Lots of local and national bike news today. Instead of letting it all pile up on my various story lists, I figured I’d drop it all into one post. So here goes…
— Some big national attention on biking today with NPR’s Talk of the Nation taking on the age-old mantra of cycling scofflaws. The piece, annoying titled, Cyclists: Do You Really Obey Traffic Laws?, was inspired by a feature article in Bicycling Magazine that does a post-mortem on the New York City bike lane backlash. The Bicycling article comes to the conclusion that the “enemy among us” is us. Here’s a snip from the article’s conclusion:
“It could be that all the new bike lanes anyone could build will only go to waste unless we realize that, as Podziba says, “We need a culture of self-enforcement among cyclists.””
This meme that cycling won’t be fully embraced by America until everyone acts like an angel while doing it is frankly ridiculous. I won’t go into details here, but check out this recent Grist article for more of my thoughts.
— Another huge national story today was a major new report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. The report, Transportation and the New Generation: Why Young People Are Driving Less and What It Means for Transportation Policy, found that Americans — especially younger people — are driving less and biking more. A lot more.
Some of the salient findings include: by 2011, the average American was driving 6 percent fewer miles per year than in 2004; the average young person (age 16-34) drove 23 percent fewer miles in 2009 than the average young person in 2001; from 2000 to 2010, the share of 14 to 34-year-olds without a license increased from 21 percent to 26 percent; between 2001 and 2009, the annual number of miles traveled by 16 to 34 year olds on public transit such as trains and buses increased by 40 percent; during that same period, young people took 24 percent more bike trips.(!)
The key takeaway? “America’s transportation preferences appear to be changing. Our elected officials need to make transportation decisions based on the real needs of Americans in the 21st century.”
— Portland-based Showers Pass launched a new a new accessory for hydration packs called LapelEau. It’s a magnetic, retractable reel that keeps the hydration tube in check.
— Public Bikes issued a recall of about 4,100 bikes due to pedals that can crack and/or break. 18 models from the 2010 – 2012 model years are impacted by the recall. Check out the CPSC advisory for all the details.
— I joined several other local journalists this morning to live-Tweet a mayoral debate on OPB. It was a very interesting dicussion and you can listen to it and relive all the Twitter action on OPB’s Think Out Loud website or listen to a rebroadcast on OPB radio tonight at 9:00 pm.
— The State of Oregon and Travel Oregon officially announced the ninth State Scenic Bikeway. The latest route is the 134-mile Grande Tour Scenic Bikeway that takes riders, “under a scented canopy of Ponderosa pine forests, past stunning views of the Blue Mountains and the Wallowa Mountains and across sweeping sagebrush rangelands near La Grande and Baker City.” The route covers sections of the original Oregon Trail. Learn more and plan your adventure at RideOregonRide.com.
Thanks for reading.
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It’s the Grande tour, not the Grade tour. And it fully deserves to be on the scenic bikeway list. Totally doable in one day if you plan your water and refueling right. (Thanks for the coverage!) Look for more coverage of eastern Oregon rides to come soon on the Eastern Oregon Visitors Association web site at http://www.visiteasternoregon.com/cyclingeasternoregon/
LapelEau is patent pending? Really? I have numerous pictures of my homemade version with my work badge retractable attached to my hydration bladder. Here is one example – http://www.flickr.com/photos/watson_house/3435545500/
Not sure what you’re arguing here. Prior art? Did you register a patent?
Bill Strickland’s emo’ rant on NPR about runnin’ down the old lady and throwin’ her car key’s in the sewer made me cringe, and I love to tell tales of glory! But IMO, this was in very poor taste. He set cycling back a month of Sunday’s for anyone listening with an opposing view. A true Limbaugh moment, ha!! I hate Bicycling magazine. Why does it still exist?
That wasn’t Strickland, it was a caller named Bill. That got a little confusing.
Well, that would explain a few things if that is the case. I was a bit slack jawed at the moment, considering it was NPR!
“driving less and biking more”
yep, and not a moment too soon.
