(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)
Here are the great bike links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Cheap gas coming: The price of oil plummeted to its lowest non-recession level since 2007 on Thursday and Friday. It’s being described as the result of a major price war launched by OPEC in hopes of ending North America’s oil boom.
Vision zero bikes: Sydney is considering banning bikes from its “shared cycle way” network because someone walking might get hurt and sue.
Car-free Sundays: After London’s mayor saw them at work in Jakarta, he’s asking his transport agency to consider them, too.
Dynamic routing: Have Dutch bike signals finally gone too far? The latest tells you the fastest of two possible ways to bike around a big intersection.
Phoenix bike share: The new hybrid dock/dockless system in Phoenix has launched with just 100 bikes. You’ll be able to pay $2 per ride to park away from one of 27 stations.
Gold-plated garages: Congress apparently provides an illegally large subsidy for its own auto parking.
Streetcar sunset: Portland’s United Streetcar has produced 18 streetcars for three cities and entered “hibernation” as European companies beat it out for new orders, reports the Washington Post.
Locomotive money: Amtrak tipped within 8 percentage points of an operating profit last year, its best result in 40 years.
Hit-and-run casulaties: As biking has risen in Los Angeles, so has the number and the share of hit-and-runs that injure people riding. Four in 10 victims are minors; eight in ten of hit and runs go unsolved.
Happiness machine: Time on a bike is a treatment for the depression of Paul Watson of Brooklyn, who got support this year from the New York Times’ annual charity drive and aims to one day own a bike shop.
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Measuring bike sharing: Don’t miss the smart comments on this post about which bike share systems are performing best.
Helmet cams: The untold costs.
RT @wheeliefast: Funny pic.twitter.com/yqNfp0n8Ud
— Carlton Reid (@carltonreid) November 29, 2014
Bus lane lawsuit: A few Clark County residents are trying to force a public vote on whether to upgrade the county’s busiest bus line to bus rapid transit.
Parking surplus: We’re looking forward to the results of this photo contest of half-empty Black Friday parking lots.
Uber informative: With a little regulation, ridesharing companies could open up transformative levels of transportation planning data.
Healthy transport: Here’s a useful list of ideas from Ohio for integrating public health and transportation policy.
Assigning blame: A new San Diego study has found that police coded people on bikes as being “most at fault” in 56 to 60 percent of crashes that injured or killed a bike user. (Local advocate Sam Ollinger is quoted acknowledging that some people are breaking the law, but suggests building a better system instead of just assigning blame.)
Food-drive ride: Matt Lauer, Al Roker and the rest of the Today Show gang joined the Cranksgiving rides in New York, DC and Miami.
Highway protests: From Tahrir Square to Oakland, civil demonstrators are moved to seize highways. Why?
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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San Diego story:
“It seems a little far-fetched to state that there is this whole issue about safety and a majority of people at fault are cyclists, when the driving public is a much, much greater percentage of San Diego than any other road user,”
I’ll say. Anytime this sort of statistic is mentioned it raises my hackles. Why would fault be so very differently distributed in European countries or Australia, where authorities have looked at this same issue?
On the subject of helmet cams, I’ve ridden with one quite a bit around Portland. Several times when I’ve heard a car revving behind me to illegally pass (for example, while I’m doing 25 in a 25 zone while taking the lane), I turn my head around to show my camera and they quickly swerve back in behind me and slow down. Works every time.
I also had someone illegally drive in the bike lane – nearly hitting me – to get a head start on the right turn lane to MLK on the east side of the Burnside bridge. After I yelled she swerved back into the car lane, honking and freaking out at me, but when she saw the camera she threw her body down, turned her face away from me, and suddenly started driving a hell of a lot better.
Wonder if there is a market for a fake helmet cam for those that don’t want to deal with the hassle of a real one?
A product review of helmet cams would be nice. I saw a $25 Gopro knockoff at Grocery Outlet a few months ago. Would that be good enough to pick up license #s?
Perhaps, but part of what makes the GoPro so good is the frame rate. You can record at 1080p resolution at 60 fps, enough to capture stills after the fact to easily identify a driver.
Yeah, the Gopro wold be awesome but I don’t think we’ll soon see a “critical mass” of folks with $300 cams on their bikes. If we can find $50 or less option, I think we could quickly reach the point where drivers realize they have a better then even chance of having their behavior become evidence. Then we’ll see some serious deterrence.
wold = would
then = than
Cameras. Not just needed on cops these days, but everywhere for the negligent and disrespectful assholes on the road.
