(Image: Smart Growth America)
Here are the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Safety labels: Smart Growth America offers our favorite riff on the U.S. Surgeon General’s “call to action” this week that Americans need to walk more.
Healthy risk: It’s dangerous for kids to never do anything dangerous, according to a new meta-analysis. “Risky outdoor play” gives people better health, creativity, social skills and resilience.
Exclusionary zoning: The fight against excessive single-family zoning builds on decades of civil rights battles and is one of the best ways to fight inequality in cities, says Daniel Kay Hurtz in the Washington Post.
Best locks: The sturdiest bike locks on the market take about 2.5 minutes to defeat with a portable cutter, BikeRadar found in its latest ratings.
Cargo accessories: The Sweet Home reviews the best bike rack, basket and panniers for bike commuting.
Insurance costs: Geico and Allstate are raising car insurance premiums in response to this year’s 14 percent jump in auto fatalities, and further hikes seem likely. Geico owner Warren Buffett blames texting. “If cars are better — and they clearly are — drivers must be worse,” he says.
Unused features: Carmakers keep rolling out new safety features, but large swaths of Americans don’t know they exist.
Stolen bike: A $13,600 bike stolen from a Spanish bike racer turned up in a used-bike shop, on sale for $135.
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Federal transpo bill: The momentum from before Congress’s summer break has stalled, Streetsblog reports.
Bike sharing: Copenhagen startup AirDonkey is launching a Spinlister-style service that lets people make money by renting out spare bikes to peers.
Bike-share benefits: Who does a bike share system serve? It’s not just people who live within its service area but people who take trips within its service area.
National model: A picture of Tilikum Crossing is the cover of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s 2016 budget, reports CityLab.
Gentrification vs. displacement: They’re not the same thing, argues Richard Florida, and the fact that they’re major forces in only a handful of U.S. cities suggests that they’re “symptoms of the scarcity of quality urbanism.”
Kids biking: Reports of the death of childhood biking seem to have been greatly exaggerated: though biking to school is way down, overall biking by kids actually seems to have been more or less stable since 1977.
Carbon folding bike: It weighs 18.6 pounds and costs $5,000.
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.