Spelling it out: What am I posting about when I’m mentioning protocols

I was checking my blog stats again when I noticed a particular string being repeated looking for the hit-from-behind protocol on my blog. I never actually made that searchable because I never used the word “protocol” when I was describing the protocol. So now that I have used the word protocol several times to make this post findable by search engines:

Hit-from-behind:
1. Mirror(s), have ‘em, use ‘em
2. Split attention front and rear. Watch where you’re going, but keep aware of what is behind you, use ears as well as eyes.
3. Have an escape route to use when someone tries to hit you from behind or just wanders into your lane from behind you.
4. Be willing to use the escape route or to abandon your bike and let the bike take the hit and inflict as much damage to the car as possible.

Intersections:
1. Threats may come from any street and from any direction on those streets, so head up and locked.
2. Since you are dealing with multiple threats you need to keep that head on a swivel, and using mirrors to look both ways at the same time.
3. As with hit-from-behind you need to have an escape route for each potential threat. The escape route for right hooks and left crosses is the same, turn right to minimize angle of impact and reduce levels of impact energy transmitted to your body.

I hope this helps keep a few more cyclists alive.

Billed @$.02, Opus

It has been a long day, and the Feed

Yes I have been on the road for a long time today, from 11 AM until 8 PM with no lunch, which meant that as soon as I got home I spent the next 2 hours or so stuffing my face to replenish the calories I lost from the miles on the road and the hypothermia of wandering around TX soaking wet with temperatures in the low to mid 60s F. After eating everything that wasn’t nailed down (I think we might be short a cat ) I filtered the Feed and now here we are, exhausted and frustrated, still drying out and getting warmed back up after riding 26 miles through what felt like a monsoon riding over to NCTCOG HQ to find out about new signs and meanings for signs that had been added to the MUTCD, and to find out about the things going on in the rest of the Metroplex as far as bike projects are concerned (Richardson has almost 6 miles of bike lanes now!). Anyway, there was a Feed and there were cyclists killed and/or injured, plus infrastructure articles, the post about the NCTCOG will have to wait until I get up tomorrow.

Up first because it’s the thing that makes me the most angry (angriest?) is a report on the trial of the thing that walks like a man with a medical degree. Defense attorney cross-examines cyclists in LA road rage case The defense tried to insinuate that bicycles were unstable, but they’re no more unstable than your average lawyer, right Eric?

A woman is killed riding her bicycle in Chicago. CFD: Cyclist killed in Lakeview crash Amazingly enough one of the commenters actually used as reason the cyclist was at fault was that she was not wearing a helmet. From what was given in the article I can’t figure out what went wrong as 2 cyclists went past a bus stopped to pick up passengers and one of them was hit by a truck. I know nothing of where the truck came from or which way it was going, why only one cyclist was hit, or anything else except that the woman was hit and she died at the scene. The comments section is useless in this situation because the people claiming to witness the wreck are making contradictory statements.

VeloNews provided several links today about bike wrecks, and infrastructure articles. The Explainer – We just wanna ride and The Mailbag – Radios, road rage and horse pucky Just read the articles.

A woman in Montreal is injured unnecessarily. Injured cyclist failed to stop at red light: Montreal police All you have to do is stop at red lights. If you want to run the red light then you have to look before you go to make sure there’s nothing to run into you.

The Canadian version of the thing that walks like a man, with a law degree, wants to get the mess over with so he can go on with his life. Michael Bryant wants a quick trial, lawyer says I still don’t see why he got out of jail after being caught on camera assaulting a man with a deadly weapon, not once but twice, and killing him in the second assault. And that miserable attempt to smear the deceased’s reputation to make it seem like it was an act of charity to kill him? I could smell the Astroturf half a continent away it must have really reeked in Ontario.

Still in Canadia comes an article on sharing the road with bicycles. Road sharing Gee, people who drive killing machines that weigh in excess of a ton and that can go in excess of 60 miles in an hour have to be careful when they do so as not to cause injury to innocent bystanders? Whodathunkit?

Also from the Great White North comes this. Cyclist’s death highlights auto hazards Do these guys know each other?

In the UK a man gets away with hit-and-run, almost. Driver avoids jail after leaving injured cyclist Of course now this guy has to be very careful around cyclists when he finally gets to drive again because he has this hit-and-run on his record.