Take note, Matt Garrett, Ray LaHood, Tom Miller, et al.
Maybe Jefferson Smith’s gamble against the CRC will prove prescient?
oh, and nice copy in the grist, Jonathan!
I used to be into cars. When I was, there was a strict rule on chat boards: don’t talk, joke, infer, whatever about street racing. Racing was to be done on tracks, in safe conditions. Any posts that violated this were removed, and board members would regularly chastise anyone that posted about racing (or acting badly or illegally on public streets). The reasoning is that it is hard to be taken seriously if everyone outside your circle thinks you’re a criminal (even if your not).
It’s not that everyone will act like an angel. It that those who knowingly break the law and or put other people in jeopardy SHOULD be chastised by the bike community as a whole (as opposed to the overwhelming majority of the bike community looking the other way, acting defensive, acting like 200lb riders going 20+ miles an hour can’t hurt anyone etc). That’s the point.
Anytime I’m in a group of people and it’s brought to their attention that I’m a full time bike commuter there is ALWAYS someone that berates me for being a law breaker. Bikers looking the other way is not going to fix that perception. Car drivers are not going to fix that perception. What sucks in these situations is I can’t say ‘Hey, the bike community does not tolerate law breaking’. Because it does. I never had to have that conversation when I was into fast cars.
I frankly think it’s ridiculous just how defensive so many of us are about the behavior of our fellow riders, and our ‘inability’ to do anything about it.
interesting perspective.
But since you made the comparison of racing cars and people on bicycles taking their own interpretation of whether to stop at residential stop signs on low traffic streets (a variant of which is legal in some states), let me ask you this: When was the last time you heard of someone on a bicycle hurting, killing, or maiming another person as a result of their cavalier attitude toward stop signs or other ‘traffic laws’?
I know, I know. A law is a law and why should people on bikes flout them and still expect others to behave well…? But I do think it matters not a little that what someone in a car, who for whatever reasons resents people on bikes, observes behavior they disapprove of (whether or not they themselves follow all rules of the road…. speed limits, anyone?…) we should take this at face value, as something that is a problem, that needs correcting, that is worth spilling a whole lot of ink over, year after year, when more than 3,000 people were killed in this country by distracted drivers last year.
How about a little perspective?
“When was the last time you heard of someone on a bicycle hurting, killing, or maiming another person as a result of their cavalier attitude toward stop signs or other ‘traffic laws’?”
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/03/12/bicyclist-sentenced-to-probation-in-fatal-sf-embarcadero-crash/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/05/BAOP1NUSV0.DTL
Granted, in the second we don’t know if it was a cavalier attitude towards traffic laws that caused the pedestrian death or if it was just a freak accident.
But I think it adds some perspective that perhaps we’re not always as benign an influence on the roads as we’d like to believe. Especially for those of us who feel like we can flaunt the ‘traffic laws’.
2/36,000 = 0.01%
Just sayin’
i’m sure some drivers say the same thing when they injure or kill a person on a bicycle.
Sure, if you want to play with numbers, for 2009:
254,212,610 registered autos in the us
33,808 auto-related deaths
0.00013 of the total automobiles in the US caused deaths… so what were you sayin’?
samizdat,
if you are going to toss out a statistic in response to BURR’s (2 deaths caused by cyclist running over pedestrian divided by number of deaths caused by people driving cars) and offer not much comment, the ratio should be comparable.
Yours isn’t.
Here’s the example I was thinking of earlier that offers some comparability:
(a) divide the number of bicycle miles traveled in a year by the number of deaths caused by people riding bicycles, and compare that figure to
(b) the number of vehicle miles traveled in a year by the number of deaths caused by people driving those cars.
Using Ken Kifer’s numbers http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/health/risks.htm
(a) 21 billion miles ridden on bikes in US in ’97/?5 deaths? = 4.2 x10e-6
(b) 2.56 trillion miles driven in US in ’97/44,000 deaths = 58.2x10e-6
I have no idea what the actual number of deaths caused by someone riding a bicycle in 1997 or in any year was, so I estimated 5 which struck me as generous.
