Infrastructure and crimes against cyclists, the Feed

After wading through the slime and dreck of this morning’s Feed I have some articles of interest for people interested in bicycle safety and other bike issues.

First up is a story that really unnerves me, a roving gang of as many as 50 teens attacked a lone cyclist beating him unconscious. Beaten Kalamazoo cyclist is friendly, helpful And as long as that headline stays in the present tense we will know that besides being friendly and helpful he’s still alive. If I’m reading this report right the kids swarmed the cyclist because they were bored and didn’t have anything better to do, as there are no jobs and there is no money for programs that would keep them busy. Apparently all the vocational ed programs in their school district have been dropped in favor of academics, leaving about a third of the student body without an education.

Someone in BC, Canuckistan is upset that people actually ride their toys in the street during winter (or probably any other time of the year). The Mail Bag I don’t know if she needs to take Valium or Prozac…

And in the UK they are having pothole problems, complete with broken bicycles and cyclists. County’s pothole problem ‘much worse’ after weather You know, potholes are almost unheard of on bicycle-only infrastructure, but are common on infrastructure that is either shared with or entirely used by motor vehicles. Just saying.

And that’s it for this morning, I’m going for a ride.

Billed @$.02, Opus

More from outside the US, the late Feed

Not much in the late Feed tonight, just the one article. That makes for a high signal to noise ratio, but not a very big blog post. The thing is I’m not so sure about the message in the article. I’ll explain after I post the links.

After several cyclists are killed in training for the Pick n Pay Cycle Tour, one of the largest bicycle races in the world in terms of the number of participants, authorities are calling for greater compliance with traffic laws by cyclists. ‘Cyclists should respect the rules’ With all the cyclists converging on the area following traffic laws should be a priority.

Now comes the part I’m having a problem with: All the reports I have read about cyclists being killed in the Argus area the cyclists were obeying the laws and were killed by drivers who were drunk or otherwise impaired, or breaking the laws in other fashions. Now with that information, and also no reports of cyclists breaking the rules getting killed, just the ones riding where they were supposed to be by law, what does this say? Should more attention be paid to the ones doing the killing than the ones being killed? Should people riding around in WMDs be held to a higher standard than the people they are killing? Or should we continue to blame the victims, repeatedly and continuously?

Billed @$.02, Opus