Interesting weather here in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell. Normally when we get rain we get tons of water falling from the sky for a few minutes and then it’s over. Today it was grey and drizzly all morning and never really did rain. Sure the ground is wet and there are puddles where we normally get puddles, but we didn’t get small rivers in the streets or parking lot lakes like a “normal” rain. I have taken to wearing my “slippers” today because that thing on the bottom of my foot decided to start hurting from the moment I set foot to floor and I just don’t feel like dealing with physical pain today to have to constantly be meditating away pain. I would rather just not be in pain to begin with. These are my slippers I made last year.
Up first is a NYC cyclist getting doored on video. Here’s What Getting Doored Looks Like From A Cyclist’s Perspective Notice parking to the left and traffic to the right and the taxi pulled over just outside the bike lane so that the door zone completely covers the bike lane. No escape route, but at least the cyclist was blocked from getting tossed into traffic by ht presence of cars on both sides of the bike lane. This is 100% infrastructure caused and prevented. Get the bike lanes up to CROW standards instead of AASHTO or NACTO sub-standards and nobody gets hurt. That sounds like a threat, doesn’t it? OMG am I part of the Spandex Mafia? 😀
Again I wonder how many people actually saw the cyclist running this red light in CA. Cyclist hurt in crash after running red light OK, assuming the report is accurate and not just profiling, intersection protocols to avoid or reduce damages. Since the cyclist or the driver was not using the built environment as designed I’m not convinced that changing the infrastructure will prevent a repeat of this wreck, but I do know that it would prevent other wrecks.
Another CA wreck, this time bicycle on ped. Mill Valley calls for shared path safety measures after child injured in collision with cyclist Don’t hit the pedestrians. I find it interesting to note that both the cyclist and the kid were hospitalized in this wreck, as would be expected for a bike-ped wreck, and unlike motor vehicle-bike or -ped wrecks either of which can be fatal and neither of which will cause the slightest injury to the driver. And don’t hit the pedestrians, especially when they are kids.
More on the UK cyclist killed when he flipped his bike over a chain blocking a bike path. Caernarfon cyclist Rhodri Hughes-Jones was a ‘mature and careful rider’ Now it seems the HiViz added to the chain was done after the death of the cyclist and in low light with a person with poor night vision like some older people that black painted chain would be about as visible as the dark side of the moon. Actually less, because you can take that Pink Floyd album to a more brightly lighted area of the store.
Wonder of wonders, another UK wreck report with actual usable information in it. Villagers worried about road danger after cyclist crash in Stockbridge So either a trailer malfunction or just wider than the tow vehicle combined with a cyclist having to dodge road defects leads to a hit-from-behind wreck with serious injuries. You know the drill by now, protocols were made moot by the pothole the cyclist had to go around, leaving getting the infrastructure “up to Dutch” to prevent.
More on the cyclist hit while waiting for traffic to clear to make a turn in Oz. Foreign student, 22, dies in truck collision at South Brisbane I dunno if I should point this out, but you can see the blood trail from the cyclist’s getting dragged through the intersection by the rear trailer of the tandem semi that hit her. And this article on the sub-standard standard used to build the intersection. Council warned of Annerley Road bike danger zone before fatal crash This is exactly why the UK has a corporate manslaughter charge for people doing things as heads of companies or governmental bodies that do things that get people killed after being advised against doing those exact things. And in this case a defense will be made using “appeal to authority” of the road standards. And where standards are clearly crap, as in this case where no provision was made for cyclists wanting to turn right (the thinking went “but they could just go an extra block and go around that block and end up pointed in the direction they want to go” after riding 4 blocks farther than someone would have to drive) not even the drive on the left version of the Copenhagen left flopped mirror image to make it a right. No, I think that in this case someone wanted to kill a cyclist, but they wanted someone else’s hands to have the actual blood on them. More Trucks ‘wheels of mass destruction’ to cyclists Laying it on a little thick, but no major mistruths there. Still more. Bikes rule the roads: Cyclists may be allowed to run red lights and cars banned from entering bike lanes and last link to the subject Bicycle Tasmania president questions laws proposed to protect cyclists
My vote for the most bizarre headline in a linked article for this blog in 2014. Waikato cycle crashes: Police urge drivers to be more social The article explains this statement, which sounds utterly absurd in a vacuum, but makes sense in the article. All three of the wrecks were caused by impatient or oblivious drivers. Of the new wrecks both were intersection related so protocols to avoid and infrastructure to fix.
Our Daily Ted. Today’s post, in which I take the day off. And am very grateful I still can. Today was Ted’s version of his Death Day.
And Infrastructure! news that was emailed directly to me by the USDoT. U.S. Transportation Secretary Foxx Announces New Initiative to Enhance Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Yes, I’m signed up as an accredited bicycle journalist with the DoT, so their standards for what constitutes a “bicycle journalist” must not be too high or I would be in the dark, too. 😉 And I see that the press release went live about 24 hours before I got the e-mail about it, which goes to show that while they consider me to be a “bicycle journalist” they don’t consider me important enough to inform me about press releases prior to them being released…
And… this… Jessamine judge decides Nicholasville Road bicycle commuter violated law Basically what the judge is saying is that if there is any pavement to the right of a cyclist then the cyclist is wrong… and the fitness for riding of that pavement is not part of the question.
A little Lifestyle that I whole-heartedly support. Wounded Warriors find support while cycling
Another e-assist article. Electric bikes gaining traction globally Yay!
And those were all the links that gave me fits or giggles about bicycles. There were a lot more links that gave me fits, but not about bicycles.
Billed @€0.02, Opus the unkillable badass Poet
Witch on a Bicycle 