I opened the Feed folder in my e-mail to a deluge of links. Granted not all of them are links to bicycle stories, but I have to read the link to make sure it isn’t about bicycles and that takes time. Frequently even on links that have nothing to do with bicycles or cycling, the writer uses the words “bicycle” or “cycling” or “cyclist” as a metaphor to describe something else, and I have to read the link to figure out what the connection is when there isn’t any.
Up first is an update on the cyclist hit by a teen-ager driving her truck on the wrong side of the road. Charges filed against teen in fatal bike accident from last year and Teen who hit and killed bicyclist in Magna charged Yes, hit and kill a cyclist riding legally on the opposite side of the road and you could be facing a serious misdemeanor charge and facing a large fine.
While we are on the subject of really old stories getting updated, they finally got around to taking care of the driver that hit a FL cyclist from behind on the shoulder of the road. Police Beat: License suspended for man in cross-country cyclist’s death They took his license for 6 months for killing a cyclist that wasn’t on the road. And people wonder why FL is the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bicycle? (And for new readers, I know “most deadliest” is redundant. I just needed something more for a state that has 8% of the total bike fatalities in the entire country within just 3 counties, with 16% of the US total in that single state.)
In WI a Green Bay cyclist is hit mid-block (presumably from behind) and left for dead. Police report cyclist killed in Green Bay I have a solution for this, treat hit-and-run as a crime instead of as an “accident”. In TX hit-and-run is a felony, albeit the most minor form of felony, but a death that happens as a result of a felony can be treated as Capital Murder (1st degree Murder in most other states) and the driver would then be eligible for the death penalty. I have only seen this used once, in a case where a repeat DUI Hispanic hit a church bus full of white people and killed several (not everybody, but more than one person in the van) and left the scene in his vehicle only to pass out and ground the car on a curb a few hundred yards up the road. That driver is currently serving consecutive life terms, but I have seen similar wrecks where the drunk driver was either white or rich that much more lenient charges were filed, where a casual observer could not discern a difference in the mechanics of the wrecks other than the race or financial status of the perpetrators. We have the tools in place in TX, getting prosecutors to actually use those tools every time they apply is the next step.
From our nation’s capitol, a cyclist gets the “door prize” and survives, only to get a run-around when trying to get the driver’s insurance information from the cop that handled the report. Morning Notes You might want to click on the links in the report.
Speaking of the “door prize” former framebuilder Dave Moulton comments on placing bike lanes in the danger zone of parked cars. Re: “Cyclists getting a bike lane along Chapel Street”
From West Canuckistan comes more information on that cyclist hit from behind on Canada 1. Cyclist dies riding in middle of road Interesting that all those other drivers could clearly see the cyclist and change lanes to avoid hitting him, but they blame the cyclist when the guy that didn’t see him ran him over. It is also noted in the article that it is in fact legal to ride on the shoulder on that stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway, but nothing on the condition of that shoulder. I’m not condoning riding in the middle of a freeway except to avoid debris in the shoulder that makes the shoulder unsafe to ride a bicycle, and as I posted yesterday on this story, when you ride on a major highway at night you need to have really bright lights that cover a large area, and reflectors are not sufficient on high-speed highways. The TX legal minimum is visible in low-beams at a distance of 300 feet, at 60 MPH (88 fps) it normally takes a car about 250 feet to stop, leaving 50 feet to identify and react to needing to stop or about a half a second. The problem is identifying a red light as an immobile or slow-moving object that needs to be avoided takes about 3 seconds at night which uses up 264 feet of that 300 leaving a minus 200 feet of clearance after stopping. The TX 300 foot visibility standard works for urban environments where travel speeds are more in the 30-35 MPH range. I’ll put a paragraph at the bottom of my blog post that will expound upon this issue.
From NYC infrastructure news that NYPD is writing tickets for minor technical violations while ignoring the riders everyone is complaining about that are actually dangerous to themselves and pedestrians. NYPD Bicyclist Crackdown Hits Wrong Target, Critics Say They ticket the guys riding without helmets (not illegal for adults), they ticket people riding during the day without reflectors (not illegal during daylight hours), they ticket people riding bicycles turning right on red, but they ignore drivers turning right on red, they ignore people riding on the siedwalks, they ignore people riding the wrong way on the street… in other words they go after the easy to catch people and ignore the ones that are being a danger to the public.
