Bicycle Safety and Licenses

On 16 Jul 2005 08:40:38 -0700, wrote:



Werehatrack wrote:

The more people we can get out there riding, the
sooner we will be able to take cycling out of the "specialty group"
status and move it to the mainstream...and if that can be done, a lot
of the criticisms of *normal* cycling necessities will vanish.

Which will happen only when cars, and driving them, become really
unafford(sorry)able to the $5/hr working class. Some say that's coming
pretty soon; something I hope I and my children never see.

It may be a reality by the end of next year. Here in Houston, the
emissions inspection requirements didn't take as many gas-guzzling old
junkers out of service as the $2-per-gallon gas price, and the upward
trend looks like it's going to continue. The big reason, of course,
is that the demand for oil in China is increasing tremendously, with
the predictable effect on market prices. Based on conservative
projections of their demand, absent a major downturn in both the US
and Chinese economies, we're probably looking at prohibitive gas
pricing in the US for minimum-wage drivers by the middle of next year.
For that matter, we're already at that point for some of them. Kids
that live in the deep suburbs are already starting to carpool
intensively according to my high-school-age daughter, and the urban
dwellers have begun using both carpooling and busses where previously
they'd all have met up at a given destination with individual
vehicles.

Something else I wish I hadn't seen:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-05-20/pols_feature4.html

(Opinion/rhetoric dept.):
This stupidity is the result of pie-in-the-sky thinking about
"bike-only lanes", where certain "planners" tried to take away street
(curbside) parking from residents along what was once perhaps the best
bike route in Austin, speaking as a 20-year resident.

Yeah, that's a looney one. There was some griping when Heights Blvd
here in Houston got restriped to make the shoulder lanes on both sides
into a dedicated very wide parking and bike lane, with just the left
lane for motor vehicle traffic in motion, but it has worked out pretty
well. The automobile traffic level is pretty much the same as it was
before, and there are quite a few bikes as well.

BTW, the article mentions "50mph" traffic. This road roughly parallels
a creek bed; it twists and turns irregularly, and has several stop
signs and two stop lights along the way. I don't have a speed gun but
I've just never seen traffic speed per se as a problem on this street,
and sincerely doubt the veracity of those who claim that 50mph traffic
is a regular occurrence.

Here in my neighborhood, we had two or three people who were trying
their damndest to get speed humps installed on our street.
Firtunately, the city changed the rules a while back, and the first
step in the process is now the collection of a signed request for
speed humps from the majority of the residents on the street involved.
they didn't even get close to that number of assents. had they
collected the signatures, though, the city would have then come out
and set up two traffic monitoring systems to measure the 8actual*
speeds of trafic...and if no more than a small percentage of the
traffic was actually speeding, the request would get turned down. One
of the porponents of the humps had tried to claim that we had cars
hitting 40 to 45 mph regularly. I sat with a stopwatch at a
convenient point just off the middle of the street for a couple of
mornings and clocked the traffic coming through during the time of day
when speeding was allegedly common; the fastest vehicle hit 36, and
the average was 29. The limit is 30. I consider reports of rampant
speeding as unproven and suspect unless verified by actual
measurements.

Also noted: in taking count a couple of times, there were more traffic
islands on the route than cars parked at the curb. The trees (growing
crepe myrtles *on purpose*???) are already beginning to branch out into
the bike path at eye/head level.

Crepe myrtles are popular, but unless trimmed properly, they tend to
branch out at all levels including head height (and below) on a
cyclist.

Short but sweet: no, bike-only lanes are not "the answer", esp. when
residents and the driving public see their turf taken away to establish
them.

They can be the answer when the circumstances permit better
integration of them. On Heights Blvd, the residents actually gained
greater usefulness of the parking in front of their lots when the
street was restriped, because the single lane of motor traffic is now
far enough from the parked cars to allow much safer and easier access
to the driver's door. An example of a *bad* implementation is Clay
Rd, where the restriping just added a bike ;lane at the right curb on
a street that wasn't overly wide to begin with, and made both motor
traffic lanes uncomfortably narrow in the process. I see very few
cyclists using that badly-encroached bike lane as a result.

They could have "fixed" it with one solid paint stripe and one dashed
line paint stripe on each side of the road. --TP

Assuming there's room for both, which isn't always the case.
--
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On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 06:17:02 +0000, Werehatrack wrote:

It may be a reality by the end of next year. Here in Houston, the
emissions inspection requirements didn't take as many gas-guzzling old
junkers out of service as the $2-per-gallon gas price, and the upward
trend looks like it's going to continue.

Fuel prices are 3 times that in
the UK, but people are still intent on driving high-powered cars and
SUVs. Public transport is not very good and cycling is not as popular as
it could be.

Quoting Chip C :
Hmmm. Is the line in the sand more defensibly drawn at "operating a
powered vehicle" or "operating a machine of any type"? I'd never
propose requiring a license to pedestrianize your way about town, but
is a bike not more like a car than a pair of feet? Is the presence of a
motor the big deal, or the quantitative ability to cause damage and
injuries to others?

The latter is proportional to mass times the square of velocity. You do
the arithmetic.

[Or, put another way; in the UK (for which the stats are readily
available), incidents involving motor vehicles kill some 3,000 people
every year. Incidents involving pedal cycles and no motor vehicles kill
one or two.]
--
David Damerell flcl?
Today is First Potmos, July.

:
: Fuel prices are 3 times that in
: the UK, but people are still intent on driving high-powered cars and
: SUVs. Public transport is not very good and cycling is not as popular as
: it could be.

