Narrowly avoiding being drenched, and the Feed

I’m running late today because I’m back to the gig visiting the widow woman and letting her cry on my shoulder and fix me breakfast. I was out of that gig for a while because they were adjusting her anti-anxiety meds to control side effects and they went too low and she got all “I hate the world and everybody in it!” for a month and stopped seeing me. Now her meds have been adjusted back up and she’s back to liking the world again and needing to talk to someone about how she feels and all, so I’m back to getting a weird breakfast once a week. Anyway, the avoiding being drenched part of the headline alludes to the bands of thunderstorms we had pass through the area just as I got home. When I got the mail it was just spitting rain, but by the time I got in the house it was pouring buckets. No tornadoes, just some hurricane level gusts and elsewhere they had some hail but no chunky style precipitation here. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees when the storm blew through because of the cold upper altitude air pulled down by the rain and the sudden rise in the humidity chilling things down also. And I just got a news item that says Senators from the east coast are getting ready to vote against disaster aid to OK because both of OK Senators voting against disaster aid for the people ruined by Sandy. I think OK just got run over by a Karma Ghia.

A NM cyclist’s death appears to have been in vain. Woman who killed cyclist in court again She drove off the road and killed a cyclist on an adjacent bike path and got the maximum sentence of… 90 days. Now she’s caught driving drunk again. Lifetime ban from driving (and I don’t understand why this didn’t happen for the fatal wreck) added to her sentence for repeat DUI. More Woman who killed cyclist now in court for DWI

More on the cyclist killed in MA over the weekend. Cyclist Killed Sunday Was MIT Scientist Nothing about the wreck. Lots about the victim. RIP. Another link Visiting MIT scientist killed while riding bike

Still in MA a child riding a bicycle is run over by a dump truck. Police: Child riding bicycle with mother dies in Westfield accident This link had nothing on the mode. 7-year-old boy killed in Mass. road accident also Memorial grows for boy killed on bike and Westfield child killed in accident with dump truck identified as Michael Ryan, 7 even Westfield boy killed in traffic accident identified OK a day later and LEO are still not reporting how this kid got hit beyond “hit by the front of the truck” and ending up under the rear wheels.

A WI cyclist is killed with LEO also sitting on the report. Girl struck, killed on bicycle in New Berlin is identified Nothing about the mode or anything beyond identifying the victim and the age of the driver. You would think this was a UK media outlet…

A young CA cyclist is killed riding to school. Teenage bike rider killed in San Jose traffic accident I hate it when media uses the term “accident” instead of “wreck”. More San Jose: Silver Creek High sophomore killed in bicycle crash remembered as classroom leader At this point LEO are not saying anything, but the driver says he “thinks” he had the green when he hit the cyclist in a crosswalk.

A fatal wreck in DC. Cyclist Killed in U Street Collision With Car Last Thursday The report said the cyclist was making a turn and that the light was green for the driver at the time of the wreck, what the phase was when the cyclist entered the intersection is unknown. Intersection wreck implies that intersection protocols might have helped avoid the wreck. Infrastructure would have prevented the wreck had the bicycle been separated from the motor vehicle traffic in both time and space.

From the UK a stupid driver gets caught after bragging about her wreck. Woman Brags About Hitting Cyclist, Discovers Police Also Use Twitter The mode of wreck is highly unusual in that the driver was on the wrong side of the road. Not much that a human cyclist can do about drivers being on the wrong side of the road, but getting the infrastructure right would keep the driver away from the cyclists. More Driver ‘admits’ knocking down cyclist on Twitter and Twitter hit-and-run boast shows dangers of ‘road tax’ entitlement

Last link is a “Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot?” moment. Cyclist Killed Duckling

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

Billed @€0.02, Opus

It’s another Monday, and the Feed

I’m not cooking beans today because we had so much left over from last week. For some reason I just didn’t feel like my usual 3 bowls last week for dinner (I actually had about half that) and nobody had more than a single bowl during the week. So, we have lots that can be put in a 210°F oven in a casserole dish with a dash of soy sauce to spark up the flavor and add a bit of liquid while the mix slowly reheats. Any dangerous microbes don’t stand a chance when I cook because I cook a just enough heat to keep the cooking process going until the food is cooked, thus also killing anything that might be living in the food before I eat it. This also preserves the flavor of my food by not over-cooking it.