Reflectors and taillights, what is “enough” and what should the legal minimums be? As long-time readers know I used to build and sell a modified LED car taillight called the “Honkin’ Huge Taillighttm” until the light I started from went out of production. This light had 18 LEDs in an elliptical array that put out light over a broad area and was as legally bright as a motor vehicle taillight could be without brakes being applied, and there was a high-power setting I could have used that was as bright as legally permitted for brake lights. I did sell one light that used the high-power option, but the burn time at that setting was too low for my tastes for a system that only had room for a 1.3Ah SLA battery. If I had used this light with a separate battery with a larger capacity for a longer burn time I might have been more amenable to using the high-power setting, bt I didn’t have that option. Now, as I posted in the paragraph about the Canadian rider getting hit from behind what is legal may not be what is safe. And a major portion of the problem is that bike lights and reflectors are regulated at the federal level but enforced at the state and (mostly) local level, and that enforcement varies from state to state. In TX you need a reflector that can be seen at 300 feet in low-beams, but you are allowed a light that has the same visibility. Some states don’t allow the light, but in the real world will not prosecute if that is all you have (except for LEO that are assholes, unfortunately). There are no states at the time of this posting that have a maximum light output or visibility limit on taillights, so long as there is a reflector that meets the minimum requirement, which opens up the use of bike lights that would be too bright to use as motor vehicle lighting. The problem then becomes how much is “enough” light? One of my early experiments had lights that could be seen for more than 1/4 mile behind me, but were very directional in that if you were outside the beam cast by the taillight you could only see the light about 100 feet away or less, if the LED was not in direct line of sight and you had to depend on the scatter from the optics of the light to be able to see it. But because this light used so little power and you could (literally) stick them anywhere on the bike this was a very popular light. Can’t see the light from the side? Stick another one on the side! I had 12 of these units on various parts of my bike running off a single switched battery with a burn time of about 14 hours with everything running at full power, and about 20 hours with the side markers run at half power to conserve juice. What made this system impractical was the amount of wiring needed to get power to all those sealed units. I literally ran about a pound of copper getting current to all the lights on the bike, plus the weight of the battery and switches. And what did I get? At 1300 feet a driver doing 60 MPH would have just enough time to see and identify my bike as a slow-moving object on the road and come to a stop if there wasn’t enough room to pass safely, or a bare minimum system for riding at night in the country. There are reflectors for big rigs that have that kind of performance, but they aren’t being sold for bicycle mounting yet and you need to be talented to mount one on a bike. Kinda like what I had to do to make the Honkin’ Huge Taillighttm.
And that’s all the news that gave me fits.
Billed @$0.02, Opus
32.928601
-96.607394
Today is Super Mule Day, and the Feed
Mrs. the Poet has instructed me to lash our rucks to Blue as payday has arrived and we need to restock our pantry with non-perishable foods. This means that Blue will be loaded to the creaking and groaning point, ditto my back, and Mrs. the Poet shall be tasked with whatever Blue and I can’t carry. Since one of my X-mas/Solstice gifts was a set of tie-downs for externally carried cargo on Blue we have been able to carry large bags of stuff that would not fit in the buckets or the ruck previously. Actually to be precise I can load one large bag of non-refrigerated food per trip, in addition to what fits in the buckets and ruck. Also I am working on new kitty-litter bucket panniers that are removable, meaning I don’t have to ride up to the back door and back the bike up to it. I could just remove the buckets from the bike and carry them into the house where they could be unloaded at leisure. And I could leave them at home on trips that won’t require cargo capacity. This would make such trips a little quicker as the current setup is about as aerodynamic as a cab-over semi with no trailer fairing. Also, I will be able to make the new panniers more weather-tight as I won’t have to drill through the inner shell of the bucket to install the mounting hardware. I have learned much since my first attempt at making kitty-litter buckets work as cargo capacity.
