Month: July 2015

“Cities, towns, planners and private businesses can’t move forward building safer cars and safer bike environments until they learn more precisely how bike accidents happen. Is a truck’s wide turn to blame? A taxi door opening at the wrong time? These seemingly small details of crashes are critical, says Anne Lusk, a research scientist in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.”
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“After studying hundreds of hopelessly low-tech police reports used to record bike accidents, Lusk and her colleagues are making a nationwide plea: They’re calling on police in all states to step into the modern era and improve reports on crashes involving vehicles and bicycles. Currently, Lusk said in an interview, the details on crashes are handwritten and drawn by police on paper, with few bicycle-specific codes or diagrams.”
https://commonhealth.wbur.org/2015/04/better-police-reports-bike-crashes

[B’ Spokes: I would also add Glympse to this list to let others see your location as you ride. The interface is a bit quirky and you have to search for “Copy to clipboard” if you want just the link to share via some thing other then a text message but it works and gives my family some peace of mind when I go out for a bike ride. Or it helps to see when I might arrive back home or some meeting place.]
https://www.waba.org/blog/2015/07/9-bicycle-apps-worth-checking-out/

Via Free Range Kids
About a week ago, you may recall, a Maine mom was charged with child endangerment for letting her 7 year old play by herself for an hour in the park visible from the family’s porch. This is a letter by a Free-Ranger to the Police Chief there, who defended the summons as well as the fact the girl was taken by cruiser to the precinct, instead of back across the street to her home. It’s everything a letter should be, and everything our country should be, too: Smart, sane, and unwilling to buy into child safety hysteria.
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“What was the particular and specific danger that prompted law enforcement action?”
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So, absent a verified and demonstrable hazard, the rationale for police action would seemingly have to fall to, in essence, “something bad could have happened.” This is an empty argument, and folly of high order. Something could “happen” anywhere. But, following that logic for a moment, law enforcement might take notice that, statistically, the most dangerous place for a child to be in the United States is riding in a car. Would it make sense, then, to pull people over and cite them for endangering their child passengers? The logic applied in this case would demand that you do. After all, children actually DO die in cars – thousands of them.
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To The Police Chief Who Said 7-year-olds Should Not Be Alone, Especially in a Park

By Cian Ginty
COMMENT & ANALYSIS: Media figures painting all “cyclists” as criminals is like an incitement to hatred which polarises some motorists. This clearly does not add to road safety. It should not be tolerated by any right-thinking person, regardless of what mode of transport they happen to use.
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The idea that only “bad” cyclists are in danger is nonsense. A polarised motorist stuck behind the best-behaved bicycle users on a narrow road or street, or while making a right hand turn etc, will not distinguish between law breaking and law abiding bicycle users.
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Here’s why we should not ignore self-proclaimed “cyclist haters”

-> The Safe Routes to School National Partnership Safety for Walking and Bicycling research compilation page identifies patterns of active transportation, injury, environmental attributes associated with pedestrian safety, as well as successful strategies to increase safety implemented by Safe Routes to School projects. Implications of this research suggest infrastructure improvements, traffic education for students, and driver enforcement can provide positive impacts on overall pedestrian and bicyclist safety. [https://bit.ly/1NuuHEY]
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.