Preparing to veg the afternoon/night away, and the Feed

And if you think that’s bad, wait until you see my TV schedule for Sunday next week. Today I just have the Sprint All Star race with all the pre-race festivities and qualifying races and hoopla starting at 1530 and running past 2200. Sunday next week we get the Grand Prix of Monaco at 0630 (ugh!!), with an hour break between the end of that race and the pre-race program for the Indianapolis 500 at 1000, then maybe an hour before the hoopla surrounding the longest race on the Sprint Cup schedule, the Coca Cola World 600 that starts (pre-race programming) at 1600. It’s an orgy of internal combustion and burnt rubber that lasts long into the night. This is where I like cars, driving in circles behind walls and sturdy fences away from pedestrians and cyclists. In fact it would be safe to say I LOVE cars under these conditions. Beyond the competition there is the engineering challenge to perform the best, using a rather rigidly enforced parameter of what constitutes “best”, under what is a tightly-controlled limit of parameters (rules). I just had a long “discussion” with Mrs. the Poet about what car I would drive on the street, and I showed her a Smart Fourtwo Passion Coupe, and the Speedway Motors ’27 T roadster kit. She has this “thing” about cars having to have a windshield and a roof, me, not so much. But this is not a car blog.

More on the anti-bike activist who killed a cyclist by driving against the flow of traffic in a bike lane, drunk. Colorado driver accused of killing cyclist had railed against them: ‘These people don’t belong’ Note to self, now that I have said that drunk drivers need to die chained to the wheel of their cars as the cars are recycled into bicycle parts I need to stop hanging out in junkyards… And Man charged with hitting, killing cyclist while driving drunk

Update on the RI cyclist killed riding in a residential area. North Providence ninth-grader killed while riding bicycle Details are still sketchy as of this posting. At this point they aren’t even saying if the cyclist was hit on the road as he was traveling along or that he just entered, so intersection protocols because it was in or near the intersection to avoid, and fix the infrastructure so you don’t have vehicles moving at deadly speeds in a residential area. That is the thing I can’t state firmly enough, this was a residential area, had been a residential area for many years (some of those houses dated back to the post-WWII era), there was no need to travel at fatal speeds except that drivers are callous and don’t care if they kill so long as they are not inconvenienced until they do kill.

More Ride of Silence links. Cyclists at Temecula Ride of Silence and Cyclist’s death sparks memorial ride safety message

A compendium of links to stories about e-assist bikes. E-Bike News: Portable Solar Charger, New Stealth E-Bikes, NYC Ban, & More [VIDEO] On the NYC e-bike ban, nobody has been killed with a bicycle or e-scooter since 2009 in the city, while 152 people died while walking or riding a bike and getting hit by a motor vehicle with a license and (supposedly) a licensed driver. Maybe they should ban the thing that actually killed more than 100 people last year instead of the thing that might, maybe some time in the future kill someone but hasn’t yet…

And those are all the links that gave me fits today.

Billed @€0.02, Opus

Loaded with swag after doing the bike to work station, and the Feed

I got up early to visit the Bike to Work Commuter Energizer Station for a bite and a bit of conversation. Because it was a trifle foggy out I decided to run with my headlights on, and I was glad I did because they both died from discharged batteries during the ride. Since I have to go somewhere tonight I have three battery chargers going at the moment, one for the 4 AA NiMH batteries in the primary headlight, one for the 2 AAA NiMH batteries in my secondary headlight that is aimed to spot street signs, and a third to keep the Chromebook running. And I mentioned swag in the headline, let me recount the swag: 3 water bottles and it would have been 4 if I hadn’t shooed the nice lady away from my bike when she started loading the buckets, a clip-on blinky light, a T-shirt, and tons of literature from DART on taking my bike on the bus including a map to bike racks, coffee, Clif bars, and a banana. And Bike Friendly Garland sticker which was what I actually came for.

Up first an update on a fatal hit-and-run in GA in a town I used to live in (in case you haven’t noticed I have lived in lots of towns). Police say hit-and-run suspect tried to repaint truck I think additional charges of obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence should be tacked on to the hit-and-run and vehicular manslaughter charges. If you are new to my blog you probably don’t know what is about to be posted next, for those of you who have read more than 2 weeks this will be old hat: Chain the guy to the steering wheel and recycle his truck into bicycle parts, the process of melting the truck down will allow the contaminants to be skimmed off the top.

