Tomorrow’s post will be late, and a huge Feed

I will be working at FlowfestSouthwest tomorrow until sundown with other members of my church at the water altar and blessing station. This will give me another chance to ride with the new headlight (yes, I’m quite fond of the new headlight, but I’m still going to build the other one) and get a few miles around the lake after dark. But this will require a very late evening posting as I have to prepare for the event in the morning, travel to it, participate, then travel home, before I can boot the computer to compose the post. So, late Saturday/early Sunday for the next post.

Up first is a wreck I was alerted to yesterday at BikeJournal.com but without a link. Now we have a link. Cyclist killed after SUV runs off the road and hits him What can I say, some drivers are so bad that they hit you when you aren’t even riding on the road. In this case none of the protocols spelled out in the link at the top of my blog would have helped, between the high speed of the motor vehicle and the fact that the cyclist was as far right as physically possible.

Still in LA a strangely late report on a cyclist hit “in the street”. Cyclist dies after being hit by a car It would have been nice to know the direction of both vehicles involved to allow assessment of how this wreck could be avoided, if it could have been avoided by the cyclist. As it stands now the only thing we know for sure was the back wheel of the bike was hit hard enough to buckle it. In 2 directions that doesn’t require a very hard hit and the cyclist’s injuries could have been caused by impact with the street, but in the third direction this requires a very hard hit and almost always results in the cyclist coming in contact with the vehicle, very hard contact. The final disposition of the bike after the wreck indicates a hit-from-behind wreck (bicycle upside down in the street with a broken rear wheel). Also this wreck took a very long time to get through the Feed as it happened on Saturday with an initial report that evening, and updates early this morning.

Up next is 2 links to the same wreck in Portland, AKA the closest thing to Amsterdam in the US. Bicyclist struck, injured on Marine Drive and Bicyclist hit, injured on Marine Drive I know, same headline, different reports. The back-channel report I got on this one was the cyclist was trying to get from one section of protected bike trail to another section of protected bike trail when she was left-crossed by an uninsured driver. That part of the report came in an infrastructure report on why they needed to complete the trail through that area, and thank you BikePortland for that report.

Moving down the coast to SoCal, a cyclist is struck from behind in a hit-and-run. Teenage Canoga Park cyclist killed in hit-and-run accident OK 2 things we know, there were 2 bikes, and both bike were legally lighted/reflectored. We know the latter because nothing about not being lighted/reflectored was mentioned in the article, although it was implied that the cyclists were riding side by side. Given the time of day this would have made the cyclists much more visible to traffic coming from the rear, had the driver been looking for vehicles on the side of the road. If the driver’s attention was engaged inside the car then there’s nothing the cyclist could have done to prevent this wreck. I’m going to go with the drunk/distracted driver hypothesis as the best working one at the moment. As to how to avoid, the cyclist was using the visual mass method of enhanced visibility, but that has the drawback of putting the left hand cyclist at higher risk from sideswipes and also removes the possibility of dodging a car by moving right because of the second cyclist to the right. A better way would be to ride with the right hand cyclist about a bike length behind the left hand one so that both have an escape route if needed.

Moving to the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bicycle, they killed another one on the A1A. Cyclist injured in Hollywood crash The cyclist in this wreck was doing everything possible to avoid conflict with motor vehicles and still got hit. Where are the promised bike lanes for this highway? A lawsuit was filed and won years ago that required bike lanes to be installed on the full length of this road, where are they?

Drivers in MN are not used to actually seeing people out on the streets. Mpls. police urge drivers to take caution after series of crashes with pedestrians, cyclist Hey! there are people out here, watch where you’re going.

Another report on the mantrap set in Jolly Olde for cyclists. Cyclist injured after riding into trip wire As I posted earlier, this was attempted murder with only extremely good luck preventing the cyclist’s death.

Still in the UK a cyclist is laid to rest after what may have been an assault. Riders pay their last respects to former champion cyclist I have no idea how this person died, but did you see the size of the peloton behind the hearse? I would hope that my funeral was as well attended.

Back to OR for an Infrastructure! report on a proposed bike route. Proposed Tualatin Valley Bikeway would be an 80-mile attraction for bicycling tourism And right off the bat in the comments is a flaming nutcase raving about how they can’t afford bike infrastructure with deficit spending and taxes so high. Do they pay people to do that?

And that’s all I have today, see you late tomorrow.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

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