Canada's most dangerous city for cyclists

On 5/4/2013 1:21 AM, Dan O wrote:
On May 3, 10:04 pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On May 3, 3:42 pm, "(PeteCresswell)" wrote:



Per Andre Jute:
But I think nothing of riding on the pavement to keep safe in places where the traffic is too heavy and traveling too fast. Even without malice most people here don't know how wide/long their cars and especially vans are.
A close-family-member-who-shall-remain-unnamed has no idea whatsoever -
zero, zilch, bupkis, nada... - where their left wheels are when driving
an automobile. Potholes that are way beyond the ghost line, curbs...
you name it. The right-side tires on that car really catch hell. Woe
be undo the poor cyclist....
That plus knowing that cell phone use, texting while driving, and doing
email while driving have become significantly-common informs my riding
today.
My suspicion is that the rules for safe riding are still evolving and
were not formulated in the context of, for instance, the study by
somebody somewhere that indicated 30 percent of people under 30 years of
age admitting to texting while driving within the last 30 days.
Couple years back, a guy I windsurfed with got his while riding the
shoulder of a flat, dead-straight stretch of road. Seemed like the
only plausible explanation was the driver of the pickup truck texting,
dialing, or emailing.
One pertinent question is, to get the attention of a texting driver,
is it better to be at the edge of the road, in a territory they
generally ignore? Or is it better to be closer to lane center, where
they have to look from time to time to stay on course?

Are you ****ing kidding me? It's better to be in the middle of the
lane to be safe from inattentive drivers?

Well that's really what another Frank that I respect much more than this
one refers to as the "crux of the biscuit" and I don't mean the
apostrophe. Andre has a much more lucid comment about that below but
for me that "take the lane to avoid being hit by inattentive drivers" is
the height of ignorance and clear evidence of ignoring reality to
propagate some cultist bull****. I seriously hope that no children are
injured following these instructions.

Per Dan O:
Remember my story about "Aunt Bea" with the flowery hat and her trike
parading down the main road in the farming community? Well, just the
other day I'm coming through the same stretch of road, notice cars
coming to a complete stop. What is it this time? A whale of a lady
salmon riding her crappy MTB the wrong way up the lane - both hands on
the same side of the bars trying to unscrew the cap on her soda.

Devil's Advocate Question: Doesn't the definition of "Salmon" depend on
speed? Seems like, below a certain speed, somebody on a bike is just
another pedestrian or jogger - albeit with somewhat diminished lateral
mobility.
--
Pete Cresswell

Per AMuzi:

What should this rider have done differently?
http://preview.tinyurl.com/dxunqmd

Not ridden that stretch? Ridden it on the dirt instead of on the
pavement?

Maybe it's the camera angle, but it looked to me like there was less
than 18" of pavement outside of the ghost line, maybe less than 10" -
and that the riders were on or to the left of the ghost line with some
enough vertical drop between the pavement and the dirt by the side of
the road to be a problem for a road bike.

Given blind curves, no shoulder to retreat to, single-lane, and traffic
closing at speed diffs of 50+, it looks like a risky proposition.

What happens when two semis go head-to-head with a rider in the mix?
--
Pete Cresswell

On Sunday, May 5, 2013 3:34:11 AM UTC+1, Dan O wrote:
On May 4, 4:16 pm, wrote:

On Saturday, May 4, 2013 6:06:12 PM UTC-4, Jay Beattie wrote:



Road crashes often have nothing to do with cars, traffic, vehicular



cycling or traffic skills. They have more to do with snow and ice and



other crap on the road.



You're correct, most bike crashes by far are caused by problems with pavement. We have only two wheels. We have to watch where we put them.



Here's a graphic showing overall crash causes on the left, car-bike crashes in more detail on the right:http://www.labreform.org/blunders/crash-charts.gif



And yes, as someone said earlier, there are lots of bike-bike crashes. Watch who you ride with.



Many times its the bad-boy, salmoning, wheelji



king cyclists who can cope best with lost traction. The hand signal



and flippy-flaggers go down.