A MO wreck that appears to be a sidewalk cyclist getting cut off at a stop sign. Bike rider hurt in collision with pickup From the picture of the damage on the bike and the position of the debris, assuming medical responders didn’t move anything, the truck and the cyclist were both moving at a fair clip, given the damages to the bike and the place where the cyclist’s shoes ended up. Since the bike had flat pedals with toe clips and not clipless pedals I don’t see any reason for medical personnel to remove the cyclist’s shoes and then leave them at the scene so they must have come off in the wreck. Also the physical evidence shows the cyclist was riding salmon which meant the driver was looking away from him when he pulled out into the street. Lots of blame to go around in this wreck between the salmon cyclist and a driver not looking where he was going. Intersection protocols to avoid and get the infrastructure right to prevent.

More on the IL cyclist killed at an intersection scheduled for a bike overpass in just under a month. Husband mourns Busse Woods bicyclist killed crossing Higgins Road Everything I read about this wreck blames the intersection and drivers that don’t look for cyclists when they turn their vehicles across bike lanes. I don’t know what a cyclist could do in the face of that kind of failure in both drivers and infrastructure. Intersection protocols seem so inadequate when confronted with drivers that face so little in the way of consequences compared to cyclists and who can blame the infrastructure when they can’t blame the cyclists.

More on the bicycle-hating drunk that killed a cyclist driving the wrong direction in a bike lane. Driver in crash that killed cyclist in Lyons expressed growing frustration with bicyclists The driver is still in jail over the wreck. I would hide in jail if I were him, too. More Patrick Ward made anti-bicycling statements before crash that killed cyclist

Another report on the cyclist killed by a man fleeing a shooting that he is alleged to have also committed. Bicyclist Killed By Suspect Fleeing From Shooting I’m getting backchannel reports the weapon vehicle was airborne when it hit the cyclist. As I posted yesterday the cyclist had no chance of avoiding this wreck as he was already in the intersection when the driver ran the stop sign at a high rate of speed.

A RI cyclist is killed. North Providence student killed in bike-car crash At this point all I know is it was an intersection wreck so maybe intersection protocols would have reduced the amount of damage to non-fatal levels. I’m not sure infrastructure would have helped either as the Street View of the site shows a dense residential neighborhood, that would be a shared space with limited motor vehicle access and an 18 MPH speed limit under the Dutch model.

More Ride of Silence links. Locals honor fallen cyclists in silent ride and Memorial Ride Honors Bike Victims also Silent Ride: Remembering Victims of Bicycle Accidents and this Ride of Silence honors cyclist hit and killed on Route 434 don’t forget this link Fort Collins cyclists remember riders hurt or killed with silent ride or this one ‘Ride of Silence’ honors cyclist killed in Davidson County not done yet Cyclists Raise Awareness for Safety on the Roads

Emerging Artist Killed in 2011 Bicycle Crash Gets Posthumous New York Solo Show

Last link 3000 cyclists are expected to descend on the Scottish Parliament to protest lax sentencing for drivers that kill cyclists. Family of Audrey Fyfe to lead 3,000-strong ‘Pedal on Parliament’ I think we might get 30 or 40 cyclists to “descend” on the TX legislature if they had to ride in on bikes.

And those are all the links that gave me fits today.

Billed @€0.02, Opus

Weather is here wish you were beautiful, and the Feed

First off let me apologize for not posting the pictures from the RoS I went to last night. The ride concluded just as a rain shower came through and the traditional post-ride socializing instead was a mad scramble to get to shelter and I had only a chance to share a few words of greeting and goodbye with the guy that started it all, Chris Phelan. That shower was an outer band shower of a severe weather system that brought at least 10 tornadoes to the area, one of which went south of here without causing much if any damage. We got very lucky this year as this was the first severe storm we have had so far and we are 2 weeks past the end of our usual storm season. With any additional luck that was it for this year. Well the reason why no pictures is we stayed glued to the tube watching the weather radar and later reports from the stricken areas, which kinda precluded downloading pictures to the desktop computer, and manipulating them to fit this blog. There was some loss of life to the south of WoaB World HQ, but nothing worse than some flash flooding in the immediate area.