Also I have to make a quick run to the local Best Buy to put more minutes on my phone. Apparently the concept of “annual activation” does not mean the same thing to Virgin Mobile as it does to me. To me it means leave my phone turned on for an entire year or until my minutes run out. But to VM it means keep plugging in monthly payment cards or we turn your phone off anyway… I will have to discuss the matter with the VM representative when I get to Best Buy.

I’m not sure if this was a bicycle or motorcycle wreck at this point. Minor Injuries Reported Following Bike Vs. Car Accident The weapon vehicle was reportedly moving at a very slow speed and the bike hit the back of the car which really confuses me as to what happened. And since the video shown with the link never showed the back of the weapon vehicle to have any impact marks (although the right side was never shown) I can only speculate. LEO have not released anything more about the wreck and the reported mode and location (cyclist hit the back of the vehicle mid-block in front of a church) makes me think that this might have been a right hook the cyclist never saw coming. You can see in the video that every space in that parking lot could be reached from the street by making a right turn. But this is just guesswork on my part.

A wreck report that has changed considerably since I first saw it last night in pre-filter. MIT scientist riding bicycle struck, killed in crash The original headline when I first saw the link was “Pedestrian struck by truck in hit-and-run crash” with the existence of a bicycle at the scene mentioned in the second paragraph. Now it’s all MIT Scientist visiting from Japan hit on a bicycle, with nothing about the actual wreck. The pictures indicate an intersection wreck, so maybe intersection protocols to avoid, and get that abysmal infrastructure fixed to prevent future wrecks. Boston streets were never intended for motor vehicle travel, I still say that motor vehicles should be forced to use pilots on foot with waving red flags front and back when driving in the old part of Boston. At the very least it would do something about the unemployment problem in MA.

Another dead cyclist in NYC, at least they aren’t using the “no criminality suspected” line (yet). Cyclist Killed By Livery Cab In Prospect Heights You would think Gothamist would have figured out by now that the driver hit the cyclist with the cab instead of apportioning all the blame to the vehicle… SWSS hit-from-behind wreck, use the protocols to avoid. There was supposedly a center bike lane in the median but I’m still trying to find out how a cyclist was supposed to get to those bike lanes other than at the beginning or end of the lanes. So bad infrastructure may have had a role to play also. More links Cyclist struck and killed near Brooklyn Museum and Fatal bicycle accident in Brooklyn The pictures from that link showed the weapon vehicle was nearly dead-center on the bike when impact occurred, which kinda places the SWSS story in jeopardy. Cyclist struck and killed by livery cab driver in Prospect Heights At least that one managed to mention the weapon vehicle had a driver. The NY Post blames the cyclist for existing Bicyclist stuck and killed after swerving in front of livery cab in Crown Heights At least in that link you get a better look at the impact site just to the left of the license plate with the skid mark from the tire lined up perfectly with the broken grill, and the tail light or rear reflector visible under the seat. Cyclist Struck, Killed By Livery Cab In Brooklyn and Bike Rider Fatally Struck by Livery Cab in Brooklyn last link Taxi Hits, Kills Bicyclist on Eastern Parkway

Salmon cyclist killed in CA. Bicyclist dies in collision with big rig in Industry There’s just not much surviving a head-on wreck with a semi. Don’t salmon to avoid, and it looks like there isn’t much bicycle infrastructure where the cyclist was hit.

The TX fund that’s supposed to take care of people injured in hit-and-run wrecks is depleted less than 5 months into the year. Injured cyclist’s family seeking donations for medical expenses

Another hit-and-run, in VT. 2 cyclists injured in Burlington hit-and-run This one appears to be caused by a driver that did not know where the edges of the vehicle extended possibly combined with under-estimating the speed of the cyclists he was passing. Other than hit-from-behind protocols there ain’t much a human cyclist can do in a wreck like this, but getting the infrastructure right would have prevented the wreck.

A MD wreck that sounds an awful lot like a hit-and-run. Carroll County Man Injured While Riding Bicycle Yeah that hitting the mailbox hard enough to knock it out of the ground doesn’t sound like a single-bike wreck. Hit-from-behind protocols to avoid and get the infrastructure right to prevent.

