SHADES OF JADE
Marc Johnson

ECM

What's the commotion all about?

Chandra over at GreenComotion seems excited.

Why "bike-boxes" fail.

One of the "innovations" that organizations like Portland's Alta+Design Group are promoting, in their quest for completely segregating bicycles from normal traffic flow, are "bike boxes". The perceived need for these has come about because of the high number of "right hook" collisions between motor vehicles and cyclists in bike lanes, often fatal. A "right hook" occurs when a motor vehicle turning right collides with a straight-through cyclist traveling between the motor vehicle and the curb.

Portland has experienced several of these, including some rather gruesome fatalities, when cyclists attempting to pass inside turning trucks (in the truck's blind spot), were caught in and beneath the trucks' wheels.

These were "deaths by design", as Portland's bike lane design essentially caused the collisions. Rather than admit the fatal flaw, more paint was deemed the remedy.

It isn't.

I can already hear the fear-mongers and segregationists screaming.

R.A. Featherston

...but as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Ed Wagner explains.

Bike-Ped-Pod-People.

They came from an Alta-net Reality! ;-)

Cyclist on cyclist violence?

At 15 seconds into the piece, Mr. Barker points out one of my problems with the so-called "Safe Passing Law" that excluded cyclists from the provisions of the proposed law.

This is a surprisingly even-handed piece. Just imagine what it would have sounded like the reporter interviewed runners instead of other cyclists?

Note: While a cyclist pictured did indeed run a stop sign, saying they "cut off" an SUV is a little over the top. As in most other locations, my recommendation is that trails should have YIELD signs instead of STOP signs. Had the trail sign been a "yield" instead of a "stop", the cyclist would have been seen executing a legal merge.

Some days...

An old friend called me today. He looked up my phone number by entering my name and the word "cycling" in Google. He was shocked. "There's a bunch of cycling-Nazis out there!" he said, in amazement.

I got home, placed some Brad Mehldau on the stereo, poured myself a big iced tea, and found the following message in my Cycle*Dallas inbox:

Ron has left a new comment on your post "The Dallas Run: a seven-fold revelation":

Thank you for posting these videos. I'm a schoolteacher, today was my first day back to work, and I cycled the 20-mile round trip from home to school and back following the model of the cyclists in the video (as well as the advice you give on this blog). In case you're curious: I live in Houston and work in Katy. My route takes me on Westheimer Road, Westheimer Parkway, and Fry Road. I've ridden the route before, but I've always hung pretty close to the curb on Westheimer Parkway and road. Today, I took the lane, and every car moved into the other lane before passing. Granted, a couple of them laid on the horn, but I can deal with that. I don't remember how I found your blog in the first place, but I'm happy I found it, and I'm delighted to have had such a good ride on busy streets today!

Posted by Ron to C y c l e * D a l l a s at 6:35 PM

It's really that simple, and that's why I do this. Another person set free from the dangerous self-imprisonment of fear-governed cycling.

Encouraging people to discover the freedom and safety that vehicular cycling affords, in the face of the pervasive Cycling Inferiority campaign currently masquerading as "advocacy", is something I believe is important.

Plus, I get to fight segregationists, fascists, and fear-mongers... just like the old days. ;-)

APBP

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

- Upton Sinclair