I suspect the ratio would be higher if we looked at injuries caused by these two types of vehicles.
Please check my math.
As the story unfolds, it sounds like Bucchere’s disregard of traffic law, seemingly with “cavalier attitude,” was very much involved: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/crime/2012/04/sf-bicyclist-involved-fatal-collision-discusses-incident-online
More to the point of this thread, that article points out that bike (and ped) advocacy organizations and individuals are speaking out against such actions and attitudes just as whyat compared to his example of car enthusiasts.
BTW, I don’t read whyat’s post as comparing street racing in cars to bikes rolling residential stop signs. I see him specifically call out “200lb riders going 20+ miles an hour” (and presumably doing dangerous acts). What I do not agree with him about is that those sorts of things don’t get called out; they do, examples on this blog include speeding through Waterfront Park or lane-splitting on Hawthorne.
cat-6 ninja clydes are a public safety crisis!
Link to an article to a story about the latest pedestrian struck and killed by a cyclist in San Francisco. The article also talks about a second person struck and killed by a cyclist 6 months ago. The article also notes that one cyclist was killed when hitting a pedestrian in 2011 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/05/BA9O1NVHMI.DTL&type=newsbayarea
“… someone on a bicycle hurting, killing, or maiming another person as a result of their cavalier attitude toward stop signs or other ‘traffic laws’? …” 9watts
Are you proposing those consequences be the conditions for faulting, opposing or restricting someones use of the road?
It’s the responsibility of all road users by their own use of the road, regardless of how big or heavy their mode of transport, to do their part in helping the roads to function safely, smoothly and with a minimum of stress to fellow road users.
Injury or death inflicted on a road user by another road user shouldn’t be the condition for compelling basic observance of traffic use laws written to help the roads function well for everyone.
“Injury or death inflicted on a road user by another road user shouldn’t be the condition for compelling basic observance of traffic use laws written to help the roads function well for everyone.”
I agree, but the implication of all the talk about scofflaw cyclists is that theirs is dangerous behavior when there are no statistics to back this up. With the rarest of exceptions this objectionable behavior is not causing injury much less death to anyone, annoying though it may be to observe.
Your choice of phrase ‘to help the roads function well for everyone’ masks the asymmetries at work here, wsbob. The roads are not functioning well for everyone but that has nothing to do with cyclists running stop signs.
I think the focus on ‘laws’ is a distraction. Many states don’t even have distracted driving laws (yet). Wouldn’t that be a better thing to focus our energies on, or maybe enforcement of those laws whose violation results in thousands of deaths each year?
Why don’y you just say “*I* am one of those asshat cyclists and *I* refuse to change!” and be done with it.
Because the issue is much more broad than that.
I guarantee you that every driver has broken a traffic law at some point, and in many cases multiple times. Maximum speed, full stop at a stop sign, yielding to the right, yielding to pedestrians at crosswalks, all are laws that I see broken regularly and with impunity by motorists. So clearly the conversation is not about whether laws are being broken, or at least it shouldn’t be – because people break those laws regardless of their chosen mode of transportation.
So a more useful focus is on whether it makes sense to make noise about the laws being broken. And the statistics show us that focusing on the enforcement of traffic laws for motorists has a much higher effect on traffic casualties than does the enforcement of traffic laws for cyclists.
i used to be one of those asshat motorists and *I* refused to change. i shudder at the number of near misses i accumulated over decades of driving. in some cases these near misses would have almost certainly caused serious injuries and/or death. i was very good at dismissing the way my tiredness, inattention, or casual disregard for the law was putting other people at risk.