The careful riders may go down IF they get themselves into a lost traction situation. But I think any honest count will show wheelie kings crashing much more than careful riders.





Duh. While "careful riders" may have more problems handling a bike, a

couple of crashes is probably the most it would take to get most of

them off the bike for good (not wheelie king, though), and even if

they *do* hang in and keep riding, they're *never* going to understand

the reward that wheelie king risks crasjhing for.



One way to put it might be this: A person crashes at the moment his risk-taking demands more than his physical skill.





Or his luck (which he pushes)... or his judgment of conditions (which

he also demands *much* more of than more "careful riders")... or...

(I'm giving this too much time already, but the point is you'd better

stick to the shallow end of the pool when discussing crashing.)



So the wheelie king, in search of "Lookit me!" glory, takes more and more risks to practice being on the edge more and more. Eventually, he can raise his skill to the Hans Rey level, and if it becomes necessary, can use that skill to avoid a crash.



OTOH, a wise old guy can say "That's dumb. I'm just going to learn to read the road surface, read traffic, be careful and ride within my existing skills." If he's good enough at that, he'll probably crash far less than Mister Trickster.





Correct. Risk / Reward. Different strokes for different folks.



Let's look at it another way: Mr. Trickster might easily be able to

outperform wise old guy at his own game (though almost certainly not

the other way 'round) - don't you think? So who's the more competent

bike rider. It's merely a matter of purposes.



Heck, Mr. Trickster may even acknowledge wise old guy's acumen at wise

old guy's particular purpose. Can wise old guy acknowledge Mr.

Trickster must also know a thing or two - that in fact Mr. Trickster's

activities are many times more demanding of "watching the development

of situations in traffic, and acting tactically", etc.?



It would seem that wise old guy cannot.



snip





And I know that there are bound to be people reading this who will refuse to believe it. But time after time after time I've talked or corresponded with dedicated vehicular cyclists who have learned it all just WORKS. Again, Keri Caffrey mentions this in that talk I linked to earlier. We just have so few problems compared to people who think they must defer to drivers, hug the curb, seek out special infrastructure, etc.





Hmm... the subject seems to have veered to the polar opposite of

wheelie king; now you're on about "careful riders".



Ride note: sunny and beautiful here in PDX about 80F, big east wind



-- I mean blow you over big.



Great weather and east winds here too, although they can't be the same wind. I was flying along to the hardware store today, and grinding my way back upwind on the way home. Wildflowers are out in the Forest, and we saw three young Great Horned Owls today. A beautiful time of year.





I remember one day riding home in a ferocious sidewind (not a nice,

sunny day, either - but a cold, ~wet, nasty one) - complete with hard,

sudden gusts. It was bad enough that I crossed over the far other

(wrong) side of the four-lane divided highway so that if I was picked

up and blown away it wouldn't be into the high speed motor traffic.



Yeah, it's a beautiful time of year (here in N America) - on that we

can agree :-)

--

Cheers... and regards

You're wasting your time, Dan, trying to educate Krygo. That man is absolutely, totally, utterly, irredeemably risk-averse, and too thick to grasp that no one can totally avoid risk (a separate point Andrew Muzi has already made very strongly), and that playing with risk might be a worthwhile thrill.. Krygoswki already lives a life drained of glee. It makes him ineducable. I laughed out loud when I read he went on courses to learn something; I bet the lecturers got utterly fed-up with Franki-boy claiming to know more than they did.

Mind you, I admire your persistence. But, if you won, it would be an exception to the nature of idiocy, as so perfectly realized in the person of Krygowski. Such successes against idiocy are so few and far between, that statistically they are negligible (a technical way of saying nil, nada, zilch, won't happen in this life).

Andre Jute
I almost became an actuary. But I preferred to take my own risks.