Cameras. Not just needed on cops these days, but everywhere to hold the negligent and disrespectful accountable.
So, who does the holding accountable of everyone who is negligent and disrespectful? Would that be you? Or do we set up an Oversight Committee of the Mindful and Respectful?
Or, you are being sarcastic and I missed it. If so . . .
Those of you with helmet cameras: do you always have it on and running? How much do you have to spend to get a decent one?
I bought a GoPro Hero3 Silver for about $300. You can get a cheaper helmet cam but the GoPro can be used for many other purposes. I haven’t had mine on as much in the winter as I’m mostly just commuting to work a few miles each day, but when I have it with me it’s always on and recording.
So you mostly use it for longer rides? And do you use it mostly in case of an accident? Or are you filming rides for another reason?
Yeah, mostly for longer rides – I find drivers to be a lot more respectful in general during peak hour commute times. And I use it in case of an accident, but it’s been an excellent deterrent.
Thanks. This is helpful.
Some types of cam just record continuously in a 2 or 3 hour loop, overwriting the previous data. You only download the data if you have an incident you want to save.
That’s the same front camera I use. I wear mine, running, nearly every day. Unless there’s an incident I erase the data every morning.
I also have a Fly6 rear camera that runs an 8-hour loop.
And yes, I definitely see driver behavior improve as if by magic when they see the camera. On Wednesday I looked in a window at a texting driver who looked up and quickly turned the phone face down and set it on the seat. Nice.
I think the ideal video camera for bicycling would be helmet mounted, and have an obvious red blinking light easily seen by motorists that indicates recording is going on. It could have a fake mode that just lets the light blink. Rear camera integrated too. And an easy to use on/off switch for when you sense an incident may occur. A continuous record mode that writes over previous data. USB and dynamo charging abilities. Waterproof and very durable. Adequate audio and video recording power to get a license plate and allow face recognition. Low FPS and wide angle format should do the job. I am surprised there is no such device on the market yet. I want a purpose built camera, designed for recording data that could potentially be used in court. Such a camera would be more compact than the go-pro, easier to use, and the battery should last much longer.
Go pro cameras are overkill for this type of use. They are designed to capture that amazing descent you do on your mountain bike in glorious detail.
Bult makes an inexpensive helmet with an integrated camera. I thought of getting one, but it is not waterproof and replacement parts are not available.
I also want a cycling jersey with a big yellow smiley face on the back that reads ” for the Camera!”
The ideal camera for biking already exists, and it’s called Rideye. Check it out: http://www.rideye.com
That looks great, except there’s no helmet mount. With a handlebar mount I’d be worried that it wouldn’t capture everything if an incident occurred. When it’s on my head, it virtually sees what I see.
There is a helmet mount, it’s just not on the website right now.
The Ride Eye one is purpose built and cheaper than GoPro. I would just attach a small lower power flashing LED module to the outside to make it more identifiable. Something like the Nite Ize ones maybe, or if anyone has a better LED choice then please recommend.
http://www.rideye.com/
http://www.niteize.com/product/SpotLit.asp
I won’t wear a camera on my helmet because it creates awkward weight distributions and would likely serve as a neck-twisting snag if I ever should crash. I mount one on my handlebars and I run it for just about every commute or ride in traffic, where “conflicts” are more likely. If I use it for the extremely rare “recreational” ride, it is mostly to capture scenery or for analyzing descents and cornering later.
Mostly, all it has been useful for is documenting poor behavior by drivers that hasn’t resulted in any injury to me. If I wanted to save every instance of such behavior, I’d have to invest in more cloud storage or more hard drive storage for my own computer—it’s not worth saving any but the most egregious of examples to show family and friends for entertainment.
I don’t find my camera serves as any kind of deterrent, however, because I don’t have it mounted as conspicuously as someone who does wear it on a helmet, and I also can’t capture as much of what is going on because I can’t record things just by turning my head at them.
I’m thinking of getting a second camera to record the rear view of my commutes, but haven’t done so yet.
I have a vented helmet mount for my GoPro. It does add some weight to my helmet that is noticeable on a 2+ hour ride, but I don’t see any safety issues with it.
I’m in south Texas this week where a fellow was just talking about paying $1.98/gallon for regular to fill up his pickup truck (it’s $2.58 at the nearby HEB). When I flew here the day before Thanksgiving the airport and my flights were relatively empty (I was upgraded to an emergency row seat where only 3 of the 5 seats were occupied). Coincidence?