Up first, Albany CA residents ask if the 25 MPH speed limit on an arterial that runs through a residential neighborhood will ever be enforced. You Ask: Do Police Enforce Speeding on Buchanan? This was a street that saw a cyclist killed a few weeks ago that was partially blamed on the driver of the weapon vehicle speeding. The description of the road makes it sound like a good candidate for speed-sensitive road mines what with drivers routinely driving in excess of double the posted limit. I have been working on a compact unit that would be about 1m long, with a shaped charge that would disable the vehicle without damaging the
pavementroad surface (changed to account for the heavy increase in non-US readers I have gotten recently, outside of the US pavement is a thing, a sidewalk, rather than a surface).First wreck report is from the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bike. Injured cyclist cited for not having lights Another ninja cyclist, part of the reason why FL leads the nation in cyclist deaths. This does not excuse the drivers that hit pedestrians at night because they have badly-aimed or otherwise ill-functioning headlights, but really reflectors are cheap, easy to get and install and make the back of the bike really shine even with bad headlights on the weapon vehicle. I have a couple of square feet of reflective materials on the back of Blue, and as soon as I finish building the charger I’ll have a blindingly bright taillight with a rechargeable battery. More Milton bicyclist hurt in accident
A wreck in San Diego has LEO puzzled as the initial impact location of the cyclist remains unknown after the cyclist was hit 3 times (this is a similar wreck to the salmon cyclist a while back on the same street, but this cyclist was riding with traffic). Witnesses Sought in Fatal Hit-and-Run Bike Accident You notice that in this wreck the cyclist ended up in the correct location and the initial vehicle to hit the cyclist left the scene and has not been located unlike the salmon cyclist wreck where the same make vehicle remained at the scene and the driver rendered aid to the cyclist. All the same 2 wrecks in a short space of time and on the same street gives me a bad feeling. (cue the Lucasfilm logo and Star Wars theme). The same number of vehicles that hit the cyclist is another striking parallel.
A SWSS wreck in far south TX. Victoria woman hurt when pickup hits her bike The only witness that was still conscious to make a report was the driver of the weapon vehicle, so until otherwise verified, this is a hit-from-behind wreck, use the appropriate protocols to avoid, and SBR would prevent a wreck like this.
A WI wreck with independent witnesses for a 11YO boy crossing against the light. Bicyclist, 11, in serious condition after crash Yeah, crossing with the light would most likely prevent this, and SBR would have no impact at all as the 11YO would still have to wait on the light.
A youth in ME is hit walking his bike on the side of the road in a school zone. Boy hit by car back at home The mother in this one is seriously over-reacting, the kid was walking when he was hit by a car that went off the road in a school zone at more than the posted speed limit. Seriously woman, the kid was 100% innocent in this wreck, and the bike made 0% difference in the wreck. This would be like forbidding him to carry a backpack because he had one on when he was abducted by aliens, as if wearing a backpack (or riding a bike) had anything to do with the situation. Unless the driver targeted him because of the bike, of course.
More on the CO wreck initially reported as a “booby trap”. Police: Injured cyclist not the victim of a ‘booby trap’ I still can’t wrap my mind around why the fisherman would have had to be fishing across a bike path, the narrative doesn’t make sense, but glad to know it was not a deliberate attempt to cause injury.
LifeStyle in TX. Cycling notebook: Bike-to-work days roll out this spring Bike to work in Houston, sponsored by the Kevorkian bike club and the organ donors league. Juuust kidding folks, riding to work in Houston is no more dangerous than riding to work in many cities around the world, like Khandahar or Beirut or even Baghdad.
And those are all the links that gave me fits today.
Billed @$0.02, Opus
→ Leave a comment
Posted in Daily Feed
Tagged anti-bike blatherings, Bike ninjas, cycling life, cyclist injured, cyclists killed, Dead cyclists, Don't read the comments, fun on a bike, helpful hints, hit from behind, hit-and-run, Honkin' Huge Tailighttm, infrastructure, salmon cyclists, signs of the apocolypse, Single Witness Suicidal Swerve/Single Witness Crossing Cyclist, Something smells, stupid drivers, stupid LEO, stupid politicians, updates, waste of human skin