Up first a report that came from the WP “just posted” folder on the dashboard, a driver shoots at his girlfriend in another car, then runs over a bicyclist as he runs a stop sign escaping the scene of the shooting. Bicyclist killed by driver fleeing shooting in Florence, police say The driver was charged with assault with a deadly weapon in the shooting, nothing so far in the cyclist’s death. The wreck was an intersection wreck but so far outside the normal bounds of intersection protocols as to make any attempt to use them ludicrous, I place this wreck in the category of unavoidable by human cyclists without precognition, and equally unable to prevent by infrastructure. The link to the LA Times story came from BikingInLA in this post: More bad news for Bike to Work Day: Bike rider killed by driver fleeing a shooting

I’m going to bite my (metaphorical) tongue on this report. Man riding bicycle hit by firetruck in Canton Again I’m going to point out that many lights do not register the presence of a cyclist and don’t change, effectively training cyclists to run red lights regularly. Also pointing out the cyclist was wearing “regular” clothes, not “dark” clothing. And that I appear to have metaphorically chewed my metaphoric tongue to metaphoric ribbons. Anyway, when a traffic signal doesn’t register your presence and change for your direction there is a procedure to follow: Wait 2 minutes to make sure it isn’t just a delay in changing built into the logic of the controller, the treat the malfunctioning control as a stop sign and waiting until cross traffic is clear before proceeding. Then call Streets for that area to report a malfunctioning signal.

Update on a Chicago-area cyclist that was killed earlier this week. Cyclist Killed Tuesday Identified As Elk Grove Village Woman Nothing on the wreck itself, but the article seems to indicate that it was an intersection wreck and highly infrastructure related, in that they are already completing plans to build grade separated crossings for pedestrians and cyclists there. You can’t get much more explicit that bad infrastructure was involved than to have a shovel-ready project to upgrade the infrastructure, and a project that will be underway in less than a month pretty much defines “shovel-ready”.

Another IL cyclist is killed in a hit-from-behind wreck near or in Chicago. 83-year-old bicyclist hit by car, killed on Northwest Side Another case of using the wrong preposition in the headline he was hit “with” a car not “by” a car. Comments and article point to excessive speed on the part of the driver, leaving mere human cyclists little chance of avoiding by employing the hit-from-behind protocols. I would say that some kind of traffic calming would improve matters immensely for that street judging from the comments viewable at the time this was posted.

More on the wreck in CO where a drunk driver in the bike lane going the wrong way hit a cyclist head on. Boulder cyclist killed in SUV crash remembered as positive, patient and Driver arrested in cyclist’s death had complained bicyclists ‘don’t belong’ in Lyons Those public comments are going to come back to haunt him, possibly getting the homicide charge bumped to a murder charge. Driving the wrong way in a bike lane, well anytime you drive in a bike lane you’re driving “the wrong way” as in a way that is inappropriate for motor vehicles to operate, but in this case the driver was driving against the flow of traffic. That makes it look like he saw the cyclist and took deadly action because his judgment had been impaired as a result of his being drunk. Any guesses as to who gets the “Waste of Human Skin” tag for today’s post?

And another hit-and-run from yet another town I used to live in. Bicyclist struck and killed by vehicle in hit-and-run accident in Augusta Hit-from-behind, from the area they mentioned I don’t think that the protocols would have been any help for mere human cyclists, and the infrastructure from when I was there was terrible. Get the infrastructure right and make hit-and-run a major felony like DUI homicide to prevent.

Don’t drink and ride. Man trying to help drunk cyclist ends up getting him arrested I think this is a re-hash from an earlier story (the swinging of the broken bike seat is familiar), but still, don’t drink and ride.

Good results from the UK as a cyclist uses evidence from the criminal trial against the driver that hit her to prove a total lack of negligence on her part for the civil trial. Cyclist who lost her leg in crash with lorry scores legal win against insurer The only problem I see in this case is that many injury cases never get to criminal charges, much less trials with publicly available records.

RoS coverage from places that didn’t go under a tornado warning. Ride of Silence bicycle event in Flint encourages awareness for cyclist safety also Cyclists ride in silence to remember those injured, killed From just down the road from where I used to live Murfreesboro remembrance bike ride is one of many globally and from the founder of the Mother Ride QUIET FOR 10 YEARS: The Ride Of Silence

Other lifestyle events. Cousin plans bike ride in man’s memory

And to close out this video of a FWD rear-steer delta trike: Monsterbike

And those are all the links that gave me fits today.

