Month: April 2013

B’ Spokes: This is cool because it’s from the Surgeon General. Not so cool because no mention of bicycling.
Is there some sort of national consensus that bicycling just can’t be done by Joe average? Maybe there is a general acknowledgement that there are not enough comfortable routes for the beginning cyclist. We have a long way to go.
https://www.everybodywalk.org/takeaction

B’ Spokes: I found the following article very thought provoking. People motivated by the right thing to do, the spirit of the law, to which I’ll add, summaries of traffic law biased toward just the more populous group, which then flows back influencing “the right thing to do” is whatever favors cars over anything else.

Anyway a quote, picture and a link to the article:

Ask any Bogotano the worst thing about this town and they’ll tell you the ‘traffic’. Then ask them if they own a car. Sometimes, without the faintest trace of irony, they’ll tell you they have two.”

https://bananaskinflipflops.com/2013/03/16/rich-people-of-bogota-are-you-the-problem/

B’ Spokes: An interesting discussion going on in Canada about requiring side guards on trucks. I’ll note per FARS the right side of trucks being the initial point of a fatal crash involving a cyclist is 22.4% of all truck fatal cycling crashes versus cars at 6.4%. On the pedestrian side, trucks right side 10.6% versus cars 2.4%.
Trucks using their right side to kill vulnerable road users stands out as being over represented in truck crashes but nothing is really being done to address that other than the Commercial Drivers manual saying cyclists and pedestrians are a hazard. Personally I think more needs to be done.
The conversation going on in Canada: https://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/canada/archives/2013/04/20130410-073710.html
Continue reading “Widow, son continue to push feds for side guards on trucks to keep cyclists safer”