And some more (not quite news) from the UK
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/government-to-give-time-to-causing-death-by-dangerous-cycling-bi/011040
“In 2009 no pedestrians were killed by cyclists. 426 were killed by motorists. So, the Gov’t is to crack down on…cyclists”
And some statistics, too:
http://trafficsafety.org/safety/sharing/bike/bike-facts/bike-injuries-fatalities
“Two percent of motor vehicle-related deaths are cyclists although bicycle trips account for less than 1 percent of all trips in the U.S. In 2006, more than 44,000 bicyclists in the U.S. were injured in traffic crashes and 773 bicyclists died as a result of bicycle-related injuries.”
Having the roads function well for everyone is what traffic laws are for. Traffic laws are part of the tools used to work towards the objective of having the roads work well for everyone.
“…I agree, but the implication of all the talk about scofflaw cyclists is that theirs is dangerous behavior when there are no statistics to back this up. With the rarest of exceptions this objectionable behavior is not causing injury much less death to anyone, annoying though it may be to observe. …” 9watts
Irresponsible road use by scofflaw cyclists or any other road user is dangerous, whether or not injury or death occurs from it. Irresponsible road use isn’t simply annoying to observe; it literally contributes to stress and a deterioration of road user ability to safely travel the road. These effects from irresponsible road use in turn diminish the ability of the roads to function optimally for everyone.
“…The roads are not functioning well for everyone but that has nothing to do with cyclists running stop signs. …” 9watts
Cyclists running stop signs absolutely do have something to do with the roads not functioning well for everyone. People are very frustrated over not being able to safely and enjoyably use the roads without fear of somehow colliding with bikes ridden by people having devised various rationale excusing themselves from complying with traffic laws.
wsbob,
you’re missing the forest of auto-sponsored-death for the trees of what you call “stress and a deterioration of road user ability to safely travel the road.”
Reading up on the subject of injuries suffered by (mostly pedestrians, I think) due to people on bicycles’ inconsiderate behavior, it turns out that there are apparently a lot of injuries, if a vanishingly small number of deaths. The injury part is a problem I wasn’t aware of (& maybe more of a problem in NYC than Portland?), and something that should be addressed.
But as many here have pointed out, singling out scofflaw cyclists as somehow uniquely dangerous participants in urban traffic still strikes me as ridiculous.
Once again, you’re attempting to impose injury and death as the conditions for having people that ride bikes, comply with traffic regulations created to enable the roads to work well for everyone.
Of road users traveling by vehicle, eighty to ninety percent of which apparently travel specifically by motor vehicle, I think most would not support those conditions. I seriously doubt people on foot would support them either.
“…But as many here have pointed out, singling out scofflaw cyclists as somehow uniquely dangerous participants in urban traffic still strikes me as ridiculous.” 9watts
Scofflaw cyclists most certainly are “…uniquely dangerous participants in urban traffic …”, or actually, anywhere they ride. There may be a fairly long list of why this is so. Here’s just a few reasons that would likely be on such a list:
Bike and rider are generally smaller than motor vehicles, making them considerably more difficult to see on the road. Bikes lack the protective passenger enclosing body that cars have. Though brightness has improved in recent years, the lens square area of illumination bike lights typically display is miniscule compared to that of most car lighting; again contributing to the difficulty road users have in seeing bikes in traffic.
I could respond with a dozen points, but I don’t have the time nor space here. However, for starters, I think it is illogical to compare a group of car enthusiasts to “all bike riders in general” or the “bike community”. Not every bike rider is an enthusiast, and cares about perception. Just like not every car driver cares about perception. Maybe the “car enthusiasts” care, but they are a small subset of all car drivers.
sanitizing a motorist web site of comments about illegal behavior does nothing but sweep that behavior under the rug.
The real problem here is that there is a huge double standard when it comes to motorists and cyclists, where cyclists won’t be taken seriously by motorists until all cyclists behave like angels, yet motorists commit all sorts of serious violations themselves on a routine basis, whether it be speeding, running red lights and rolling stop signs, failing to signal turns, failing to yield the right of way to other road users, or driving while talking or texting on their cell phones.