Works on gun nuts too. Recently in Harrisburg a road raging good ol’ boy reportedly threatened to shoot a cyclist (although he didn’t brandish a weapon) who was just too darn slow in getting out of his way. Upon seeing the handlebar-mounted Go Pro, he silently backed off and meekly drove away.
Freeways were shut down in Portland by cyclists and pedestrians on March 19, 2003, during the protests against the war in Iraq.
It’s disgraceful that this type of non-violent civil disobedience is illegal in the state of oregon.
It wouldn’t be civil disobedience if it were legal.
The assumption that governments or law enforcement always behave in a lawful manner is absurd.
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, or commands of a government, or of an occupying international power.
(From Wiki but a reasonable definition.)
Choosing a form of protest based purely on its ILLegagity is ridiculous and in the case of a highway with high speed heavy freight almost guaranteed to be fatal.
If a freeway driving motorist saw a semi-truck in front of him slowing, and that motorist changed lanes, while maintaining freeway speed, to overtake the truck and found a cluster of black clad protesters in his lane once he passed the truck and he struck the protesters, would that be violence? What if someone older than me was driving on the freeway (in a steel blue Buick with a white vinyl roof) same scenario, but upon seeing the protesters, slammed on his brakes and swerved to avoid the unanticipated pedestrians. If the Buick veered into the path of a Dodge Ram 3500 dually and the driver was killed, would the protest still be non-violent? Claims that spreading chaotic disruption on freeways is non-violent is absurd. You have a right to protest, but not to put people in danger
It might be noted that the Iraq war protests were attended by about 50,000 people in Portland, and that the freeway incursions were done by the usual suspects after the peaceful protest had ended. FWIW neither the peaceful demonstrations (of several million nation wide) or the law breaking protests had any influence on the White House and the war was conducted with disastrous results.
That Dutch signal is really cool. PBOT and others here should take it to heart because it really highlights a fundamental difference between their successful approach and our floundering approach: convenience.
Between being on the cusp of 1. everything recorded all the time – helmet cams, vehicle cams, black boxes in vehicles, and 2. collision prevention software in all new autos, we’re what, 5 years? away from radically safer streets.
I’m actually skeptical of all the bells and whistles installed in new cars in the past few years. While theoretically it could make driving safer, I fear that most people will end up relying too much on these features and will thus become worse drivers.
There’s an interesting, if overly long, article about the Air France crash that discusses the reliance of pilots on technology. I think it has some parallels for drivers.
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash
Fascinating article, thanks.
Quote from the last paragraph that sums it up for me:
“It seems that we are locked into a spiral in which poor human performance begets automation, which worsens human performance, which begets increasing automation.”
We are coming up in the next few years where anti-collision software will prevent you from being able to cause an accident directly. The systems now being tested are very very good, far better than humans.
but why would anyone slow down if they can rely on that kind of thing? Count me out.
It’s funny that you label the photo with the protest sign “GAS PRICES RIGGED” as “Less so than they were, maybe” when the OPEC cartel is the text book example of a price rigging organization who are all but publicly admitted as increasing supply to drive down prices specifically to strangle America’s burgeoning oil industry.
The prices aren’t as HIGH but they are just as RIGGED.
Also: this can’t last forever. OPEC has been sitting on a dwindling supply; at some point (possibly soon: 12 months?) there will be a sudden supply reduction and prices will spike and probably stay a a new high that makes the halcyon days of $3.50/gallon gasoline look like the good years.
The difference is that in say Saudi Arabia it costs next to nothing to extract a barrel of oil. (I believe it’s somewhere between $3-5 per barrel). Fracking costs somewhere more like $30-50 depending on site in the US.
Most the OPEC nations are probably past peek oil (they’ll never tel,l but I’d guess most went past peek about a decade ago- which is what allowed fracking to become profitable), but they can definitely deflate the fraking boom in the US for a long time if they wanted to.
Also don’t think that perhaps the US Government isn’t perhaps also behind keeping the prices low. It’s a two birds with one stone kind of thing. Cheap gas keeps the people happy and sells more cars.
As an added bonus it hurts Putin in Russia since oil is one of its biggest exports, likewise it potentially helps the EU look for non Russian suppliers since Puitan has made threats to the EU’s oil supply.
They’re already saying Russia might be heading to recession next quarter in a large part because of the low price of oil. Economic warfare worked during the cold war, seems like it be a good way to strike at the Bear without much consequences. Especially if you can hide behind OPEC.
And there’s the US aid to the Gulf states in the form of military action against Islamic State. So, a perfect storm of contributory events.