By: Shaun de Jager, Road Awareness
Driving is supposed to be fun – it used to be anyway. Obviously the automobile wasn’t designed as a toy but rather as a convenient way to traverse great distances in a short amount of time. It really was convenient. Well…it used to be anyway. Now driving isn’t convenient at all though. It’s no longer fun to drive and it has become a huge source of frustration, fear for some, and leads to much pain, suffering and deaths. There have been more traffic related fatalities around the world, since the first automobile was made, than all the deaths from all global conflicts over the past 3000 years combined.
A machine that was supposed to make our lives easier has turned out to be more lethal than the atom bomb. I don’t mean to sound melodramatic but the drama on our roads is pretty severe.
However, despite all the technology invested into making our roads and vehicles safer, things are getting worse and the impact of each crash to our social economy is mind boggling. For example, each traffic fatality in Canada equals about $15million to the social economy. Although if our roads and our cars are getting safer, why are our roads getting worse? Well the simple answer is our drivers are getting worse. They are less skilled, less aware, more complacent, and far less respectful (not only of others but also of themselves). One thing is certain…drivers just don’t care about their driving anymore and a driver’s sense of personal accountability is about as rare as a flock of Condors.
There are a myriad of reasons why drivers have become so much worse over the decades but it really comes down to taking personal accountability for our safety on the roads and having the right attitude. Although our driving culture, especially in North America, is absolutely deplorable. But why? Why has our driving behaviour become so appalling? Well lets break it down and consider some examples.
Lets talk about the psychology involved here. Safe driving is directly related to our attitude and a poor attitude relates to poor behaviour. Simple enough but why do drivers have such a bad attitude? We all have a bad day, I get that, but our emotions and how they relate to our driving is another discussion. You can read more about how our attitudes and emotions affect our driving in my post about the Three States of Mind.
Some of the reasons we have such a poor attitude out there is because how our driving culture has been programmed with certain beliefs. Drivers believe they can’t get hurt because of the false sense of security ingrained in us by marketing campaigns. We are told again and again about the safety of All Wheel Drive (AWD) which is totally false. AWD is a performance feature first and foremost. We are also lead to believe that ABS brakes allow us to stop on a dime which is also untrue. It allows drivers to brake in a straight line and allow us to brake and steer at the same time. You aren’t told that it takes longer to stop on snow and gravel with ABS vs conventional brakes. You also aren’t told that it can take 10x longer to stop on ice than on a dry road. Instead you are lead to believe that ABS is the greatest thing since sliced bread. More and more marketing campaigns are hammering us with the marvels of the latest safety feature that will keep us safe. Things like stability control, traction control (also not a safety feature), blind-spot & lane departure warning systems. These are just tools to aid a driver; they will not allow you to defy the laws of grip or physics.
One of my pet peeves is left lane hogs. I had to ask myself “Why is everyone over there in the left lane when the right lane is totally empty? Why do they just sit there like sheep bumping into each other?” Well again it comes down to psychology. Our driving culture calls that lane the ‘fast’ lane. So if that’s the ‘fast’ lane then people must deduce that the other lanes are ‘slow’ lanes. Nobody wants to be slow. Everyone wants to get to where they’re going quickly, so they all merge over to the ‘fast’ lane and sit there…like sheep…going ever so slowly, while the cars in the empty ‘slow’ lane sails along un-impeded by stop and go traffic at all. That lane is called a ‘passing’ lane! It’s for passing! If you aren’t passing then you are cruising and should be in the right lane as required by law.
Time and time again, police are told by drivers, who are involved in a crash, that their car ‘just took off’ or ‘suddenly went crazy’. Cars don’t suddenly do anything. They don’t suddenly go ‘crazy’. They don’t just take off for ‘no’ reason. Drivers control their vehicles and its drivers who lose control of their vehicle. Remember that Toyota recall for “un-intended acceleration”? It took a while to figure out, but that huge increase in Toyota’s ‘taking off’ was during the winter. Drivers were hitting the gas without realizing it because they were wearing winter boots. Same thing happened with AUDI back in the 1980’s and it took years to recover from the bad press. You may not have ‘intended’ to step on the gas…but you did. The car doesn’t just ‘take off’.
It doesn’t help when the media says things like “car loses control and rolls over” or things like “truck went through a red light and hits another car”. Hold on there guys…vehicles don’t lose control…drivers do…and they are very good at it. Vehicles don’t run red lights and stops signs….drivers fail to bring their vehicle to a stop. The media keeps removing the human from the equation but all this does is reduce our sense of human accountability. When cars are one day fully operated and controlled by computers and fully drive themselves (which is in our near future I’m sure) only THEN you can say the car lost control. Until then, drivers are ultimately responsible for what they tell that vehicle to do, or stops telling the car what to do. BREAKING NEWS: News anchors aren’t just reporting problems on the road – they are adding to the problem.
Here’s another news flash: There are no ‘accidents’ on our roads. Well…very few. There are crashes and collisions. In fact 95% of all crashes are fully avoidable and as such, they aren’t accidents at all. An Accident is defined as something unavoidable, unforeseeable and unpredictable. The use of the word ‘accident’ further reduces our sense of personal accountability. Please refer to the following article “Not an Accident”, where I discuss the improper use of the word in more detail. Lets leave the word ‘accident’ for when an asteroid falls from the sky and pulverizes a vehicle.
Safe driving is directly related to our behaviour and attitude. Our attitude though is affected by our psychology and our State of Mind. In turn, our psychology is programmed by our driving culture, the media and the terms that we use in a rather cyclic way. We all need to start re-programming our driving culture because only then will our attitude and sense of accountability improve, which will in turn lead to safer roads.
Safe driving starts and ends with you…and with me…with all of us.
https://www.roadawareness.org/news/psychology-of-our-driving-culture-affects-our-safety/
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[B’ Spokes: One thing that stands out to me is his rant on "left lane hogs", things maybe different in Canada (but a casual Google search says no.) There is no general requirement to stay right except to pass for motor vehicles unless it is signed, even then if you are going the speed limit the police would be hard pressed to issue a citation. That is unless you are in Maryland where they gave a lady a ticket for going two mph below the speed limit (Ref:https://www.baltimorespokes.org/article.php?story=20130324215459169 ) Even with this the police got the laws wrong.
And this brings me to my point, too many rely on incomplete summaries of laws or outdated laws and jump to the conclusion "Why can’t we all agree on made up rules of the road? It’s just a common courtesy."
That’s just it, one man’s courtesy is another man’s inconvenience. And I have to admit I bristle when I hear things along the lines of "Other people should always be more considerate of me." Without any of "We should all look for opportunities to be considerate and tolerant of one another." And of course very few see the real problem… too many cars. If too many cars on the road is getting you upset then please look into alternate modes of transportation or just chill and be tolerant of the things you encounter, you’ll be better off for it.]