Billed @€0.02, Opus

The Ride of Silence is today here, and the Feed

Today is the day. I’m going to take the train to White Rock Station, and the White Rock Trail to the rally point for the ride, and probably an allergy pill so I don’t sneeze like a steam engine during the post-ride prayer. I might remember to bring my camera and take some pictures to post in tomorrow’s blog post. We can hope so anyway.

The Really Big Story today is the NTSB “suggestion” that states lower their legal limit for BAC% from .08 to .05%. NTSB recommends lowering DUI threshold to .05 I’m not including the other 27 links because they are all the same article from the AP printed in other newspapers. My research on this suggests that initial testing done included too many alcoholics in the sample size, possibly because the testing advertising placed too much emphasis on “free drinks”. Also the legal limit was set high to make sure the driver was drunk drunk and not “a little tipsy”, as the legislators did not understand that “a little tipsy” was in fact too impaired to drive safely. In my lifetime the legal BAC% went from as high as .15% to .08%, with the drop to .10% coming fairly quickly as state troopers used legislators as test subjects and film or video tape to record behavior and driving ability at various levels of BAC% with even the semi-alcoholic legislators seeing that even at .10% when they felt sober enough to drive they were seriously impaired. Further testing with a wider pool of test subjects (and offering money for the test beyond just free alcohol) showed even to conservative legislators that driving was significantly impaired at the .08% level that they felt just fine at. I think also part of the reason for the lower BAC% is that people are drinking less, being less acclimated to the effects of alcohol, and showing impairment at lower concentrations than before, but that is just my hypothesis, I have no way of testing it to raise it to the point of a theory.

Speaking of drunk drivers… $25,000 bond set for Patrick Ward, suspect accused of driving an SUV that hit and killed a cyclist This was the driver that was driving in the bike lane against the flow of traffic so he could make a left turn…

More on the NY cyclist that died from hitting a deer. Medical examiner: Blunt force trauma killed N. Salem bicyclist who hit deer Even though this cyclist was wearing a helmet, and did not hit an unyielding motor vehicle but instead hit a somewhat softer deer, he still got fatal massive blunt force trauma to his pelvis.

A salmon NH cyclist is hit. Girl hurt after plowing into side of car while riding her bicycle As has been said many times by many people, when you ride salmon drivers don’t look for you and just pull right out in front of you (or into you). This cyclist was lucky. Ride with traffic to avoid (and use intersection protocols) and get the infrastructure right so that a 12YO girl can use it.

Two NC cyclists (or one cyclist and a passenger) get hit. Two children riding bicycle struck by car, injured The children had just left their driveway when they were hit. intersection protocols to avoid, and slow down motor vehicles in residential areas to prevent. This makes 3 kids hit outside their or their friends’ homes while riding bikes in the last 7 days. That’s 3 kids too many.

A VT cyclist is Jerry Browned and injured. Rehoboth teen, 14, struck by van while riding his bicycle The cyclist was struck and injured, the bike was untouched. Hit-from-behind protocol to avoid, and a 3-foot law that is rigorously enforced to prevent if they don’t want to spend the money to build bicycle infrastructure.

An IL cyclist is killed. Bicyclist killed in collision with car in Schaumburg At this point LEO do not know who had right of way in this wreck (and I can’t get google maps to open up to check for a traffic control device) so I can’t tell you how to void this wreck beyond advising using intersection protocols. The fact that the cyclist had to cross a high-speed intersection without separation in time and space is an indictment against the infrastructure, which correcting would have prevented this wreck. The Dutch way would have had a grade separated crossing for this intersection.

A serious wreck in CA. Cyclists injured in Harris Grade Road crash While the article doesn’t say the pictures show bikes that have obviously been hit from behind by a vehicle moving at a high rate of speed. I mean you can see a shoe still clipped into the pedal and still tied which means the foot that had been in that shoe was removed violently. Hit-from-behind protocols to avoid and get the infrastructure right to prevent.

A NY police Explorer and cyclist does the right thing, and people are stunned. Greenburgh Police Explorer Keenan Assisted Injured Cyclist I don’t know what the big deal is, he just followed his training and used human compassion. Have we become that jaded that someone doing the right thing becomes big news?

A rigorous study in Canada shows little difference in head injuries between mandatory helmet provinces and those without helmet laws. Cycle Helmet Safety Laws Not Necessarily Reducing Head Injuries, Study Finds There are many factors that reduce head injury in people who voluntarily wear bicycle helmets compared to another group that does not. including riding style, condition of the bike, and other things I can’t think of off the top of my head.