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

Billed @€, Opus

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

I can’t believe I’m starting a post this late at night, and the Feed

I had stuff I had to do today, with a long trip away from the house and computers involved. I have that camping trip coming up, well part of that is I have to have a bike ready for a customer that is going to use said bike on that camping trip. I had consumables to buy (tubes and brake blocks) that need to be installed by Tuesday at the latest because the bike ships to the campsite Wednesday morning. I think I might have mentioned that I have been a bit under the weather lately and not much good at going out on trips and buying things or doing anything much more strenuous than placing the laptop sideways as I lay in bed and reading web comics. I’m feeling a bit more active now, so I did “stuff”, but now I’m feeling a bit tired again, so this may be a little terse again.

Up first is a story with more than one link about a little boy killed just feet from where he had been visiting, and only 7 blocks from his home. 10-year-old WA boy hit and killed while riding bike and Spanaway boy, 10, hit and killed by pickup truck while leaving friend’s house on his bicycle This was right in the middle of a residential area, the driver should have been going slow enough to stop when the kid entered the road. Also from the video it looked like this was an arterial road through a residential area and had very poor sight lines because of overgrown vegetation on the side of the road, a lethal combination. To avoid teach children that every driveway is an intersection and to use intersection protocols, to prevent have as few houses on arterial roads as possible, and where arterials have to pass through residential areas have the speed limits as low as possible. Forget the “85th percentile” BS when people’s lives are at stake. I have rather strong opinions on the “85th percentile” rule that I will get into in a Sunday post.

And from the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bike cyclist is left-crossed and blamed for his own death… WTF? Motorized bike rider dies following crash on NW 20th St. The narrative of the wreck makes the mode of the wreck quite clear, then blames the wreck on him for being there to get hit (note, from the comments left with this article, that might change). I checked the entire length of the street in question and there were no stop signs on the street, much less any traffic lights. But the directions of travel for this wreck don’t make much sense as the cyclist was riding on an east-west street if the location was right, or assuming that the directions of travel given for both vehicles was correct then the wreck could not have been on any street in that neighborhood because of a lack of places to travel north and have a car turn east in front of you. This is causing me another WTF? headache as none of the facts are matching the pictures of the area. In particular that bit about the “non-travel lane” as there are no lane markings at all on the street named in the article… I can’t tell you in good faith how to avoid or prevent this wreck until I figure out how it happened, and at this point I’m thinking that it might have happened in an alternate universe because I can’t get any of the facts given in the case match up with the geography of the area. The closest thing I can say is based on the narrative use intersection protocols to avoid and as this was a residential area cars should be moving slow enough to not impede the safety of bicycles or pedestrians.

Update on that wreck from yesterday about the SWCC in FL. Bicyclist hit, killed while crossing Dixie Highway in Deerfield Beach The second driver in this case was driving too fast for conditions if they were not able to see and avoid an adult human in the road for at least 10-15 seconds prior to impact, as the first driver pulled over and stopped and attempted to warn other drivers about the cyclist in the road. Intersection protocols to avoid, get the infrastructure right to prevent.

An OR cyclist rides drunk, into ditch. Cyclist injured after crashing bike in ditch Don’t ride drunk, and keep your vehicle under control at all times. Single-vehicle wrecks are so easy to solve…

A cyclist in Oz has a narrow escape. Struck cyclist is lucky to be alive The cyclist was trying to use the infrastructure as designed to be used and there was just too much speed on the part of the motor vehicles to actually ride a bike on the bike lane which vanished just as the cyclist got to the intersection.

A cyclist in Enn Zed on a paid ride with lots of signs warning drivers to be alert for cyclists on the road gets hit by an idiot. Cyclist injured on fun ride Of the four cyclists hit, only the 63YO victim needed transport. I’m sorry for the cyclists, but this comes down to drivers not paying attention to the roads as they use deadly weapons for transportation. Hit four at once with one needing hospitalization on a route that has signs warning drivers to watch for cyclists in the roads… If the driver wasn’t near-terminally stupid he should be charged with assault.

Infrastructure! news from NYS. Half a Billion to Treat Pedestrian and Cyclist Injuries, and That’s Just the Hospital Bills Those are direct costs of favoring the motor vehicle over all other modes of travel, and not even a full accounting of those costs as it doesn’t include any medical costs after the injured vulnerable road user leaves the hospital, and I can tell you that is an astronomical number, easily exceeding the amount spent in hospital. My total costs for just medical expenses came to almost $250K, of which about $100K was in-hospital…

Infrastructure in WY, as the bridge where a cyclist died from hitting bad pavement and then going over the guard rail gets repaved. Repairs set for bridge where fall killed biker According to the WYDoT spokesperson the work had been in the planning stages prior o the death of the cyclist…

Sad infrastructure news from Jolly Olde. Hackney council to remove ‘ghost bike’ in memory of killed cyclist Someone made the comment that the bike was a constant reminder to the council that bad infrastructure killed the cyclist and that’s why the bike had to go.

