Mrs. the Poet was sent home from work, and the Feed

I’m sure some of you are expecting something really juicy and scandalous here, but the truth of the matter is Mrs. the Poet has some kind of upper respiratory bug and she got sent home so she didn’t give it to thousands of school kids with their lunches. So it’s a case of preventing “You wanna side of crud with your mystery meat, because you get one anyway.” I am immune of course, probably because I have upper respiratory allergies. Since my immune system is already fighting imaginary battles with live ammunition against pollen actual pathogens are destroyed long before they can cause damage. That’s the good part, the bad part being I feel almost as bad with allergies as I would getting sick except without the fever.

Before I get to the bike links I want to share from one of the online news outlets I sometimes get bike links from to show what I have to wade through to get you your bike news. ‘Star Trek’s Kate Mulgrew on geocentrist film: ‘I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one’ and Pat Robertson asks God to ‘deliver us from this president’ I can see something like that happening just from what little experience I had as a voice-over actor. They only give you your lines to read for these gigs and never let you see the rest of the script. Of course I was voicing funny animals on a cartoon, not reading for a “science” documentary. But back to the point, I wade through hundreds of pages with this kind of stuff on them in headline form to find maybe one or two links a year, because links from outlets like this don’t show in my Feed. And people wonder why I get a little crazy every now and then?

Up first in bike reporting is a hit-from-behind wreck in the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bike. Bicyclist struck and killed in suburban Boca Raton Uhh, what happened?… FL LEO: “We don’t know. It is a strange and perplexing thing that his man is dead and his bike is all trashed and that car has a huge dent in the right front corner. We just do not understand what could have taken place here.” Really?!?! The guy was hit from behind in the bike lane and they can’t figure out what happened? You can see the skid mark where the guy was hit in the video about 6″ to the left of the stripe, between the stripe and the garbage next to the curb. Don’t confuse that with the shadow from the overhead power lines in a similar location. Hit-from-behind protocols might have avoided death or serious injury (there would have been some injury from hitting the curb) and getting the infrastructure right (including keeping tiny old ladies out of very large vehicles) to prevent. And before anyone makes a comment, the driver was shown barely clearing the side windows of a small sedan, there’s no way she could see over the passenger side of the windshield of that full-size “mini” van.

LEO in a different part of the country see things a bit differently. Police: Driver who killed Seattle cyclist may have been chatting Driver hit cyclist at 73 MPH in a 45 zone passing on the right, why do they need to add “chatting on the phone” to the list of transgressions to make a homicide case out of it? The cyclist had no chance to avoid this wreck because his view of the weapon vehicle would have been blocked by the semi that was legally passing him, until the last second before he was hit. Infrastructure would not have helped because the driver of the weapon vehicle was not using the built environment as it was intended, so unless there was a big curb between the bike path and the motor lanes he would have been hit anyway.

A bit south video from the on-board camera was the key in breaking a bus wreck that hit 3 cyclists, and killed one of them. Cyclist Hit by North County Bus Reaches Settlement I saw the video from the front of the bus, and the cyclists were riding in a straight line right where they got hit, and the bus never deviated from its path either. The driver swore he was making a safe pass when the cyclists “swerved” in front of him, which I will say is probably the way he remembers it. But it just isn’t the way it happened. You can see there was a steel rail to the right of the cyclists that took away any option for using the hit-from-behind protocols to avoid any part of this wreck.

Ted Rogers got the same memo about the Camp Pendleton bike wreck settlement plus a few more today. Morning Links: Settlement in Camp Pendleton bus collision could have far reaching bike benefits

A cyclist in the Great White North was hit because he wasn’t wearing a helmet. Cyclist seriously injured after collision on Park Avenue Seriously, it’s in the sub-head. The narrative says the cyclist was hit by an eastbound vehicle as he was making a left turn but fails to give the initial direction of travel for the cyclist. It does show a collapsed windshield on the weapon vehicle which indicates a bit of speed from that vehicle. The Street View of the location shows a signal-controlled intersection, but the narrative fails to say which vehicle was violating the right of way and ignoring the traffic control. And seriously this one could go either way, cyclist making a left is hit after the light changes before he could clear the intersection, or the cyclist jumped the red to try to beat cross traffic. Anyway, intersection protocols to avoid or to mitigate injury, and get the infrastructure up to Dutch to prevent.