A story that’s getting a lot of time in the Australian media. Cyclist killed in truck collision and Three die on Victorian roads in 24 hours also Cyclist dies after being hit by truck Apparently the truck driver was not trying to hit the cyclist as he was hospitalized for shock after he killed the cyclist. near as I can tell this was a hit-from-behind wreck of the hardest kind to prevent, the one where a driver thinks they have left enough room and isn’t trying to buzz you, just mis-judges how big the vehicle is by a large amount. Standard hit-from-behind protocol applies, plus just be careful both behind the wheel and turning the pedals.

Drivers get mad that cyclists exist in Houston. The Wheel World

Substituting endorphins for illegal pharmaceuticals. Win a red ribbon Personally, I don’t care if you do drugs in the privacy of your own abode, I just care if you get stoned and get on the roads, any mode but especially in a car.

Substituting a religious addiction for other addictions. Ride a testament to mental, physical strength If that is what works for you and your problems, do what you gotta do.

And proving that making something illegal won’t make it go away… Despite Ban, Electric Bikes Gain Favor on City Streets One of the things I do when I’m not typing this blog or going for bike rides is build assist bikes from my own designs. I prefer through the gears assist for better use of less electricity, but I acknowledge you can’t beat a hub motor conversion for simplicity.

And that’s it for tonight (this morning?).

Billed @$.02, Opus

A rant at the end, and wrecks at the beginning, nice stuff in the middle

Today’s Feed combined with the Welcoming Congregation classes I have been taking have brought about an epiphany. More about that at the end of the blog post. First we have wrecks, then we have lifestyle reports, then you get the rant.

Up first for no particular reason is a rather sparse report on a hit-and-run against a cyclist in the Delmarva region. Cyclist injured in hit and run At least the police are not blaming the victim in this one, but beyond that I can’t say what exactly went down in this wreck besides the cyclist. I do know that intersections were until recently the most likely place to get hit on a bicycle because of the omnidirectionality of threats. You still have to be aware of cars hitting you from behind, but you also have to be alert to cars hitting you from either side or turning in front of you. This is where you have to keep your head on a swivel to keep alive.

A cyclist injured in a right hook incident who was impaired in efforts to recover expenses incurred in the wreck because of PD failure to cite the driver has won a suit against the city responsible, Portland OR. City to settle with injured bicyclist over North Portland intersection When someone makes a right turn across an active traffic lane without checking to see if the lane was clear before turning and causes a wreck with injury normally there would be a citation for failure to yield, and there is a special law that applies to bike lanes with an enhanced penalty because of the relative fragility of cyclists compared to motor vehicles, but that law was not enforced here and the cyclist suffered additional harm because of the city’s failure to enforce the law. Hence the lawsuit, hence the settlement when the city found itself in an indefensible position.

And on the subject of lawsuits, one has been filed over the wreck of a cyclist with an 18 wheeler. Old Dominion Freight driver accused of badly injuring cyclist while using wireless device The list of injuries the cyclist suffered just boggles the mind: Helwig suffered a broken pelvis, broken ribs, broken back, lacerated liver and spleen, head injury, and a badly damaged left arm. He lost one kidney and his small intestine. That pretty much defines the term “basket case”. Go get ‘em.

A competitor to RoadID has a different product to offer. Is it a better product? Yikes ID Helps Cyclists Make Smart Safety Decisions So They Never Have To Ride Alone Assuming there isn’t more than one cyclist involved this might be a good idea, and it might also help return stolen bikes with really stupid people involved. I think it might be a good idea for commuters.

A charity ride against cancer. Brett’s ride rolls on

More on the story of Alice Swanson’s Ghost Bike saga. Alice’s Blend: The people behind the ghost bike saga I see the anger, and I understand the frustration of the people involved with the struggle.

The Saratoga Springs school that banned riding a bicycle to school has become international news, here’s an update from the local newspaper. A sensible way to get to school

And final article from the Feed, is it possible to design roads so that nobody dies while using them? People don’t have to die on the road I don’t see how you can re-write the rules of Newtonian physics just because people die trying to break them. Mass has consequence, velocity has consequence, and no amount of complaining about it is going to change those facts. Even if bicycles are given completely separate facilities, in order to get to places people find useful those facilities will have to interact with motor vehicle traffic at at least two points, the point of origin and the destination, unless you somehow create infrastructure to deliver goods that doesn’t require the use of roads and trucks to bring goods to their point of sale, and ban the use of private motor vehicles. And even if you do all that, people will still run into one another and get someone killed, even if they’re on bicycles.

And now the rant I promised:

In the class I session I just took this Sunday we discussed Oppression (with the capital “O”). One of the characteristics of oppression is to declare a “norm” so that anything outside of that norm may be oppressed, in this case the “norm” is a car driver. It is not enough that one be in control of a motor vehicle, that vehicle has to have 4 wheels to go with the motor, just ask all the motorcycle riders that are run over and severely injured or killed because “I didn’t see him” is accepted as an excuse from responsibility.

