On 1/3/2019 9:11 PM, jbeattie wrote:

There have been very few above-freezing rainy days when I couldn't ride -- and those were monsoon days with 50mph wind gusts and trees falling down, some of which actually squish cyclist around here. On my commute route: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2NLBJJCEAAS4KK.jpg That fell on a cyclist in the bike lane. Bike lanes are dangerous!

I'm curious about the cyclist's injuries.

Around here, we had a kerfuffle regarding ash trees killed by the
Emerald Ash Borer. That invasive insect is killing something like 99% of
ash trees, so our local forest preserve has lots of dead trees.

There's a squad of local idiots who wanted to cut down every dead tree
in the 265 acre forest preserve, for "safety." Others said look, just
cut the ones over parking lots, picnic tables, etc. but the idiots
yelled about liability, despite Ohio laws and Supreme Court cases
absolutely absolving the village of liability in such an instance.

Along the way, I dug out a research paper that estimated the number of
tree fall deaths in the U.S. at about 25 (IIRC), with most of those
occurring inside cars, probably when people drove their car into a
fallen tree. Seems there are no more than 10 or 12 per year that occur
with people just being outside. Having one of those dozen occur in our
woods would be a statistical fluke.

After this settled down a bit, there was a report of a man knocked
unconscious by a falling ash tree in the forest. We suspect the idiot
team found a recently fallen tree and paid a guy to lie under it.

--
- Frank Krygowski