Via Michigan Auto Law
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There were many people who were quite willing to assign blame against him for just riding a bicycle. And there are many people willing to forgive clear negligence if the victim is on a bicycle.
As a lawyer, the only thing you can do is try to identify these people in voir dire, and try to focus the jury on the choices that the defendant makes that would threaten anyone who was there at that time – whether they be on a bicycle, in a car, or walking the street as a pedestrian.
The lawyers defending the trucking company refused to accept any responsibility for his death. They said he caused his own death, and then they said it didn’t really matter because an 83-year-old man isn’t worth very much money. The defense lawyers offered $250,000 before trial and $500,000 when the jury was deliberating.
The jury awarded a $2.55 million verdict to the estate (He is survived by his 10 children, 38 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren). Yet the jury still found fault on behalf of my client for the way he was riding his bike, even though he was crossing legally and was hit and killed.
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Please, try and be patient with cyclists as they are riding. Cutting a moment or two from your car ride isn’t worth injuring or killing somebody.
https://www.michiganautolaw.com/auto-lawyers-blog/2013/04/05/bias-against-cyclists-is-rampant-and-unfair/

B’ Spokes: This is something I strongly encourage for the Baltimore Metro area. I will also assert when we make the roads safer for pedestrians we make the roads safer for us. It really comes down to eliminating the concept that roads are just for cars. Read the full article for what the blowback might be if we did try this here.]
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By SARAH GOODYEAR, The Atlantic Cities
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Last year at this time, the cops were cracking down on jaywalkers. Will switching tactics make a difference?
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The problem is that roads in much of the United States are engineered for speed. Straight, wide, free of any obstacles, the modern American thoroughfare sends drivers the clear message that this is their domain, over which they should reign undisputed. Bright yellow signs with silhouetted figures and white lines on the asphalt can’t begin to convince people behind the wheel of anything different, not to mention some rule from driver education that they forgot as soon as they got their licenses.
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The drivers may be aware of the destructive potential of their vehicles, but many seem to think that just means everyone should get the heck out of their way. “I thought the guy was crazy for walking across like that," says one guy from behind the wheel, shaking his head.
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Do pedestrian decoy operations have any effect on attitudes like that? At least one study suggests that they might, if combined with a concerted educational approach. A 2004 study published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis looked at a two-week-long Miami Beach "driver-yielding enforcement program," which included decoy pedestrians, feedback flyers, and written and verbal warnings. The article’s authors found that the program made a measurable difference in driver behavior:
"Results indicated that the percentage of drivers yielding to pedestrians increased following the introduction of the enforcement program in each corridor and that these increases were sustained for a period of a year with minimal additional enforcement. The effects also generalized somewhat to untreated crosswalks in both corridors, as well as to crosswalks with traffic signals."
In other words, crosswalks can become safer places if municipalities are willing to do some hard work. That’s important because, as Emily Badger wrote last week, other research shows that many pedestrians are struck when they’re in crosswalks acting in accordance with the law – doing what is supposed to be the right thing.
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Janna Chernetz, the New Jersey advocate at the nonprofit Tri State Transportation Campaign, says that her group sees pedestrian decoy operations as part of a bigger picture. “These programs are one tool in a toolkit,” she says. The others include education, as well as better infrastructure that sends a clear signal to motorists and pedestrians. One example is HAWK crosswalks (that stands for high-intensity activated crosswalks), which use an unusual cluster of lights to get a motorist’s attention when a pedestrian is entering the roadway. [Has Maryland installed any HAWK crosswalks yet?]
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https://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/04/police-stings-drivers-who-dont-yield-crosswalks-does-it-really-work/5221/

https://reviews.mtbr.com/the-angry-singlespeeder-dont-showroom-your-local-bike-shop
B’ Spokes: Seriously, if your local bike shop helped you in deciding what product to get, buy it from them and not on-line. Do not use them as just a show room. Amazon is not testifying in Annapolis like some of our shops and nearly all of our bike shops support local cycling in one way or the other, return the favor and support them!
Buy local and support local!