One of the other characteristics of Oppression is that people outside the “norm” are not given equal enforcement of the law when they are victims. To wit most recently the Bexar County incident where 2 people were killed by a truck driver that went off the road repeatedly, but the truck driver did not suffer any kind of legal consequences for killing 2 people on a bicycle.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be confined to “bicycle infrastructure” any more than black people wanted to be confined to “Colored Only” drinking fountains, but I even more don’t want to be banned from the roads like black people were banned from voting or other meaningful participation in the political process. I’m not saying bicyclists are the new [offensive and derogatory reference to people of African descent], but just going by the number of lynchings, we may be getting close.

Billed @$.02, Opus

Buying something with PayPal

My job with examiner.com requires I get paid via PayPal. I don’t get much, but when I try to spend it I can’t. Let me explain and then maybe someone can tell me what’s happening.

I tried to purchase a manual on making an electric motor from a junkyard alternator from a company on the web. I won’t name the company because I don’t think this is their problem. The item in question is $19.95 after all charges are added to the order, I indicate on the cart that I’m paying by PayPal, I get a PayPal logon screen with the amount of the purchase showing, I enter my PayPal password, and I get a screen asking for a credit card saying my balance is too low to purchase the item, which it isn’t, it’s a bunch more than $19.95 (well, not a bunch but more than the purchase amount plus what PayPal has as the maximum charged to transfer funds out of my account).

So, what gives? Am I being scammed? Is my hard-earned money stuck in PayPal’s claws forever? I put in a lot of hours for this pittance, and I want to buy stuff with it. I have been working for examiner.com since the end of February, I didn’t make enough to get paid until the end of July, and here it is the end of August and I still can’t enjoy the fruits of my labors (and anybody says writing ain’t work can come search the TX legislature listings for bills related to bicycles by doing word searches for “bicycle” and related terms and also for TX VC section numbers that concern bicycles, and for bunches of other things that might pertain to bicycles and e-assist or ICE assist bicycles (that only took me 14 hours to do over 2 days) and then write a cogent article about what you find. Lobbyists get paid $50-100K/annum for this, I got $0.27 for the day the article was published)

Anyway, to get back to the question, am I being scammed? If so, by whom? If it’s the company I was trying to buy stuff from, they will get it from both barrels because “Witch on a Bicycle” is not just the title of this blog, it’s a description of the author. Grrr!

PSA, Opus

Who needs a headline when you have stuff this good?

I know, that’s pretty blatant isn’t it? The alternative was “Read this or you’re stupid” which wasn’t any better and a whole lot more offensive. Anyway the reason I’m late today is I had to go buy a skirt to wear in a church function tomorrow night. I will be playing the part of Hermes in our church’s annual Patron Auction that performs 3 functions for the church 1) it raises money for the church 2) It raises food to donate to local charities and 3) it lets us choose a symbol of the direction the church will take in the coming fiscal year. Our candidates this year are Ganesh, Frigg, and Hermes (and my spell checker went “poof” with the non-classical deities Ganesh and Frigg). Anyway it turns out I’m a hard size to buy for as my lack of hips in a feminine sense make me a 14 below the waist but a small 16 in the waist. Fortunately when I’m done with this my wife wears a 14 for both her hips and her waist, so she can wear it after the Auction.

We only had 9 links total in the Feed today, lower than usual for a Friday. But I’m sure I’ll muddle through somehow…

Another report on the “SWSS” story that turns out to not be “SW”. Marshfield cyclist killed in crash This one was later than some of the links I had yesterday, but was not as updated as those links.

New Jersey drivers seem to have something against young cyclists as they have clobbered 3 in three weeks. 12-year-old cyclist hospitalized; driver charged with DUI DUI drivers are scum, and should never be allowed to drive again after they have a wreck. There has to be a way that passes constitutional muster and does not infringe on the rights of people that don’t drink and drive, that will prevent drivers from driving drunk. All you lawyer types out there get to work, you have a job to do. Make the world safe from drunk drivers, without infringing on the rights of the innocent.

And what appears to be a purge of the gene pool, no offense to the cyclist. Bicyclist seriously injured after colliding with train I hate to keep harping on this, but trains are big, loud, and very hard to miss. There are also crossing warnings, gates, and flashing lights to be ignored, not to mention that trains are confined to run on a set route by these things called “rails”… You know where they are, you know when they’re coming and people still get hit by trains, killed by 19^th century technology in the first decade of the 21^st. Human technology guys, this is your baby. Why do people continue to be hit by trains?

