Twelve years gone

I moved this blog over from MySpace November 23 2008. That makes twelve years since I did the move. I had been looking for a new place to home the blog since MySpace started censoring the blog for having too many links, back when I was reporting on bike wrecks by linking to articles on other sites that had first or second-hand reports about people getting hit on bicycles. I’m not going to say I was in any way responsible, but this was shortly before MySpace went down the proverbial tubes.

Twelve years, at least eight of which I spent mired in virtual gore and broken lives, trying futilely to keep what happened to me from happening to other people. It might not have been futile, I might have saved one or two people from getting hit because of my protocols for not getting hit. But that was only a drop in the bucket, comparatively. Thousands of people still got hit every year and had their lives permanently altered, and almost never for the better. Hundreds more had their lives ended every year. And that was just in the US. It felt like I was swimming upstream in a Mississippi of blood, and I had to stop for my own mental health.

Which brings us to the current phase of the blog. I almost never mention bicycles, because I’m still not quite over when I got hit on mine. As you might have noticed I’m letting another old obsession run wild, my obsession with hot rods. I used to be a sports car racer way back when, and there has been some cross-pollination between the two cultures with my favorite competition, autocross, becoming the “new thing” for hot rodders as shown with the Optima Ultimate Street Car Battle, and Goodguys Rod and Custom shows, and minor or major gatherings of hot rodders all over the country having autocrosses as part of the show. I used to be pretty good at autocross, winning class and placing high overall, so this time I’m planning on building the type of car I’ve wanted since 1968 to run the type of racing I was good at since the early 1980s, with a few touches of my own. The biggest “touch” is an exo-skeleton frame inspired by sprint cars, mostly because the rectangular tube ladder frame of most T-buckets had the torsional stiffness of cooked pasta and was very heavy for what you got in structure, and the suspensions that you got from most kits was rudimentary at best, with high roll centers and a habit of jacking the inside rear tire during hard cornering causing a sudden transition from plowing understeer to oversteer in the blink of an eye. Not the vehicle for making FTOD runs on an autocross course. And putting a roll cage on for safety made putting the body on an exercise in full scale building ships in bottles.

So, there you have it. A nutshell look at where we came from, where we are, and maybe where we are going.

Advertisement

I have found a 3D printer I can use for making parts for the Mini Sprint-T, and the Feed

OK one of the minor problems I have been facing building the Mini Sprint-T as a mockup for the full size car has been things like steering boxes, and brake discs in the right diameter, and power steering pumps and brackets. But I have found place that will let me make 3D printed 1/25 bits for $50 and the cost of materials, provided I can find or create a CAD file in the .dwg format, or a half-dozen or so other formats this printer understands. I could even make bits to make the front wheels turn and roll by printing spindles as well as hubs. Or using a printed spindle to cast a metal one that would make the wheels roll better.

Up first because reasons is the gun tragedy in CO. Two women and a cyclist killed after heavily armed gunman opened fire in downtown of Colorado spot voted ‘America’s best place to live’ and Colorado Springs neighborhood honors cyclist who was shot, killed also Cyclist begged for life while Colorado gunman fired I have been exposed to gun violence, to motor vehicle violence, and been the victim of a hate crime (someone thought I was a Mexican because I spoke fluent Spanish and rode my bike for transportation), but I have never seen this kind of depraved indifference to human life.

Getting to the rest of the stories with multiple links we get this drunk driver running over a MD couple on a tandem bike. Two Montgomery cyclists killed while on their tandem bike and 2 bicyclists hit & killed by drunk driver in Md. also Loved ones remember cyclists killed by possibly drunk driver Stories like this remind me of why I want to put drunk drivers back behind the wheels of their beloved vehicles for one last trip, through a car shredder. The cyclists were wearing about as much HiViz as a humans can wear and riding in bright sunshine but that didn’t keep the wasted driver from running right into them.

Hit-and-run in NV. Police Looking for Driver Who Hit and Killed Bicyclist and Bicyclist struck and killed by vehicle in Reno The narrative is hit-from-behind and then a hit-and-run. The ways to avoid a hit-from-behind are in the protocols link at the top of the page. The careful mention in both links of the cyclist’s lights are a clue that the cyclist was equipped well beyond the legal minimums, which means that the driver may have either fixated or deliberately targeted the cyclist.

From CA we get this hit-from-behind wreck. Cyclist killed in Road 99 collision and Coroner identifies Davis bicyclist killed in collision with SUV The narrative is interesting. It reads like the driver saw oncoming traffic first and slightly fixated on that and just didn’t process the cyclist out there on the shoulder/right side of the lane until just before impact. Since there was no mention about the cyclist’s lights and reflectors we have to assume they were there and operational because if they weren’t you know there would have been mention of that fact, prominent mention. The cyclist was not far to the right over on the shoulder that was just barely there, but might not have been far enough out into the lane for the driver to see him. The fact remains that the driver chose to hit the cyclist over moving into the other lane with oncoming traffic, a common trope among carhead internet commenters who don’t seem to realize there is such a thing as a brake pedal.

While we are in CA how about some Daily Ted? Morning Links: A reminder to lock your bike the right way, more kind people, and citing Cedillo as a bike expert

Why did this driver “lose control” and drive into a group of Halloween revellers? Halloween Tragedy: 3 Killed, 4 Injured When Driver Crashes Into Trick Or Treaters In The Bronx “No criminality suspected”

In the most deadliest state in US to walk or ride a bike we get a demonstration of “why”. Seminole woman hit, killed while riding bicycle The driver was crossing the sidewalk while not looking where he was going or for any traffic on the sidewalk at all.