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

Billed @$0.02, Opus

Mule Duties again today, and the Feed

Starting out, let me say that yesterday’s trip was very fruitful and productive, even with a 20 mile urban round trip (who needs hills when you have stoplights or 4-way stop signs every quarter mile or less?) with light winds. I have another trip coming up to get a replacement for my replacement computer. I need something that will let me unhook from my cable modem and move around the house a bit. We have Wi-Fi but none of the computers I currently have working has Wi-Fi working on it so I have to use a stand alone Buffalo Air Station to connect to the wireless router, and even that doesn’t help for the laptop without RJ-45 connectivity. That would be the Win98 laptop with the bios so old that it can’t even boot from the CDROM on the PCMCIA bus because nothing on the PCMCIA bus even exists as a usable drive until Windows loads. I have all this neat stuff on the computer that I can’t use because the only wireless device I have needs a driver for Win98 to install but I can’t get the driver until I get the wireless device installed. At the moment it is a game player that has (only) Solitaire installed. So, new laptop coming. I was looking at the Chromebook laptops as they seem to be all the computer I need when I’m not actually at home or even not in my office at home. I’m hoping the local Best Buy still has the version with the hard drive as I don’t see the 16GB SSD of the newer version as being adequate, partially because I don’t trust The Cloud for my storage and partially because some of the programs I use to make this blog don’t work with Cloud storage, they require storage on the same device as I’m using the program on. Also the hard drive version has 320GB of storage, meaning I could wipe the Chrome OS and install Ubuntu if I have any “issues” with Chrome.

Up first an update from the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bike. Flagler Beach bicyclist killed Tuesday riding in bike lane This was the cyclist killed when the driver sneezed. If you can sneeze and kill someone with something, that deadly thing needs to be very tightly regulated so as to prevent “death by second-hand pollen”. Seriously, if you are in control of a device so deadly that a sneeze at the wrong moment can kill that device needs to be removed from inadvertent contact with the public.

Second update is on the driver that hit the cyclist head-on in the cyclist’s lane, then flipped the vehicle. Cyclist killed when struck by car Nearly a week later and no charges have been filed for running a cyclist over in her own lane and then wrecking your vehicle? TANJ!

And those are all the live links I had, except for an old one about the Jalabert left cross. That one has been hashed to death in other media outlets, and covered in this blog as well.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

Still getting a massive number of clicks, and the Feed

I’m not going to fib, I expected a few more clicks than normal when I started the contest, maybe a new record for site views, but I did not expect anything like what I got. Monday and so far today are equal to my record day before this week. Tuesday was almost FOUR TIMES THE PREVIOUS RECORD. I am happy that WordPress has huge bandwidth servers, because if this had been on a dinky low-bandwidth server like this blog was originally started on I would have gone through my monthly data allotment by the end of the day yesterday. Of course part of that is the image that is taking up way more bandwidth than my usual wall of text, but that does not even compare to the number of site views I got yesterday, I mean yesterday would have been a very nice WEEK from before.

And I have already gotten my first entry in the contest, from the founder of Cool Cat Studios herself, Giselle Lagace who submitted a very nice redhead on a unicycle done in the style of Archie comics (a company she now works for). I can’t show it for obvious reasons, but take my word for it, it’s cute and uses the shape of the scar as a frame so plus points for that. You still have lots of time to come up with your own design as the contest won’t close until June.

Well, I just opened the Feed folder to nothing but dead links, and UK links which might as well be dead for all the information they contain about the wrecks. Waiting for the afternoon Feed has resulted in one live link.

A Clovis CA rider is killed by a driverless car run amuck. Cyclist killed Tuesday morning in Clovis Have I mentioned how much I hate articles like this:”The cyclist was struck by a car around 5:30 a.m.” that make it seem like cars are a force of nature that can’t be prevented from killing people? It gets worse “…in the area that has become very popular with bike riders but can also be very dangerous.” It’s dangerous because people are letting their cars drive around unsupervised? Or because area drivers have no comprehension that cyclists are human beings that feel pain and are not there just to screw up their morning commute?