Another waste of human skin drives away from a dead cyclist that he or she killed, this time in IN. NEW: Bicyclist killed in hit-and-run accident Not enough information about this wreck to tell you how to avoid it. The usual rants about hit-and-run drivers, I’m actually starting to get burned out about them. I mean there is only so much time and so much anger a human being can sustain, and I’m approaching my limits. Or maybe I’m a little over my limits.

I wonder if the head dog at Mad Dog Media knows about this one? Irish cyclist killed in Chicago Not enough information to tell you how to avoid the wreck.

A Canadian cyclist is killed in VT USA. Cyclist Killed in Vermont No word on how the actual wreck happened, as they found the cyclist in the road with a nearly pristine bicycle, and almost dead at that point.

A typical UK wreck report. Cyclist killed in crash with car Nothing here to tell you about how to avoid the wreck, which makes it a normal UK wreck report…did I mention that I hate UK media laws? I mean in this post not over the life of this blog…

A horrific crash in Oz. Cyclist killed by school bus The kids on the bus actually saw the cyclist die.

In a place where you can actually get bicycle liability insurance, most don’t get it. Cyclists not adequately covered says online insurer Naturally the guy selling the insurance is going to say not enough people are buying it, but I am sooo jealous of those that actually can get their bikes insured and themselves insured against getting hit by cars.

And that’s all I have for you today, more in the morning.

Billed @$.02, Opus

On the 233 anniversary of our independence from England

Two Hundred Twenty-three years ago we here in the (mostly) United States of America decided to set out on our own as a Nation rather than a collection of colonies. Some years we did better than others, This is not one of those years. But we are still a strong nation, the only Superpower left in the world. How much longer that will last is unsure at this moment, as what made us a superpower was our manufacturing might, which we have now outsourced to China. We are slowly, and in ways not so slowly, turning into a third-world nation economically with a small caste of very rich and a large underclass, with a thin middle class separating them.

You might ask why a witch on a bicycle would be writing about economics on the day we celebrate our birth as a nation. The answer is simple, just as all politics is local, all things revolve around economics. What can be done is a reflection on what can be paid for, whatever the currency required. The West won the Cold War by destroying the economy of the Soviet Union, we created more war materiel than the USSR without destroying the civilian economy because our economy was more efficient than the Soviet’s. And now we are facing an even greater foe, Greed. The very rich are not satisfied with 80% of the wealth (some of them, enough to make it a problem). They want all of it, not just the biggest piece but the whole pie. And rather than share they would let the pie be destroyed completely. They don’t see that by sharing they can have more than trying to keep the whole thing for themselves, that by paying more to their employees and by treating their employees as partners rather than enemies they can get a smaller share of a much larger pie and still get more pie.

Me? All I want is a place to stay, enough to eat, and a safe place to ride my bike.

PSA, Opus

Happy 4th of July! Now go watch some fireworks.

Why I call motor vehicles WMDs

This is a separate post from the bike wrecks to highlight why I keep referring to motor vehicles as WMDs. First a WMD is a device that can destroy buildings or kill or injure more than one person at a single use (actually the definition calls it a “shot” but motor vehicles aren’t shot, they’re semi-guided projectiles).

First up is a building destroyed by a single vehicle. Family looks for jobs, new home after Monday crash The house was destroyed by a pickup truck, not the much larger vehicle the truck was bounced off of. Imagine the destruction that would have ensued had the house been hit by the tanker truck. One hit from a single vehicle and a 150 YO house was destroyed, damaged beyond repair. This is one of the descriptors of a WMD, the ability to render a structure uninhabitable with only one projectile or usage (high explosives are a class of WMD).

Another instance why I call motor vehicles WMDs is this wreck. 4 injured by out of control taxi The wounded were in a large arc, not concentrated in any one area of the street. This is similar to the spray pattern of a machine gun, again with a single projectile. This is another descriptor of a WMD the ability to engage multiple targets with a single weapon.

The last reason I call motor vehicles WMDs is the Sand Springs OK incident that killed 2 out of 3 people in a single impact event, a third descriptor of WMD, massive lethality in a single engagement. I don’t know why the Iraqi were blowing up cars when they could have just driven them into the troops and done almost as much damage, maybe more if they hardened the vehicles up a bit. Hardening a vehicle is much easier than turning it into a bomb. Having done both the only thing that would have made adding explosives easier than hardening would be an inability to procure sheet steel in quantity. Well that and a lack of desire to live…

Billed @$.02, Opus

The Sand Springs OK bicyclist killer

This case has gotten an unusual amount of attention, in part because the cyclists were not even on the roads when hit, in part because of the extreme amount of violence involved in the wreck (the deceased cyclists were knocked out of their helmets they were hit so hard), and in part because of the utter indifference and depravity at the situation on the part of the accused.