Don’t for a second think I’m shilling for petroleum companies or their “Loot and Pillage” amoral compass. I was merely pointing out the observational bias of seeing collusion and conspiracies ONLY when they hurt you directly; if the collusion, conspiracy or corruption FAVORS you then it must not exist.
This is a common defect in reasoning that we must watch out for.
Besides: the real conspiracy isn’t that OPEC is doing this to squash our American fracking oil industry (U.S. on pace to be the world’s largest oil producer) or that the United States may have “suggested” to OPEC nations that their cooperation in price starving Russia’s oil export revenue stream would be “mandatory”.
The real story is that we are using such a blunt economic sledgehammer to attempt to affect delicate political change.
So on the upside immediately:
() the falling price of oil negatively affects both Russia and ISIS. ISIS captured several oil wells and this is a major source of liquid funding; while recapturing said wells is the ultimate goal (or making them non-functional without starting oil well fires) reducing the money they produce is an easy start.
() domestic fraking becomes unprofitable immediately effectively ending most of it…. for now
() increased economic activity from everyone else who isn’t working in the petroleum industry. Economic growth has always directly tracked with the cost of the cheapest form of transportation. With oil cheaper the poor have more spending power and commercial freight costs less to ship.
On the downside immediately:
() Other oil producing countries that are not enemies, like Norway, are predicted to enter recessions due to their economies heavy dependence upon the oil export business while decreased revenue enters country budgets from export duties. This even affects the United States but less so due to the diversity in our employment sectors. Expect to see a spike in petroleum related layoffs this holiday season and that political side blaming the other for ruining the Christmas of “hard worin’ Muricans”
() With cheaper oil comes less economic motivation to live closer to a city, bigger cheaper suburbs and more traffic
() less economic interest in “Green” energy.
On the downside long-term (several months to years out) :
() It is easy to find in the news that OPEC is not united in this most recent production decision. Most of these countries budgets RUN on oil revenue to the point of being dependent upon high per barrel prices. It is in the immediate economic interest of almost every OPEC member to let the price rise again.
() Due to the prior point and publicly known reserves of OPEC nations they pretty much have to cut production to ensure that they don’t run out. Losing the ability to produce oil effectively reduces some of these nations to pre-Industrial Age chaos. Since demand increases exponentially with global population while their reserves can only shrink this lowering in price is only the calm before the global economic $#it-storm when the price per barrel starts hitting new records.
() Eventually the price per barrel will be enough to justify getting Canada tar sands oil out by even pack mule. Expect high profit margins to encourage fraking EVERYWHERE. Money speaks and owns the government; you might want to invest in home water purification equipment.
I was only pointing out some players and motivations in the rigged market you pointed out.
All commodity markets are rigged, oil just effects more people (directly and indirectly) than most the other commodity markets. And as a result can often feature political, economic, and social interests as a price motivator.
“All commodity markets are rigged”
Yes. That right there. Nothing else needs to be said.
Interesting article but it’s flawed (though your analysis seems correct). Production and reserves are two different things (as you note), and OPEC is and will remain number one by far for an awfully long time. Saudi Arabia was leading traditional production (though still behind Venezuela in reserves) but has had to throttle back dramatically and increase exports to respond to OPEC pricing pressure (which is not recent news). We’ve increased oil production somewhat with the Bakken boom but are still quite far down the list and will never really catch up like the title of this article misleads. What we have jumped up on dramatically is natural gas production, but that’s still throttled by supply capability (hence the battle over LNG facilities in Astoria).
(You can guess what industry I’m working with in Houston this week ;).
Regarding the helmet cam discussion: perhaps this would be a great focus of systemwide safety (towards Vision Zero) if a 501c3 (BTA) were to seek partners (ODOT and PSU) and write a grant to distribute a high number of these bike cameras in a geographic area to document traffic behaviour (and data) plus press coverage so drivers know that “Santa” is watching. This effort should allow a lower price point (sponsorship?) and local infrastructure to support them. These cameras could also be augmented by other safety equipment if needed (headlights, GPS loggers, etc.). The riders would then get the equipment after the study was complete.
I think the BTA should rent out cameras and take on prosecuting the dangerous drivers documented with them. Imagine if drivers knew any cyclist could have a camera, and that there was a united group behind them, determined to put consequences to dangerous driving.
Oh, and publish the license plates, so insurance companies would be stupid for not checking before pricing insurance.
Speaking of half-empty parking lots, how come nobody has ever called out Walgreens on SE Belmont and SE Cesar Chavez for their inordinately large parking lot?
Can we see that video?