UK cyclists are still livid over a serial cyclist killer getting only 300 hours of community service and a 5 year ban after his second victim. CTC and families of cyclists killed by same driver 25 years apart call for appeal against driver’s community service sentence and Tougher sentence demanded for driver who killed two cyclists also Cyclist Audrey Fyfe’s widower lodges complaint against driver’s sentence

From Oz more on the second driver convicted in a hit-and-run against a cyclist. Second man jailed over cyclist hit-and-run When I went back to get the headline the page had vanished and an “under construction” page was up in its place. So at this point I have no idea if you will be able to read this article when I post this.

Also from Oz a cyclist is rammed into a parked car. Rider, 50, injured at New Lambton And at this point that is all I know from this wreck, that the driver hit the cyclist from behind and rammed the cyclist into a parked car. I would say hit-from-behind protocols but the escape route was obstructed by storage of private property on the public right-of-way. That only leaves putting cyclists on the other side of the parked cars in a parking-protected cycle track.

Still in Oz, doctors reveal a steady stream of injured cyclists hit by cars through their ER doors. Cyclists hurt every week in Cairns say doctors The carnage of the road seems to mostly impact people not in cars…

South Africa is having a spate of hit-and-run lately. Avid cyclist killed in hit-and-run This is he second cyclist hit from behind while riding on the shoulder in a week. I have seen what “roads” are like in Africa and you don’t want to try to run off the pavement on a 23mm wide tire road bike unless you like pain and fixing broken wheels.

Lots of links for tonight’s RoS… Cyclists to participate in Ride of Silence to honor those injured, killed while riding and Cyclists to participate in Ride of Silence to honor those injured, killed while riding Same media outlet, same headline, two different stories? Also Murfreesboro bike ride will be in remembrance of MTSU student killed in February Another one Ride of Silence honors cyclists injured or killed on the road

And those are all the links that were still alive after I filtered the Feed, and gave me fits.

Billed @€0.02, Opus

Well at least it’s nice out, and the Feed

This time of year is one of the most frustrating for me while I’m here in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell. The pollen makes me want to stay inside where the air is at least partially filtered free of pollen, but the temperatures make me want to be out JRA because it’s neither gaspingly hot nor heavy coat cold and for a few days you can actually ride considerable distances without becoming drenched in sweat and still be able to wear open finger gloves. For me that is the perfect riding temperature, and I have to miss it because plants are having sex… It makes me want to scream when I think about it so I try not to think about it. Take away the pollen and this is what it’s like to live in San Diego all year long, practically.

The End of Times must be coming, as another Texan is arrested for hitting a cyclist. Man arrested in hit-and-run that injured cyclist The wreck was a hit-from-behind, use the protocols to avoid, get the infrastructure right to prevent. I must say, this is a pleasant change to have LEO at all levels suddenly decide that cyclists are equally worthy of the protections of the law as they are the punishments. Now if they could just convince NYPD of this.

One state over a cyclist is hit by a blind driver. Arkansas State Police: Bicyclist dies after collision with pickup in Yell County Once again the driver of the weapon vehicle used the Universal “Get Out of Jail Free” card to escape liability and punishment. Hit-from-behind protocols to avoid and get the infrastructure right to prevent. One bit of legal infrastructure that would help immediately would be changing the law so that any hit-from-behind wreck is automatically the fault of the driver unless proven otherwise, with “I didn’t see him” as an admission of guilt instead of an excuse.

A completely unavoidable wreck turns fatal. Somers Cyclist Hit By Deer Dies Of Injuries Local wildlife is the joker in the road safety deck. The best that you can hope for is to not be there when they are in the roads. I haven’t been able to find out if this was mutually fatal or if the deer was unhurt.

Update on the child cyclist killed in AL. Funeral held for child killed in bike accident in Cullman They are staying with the story that the kid pulled out in front of the driver and not that the driver was going too fast in a residential area.

More on the cyclist killed by a drunk driver driving on the wrong side of the road in CO. Boulder cyclist killed in crash with car identified Take one intersection with 5 different streets and highways converging in one spot, add bike lanes to one of those streets and a drunk driver that has lived in that town all his life and knows those roads like the back of his hand, and you get someone driving in the wrong lane and hitting a cyclist head on. Intersection protocols don’t apply in this chaos, getting the infrastructure right is the only thing that can prevent wrecks like this one. That and draconian speed limit enforcement. More links Driver facing vehicular homicide charge after cyclist killed in Lyons crash also Bicyclist Hit, Killed By Vehicle In Lyons

From the UK the first step in appealing the incredibly lax sentence for killing a cyclist has been taken. Family of dead cyclist lodge complaint against driver’s sentence Seriously, 300 hours of community service and only a 5 year driving ban for his second criminal fatality is ludicrous.

