The Monday Roundup: No more ‘Share the Road’, helmet lawsuit & more

The new Garmin Virb.
(Image: Garmin.)

Here’s the bike news that caught our eyes this week:

Garmin camera: The GPS maker is competing with GoPro with a new $400 action camera that connects wirelessly to a mobile app on your phone and the company’s other hardware. There’s a $300 version with fewer bells and whistles.

Helmet lawsuit: Easton-Bell Sports won a lawsuit brought by a man who suffered brain injuries while completing a long ride. The California company said he’d been wearing it improperly.

Athlete killed: A promising British hockey star died after crashing the $30,000 BMW that his mother had just bought him because she thought it’d be safer than biking to work.

Bizzare bike attack: Wildest story of the week has got to be the young businesswoman who was biking in Chicago when a man in the back seat of a speeding purple SUV grabbed her messenger bag and towed her into a parked car.

Hit and run epidemic: Half of all car crashes in Los Angeles are hit-and-runs. An LAPD detective says one major factor is that people who entered the country illegally are terrified of the entire justice system.

Intelligent bike: The $2,600 Vanmoof offers an onboard computer, GPS tracking (to find your lost bike) and an electric assist system that knows how much help you need at a given time.

Cars that make people drive worse: Bigger cars and more expensive cars make people more aggressive.

“Americans growing less concerned about dangerous driving behaviors”: Apparently the AAA doesn’t own any stock photos of people in cars looking concerned. Four truly scary trends here.

Mandatory parking lots: Sightline Institute founder Alan Durning lists five ways parking minimums raise rents.

Carfree street counter: Two weeks after cars were banned from Goldsmiths Row, London, it’s drawing 5,000 bikes a day (that’s about as many crossings as the Steel and Burnside bridges put together).

Amazon cycle track: Under a deal negotiated with Seattle as part of a growth plan, Amazon will fund a two-block protected bike lane.

Third truck death in SF: All three deaths of people on bikes in San Francisco this year have involved large trucks in the same construction-heavy area of town.

Global road deaths, mapped: This new map seems suspiciously similar to this one.

Texas takes up bikes: “It’s not this sort of fringe tree-hugger issue anymore,” Alta Planning’s new woman in Dallas tells the NYT. San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth all have bikesharing and Austin is next.

Bikes are the new sewers: “Cycling offers us, for the first time in more than a century and a half, the chance to build an infrastructure that will bring with it significant public health improvements.”

Bike tourism: Bike-related tourism brings $88 million a year to Arizona. Keep pedaling, Phoenix — it’s $400 million here.

Oh dear: Chicago condo owners worry that bikeshare racks will bring an “‘invasion’ of people” to their area.

Bikesharing helps bike shops: That’s the story at NYC bike shops that don’t rely completely on rental revenue.

Divvy turnaround: Three months after a preemptive series of pans of Chicago’s new bikeshare system, the Tribune’s transpo reporter rows back his complaints and changes his tune.

Citi Bike bar crawl: “Beats paying for a cab,” the NYT reports.

Police problems: As Doug Gordon of Brooklyn Spoke put it, one traffic safety problem Mike Bloomberg has never tackled is the NYPD.

Church vetoes bike lane: D.C. political leaders nixed their own DOT’s plan to cut street parking in front of a historically black church to make room for a protected bike lane.

Handsfree distraction: Driving without a phone in your hand is just as distracting as driving with one.

Bad bike sign: Bike Delaware makes a persuasive case against “Share the road” as a message for street signs.

Speaking of which, your video of the week gets some sort of award for the most patronizing “bike safety” offering I’ve seen in a while:

If you come across a noteworthy bicycle story, send it in via email, Tweet @bikeportland, or whatever else and we’ll consider adding it to next Monday’s roundup.

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