Month: April 2016

Via The Invisible Visible Man Blog
“The designs betray a profound confusion in public policy. There’s a vague instinct that cyclists can’t be entirely denied better facilities. But that goes hand in hand with cowardice about the idea that promoting cycling is a public good. There’s no sense that sacrifices to encourage cycling might be worth everybody’s while. The unspoken sense is that cyclists should take up no space, have no momentum and cause no-one else to modify any part of their behaviour.”
“My sense is that the incident might partly reflect police officers’ genuine conviction that it’s a cyclist’s job to avoid traffic turning across his or her path, not a driver’s job to yield.”
https://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/04/an-angry-driver-on-8th-st-two-tragedies.html?m=1

by Bob Gunderson, Dearest District 5 Blog
“Everyone plays a part in chainsaw safety, from the people wielding chainsaws, to the people scurrying in fear around chainsaws.”
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Chainsaw merchants say it’s only coincidence that people running through the city with chainsaws contributed to the uptick in chainsaw injuries & deaths.
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Randy has been wielding a chainsaw on Market Street ever since he can remember, and he’s not about to stop “just because some idiot hurts themself on my chainsaw.”
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Randy Smith, head of the “San Francisco City Chainsaw League” said,”It’s my God given right to juggle chainsaws while running through downtown. It’s my preferred method of travel. People just need to make sure to educate themselves and their children to watch for people with chainsaws. It’s about mutual respect. Besides, if you don’t want someone coming at you with a chainsaw, travel around with a chainsaw, for safety.”
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https://dearestdistrict5.blogspot.com/2016/04/everyone-plays-part-in-chainsaw-safety.html

[B’ Spokes: You all heard these arguments before but maybe you need to be reminded of just how absurd it is that we use a 3 ton steel cage for personal transportation at the expense of other modes of transportation. The automobile, the ultimate in lazy decadence, the leading cause of death for the ages 1 to 39 and after that the lack of physical exercise is the leading contributing factor in the cause of death.]
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/absurd-primacy-of-the-car-in-american-life/476346/?utm_source=SFFB

BY CHARLES MAROHN, Strong Towns
We need to rethink our urban areas. They need to be redesigned around a new set of values, one that doesn’t seek to accommodate bikers and pedestrians within an auto-dominated environment but instead does the opposite: accommodates automobiles in an environment dominated by people. It is people that create value. It is people that build wealth.
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“Why do cyclists deserve special treatment?” “Why should they have their own standard?” “This is a civilized world, after all.” “If you don’t like it, take a car.”
To say that I find this hypocritical and somewhat maddening is stating it lightly. First, drivers don’t follow traffic laws.
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And there is the other rub; we are treating traffic regulations like they were given to Moses on Mount Sinai. If people actually understood the haphazard way traffic control devices were developed and the random way in which they are applied, they would not hold them in such majesty.
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We need to rethink our urban areas. They need to be redesigned around a new set of values, one that doesn’t seek to accommodate bikers and pedestrians within an auto-dominated environment but instead does the opposite: accommodates automobiles in an environment dominated by people. It is people that create value. It is people that build wealth.
…
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/5/19/follow-the-rules-bikers.html