From Oz comes a story of a coverup of a cyclist’s death. Man jailed for assisting in hit-run It should have been obstructing justice and conspiracy, and the sentence should have been much longer (years instead of months) and as the victim’s father said he should have lost his driver’s license for life. But still for Oz getting 20 months for killing a cyclist still counts as a good result.

Another Ride of Silence link as we all get ready for the Ride tomorrow (Northern hemisphere) or Saturday (Southern hemisphere and rain date for the rest of us). ‘Ride of Silence’ to remember Endicott cyclist killed in October

And those are all the links that gave me fits today, Be sure to go to rideofsilence.org to find where your local RoS will be held and plot your route so you can get there in time. I will be attending the Mother Ride again this year.

Billed $€0.02, Opus

I hade Sprig, and the Feed

Yes, it’s that time of year again, the peak of allergy season when I get to either suffer a completely stopped up head, watery eyes, constant sneezing, and occasional disgusting digestive issues, or be unconscious from the allergy meds that don’t interfere with my BP meds. Hell of a choice innit?

Up first the driver that killed a cyclist in Austin has been released from jail. Elderly man indicted in cyclist’s death released It’s a pity that this will probably be all the time this killer spends in custody for illegally driving on the shoulder to pass a traffic jam and killing another human being. I’m just totally impressed the DA was able to convince a grand jury to indict the lowlife. BTW this link gets the “Signs of the Apocalypse” tag because the end must be near if a DA can convince a grand jury in Texas to indict a driver for killing a cyclist.

Update on the wreck in CO as the driver has been charged with vehicular homicide after hitting a cyclist head on while driving on the wrong side of the street. Man arrested for vehicular homicide after bike rider killed in Lyons The speed in which these charges were filed stuns me. Usually when a drunk driver kills someone there is a wait for the toxicology screens to come back from the lab, in this case they went with a field sobriety test and a breathalyzer to file serious felony charges in less than 24 hours. Earlier links Driver arrested after bicyclist killed by SUV in Lyons and Boulder County Sheriff’s Office: Cyclist killed in Lyons car versus bike crash

A VA hit-and-run wreck as a semi driver tried to pass when there wasn’t room to pass. Police search for tractor trailer driver that hit two cyclists The semi driver moved to pass a group of cyclists then cut over before completing the pass, hitting two of the cyclists. This is not the kind of wreck a human cyclist can avoid, but getting the infrastructure right would go a long way towards preventing another one. I am trying to think of what could be done with the built environment to prevent this but since the semi driver ran the oncoming vehicle off the road as well as hitting the cyclists the only thing I can think of is removing the incentives for truck drivers to act this way by removing the per-mile pay schedules. Almost all a driver’s expenses are per time except fuel and some preventative maintenance, and driving at a slower speed reduces the per-mile costs for those.

Update on the NE wreck that looks like will cost the rider her foot. Woman injured in car-bike crash improving All the reports on this one place the blame on the cyclist for violating the right of way of the faster car, and none mentions the passing lane to the left of the wreck. I’m going to go with the cyclist not allowing enough time for the driver to move over, or that there may have been other traffic in the inside lane that prevented the driver of the weapon vehicle from moving over.

More on the death of a NY cyclist. Troopers: Teen cyclist killed by drunken driver in Cohocton Mode of wreck is still not given but since an intersection has not been described as being next to or very near the wreck I’m going to have to assume hit-from-behind, so use those protocols to avoid if possible, and get the infrastructure right so that drunk drivers can’t get near cyclists and cyclists can still get where they need to go and from town to town.

A wreck in Oz with almost no information. Cyclist, teenager die in separate crashes No mode given, just that the other vehicle was an Australian pickup truck (ute).

Another RoS link as the date approaches. Ride of Silence to remember those killed in bicycle accidents

Lifestyle in CA as a cyclist is remembered. Hundreds take part in memorial ride to remember local cyclist killed in crash

And those are all the links that gave me fits today, minus a few that expired over the weekend.

