling bicycle injury cases, I have never once seen a driver cited for hitting an at-fault cyclist. Nor has anybody else ever seen such a preposterous injustice. In fact, in the real world, it is all-too-common for an at-fault driver to face no charges after injuring, or even killing a cyclist. And when drivers are cited for carelessly causing serious injury or death, it is almost always on a minor traffic violation, like “failure to yield.” If you were killed by a careless driver who got the kid glove treatment afterwards, would you feel like drivers are the victims here? Would your bereaved family feel that way?
But let’s ignore that reality, for the convenient fiction of a make-believe world where drivers are all scrupulously law-abiding victims of insane cyclists run amok, rather than the often careless law-breakers of the real world, who injure some 50,000 cyclists and kill some 700 cyclists annually.
That way, we won’t have to deal with the real issues.
https://www.bicyclelaw.com/blog/index.cfm/2014/1/10/Lets-Not-Avoid-The-Real-Issues

Highlights
• Car use has negative effects on urban communities by affecting social perceptions.
• More car use through a relatively poor area is associated with less positive views of that area.
• More walking through a relatively poor area is related to more positive views of the area.
• Attitudes towards young people are more negative when they are seen from a car.
• Attitudes towards young people are most positive when seen from a pedestrian perspective.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369847813000806

The Big Question: not only is cycling more liberating than any other way of getting around, argues Emma Duncan, it’s also more egalitarian
From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, January/February 2014
Transport is a subtly political business. Left-wingers like trains (central planning, low fuel consumption, largely egalitarian seating). Right-wingers like cars (freedom, independence, individualism). Only the bicycle crosses the political divide: it embodies both liberty and equality.
…
Even in rich countries, the cyclist has a greater liberty than any other traveller. She cruises up alongside traffic jams, as drivers fume. When the road is closed and screeching cars make angry U-turns, the cyclist picks up her bicycle, smugly wheels it along the pavement under the impotent glare of policemen, and nips back onto the road when their backs are turned.
…
https://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/simon-willis/travelling-best-bicycle

[B’ Spokes: I try to avoid quoting articles in their entirety but this is just too close to home. Having nice places to ride are nice but the real issue is are they accessible by the majority of the population? And the Baltimore metro area is notably lacking such amenities. And you don’t have to go that far to get bicycling accommodation envy, Montgomery County and DC are way ahead of us and not just in miles of bikeways but also in things you would like to ride on. Sure they have a few things you have to take with a grain of salt but too much of our cycling infrastructure really pushes the minimum standards of AASHTO. Minimum things are not that comfortable to bike in. ]

By Bikeyface

Bike are a popular present for Christmas. And no doubt many kids are jumping with excitement about their new bicycles right now. However, very soon they will get wise to the nature of the world.

Yep, within a few months they’ll know what they want next Christmas.

So let’s help deliver it to them this year.

https://bikeyface.com/2014/01/10/a-place-to-ride/

[B’ Spokes: I wonder if this has some explanation why overweight people seem to be velmetly opposed to cyclists on the roads, at least that is my impression.]
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By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS, New York Times
Overweight women’s brains respond differently to images of exercise than do the brains of leaner women, a sophisticated new neurological study finds, suggesting that our attitudes toward physical activity may be more influenced by our body size than has previously been understood.
…
The resulting readouts revealed that overweight women’s brains were put off by exercise. Shown images of people being active, these women developed little activation in the putamen region of the brain, suggesting that they did not enjoy what they were seeing. At the same time, a portion of the brain related to dealing with negative emotions lit up far more when they viewed images of moving than of sitting.
…
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/how-body-size-shapes-our-view-of-exercise/?_r=0