The wreck happened on a fairly high traffic road leading out of Tulsa
View Larger Map
OK 51 is readily visible on the Google Map view. This was where the wreck took place, on the shoulder of OK51. You can look back in my blog to get the full story.

Today’s links are about the perp (I refuse to mention her name, I do not want to give her not one second of fame or infamy) bonding out of jail for a second time after her bail was raised to $300,000. Hang onto your mice, it’s a bumpy ride Accused cyclist-killer back in jail and Tausha Borland’s Bond Increased and Woman Accused In Bicyclist Deaths Out On Bond also Woman charged in bicyclists’ deaths free on bond even Driver in cyclists’ fatalities free on bond and Local, State Briefs: Suspect in 2 bicyclists’ deaths released from jail and finally Tausha Borland Bonds Out For Second Time

The booking picture is of a spoiled brat that needed to be slapped down back in 2007 the first time she was arrested for DUI, but somebody had money and it was reduced to a misdemeanor and she was let go. She ain’t getting let go this time.

Billed @$.02, Opus

Governor Goodhair screws us all royally

I had to make this a separate post because I am so steamed about this. Governor slams door on cyclists and Safe-passing-for-bikes bill reportedly on Perry veto list also Other measures the governor killed or let live finally Perry vetoes of ethics, bike bills surprise some

Rick “Goodhair” Perry has a bodyguard of 4 Texas State Troopers that ride with him either MTB or on the rare occasion he ventures out on his road bike. If I had armed guards front and rear when I was riding I wouldn’t worry about getting passed too close (“buzzed”) when I was riding either. Perry needs to get out and ride the roads without his entourage and see what it is really like for those of us not surrounded by tons of steel and plastic. This was not a bicyclists’ bill, this bill would have protected everyone that was not in a car from those who are driving multi-ton WMDs disguised as transportation. It imposed no new requirements on drivers, they are already required to pass safely, it just makes it law that not hitting someone hard enough to knock them down is not the same as passing them safely, and ups the punishment for not making a safe pass on someone that has no armor.

PSA, Opus

The NCTCOG and bicycles

This is what I know right now about what is going on with the NCTCOG and the stimulus (ARRA) money that is supposed to be spent on us.

As of the public meeting last week there was $180,000,000 +/- to be spent on non-motorized transportation infrastructure. Of that roughly $30,000,000 was going to be spent on a park over a freeway. Park. Over. Freeway. The only way I can see this as transportation infrastructure is they are building the freeking park over the freeking freeway in the middle of the freeking downtown Dallas Canyon. Aside from some walkways there will be no through bicycle access to the park, in other words the “infrastructure” we are getting for our $30E⁶ is a few feet of concrete walkways that will be mostly occupied by people standing around enjoying nature. Note that I am in favor of standing around enjoying nature, just not in spending $30E⁶ of scarce transportation dollars to pay for it, not when there were many more bike/ped projects that were ready to go that had all their funding pulled when recissions were made between 2002 and 2006 so that highways could be funded.

Parks are not transportation infrastructure. Parks can be built around transportation infrastructure as in many MUPs but 2 square blocks of greenspace over a freeway is not transportation infrastructure.

I am very angry and frustrated that the first dedicated money in TX for non-motorized transportation was diverted to build a park over a freeway. It was bad enough that we got “linear parks” that didn’t connect to anything as bicycle infrastructure before, but now that we have money that was supposed to build actual infrastructure building more freeking parks, well lets just say that limits exist and mine has just been passed. I have been writing my representatives and senators for years about bicycle infrastructure only to see transportation dollars for bicycle projects diverted to highways, and now I see transportation dollars with strings attached being diverted to parks and I just can’t stand it any more. I have been hearing about the Veloweb ever since I got to TX back when W’s father was still President, and I’m still waiting for a path that runs from near where I live to downtown Dallas and Fort Worth. It’s supposed to run less than 1 1/2 miles from my house and go all the way to Plano and from there to downtown Ft. Worth, and going the other way eventually to downtown Dallas. Right now all that exists are lines on a map. For most of the Veloweb all that has ever existed was lines on a map. I want those lines on a map to have counterparts in concrete on the ground, and I want the ARRA money that was designated for non-motorized transportation to pay for infrastructure, not freeking parks.

PSA, Opus