But, there is a "comfort" component as well. I live about 40 miles from DFW
airport. One time, I decided to take public transportation to get to my
house. It took me over 3 hours, riding a train and waiting for/changing to
a bus and then switching to another bus---but I eventually got home with the
monetary cost being only $1.75. I had to walk the last 6 blocks, but that
was part of the trial, so I didn't mind (it was in the middle of the
day--not at night).

On the other hand, I can drive to the airport, pay about $8 to park, and
then get in my air-conditioned car and come home in about an hour. No
schlepping the bags about and hauling it into trains and buses. No having
the exact change for the bus ride or standing at the kiosk to buy the train
ticket and hope you get finished before the train arrives. No bus stopping
every other block to pick up passengers. So, you pay your money and that
save time and effort.

Pat in TX

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 09:49:02 GMT, Rob Shields
wrote:

On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 06:17:02 +0000, Werehatrack wrote:

It may be a reality by the end of next year. Here in Houston, the
emissions inspection requirements didn't take as many gas-guzzling old
junkers out of service as the $2-per-gallon gas price, and the upward
trend looks like it's going to continue.

Fuel prices are 3 times that in
the UK, but people are still intent on driving high-powered cars and
SUVs. Public transport is not very good and cycling is not as popular as
it could be.

Public transport in the UK in my experience was better than the
average in the US, though that only held true for the major cities.
As was the case when I was in England, public intra-city transport in
the US is essentially nonexistent in many medium-size and smaller
population centers. Houston is the fourth largest city in this
country, and it takes longer to get downtown from my house via bus
than via bike, even when you discount the time spent waiting for the
bus. (It passes within two blocks of my door, but only runs once an
hour; if you just missed it, a bike will make the round trip faster
than the bus will get you to the other end.)

Automobiles are the de facto mass transport system for the US at the
moment, but as the cost of operation of them increases, there will be
renewed interest in infrastructure-based mass transport to supplement
on-demand private vehicles.
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:
: Automobiles are the de facto mass transport system for the US at the
: moment, but as the cost of operation of them increases, there will be
: renewed interest in infrastructure-based mass transport to supplement
: on-demand private vehicles.
:
I doubt it, and I'll tell you why: because the cities in the U.S., except
for the old port cities, did not "grow up" as did cities in Europe. Here in
Texas, it's all sprawl and why not? The land was available and not expensive
and everyone wanted his own "space". Now, to go back and say, "You're going
to have to demand mass transportation" is a nice thought; a worthwhile
thought, but people here don't have that mindset. After all, people in
Europe couldn't just pack up and move west when the cities got crowded... We
have this "T" between Dallas and Fort Worth, and it is a great ride, nice
and cheap, but ridership is woeful. You could buy a ticket from Fort Worth
to Dallas on this new, modern train for $4. Hell, that might even be round
trip, for all I know! You can go from DFW to Dallas for $1.75 AND get free
transfers for the buses after that. But, people just don't "think" about
mass transit as being necessary for them---they just wish other people would
ride it so that there would be fewer cars on the road to bother with.

Pat

Chip C wrote in part:

... Rather than
licenses I'd prefer a massive advertising campaign along the lines of
"bikes belong on the road and they'd damn well better act like it"
accompanied by a crackdown on crummy cycling *and* bike-unfriendly
motoring (ideally, as others have mentioned, by cops on bikes).

Today, while busting a red light, I exchanged hello
waves with a bike cop, who was riding on the sidewalk.

Robert

wrote:
While riding around the past several days I've noticed some amazingly
unsafe riding by what I assume are not serious cyclists. I saw a rider
ride through a red light into a busy intersection while several cars
stayed stopped at a green to keep from hitting him. I saw riders
riding down the wrong way on a one way street against traffic. I
routinely saw riders blast off the sidewalk through the intersection
without looking or stopping. Further, these where the majority of the
cyclists I saw while riding through my neighborhood.

All of this made me think that bicycle safety statistics have almost no
meaning to the serious cyclist. After all what does the accident rate
of this group have to do withj the way I ride ? Alligator hunting is
probably as relevant.

It also made me think about why drivers get so angry with cyclists. And
once again, these drivers' anger spill over to safe cyclists. How do
people feel about licenses to ride a bike ?

A license will not prevent stupidity. These people know the correct
thing to do, just don't do it.

Quoting Rob Shields :
Fuel prices are 3 times that in
the UK, but people are still intent on driving high-powered cars and
SUVs. Public transport is not very good and cycling is not as popular as
it could be.

Well, yes and no; the distances here are not as silly, even the biggest
4x4 land barges here are not nearly as big as in the US, and our public
transport is lousy compared to the Continent, but better than in the USA.
--
David Damerell Distortion Field!
Today is First Teleute, July.

On 19 Jul 2005 14:42:43 +0100 (BST), David Damerell
wrote:

Quoting Rob Shields :
Fuel prices are 3 times that in
the UK, but people are still intent on driving high-powered cars and
SUVs. Public transport is not very good and cycling is not as popular as
it could be.

Well, yes and no; the distances here are not as silly, even the biggest
4x4 land barges here are not nearly as big as in the US, and our public
transport is lousy compared to the Continent, but better than in the USA.

Correct on all counts, and I'll add one. In large parts of the US, an
adult who relies on mass transportation for local transit is regarded
as a second-class citizen. Using inter-city busses for transport is
regarded as being fungible with living in a trailer[1] and keeping
dogs under the porch.


[1] "trailer" is a term of disparagement itself; the more polite name
is "mobile home", and the genteel phrasing is "manufactured housing",
though there are some who contend that the latter designation should
be reserved solely for those units which are not designed to be
transportable a second time. There is an embedded belief in US
folklore that aggregations of mobile homes are an attractant for
tornadoes.

--
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