In India bicycle infrastructure takes a back seat to motor vehicles as it seems to have done in just about every Anglophone country leaving cyclists to fend as best they can. 2 cyclist killed on e-way in hit-and-run cases In spite of the fact that the majority of the people in the country walk, use transit, or ride a bike for all their transportation, motor vehicles are the only mode of “traffic” that gets taken into account when building transportation infrastructure. No Idea how to avoid these wrecks with the built infrastructure, but getting the infrastructure right would probably prevent wrecks like these as they would keep high-speed motor vehicles away from soft and fragile human beings.

And those are all the links that stayed live long enough to put them in the post. And if the tone of today’s post was a little volatile I have been reading a bunch of reports about pedestrian hit-and-runs, as well as people killed by cars driving on the sidewalks. It’s enough to make a guy want to get a rifle or bazooka and take out some cars before they take out tons of people. What keeps me from doing that is the knowledge that there are actual people inside those cars, most of whom don’t deserve to die. I’m sure some do, but I have no way of knowing which ones are which, so I don’t.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

Mule duties, take two, and the Feed

Well things did not go too well for the mule duties yesterday. There was some kind of mechanical malfunction on the bus Mrs. the poet was taking to the grocery store (same one she takes to get home from work) and the 1530 bus did not make it to the transit center until 1710, which is more than two schedules after it was supposed to be there. Our local transit agency has been hit with declining revenues from their allowable 0.5% sales tax and rising fuel costs and an aging fleet and has recently raised fares to compensate for the difference in income and outgo, but has not been able to station service protection buses at transit centers like they used to do. So we consumers of transit get a more expensive but lower quality service. Mythbusters notwithstanding that will fly like a lead balloon. Mythbusters did a show where they built a balloon out of lead foil after calculating the crossover point where the weight of the foil surface (l²) was overcome by the volume of lifting gas (l³). They built it as a cube but it turned out to be a lumpy sphere which increased the volume even faster than as a cube and actually had to stop filling it because it had excess lift. So I used some money I had taken out of the bank since the check finally cleared that day and bought the emergency things we had run out of (milk, bread, sugar) bought a microwave dinner for the family and also got Mrs. the Poet a new bus pass for March as her old pass would expire today. The sum total of all that is that I will have to go to the grocery store again today, plus I have a meeting at church tonight. So lots of bike fun for Opus today.

Up first, a cyclist who was victimized by a hit-and-run driver gets victimized again by Rick Perry’s cuts to health care. Injured Cyclist Brian Lindquist Faces Discharge From Rehab Center [Updated] and Severely injured cyclist needs continued help to recover It’s bad enough that the driver who did this is still driving while waiting trial (after having alcohol and drugs in his system at the time of the wreck), but to have the agency who should be taking care of you (and subrogating the costs from the driver) say “sorry, we don’t have any money”… and there used to be a fund set up to pay the victims of hit-and-run (who picked up the majority of the $250K of hospital bills I ran up after my wreck/assault with a deadly weapon) but that fund is also dry as there are more people hit-and-run than the fund can cover.

Up the road in the other direction an OSU teacher gets hit. Injured cyclist a university faculty member The wreck description makes it appear to be a left cross, as after hitting the cyclist while making a turning movement the vehicle then ran over him causing crushing injuries to his torso. While this is a possibility in the right hook, it is much more likely in the left cross scenario where the driver either “doesn’t see” the cyclist or misjudges the speed the cyclist is going (on the low side) and hits the cyclist with the front of the vehicle. Intersection protocols to avoid, and fix the infrastructure to prevent. In that “fix” make sure that drivers can actually see. And recycle any motor vehicle involved in injuring a vulnerable road user. We take guns that have been used in crimes away from the criminals, why do we give back cars when they have been used in crimes?