I keep telling you guys, Don’t Hit The Pedestrians! Because cyclists hitting pedestrians get bigger fines than drivers that do the same thing in the same place. Cyclist fined over footpath collision This cyclist got essentially the same fine as a driver got for killing a cyclist last year, shameful.

MO cyclists defeat an amendment to a bill that would have cut all bicycle spending from the transportation budget. UPDATED: Missouri Pols Launch Sneak Attack on Bike Funding and Bicycle Ban Amendment Defeated: Cyclists Celebrate “Victory of the Decade” Note that there is still no money allocated for cycling, but we are celebrating not being completely excluded from the process.

We celebrate such tiny victories in this country. On The “Protected” M Street Cycletrack I posit this is because otherwise we have nothing to celebrate at all. See the previous paragraph for an example of celebrating “nothing at all”.

A much better writer than me nails the existential problem with cars in an urban environment. Miserable subway passengers, a grouchy runner – and a lesson from Bob Dylan There is the problem in a nutshell, drivers are emotionally cut off from the environment while still being physically a part of it. You have your sound-proofing, AC, tinted window glass, and stereo system with amplifier, that completely isolates you from interacting with anyone else in the environment, while you guide more than 2 tons of deadly force through that environment. Drivers have no empathy because they have nothing to empathise with or to.

How can we reduce the number of trips made by cars? Cutting Car Reliance, One Trip at a Time

Where to have your next Time Trial event. Bike fun to close runway If you happen to have a nearby airport that has to accommodate trans-ocean airliners but has little traffic otherwise for hours at a time, there’s your very flat out-and-back time trial course.

A less-happy kind of ride nearby. Hamilton Cycle Death Memorial Ride This is not part of the world-wide Ride of Silence movement but a local to Enn Zed action.

When the Big One hits, or even a local Little One, a bike can be your best choice for mobility. When the Big One Hits, We’ll Be Mobile Add to this the news that when the quake and tsunami that shut down the Fukushima nuclear plant the only thing moving in some places was the local bicycle fleet. There was no gas or fuel for busses, and the train tracks were too damaged to run the trains for from days to months depending on the location and how close it was to the epicenter. A few trucks could bring in food and a little fuel that was only used to get the trucks back out for more food, not for local transport. Many places were otherwise completely shut off until train service was restored up to a year later.

Could the solution to the hit-from-behind problem be letting drivers know that thing in front of them is not moving very fast and they should change lanes? Found … the solution to safer urban cycling – Behavioural science cracks problem of cyclist blind spots for drivers with Brainy Bike Lights I’m linking the article for your information but I think these lights are useful only as lights and will not cause drivers to magically develop a heart and brain.

When urban transportation designers use bad clip art to illustrate their infrastructure it makes it look bad and not get built. Why can’t we get visualisations right?

The progenitors of my current bike. A bakfiets compilation I must say I rather like the DHL bikes with their large, apparently lockable boxes. Also the woman in the video with the three kids in the box and another in a seat on the back… busy lady!

Last link, when you still want to get more exercise than using a cart but you don’t have the time to walk a round of golf there’s this thing. Vail Golf Club to offer third option for golfers — Golf Bike It looks like it has 20 X 3″ tires to reduce turf damage and a 6-speed freewheel for getting up those short, sharp hills on golf courses.

And those were all the links that gave me fits and giggles today. Less fits and more giggles today, that was nice.

Billed @€0.02, Opus