After more than a year of being broken and well back in line of things that needed fixing we finally shook some money loose to get the oven fixed, which turned out to be a simple $10 fix (on top of the $45 charge to bring the repairman to the house). So, now I will be able to bake things without having to put the ingredients in the bucket panniers on the bike and haul them to the church. This will mean eventually I will get back to baking bread again after I replace all my flour that has expired and get fresh yeast (yeast has a very limited shelf life, too).
Up first and my first new death of the new year, is a cyclist killed by a snow plow. New Brighton bicyclist killed in collision with a plow truck in Fridley From what they say in the story this was a ninja cyclist who forgot the cardinal rule of bike ninjas: ride like you are invisible, because for all intents and purposes you are invisible to drivers.
Another report on the 16 YO killed crossing a major highway through a residential area in OH. Teen Bicyclist Killed On US 50 I finally got a Streetview to pull up from Google Maps, and if you look close you can see the intersection is controlled by those furshluginer loop sensors that almost never detect a bicycle present to cross the road, and there are 5 lanes and wide shoulders to cross on 50 with sight lines that are limited considering the speed of the crossing traffic. The road the cyclist was on is a short stretch of pavement that connects 2 residential areas on either side of the highway and from all appearances only exists to cross that highway. A bit of irony in the Streetview is if you pull up a bit to the right from the intersection view you can see a cyclist waiting on the light in the left turn lane, so it’s not like this isn’t an intersection that doesn’t see at least some cyclists, one was killed there and there was one there when the Google camera car was rolling through.
In AZ what appears to be a cyclist who was hit crossing under a stale green. 14-Year-Old Bicyclist Hit by Truck, Critically Hurt The reason I place such a high probability on the stale green hypothesis is the width of the debris field and the very close proximity to the intersection. Given the estimated speed of the weapon vehicle as expressed in the article and the width of the debris field I would say this wreck’s initial impact wasn’t next to the crosswalk but on the other side of the street. Had the impact been in the lane closest to the debris field the cyclist would have just barely entered the intersection, and there would not have been enough room for the debris to have spread out like that and the weapon vehicle would have had to been travelling much slower than the speed given to have the debris field that close to the impact site. As I have posted before I don’t know what to do about the stale green problem, There was a countdown amber in an old MUTCD that would have worked great with the newest LED traffic lights, but cyclists needing to stop on a stale green would get rear-ended by drivers that could have made the light crossing with the green. One possible solution would be an amber phase that was timed to be long enough for a 12MPH vehicle to clear the intersection if the vehicle was 5 feet from the stop bar when the light changed, or a combination amber/all-red duration that allowed a 12MPH cyclist to clear the intersection.
Infrastructure! from WI. Hoan decision doesn’t kill other plans Instead of providing a direct route by placing a bike/ped crossing on the side of the bridge, the alternative is a convoluted collection of bike paths and lanes that goes around the obstruction the bridge was crossing, making the bike rote 3 times longer than the motor vehicle route. The ironic thing is the convoluted bike route will end up costing a few thousand dollars less than the direct bike/ped facility on the bridge, roughly $3.5 million either way.
More infrastructure, this time from NYC as a fence is put up to prevent people from throwing debris onto a bike path under a bridge. City: New fencing will defuse bike path ‘bombing zone’ This is where several cyclists have been hit by bricks, bottles, rocks, and a golf ball with injuries ranging from bumps and bruises to cuts and broken bones. The fence is supposed to prevent the throwers from having a clear arc to the bike path.
And that’s all the links I have for today, go ride your bike…
Billed @$0.02, Opus
Witch on a Bicycle 