Going back the other way, a cyclist is hit by a driver with faulty headlights in SA. Teen struck and killed while riding bicycle The cyclist was hit in the left lane by a driver that did not see the cyclist until she hit him. Even allowing for the clothing and having any reflectors facing away from the headlights as the cyclist crossed the road, had the headlights been aimed properly and fully functional and the driver driving at a speed where the vehicle could be stopped in the distance the driver had clear vision of, then this wreck would have never happened. To avoid use too many lights and reflectors, to prevent make any wreck that uses the words “I didn’t see (the cyclist)” automatic fault of the driver, and issue equipment violations for faulty headlights, because you can always see a cyclist if you are looking for things in the road that you might run into. More Cyclist stuck and killed on northeast side roadway and Cyclist who died is identified

A cyclist is killed in what seems to be a hit-from-behind wreck near Seattle WA. Bicyclist Killed After Struck by Taxi Van in Pasco and Bicycle rider struck and killed in Pasco The cyclist was carried by the weapon vehicle for “about 75 yards” which indicates both a hit-from-behind and a high rate of speed on the part of the taxi driver as well as a lack of attention to surroundings. Until more information comes out I’m going to say that this was a wreck that no human cyclist could have avoided, and that since it was in a residential area directly in front of an apartment complex they would have been in shared space anyway so the infrastructure would not have helped either except that vehicle would have been moving much more slowly and the cyclist or the driver would have reaction time to avoid the wreck.

A CA cyclist is killed apparently riding salmon. Cal Poly Pomona student dies after vehicle hits him on campus and Cal Poly student on bicycle struck, killed by car on campus street From pictures posted with these articles at the time of filtering the links it looks like there was plenty of room for a bike lane (even a bi-directional bike lane) at the scene of the wreck and that the cyclist was trying to be where he could see the high-speed traffic and hopefully avoid it. This doesn’t work, and the additive nature of the impact makes survival chances much less.

Witness account of the hit-and-run assault of a group ride in AZ. Tyler Wren Journal: A first-hand account of the Jamis hit-and-run The best thing to come from this wreck is that having photo documentation of something, as well as physical evidence of the event, can be crucial to getting justice.

From the UK insult has been added to literal injury as thieves steal a bike as the owner lay in the road bleeding. Injured cyclist hits out at thieves who stole his bike after crash From my currency converter that comes to about $500US give or take a few bucks.

Infrastructure! news from TX. Not in my backyard: Hike and bike trail too close for comfort? I wonder if the trail was described as a road for people not using cars would the NIMBYs change their tunes? The “reason” of more crime is just stupid, how many times have you seen someone carrying a TV, stereo, or computer (desktop) on a bike path?

And speaking of insults and injuries from across the Pond. Suspended prison term for driver who killed cyclist That’s right it’s perfectly fine to just leave a cyclist dying in the road after you hit him with a couple of tons of motor vehicle. I think the tenor of the conversation in the court was “Just leave”. The suspended sentence was on condition that the driver left the country and did not return for a minimum of 10 years, I would say that under the circumstances this was about as effective as deporting him, but I would still like to see that he wasn’t a threat to others.

And it’s Friday, so there must have been an article on e-assist bikes in the Feed. E-Bike News: Concept E-Bike, Pedego Trail Tracker, Belt E-Drives, Sales Up, E-Bike Action VIDEO! I like that mid-drive add-on assist and the bike that had the batteries in a “gas tank” on the top tube.

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

Billed @$0.02, Opus

Stuck in a ridiculous situation, and the Feed

I don’t have any coffee today, just tea. This means I will be in a less happy mood than normal, because no coffee. Why we have no coffee is such a ridiculous thing as to cause hair-pulling. Allow me to explain: Mrs. the Poet took a job cleaning a house, for which she gets $75. The check bounced and the bank charged us $35 for the privilege of being paid with a bad check even though we had isolated the check in an account we can’t spend from until we go to the bank and transfer the money from that account to another. That $35 was most of the grocery budget. We also got a rather large check from the insurance that my Dad had that was held 90 days while they tried to prove Dad was not dead (and considering the fact he was buried in a veteran’s cemetery if he wasn’t dead then he most certainly is dead now). The bank is holding that check for 7 working days (9 calendar days) to make sure it isn’t fraudulent. So we have just under $10k in the bank and can’t buy groceries because the bank is holding all our money. I wonder if I should charge the bank $35 for the privilege of holding our money and not letting us have it?

A CA cyclist is hit from behind so hard his body was stuck in a tree. Simi Valley cyclist killed after being struck by car and Location: Tierra Rejada Rd / Sr23 N Tierra Rejada Rd Ofr, Moorpark – Feb 21 2013 1:27PM also Bicyclist Dies in Hit and Run Accident News from locals says that the cyclist was hit while riding in the bike lane. To avoid use the hit-from-behind protocols, to avoid you have to get all the infrastructure right, including driver’s licensing that makes sure only people that can actually keep a deadly weapon inside its own lane are allowed to drive deadly weapons for transportation.