Still in FL, a driver “forgets” how to change lanes to pass. Cyclist killed in Melbourne incident Several drivers saw and passed safely before the weapon vehicle ran over the cyclist from behind. The cyclist was doing it right, not her fault the driver forgot how to drive.

Over in Bayou Country an allegedly ninja cyclist is hit from behind. Lake Charles bicyclist killed in accident Not getting lighted like a Christmas tree is not an excuse for driving faster than you can stop in the distance you can see clearly in the light from your headlights. Still, lights and reflectors people, they can save your life.

PA cyclist is chased down and shot (?!?) POLICE ID TEEN KILLED ON BICYCLE IN STRAWBERRY MANSION

Over in IL there were 4 minor bike wrecks in one day. La Grange police blotter: Bike rider gets clipped, escapes injury

GA gets a USBR. U.S. Bike Route 21 will be one of the first of its kind in America If you want to ride from Cleveland to Atlanta via Chattanooga USBR 21 is your way to go. Not the shortest route, but the one route where drivers will be expecting to see cyclists.

Mapping where drivers and cyclists almost hit will predict where they actually do hit. Mapping Safer Streets for Bicyclists, Pedestrians in Portland This is important because the difference between a scare with no contact and a fatality can be fractions of an inch. Do something about the scares and you don’t have to worry about the fractions of an inch.

WY wants to fix their infrastructure so they don’t lose any tourists. Bike benefit bill ready to go to Wyoming House

Remembering a fallen PA cyclist. Cyclists remember Taylor Banks during memorial ride

Another SWCC wreck in the Great White North. Cyclist critically injured in Parc Avenue collision You can look at that bike and tell the driver does not have a firm grasp on reality. Can’t LEO look at a bike and see the directionality of the impact? Or is that a skill that I developed on my own?

Nothing a cyclist can do about a car on your side of the street, even in the GWN. Cyclist killed in head-on collision near Quebec City “The jaws of life were necessary to free the driver from his vehicle” says more about the severity of this wreck than I ever can.

After creating a controversy with the 3 month limit for ghost bikes they want to make a permanent memorial. Ghost bike debate: Permanent memorial for cyclists proposed. That’s wonderful, but a permanent memorial to killed cyclists does nothing to alert drivers about bad intersections or other bad infrastructure that gets cyclists killed by motor vehicles.

LEO have the time of a hit-and-run death down to a very tiny window. Police have narrowed time when cyclist killed to five minute window It sure seems like this has been a bad weekend for bicycles in the Great White North. More Brampton cyclist fell, then was run over by transport truck: police OK buzz job and then fell under the rear wheels of the truck. Why do they have to find ways of blaming the cyclist for falling first when Occam’s Razor says he got hit by the truck and run over?

Jolly Olde reacts to the US Bishop going to prison for killing a cyclist while driving drunk. Seven years for bishop who killed cyclist while driving drunk and texting

More on the driver who assaulted a kid with his car and was barely given a tap on the wrist. Motorist jailed for chasing down and hitting teenage cyclist in his car

A cycling hazard that’s unique to Oz. Cyclist seriously hurt after hitting kangaroo at Victor Habor There was a song popular when I was a kid that seems appropriate here.

Another one gets hit in Enn Zed. Cyclist seriously injured after being struck by car The cyclist was either hooked or crossed, from the damage to the weapon vehicle my money is on “crossed”. You can see the imprint of the handlebars in the doorskin leaning away from the direction of travel with obvious impact damage to the quarter window behind the door.

And I’m finally out of links today.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet

I am going to be boring on NYE, and the Feed

Yep, I’m doing an “old folks” NYE tonight. Not even any carbonated apple cider tonight to toast in the New Year. Just watching the TV and kissing Mrs. the Poet at midnight. Yep, that’s real exciting…<yawn> Not many links today but I’m going to get through this as fast as possible so I am not at the computer when 2014 ends and 2015 begins.

Opening up with Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Fat tire biking the Iditarod trail, Aussie ped safety video and best wishes for a happy New Year

An infrastructure related wreck shows why people at the front of a group ride it’s better to alert trailing riders. This one was sent to me on Facebook. Expect the Unexpected on a group ride! It takes a quarter of a second for your average human to see and identify a potential threat and begin to react to it, and you can see that was about the same amount of time the second rider had to see the debris after it came into view around the lead cyclist.

Once again the “justice system” fails to ensure justice in the Great White North. Day parole continues for drunk driver who killed cyclist The driver was sentenced to 6 years and a lifetime driving ban, now I wonder how “lifetime” that ban will be in light of how little time he actually spent in prison. It’s looking like he will be driving about the time he was supposed to be walking out of prison.

To solve a problem you first must define the problem. This is a major step towards defining the problem in DC. Map: Here’s Where Pedestrians and Cyclists Were Struck This Year The standard technique is to look for “clusters” of wrecks and see what the infrastructure looks like, then identifying potential sources of conflict that might lead to wrecks, then systematically removing those sources of conflict. It doesn’t always work that way, because many times there are certain parameters that can’t be violated, usually causing any disturbance in vehicle speed is verboten.

Some fun news from the UK. Worthing chosen to host cycling series Yep putting steeply banked turns facing each other on opposite sides of the street looks like more fun then the law allows.

And another link to the story that bikes make more jobs than cars in Europe. Cycling Is Creating More Jobs in Europe Than Automakers Are in the U.S.

And that’s it, I’m outta links.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet