Month: September 2012

via Roads Were Not Built for Cars
REG: Cyclists have bled us white, the bastards. They don’t pay road tax, they run red lights. And what have they ever given us in return?
XERXES: Pneumatic tyres.
REG: What?
XERXES: Pneumatic tyres.
REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that’s true. Yeah.
COMMANDO #3: And ball bearings.
REG: Yeah. All right. I’ll grant you pneumatic tyres and ball bearings are two things that the cyclists have done.
MATTHIAS: And the roads.
REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don’t they? But apart from pneumatic tyres, ball bearings, and the roads…
COMMANDO: Lightweight steel tubing.
XERXES: Chain driven differential gears.
COMMANDOS: Huh? Heh? Huh…
COMMANDO #2: Dust-free highways. Tractors. And spark plugs.
COMMANDOS: Ohh…
REG: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
COMMANDO #1: And central Government administration of roads.
COMMANDOS: Oh, yes. Yeah…
FRANCIS: Cars and planes.
REG: Cars and planes?
FRANCIS: Yeah, America’s first car was built by the Duryea brothers: they were bicycle builders first. And powered flight, Reg, that was developed by the Wright Brothers: they owned a bike shop and built bikes.
REG: All right, but apart from the pneumatic tyre, ball bearings, differential gears, roads, motoring, and aviation, what have cyclists ever done for us?
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REFERENCES…
Continue reading “MOTORISTS’ FRONT OF JUDEA: What Have The Cyclists Ever Done for Us? [à la Monty Python]”

By Bob Mionske, Bicycling
Cyclists ride for a lot of different reasons. For some, it’s for the love of sport. For others, it’s is an economical way to stretch a tight budget. There’s also the environmental benefit.
And of course, many people ride for their health. A new study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, identifies physical inactivity as one of the leading causes of premature death. How bad is it? Consider these statistics:
• Inactivity causes 5.3 million deaths per year—from diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and breast and colon cancer.
• That’s more than the number of deaths caused by smoking.
• Inactivity is the cause of 1 in 10 deaths.
• People in higher-income countries are the least active.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Adults should engage in moderate exercise—for example, brisk walking, cycling, or even gardening—for at least 150 minutes each week. In the U.S., 43 percent of us don’t meet that minimum requirement. In Europe, it’s 35 percent. Worldwide, one-third of all people live a sedentary lifestyle—and for teenagers, the number rises to over 80 percent.
Pedro Hallal, a professor who led the Lancet study, said “The global challenge is clear—make physical activity a public health priority throughout the world to improve health and reduce the burden of disease.”
Which brings us back to—what else?—bicycling. Want to get some exercise in every day? Try bike commuting. If someone you know wants to ease into getting around by bike, the 1-Mile Solution is the perfect way to get started.
But despite cycling’s many benefits, there’s one big problem we must contend with when we’re trying to get people off their couches: The roads we ride on can be a hostile environment. There are several reasons for this.
First, road infrastructure is usually biased towards the automobile, and often fails to take cyclists into account at all. Even though it is legal to ride on most roads, the more biased towards automobile traffic the road infrastructure is, the more intimidating the road will feel to all but the most intrepid of cyclists. As Professor Lindsey Davies (president of the UK Faculty of Public Health) observed in response to the study on inactivity, “We need to do all we can to make it easy for people to look after their health and get active as part of their daily lives. Our environment has a significant part to play. For example, people who feel unsafe in their local park will be less likely to use it.” The same goes for our roads.
Second, our laws are usually biased towards motorists. Consider, for example, the driver who passes dangerously close to a cyclist, and injures or kills the cyclist. In too many states, the motorist will at most be ticketed for a relatively minor offense, like making an unsafe pass. And that only happens when an officer is concerned enough to write a ticket.
When a motorist is severely injured or killed in a traffic “accident,” the circumstances are usually so extreme that serious charges may be filed. But all it takes to injure or kill a cyclist is a moment’s inattention, a bit of bad judgment, a careless act. An “accident.” The message sent to drivers and cyclists alike is that our lives are worth little to nothing. “Was the cyclist wearing a helmet?” people ask, subtly shifting the blame from the careless driver to his victim. In contrast, in countries where cyclists’ lives are valued, the law places the burden of safety where it belongs—on the driver. This makes the roads safer for cyclists and drivers alike, and is one factor in getting more people on bikes.
Third, too many motorists, including many law enforcement officers, have only vague notions of what the laws on bicycling are. They may, for example, think you are breaking the law by riding on the road instead of the sidewalk, or by taking the lane. This confusion raises the hostility level of motorists, and too often results in unjust law enforcement by officers who aren’t really sure what the law is.
Finally, many motorists feel entitled to threaten us, and even jeopardize our lives, with hostile and aggressive behavior, simply because they do not believe that we have any right to use the roads.
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https://bicycling.com/blogs/roadrights/2012/09/28/a-matter-of-life-and-death/2/

Bikeyface has another great post. Motorist honking… even when they use words they really do not do much better. (You have to see her illustrations!)

https://bikeyface.com/2012/09/20/thick-skin/

But I have to share the last frame as I think it makes a strong point why we need better motorists education:

After all, does this ever happen?

https://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/09/27/lahood-incorrectly-blames-80-percent-of-pedestrians-for-their-own-deaths/
B’ Spokes: I recommend reading the article linked above but I really have to say, If we were talking about motorists making left turns that killed this many, we would get left turn lanes with specialized left turn lights not a "Look before you make a left turn" campaign.
Enough with the trying to shoehorn bikes and peds into car centric infrastructure!

[B’ Spokes: Lots of thoughts went through my head while reading this. If you have an interest in traffic psychology then this is good. I’ll pull out one highlight.]
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Jon Sutton interviews Ian Walker about how psychology can assist non-car drivers
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Pedestrians
‘If we think cyclists are ignored by researchers, pedestrians have it even worse. Of the little that is published on pedestrians, almost all of it can be construed as supporting the societal status quo in which pedestrians are firmly held as second-class to people in motor vehicles. Analyses tend to look at why pedestrians are so “reckless” as to “jaywalk” away from their designated crossing areas, rather than to study what I would argue are much more fundamental questions about the social, environmental and health consequences of obliging healthy and harmless walkers to yield priority to inactive and polluting drivers. Ian Roberts and Carolyn Coggan looked at this in a 1994 paper (see tinyurl.com/735bl96) – little has changed.’
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Continue reading “Vulnerable road users”