From the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bike closure approaches more than 3 years after a cyclist is killed by a DUI hit-and-run. Family Of Cyclist Killed On Rickenbacker Reacts To Suspect’s Guilty Plea The maximum sentence is 37 years, letters need to be sent to the judge now that anything less than 30 years is not acceptable for this case where the defendant kept out of jail and the court for as long as possible.

In what has to be a first in the US a man that killed a cyclist with a motor vehicle gets the maximum sentence possible under the law he was convicted of. Meegan gets 15-year sentence in death of cyclist I’m shocked, until I got to the part where the driver was HIV positive and taking shots at a bar. I suspect that the sentence was more to punish a gay man for having HIV than because he got drunk and killed a cyclist.

Another SC cyclist dies in a hit-and-run. Simpsonville Cyclist Killed In Hit And Run Hit-from-behind wreck, use the protocols to avoid and get the infrastructure right to prevent. More Simpsonville Cyclist Dies in Crash AAAAnd they blame the lack of a helmet for the wreck….

A cyclist in Oz is hit by an apparently driverless truck… Cyclist injured in collision with truck in East Fremantle Nothing much on the actual wreck including no identification on either the driver of the weapon vehicle or the victim, but they did quote a politician that the roads are crap. (!?!) If it wasn’t for that quote this link would have not gotten past the filter stage.

Another wreck in Oz. Cyclist killed at Corio The description of the wreck indicates there was something in the road that caused the cyclist to fall into the path of the weapon vehicle. The rider was part of a group ride to raise money for charity when he fell and was killed. Infrastructure-related so fixing the infrastructure is the prevention required.

A wreck report from Enn Zed that was in such a hurry to be posted that not all of the First Responders had responded yet. Cyclist seriously injured in crash near Whitianga At this point they have sent a medevac helicopter. The wreck has not yet begun to be investigated, nor have any of the participants been publicly identified.

E-bikes at Interbike to try to capture hearts and minds. Getting the E-Bike Word Out! The Interbike Electric Bike Media Event [VIDEOS] From what I could tell the videos were bikes going by and talking heads, my office computer still doesn’t have audio so I don’t know what they were talking about (probably e-assist bicycles). But the text was about people finding out that e-assist bikes are practical fun, and that riding one does not mean turning into a fat old person, just that fat old people are among the early adopters of this technology. I can say from personal experience that an assisted bike is just oodles of fun and really extends the human range as you can use the motor to get you going and up hills while you use a steady amount of power for riding the flats, only you use that same amount of human power all the time. Believe me, using a steady amount of human power makes doing that amount of power for longer distances doable, and using assist to get to speed and keep your speed up on hills makes getting there faster for the same amount of effort so you end up riding longer distances.

And those were all the links that gave me fits in the bicycle department today.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

What should be a short post before Mule Duty, and the Feed

Well there isn’t much in the Feed today, and I think I have played the pictures from the parade line as far as it will go, so there’s grocery shopping and real links today and not much of either one.

First link is not about wrecks, or infrastructure or any of those things, in case you have forgotten the date. Valentine Bikes Day Notice the one word that is not about two-wheeled human powered vehicles? Cowabunga dudes! (and if you “get” that reference you may be younger than you think.)

The Big Story today is closure on a fatal hit-and-run in CA. Man Sentenced to Prison for Deadly Hit and Run and Driver who hit, killed bicyclist in Rancho Santa Fe sentenced to two years in prison I don’t know which is worse, that the driver only got 2 years for killing a cyclist, or the comments that he would have gotten more if he hadn’t been an Asian, or the comments that he got too much for killing “just” a cyclist.

A cyclist trying to cross a highway at an intersection gets hit part of the way across. Family Searches for Answers Following Bicyclist’s Death That intersection is huge, at least 3 lanes in each direction, turn lanes and all combined to 9 lanes to cross in the time alloted by the traffic signal. The cyclist appears to have been hit in lane 7 of 9, if he wasn’t watching the light carefully at the intersection he could have lost 2-3 seconds after the change to green and a slight fumble getting started would have cost him another second, so 4 seconds off the green phase off the bat, with 4-6 seconds of amber could have given him as few as 10 seconds to clear the intersection that would require more than 6 seconds to clear if he hit the intersection at a normal cruise speed. IOW if he had timed the intersection perfectly he would have had barely enough time to avoid getting hit, but any delays or fumbles on the cyclist’s part would have placed him in the middle of the intersection with traffic coming at high speed towards him. The LEO at the scene reports that people get hit in this intersection regularly, so I’m going to call this wreck the fault of the City of Las Vegas for building crappy infrastructure that can only be negotiated safely by motor vehicles, and that only because motor vehicles have crumple zones to protect occupants in wrecks.