The lunacy is of course that it isn’t the scofflaw cyclists that are responsible for 40,000 +/- deaths on US roads and highways each year; rather, it is the scofflaw motorists.
a 3,000 pound car (light by most standards – one google search puts the average at 4,000 – but let’s give the cars a little leeway here) traveling at just 7 miles per hour has <a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=calculate+energy+of+3000+pounds+at+7+mph"6,666.7 kilojoules of inertial energy behind it. This is about the speed that I see the average car roll through the stop sign at SW Oak and 9th from my office window.
A bike, let’s use a rather large person on a very heavy commuter bike: that would put him at about 300 pounds. That person at the same speed has about 0.6663 kilojoules (666.3 joules) of inertial energy. 1000 times less energy! Literally.
The danger posed by a bike and a car aren’t even in the same neighborhoods. Add to that, that a bicycle operator has better unencumbered visual and aural acuity at his disposal than someone inside a car with sound insulation and visual obstructions.
It just boils my temper when I hear “just how dangerous” a threat bikes are to public safety.
Sorry. Messed up that link:
The example car has 6,666.7 kilojoules of inertial energy behind it
Thanks for the math! It is remarkable that there is as much energy involved in bringing my truck to a stop at a stop light as is required to pedal my other machine all the way across town.
seconding schrauf here. the direct comparison would be to a “community” of people who get around by car. take a look at their chatboards (e.g., oregonlive). the minute you hold them to this faux standard, we can talk. i am a person who uses a bicycle to get around, and this gives me zero responsibility for a bunch of idiots who do whatever on the roads, regardless of mode. to identify me with a “community” of bicyclists (and to suggest that the people who run stops or whatever your peeve is are a part of the same “community”) is bigotry, pure and simple. i will not play into it.
that said, bicycling magazine is marketed to sport cyclists, so i guess no harm. what disturbs me is when bike advocacy groups pick up this meme.
this was supposed to be nested with a comment that is still, hours later, “awaiting moderation.” the reader may imagine the context for herself.
racing >> speeding >> failing to signal
????????? >> ????????? >> rolling a stop
PS: false equivalency.
I have something on my hydration pack called a “XC speed clip” or ‘speed clip XC”. I won it at a race or raffle over 10 years ago… Just like the Showers Pass version but no magnet..
Oh, and I used to be into cars too. Before there were chat boards.
I only follow three rules on a bike, no matter the law or the paint on the road. 1. Do not get hit by a motor vehicle. 2. Do not be a jerk. 3. Do not lose momentum. #1 means I watch at every corner, trusting no stop sign nor signal. #2 means I watch for pedestrians (say hello!) and signal around motor vehicles, etc. #3 means I don’t put my foot down at every stop sign for God’s sake. A victimless crime is what coasting thru a stop sign is, and just like smoking a joint, it should not be allowed to consume scarce public safety resources.
The NPR piece is kind of ironic in that the expert guests are pushing the source of the problem being mentality of otherness between different transit mode users while the title of the piece pushes it. Journalism…
That aside, it made me glad for the sensibility of most parts of the Oregon Road Statute (though there are a few laws that receive the stink eye from me).
*raises hand*
I’m a pudgy slow lady with no fighting skills. May I be excused of what is apparently my civic duty to confront jerks? Thanks.
Likewise, as a smaller guy who never got into a fight growing up (knew I would lose, so I learned diplomacy instead of fighting skills), I’m going to ask for the same exemption. I’ll just keep on quietly following the law on my own, while most normal motorists (addled by availability bias) continue to fail to notice.
There was a period when I felt a civic duty to confront other cyclists for running red lights. Despite my attempts to be polite about it, In EVERY CASE the other cyclist became angry and defensive. In at least 2 instances it turned out the person was (or pretended to be) mentally ill, and incapable of comprehending my message.
In another instance, 3 street punks on BMX bikes threatened to kill me. I’m done. Someone else take over.
Minding your own business is a good idea, no need to play traffic cop with other cyclists; and when it’s done to me that’s exactly what I tell the other cyclist.
as someone who drives a few times a month i’ve decided to start confronting motorists who speed or fail to signal. its very upsetting how fellow motorists are making all of us motorists look bad. there would be far less anti-motorist rage if motorists JUST OBEYED THE LAW!
