Still recovering from the doctor visit, and the Feed

The diagnosis of a pulled or torn rotator cuff from a near-fall on the train has been confirmed with a tear being the most likely injury because of the persistence of the injury, and the treatment has resulted in an arm I can barely lift to shoulder-high. The good news is I’m starting to get more range of motion in my hips, but still not enough that I might cross my legs on the floor. Sitting Japanese style on the floor is likewise not going to happen soon. [Chekov’s voice]I’m going to live, but I won’t enjoy it very much.[/Chekov’s voice] (Star Trek TOS)

Up first is an interesting report out of WA via a media outlet in SF. No criminal charges for driver who killed cyclist At first when I read this I was angry, again. Then I read the “wrote him a $10,287 ticket” quote from the second paragraph and did not feel quite as angry. The ticket carried a $5K fine and other costs that more than doubled the fine, but because it’s a ticket and not a criminal charge it only has to go before a traffic judge, and when was the last time you ever got anything off from a traffic judge after a wreck?

Lawyer blatherings about an OH wreck. Car strikes bike rider, throwing her to her death Boiled down, the cyclist was following the law and the driver is going to get away with it because, cars. Then the article goes on about the need to have a safe-passing law for incidents like this so that LEO can at least issue a ticket like the paragraph immediately above this one.

More lawyer blatherings. Bicycle accidents often due to the negligence of automobile drivers I would change the “often” to “usually” but that’s just because I read thousands of wreck reports every year where drivers “fail to see” cyclists riding the roads in front of them and the cyclists are blamed for somehow developing the ability to become invisible while in front of a car.

A terrorist act against cyclists in the UK. Edinburgh cyclist injured by clothes line strung across cycle path There were 2 clothes-line traps on the path with visual distractions spread on the ground underneath them, this was carefully designed to injure or kill a cyclist on the cycle path.

Infrastructure! news from Oz. Trucks to carry bike safety message Delivery trucks will carry a bill-board sized PSA about not passing too closely to cyclists.

Lifestyle in CA. Downtown Chico businesses support fundraiser for killed bicyclist

Last link is another “revolutionary” hub motor development. Smart Wheel By FlyKly Could Change Everything About Commuting Already known that e-assist bikes could drastically change commutes in the EU and UK, and their e-assist regulations are downright repressive while still allowing e-assist to exist. The big problem is not the bikes, it’s the infrastructure here in the Big PX and sprawl. Back when I was a member of the working world this bike would have barely been able to get me to and from work because of the sprawl here in the Metroplex. And this was after I started bicycle commuting…

And those were all the links about bicycles that gave me fits today.

Billed @€0,02, Opus

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Happy Veteran’s Day to my fellow Vets, and the Feed

I spent today the same way I spend just about every day I don’t spend at home, on the bus for several hours to spend a few minutes getting something done. I left home about 1145 to go to the storage center to pay the rent on the storage unit, then got on the first bus of the day to go meet my wife at the school she works to go with her to a doctor’s appointment we had made consecutive so we could get it all done at once and me pay for it. I returned to Casa de El Poeta at 1945. Time spent riding on a bus or train or waiting on a bus or train 6:50, time actually doing something :50, time eating that caused us to not catch the next train :20. Number of meals eaten while on the road: 2 for me and 1 for Mrs. the Poet. Number of trains not caught 1 for an extra 10 minutes of waiting that would have been canceled out anyway by waiting on the bus we caught anyway even after we stopped to eat. The biggest problem with this was the time spent standing around waiting for the next bus, which was literally over half the total transit time. The DART system does not mesh well with transfers sometimes taking almost an hour depending on the desired direction at the transfer point. The frequency of the bus routes during mid-day travel makes what would be a 1 hour bike trip a 3 hour bus ride after transfers and routing out of the way. Our doctor’s appointment was a block off Walnut Hill Lane, but to get there we had to take a bus from the school to Walnut Hill Station, then a train about 7 miles south and more than halfway to downtown Dallas to catch a bus that meandered back to Walnut Hill Lane and to Walnut Hill/Denton Rd station after waiting a few minutes to catch the bus. Time to go most of the way downtown on the train and back on the bus was just under an hour, but even taking the faster train ride to the Walnut Hill/Denton Rd Station would have netted only waiting for the same bus we would have been riding from the other train station nearly downtown. The problem is frequency of connecting routes and the circuitous routing required to get from one side of town to the other. Unless you get lucky and your starting point and all destinations lie on the same bus or train route most of your transit time is going to be eaten up by transfers and out-of-the-way routing.

Now had I not needed to pay the storage unit rent I could have saved some time and left at 1245 instead of 1145, so the walk and catching the other buses only added an hour to my day, or I should say subtracted about :45 from Doing Something Else.

Up first isn’t a wreck but 2 lots of links asking the same question, one that I keep asking over and over again in this blog. Is It O.K. to Kill Cyclists? and No, it’s never Ok First one from the well-respected NYT, the second from some guy in Oz in response. And this from BikeSnobNYC Shafted Again. And the Economist in the UK The American right-of-way and Treehugger says Is it OK to kill cyclists? You would think so, from the number of drivers who get charged for it.

Cyclists in the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bike want that changed. Cyclist group pushes for change after deadly hit and run If hit-and-run was treated like the real crime it is, then there might be fewer of them.

Cyclists in CO are working to the same ends as FL cyclists. Fort Collins Looks To Reduce Hit & Run Bike Accidents

A drunk driver runs down one cyclist of a pair, leading to the driver’s arrest. 12-year-old Wagoner boy killed by suspected drunk driver and 12-year-old boy riding bike killed in Wagoner Seriously, the only thing keeping WoaB from being on an archipelago in the Gulf of Mexico is how much OK sucks. Nothing the cyclist could have done to avoid the wreck in this case, maybe infrastructure could prevent a similar wreck. Like placing breathalyzer interlocks on ignition switches to keep drunks from becoming drunk drivers, thereby preventing drunk drivers from becoming killers. Chain the driver to the steering wheel of his vehicle as it gets fed to a car shredder.

A CA cyclist gets squished by a multi-ton weapon of mass destruction and all cyclists are blamed for it (go back and read the first paragraph of links again). Bike safety emphasized by Chico police after recent accidents

A cyclist is hit while riding wearing clothes in the Great White North. Cyclist hit by pickup truck in Woodstock Hit-from-behind wreck, use the protocols to avoid and get the infrastructure right to prevent. The narrative makes me angry for blaming the cyclist for wearing clothing and arriving on the scene before the pickup truck. Was the truck not equipped with headlights?

Another wreck in the GWN. Cyclist injured after collision with police car The cyclist “lost control”? Well it is already winter up there so there may have been a temperature-related loss of traction incident. Or the cyclist got buzzed by the police vehicle and the driver was looking for a way to deflect blame. Hit from behind wreck so protocols to avoid and get the infrastructure right to prevent.

A UK driver is blamed for hitting a cyclist from behind. Lorry driver in court accused of killing cyclist on A19 near Hartlepool Go back to that first paragraph of links again…

Infrastructure! news from the UK. Fresh calls for HGV safety measures as cyclist death toll rises – but are stickers and lenses enough?

And those were all the bicycle-related links that gave me fits after I finally got home this evening.

Billed @€0.02, Opus