Two links to a cyclist who was collateral damage in a police pursuit. Female cyclist injured in downtown police pursuit and SIU investigating Queen Street collision after cyclist injured From what little LEO have released on the cyclist’s part of this there was nothing a cyclist could do to avoid this wreck as it appears to be a “pinball” wreck with the direction of the weapon vehicle altered by impacting a third vehicle (actually a second with the cyclist being the third) before hitting the cyclist. Infrastructure would not have helped much either. The wreck looks to have been pretty severe from the crumpled remains of the bicycle shown in the second link.

Infrastructure! in VA, two links. Petersen’s bike safety bill dies and Bike tailgating measure clings to life in Va. House One can readily see the value the VA GA places on human life not moved inside a motor vehicle.

Infrastructure in Canuckistan. Bike lanes pit cyclists against residents Oh gee, free storage of private property in the public right-of-way, or a safe place for human beings? That is a conundrum [/sarcasm].

A coroner in Enn Zed recommends requiring the very thing that made no difference in the death he was investigating. High visibility gear should be compulsory for cyclists – coroner The off-duty LEO who died in this wreck was wearing all manner of reflective gear and properly lighted, but still was killed by a motor vehicle operator. And the coroner thinks it a “no brainer” to do something that the evidence in front of him has just proven to be ineffective. To talk of a lack of working brains…

Last link has nothing to do directly with bicycles, but is an example of what can be done with talented DIY. DIYers build prosthetic hand for 5-year-old boy Lose a hand? build another one. It’s Open Source Medicine.

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

Billed @$0.02, Opus

Getting very busy this day, and the Feed

February is a very busy month here at Casa De El Poeta (got the Correct Translation this time). Oldest and Youngest children have birthdays that are separated by only 4 days (and 3 years), and 10 days after that is wedding anniversary, which makes February almost as busy and expensive a month as December. Today after I finish the blog post I will be going to Plano to have too much to eat at a restaurant with the birthday kids, then back to church for Vegetarian Pot Luck and ritual scheduling (where ritualists are assigned dates to serve their duty to the rest of the congregation). And tomorrow after morning service Blue and I will be going to the not-so-wilds of Oak Cliff for the parade, then back to Casa De El Poeta for a quick snack (maybe), then evening services. That means that more than likely there will be no Wreck Free Sunday blog post tomorrow (boo!).

Another story on the report from Jolly Olde that fewer people are getting hurt in cars but more cyclists and pedestrians are getting seriously hurt or killed. Number of cyclists killed and seriously injured rises again This article also points out that there were similar rises in the category “anyone not actually in the car at the time of the wreck”. So cars are better at protecting occupants in the wreck, which leads to drivers having more wrecks (?) maybe. It is a fact that drivers are hitting more people walking, riding bicycles, and riding motorcycles, which strongly infers that drivers are just hitting more of everything but because cars are safer for occupants fewer people are getting hurt in the cars.

And also from the UK a primer on what to do after the car hits you. Injured cyclists must use their rights Most important thing to remember is to always, always, ask for medical attention after getting hit by(with) a car or other motor vehicle. Adrenaline can completely anesthetize any injury until several minutes after the actual injury. This was to allow a person to escape a dangerous situation even with serious injury that they might recover from if they could just get away. When you’re hunting mastodons this is a good adaptation, when the beasts are metal and have human pilots it’s mostly not-so-good. Always get checked out by medical personnel after impact with motor vehicles.

An Olympic cyclist discovers that e-assist makes riding a bike a fun thing to do again. Currie Tech Teams Up with ’84 Olympic Cycling Silver Medalist, Nelson Vails to Promote “Getting More People on Bikes!” When an Olympic silver medalist says “This makes me feel like a kid on a bike again” I consider that a Good Thing.

And those are all the links I have today. I had to take a break in the middle of doing the post to go have lunch with the end kids to help them celebrate their birthdays and next week I’ll be celebrating my wedding anniversary, too. Whoo-hoo!

Billed @$0.02, Opus