I look forward to the possible day in which all of humanity realizes that every individual acts of its own accord regardless of whatever group it is a part of and subsequently no longer feels pressure in response to their perception of others’ perception nor applies pressure in response to their perception of others. The millenia-old convention of placing all perceptive responsibility on one side of perception is quite outdated, if you ask me.
When my neighbor (who sees I ride a bike a lot) asked why bike riders break the law all the time, I told him the last time I drove down the Banfield at the speed limit, EVERYONE was flying by me; some like I was standing still. He changed the subject immediately.
Bad behavior seen in drivers does not reflect on motorists in general. Drivers are not in some kind of “club” where the behavior of one reflects on the others.
I don’t get admitted to any “club” either when I ride a bike. I am just using our public right-of-way and trying to survive a landscape of multi-ton vehicles charging about, piloted by drivers of any level of driving skill or temperament. Bicycling safely means that you expect nobody will see you, some may want to harm you, and that the law will not help you.
Title aside, the NPR program was well done in illustrating the current state of affairs.
Thanks for all the informative coverage this morning Jonathan! I’d just like to say how excited I am for Eastern Oregon to finally have this gorgeous scenic bikeway added to the already impressive list of scenic bikeways in our state. I used to live in Baker City for a few years and while i always enjoyed the Elkhorn Stage Race (now the Baker City Cycling Classic: http://www.bakercitycycling.org/BCCC/Home.html) that came to town every year, i think this will only improve the accessibility by all cyclists to truly enjoy and appreciate the pure beauty of his region.
The NPR piece was so terribly done, I was/am at a complete loss for words. Lawbreaking jerk Fred’s really shouldn’t be the spokepersons for the bicycling movement. And I love the justification/whining – just look at Holland! They have great infrastructure, so that gives me the excuse to break the law (cyclists’ justification)/Cyclists break the law, so we shouldn’t build cycling infrastructure (motorists’ justification).
Its all just inane and there is such a dearth of people taking responsibility as well as logic involved, that I really don’t know what to say. If you can’t be bothered to follow the rules of the road, you should be banned from cycling OR driving a car. Period. You have legs – you can walk.
as a pedestrian, i often find it advantageous to cross midblock or at some distance from the corner. are you going to ban me to some rung lower than walking?
Walking against a traffic control signal is illegal, but it’s not illegal to cross mid-block or some distance from the corner.
At any rate, regarding people that travel by bike, it’s this small minority of road users that bear much of the burden of persuading the public that providing infrastructure for the support of travel by bike is a good, worthy, wise public investment.
Of the people traveling by bike, those that disregard the rules of the road, increasing the difficulty and danger of traveling the roads, undermines efforts to encourage more people to ride, and to expand infrastructure that supports use of bikes for travel.
“it’s this small minority of road users that bear much of the burden of persuading the public that providing infrastructure for the support of travel by bike is a good, worthy, wise public investment.”
except that the majority of the public supports cycling. imo its only a highly politicized and histrionic minority that feels cycling scofflaws are a “crisis”.
“…except that the majority of the public supports cycling. …” spare_wheel
As recreation, away from sidewalks used by pedestrians, and from roads and streets heavily depended upon by and used for motor vehicle travel? Yes.
As practical means of transportation on heavily used urban streets and roads and country roads? The idea that the majority of the public, confronted as it seems to be by examples of people on bikes frequently disregarding rules of the road, supports cycling on major streets and roads as practical transportation, is questionable.
i guess you are carless again…then.
The idea that self enforcement is key to transportation reform sounds like very damaging logic.
Is it logical telling pedestrian groups to herd in 50% or near 40 pedestrians a minute who completely ignore the signals at the Rose Quarter Transit center? No.
The cops don’t sting that area because it would create a lot of fines and anger and never really improve safety.
It sounds like Amanda Fritz should take her scapegoating to New York.