Billed @€0.02, Opus

Struggling to stay awake on a Wreck-Free Sunday

Once again, plants are having sex in my sinuses, and I’m taking the diphenhydramine to alleviate the symptoms. Unfortunately that comes with its own set of problems, first of which is drowsiness that frequently progresses to actual sleep. If I stay up and moving about I can stay awake for a bit but if I take enough to keep me from experiencing the allergies I have taken enough to put me out if I slow down too much. I didn’t feel too bad so far today, but the day is not over yet.

Mrs. the Poet is still enamored of the Factory Five Model 65 over the Speedway Motors ’27 T, and I have to admit the Model 65 is much more practical as a day-to-day car. The thing is I have had my fill of “practical” cars, from my first new car the 1978 Honda CVCC to the last car I owned the Hyundai Excel. Practical as can be, every last damn one of them. The first car I actually owned was a two-seater with a Fiat motor in the back, that I got when it killed its third owner. That was a fun car to drive, and not very practical except it got fantastic mileage for the era. It had the bad tendency to suddenly flip over and kill whoever was riding in it when cornering at the limit, and because it had such ridiculously skinny tires it reached that limit very early. As I said I got the car cheap after it killed its third owner, who got it at a good price after it killed the second owner, who made a deal with the widow of the first owner. I installed a travel limiter (chain) to slightly tame the beast and managed to tear something else up before it killed me. This was almost 40 years ago so you’ll forgive me for not remembering the name of the car or what tore up that caused me to junk the car. But yeah, given my “druthers” I would choose a car that was fun to drive over a “practical” car. The difference is that today I will pick a car based on how well it can stop over how fast it will go, because I have this thing about not hitting people now.

It’s funny in a way that I’m discussing my next car on a bicycle blog, because when you stop and think about it the most practical “car” is a bicycle, except that you have to share the roads with cars. That’s really the only thing that keeps bicycles from being more useful than cars, the fact that cars are so massive and deadly when trying to share the same space with bicycles. The car that I prefer out of the two listed has an average curb weight of 1700 pounds with a cast-iron block and heads Chevy 350/350 combination. I don’t plan on using an iron block and heads Chevy, I might use a Chevy but I’m looking at the LS376-515 with aluminum heads and block, more power that uses less fuel, and much lower weight. The LS376 weighs 414 pounds where the cast-iron small-block is listed at 575 pounds and “only” 300 horsepower, compared to the 515 available with the other engine. I probably will only be able to use that much power when I take the car racing (at sanctioned race events only), but I will get the better gas mileage every time I drive. The car I like (the ’27) has limited cargo space that is only slightly more than the kitty litter buckets on Blue, and you have to tilt the seat forward to get to it, but the brakes and light weight make for a car that goes like stink and stops like catching the wire on an aircraft carrier. But even that is still way heavier and more deadly than a bicycle that weighs maybe 350 pounds fully loaded and has a top speed of 20 MPH. The ratio between curb weight and loaded weight of the car I prefer is miniscule compared to the bicycle, and the car that Mrs. the Poet prefers is even worse because it starts 800 pounds heavier than the car I like. But overall not that different because the car Mrs. the Poet likes has a huge trunk.

I mentioned racing, and that would be one reason why I would get a car again, to have a car that I could race in SCCA Solo II competition. The ’27 would have to be entered in A/MOD, the Model 65 could slot into the slightly less-competitive E/MOD. This would require a second set of tires just for racing, of course, which opens a whole new can of worms… As far as the rules are concerned the Model 65 is closest to being competitive out of the box as the suspension is 95% sorted for racing tires and the weight is only slightly above the minimum for the class in street trim. I might have to add ballast to keep the car legal when I run race tires. The ’27 on the other hand is way over the class minimums in every way: weight, width, wheelbase, and wheel size and anything I can do to make it faster as a race car won’t put me outside the class.

And on a completely different note, I am in discussions with the people of Occupy Dallas to establish a bike co-op. At this point all they know is that they are interested in having a bike co-op to give people options in travel, and that I know how to fix bicycles. We have established what needs to be done to have a co-op; space to work on bikes and store tools, tools to use to fix bikes, and somebody that knows how to fix bikes and is willing to teach that to other people. Of that they actually have me knowing how to fix bikes and willing to teach others how to do it. I have a tentative suggestion that my church would be willing to work with Occupy for providing tools or a place to work on bikes. So I may be losing at least one night a week from my free time.

PSA, Opus