Here’s the news that caught our eyes this past week…
– Portland didn’t make it to the top of The Fixie Index but we did come in at the top of The Guardian‘s five best places to live in the world. One reason for the high ranking is that Portland is “the most bike- and foot-friendly city in the country,” according to the British newspaper.
– South Carolina’s Department of Transportation might ban bicycles on the James Island Connector after a person on a bicycle was struck and killed by the operator of an AT&T service van. The road in question is one of limited number of routes to access the city of Charleston, SC.
– The Swedish towns of Malmö and Lund will soon be connected by a “bicycle superhighway”. The four-lane, bicycle-only road will stretch for 20 miles and is being constructed at a total cost of $7.1 million USD.
– A family feud has erupted after after Dr. David Hon, creator of Dahon bicycles, alleged Dahon patents were used by rival bike manufacturer Tern, a company part-owned by Dr. Hon’s wife and son.
– UC Santa Barbara is home to four new bicycle repair stations and two more are scheduled to be installed soon. The repair stands, similar to ones installed at TriMet’s Bike & Rides, were installed by the school’s housing department and student association after they heard about the popularity of similar programs at other schools.
– One woman in Chicago is going to be installing and maintaining beehives around the city via bicycle. Her plan is modeled after the work of a beekeeper she met in Eugene, Oregon.
– Remember last week when we told you about Gene Hackman riding a bike and getting hit by someone driving a car? It turns out he wasn’t wearing helmet but he did survive the collision. Did not wearing a helmet save his life? The answer is very likely “no”, but Lovely Bicycle explores why it’s difficult to prove that bike helmets save lives, especially when a crash involves a motor vehicle.
– Sanibel Island, located off the southwest coast of Florida, will soon be home to a Welcome Center for people on bikes. The facility was planned by Sanibel Bicycle Club member Tom Sharbaugh and is being built completely with private funds.
– When someone driving a motor vehicle injures or kills someone on a bike sometimes their excuse is that they “didn’t see” the person on the bike. An article in Bicycling magazine dives into why that argument doesn’t add up and exposes one big hole in many North American legal systems.
– After following the tenets of vehicular cycling for nearly two decades, one man shares what he enjoyed about the approach to riding as well as his disappointment that the skill is still necessary on some roads.
– Car-centric advertising isn’t unique to the United States. Copenhagenize shares a series of disturbing ads depicting speeding, driverless cars running over Danish celebrities. The advertisements are part of the “Take a Chance” campaign which is partially funded by an insurance company and comes soon after a 10-year old girl was killed by a person driving a car in Copenhagen.
– Bike mechanics are predominantly men but a shop in Chicago is giving women a place to “wield a wrench in a non-patriarchal environment.”
– We finally have snow on the mountains here in the northwest but some ski resorts around Lake Tahoe are still dry. Far from suffering, resorts and shops in the area have plenty of customers renting mountain bikes.
– This complicated concept for a combination bicycle and tripod looks interesting but is probably more complicated and less useful than mounting a camera to your existing bike.
– If music is your creative outlet then you might want to take a look at the Axrak guitar rack, designed to make it easier to bring your six string on a bike ride.
– And finally, a video from Bikes Belong and their People for Bikes campaign that covers pretty much “shit cyclists say” (or “Shit white male cyclists say” according to one of our Twitter followers)…
Did you find something interesting that should be in next week’s Monday Roundup? Drop us a line.