On Sunday, May 5, 2013 1:07:26 PM UTC+1, Duane Hébert wrote about Frank Krygowski's riding advice:

for me that "take the lane to avoid being hit by inattentive drivers" is

the height of ignorance and clear evidence of ignoring reality to

propagate some cultist bull****. I seriously hope that no children are

injured following these instructions.

Ditto. Well said, Duane.

Andre Jute

On Sunday, May 5, 2013 3:09:29 AM UTC+1, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Sat, 04 May 2013 11:50:03 -0400, "(PeteCresswell)"

wrote:



Now I take pains to wear a bright red jacket or shirt.



Red is too dull. I wear taxicab orange -- but only because

fabricstore.com didn't have any lime-yellow linen.



--

Joy Beeson

joy beeson at comcast dot net

http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/

The above message is a Usenet post.

I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.

My cycling jacket is bright sunshine yellow.

Unfortunately, the typical hedge beside the road where I live is gorse, which flowers profusely all year round in precisely that shade of yellow...

Andre Jute

Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Thursday, May 2, 2013 9:02:09 PM UTC-4, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
Whilst the article is interesting it's the comments below it that really
get me thinking. It's amazing how many people think that bicyclists do
NOT belong on the roads. Also interesting how many bicyclists delight in
flaunting the Rules of the Road whenever it pleases tthem.



http://ca.autos.yahoo.com/news/canad...141704036.html



Cheers

Hmm, so many interesting posts. I don't know which one to comment on.

Here's the thing I find interesting. The only time I ever had a collision
with another vehicle whilst riding my bicycle it was because an idiot
bicyclist going the WRONG way zoomed out of a quiet side street to cross
a busy multi-lane road (multiple lanes both) ways. There was absolutely
no way to avoid hitting this cretin. The corner of the street he exited
from in the WRONG direction was also a blind corner.

I do not have nearly the same number of close calls with motorists that I
do with bicyclists. At nightstealth bicyclists will ride along the
sidewalk and then suddenly move onto the roadway. I've even had them do a
90 degree turn in order to sprint from the sidealk to a store across the street.

So many times I've seen a bicyclist appear seemingly out of nowhere
(wormhole? Time warp?) in a manner that no other road user would expect.

As a motor vehicle passenger I have seen bicyclists doing trackstands at
an intersection and their front wheel is wobling a bit on its contact
point with the road. Almost without fail the non bicyclist driver says on
or more of the following: "What the H**l is he doing? Where's he going?
Is he going straight or is he going to turn?"

A lot of bicyclist ride as if they were surrounded by tank steel. They
think they are invincible.

It would be very nice if all road users were to behave in a manner that
is predictable to other road users. That is, save the acrobatics for the
streets when they are empty of traffic not in the midst of a rush hour.

Cheers

Agreed. My riding rules are to be visible, predictable and legal. While the
three are hardly ever contradictory, I think I would also prioritize them
in that order too.

On May 5, 5:31 am, "(PeteCresswell)" wrote:
Per Dan O:

Remember my story about "Aunt Bea" with the flowery hat and her trike
parading down the main road in the farming community? Well, just the
other day I'm coming through the same stretch of road, notice cars
coming to a complete stop. What is it this time? A whale of a lady
salmon riding her crappy MTB the wrong way up the lane - both hands on
the same side of the bars trying to unscrew the cap on her soda.

Devil's Advocate Question: Doesn't the definition of "Salmon" depend on
speed? Seems like, below a certain speed, somebody on a bike is just
another pedestrian or jogger - albeit with somewhat diminished lateral
mobility.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.b...85fa2c2a28cca5

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.b...e35e761890cf75

On Saturday, May 4, 2013 9:48:14 PM UTC-4, AMuzi wrote:


I don't want to beat this to death, but really knowledge,

awareness, preparation and skill are sonmetimes simply not

sufficient given the anomalies and vicissitudes of traffic:



http://subscriber.dailyherald.com/story/?id=291185



She was properly stopped at the stop line but dead anyway. I

had close friends who died in absolutely rider-unavoidable

conditions with zero, truly zero, rider fault.

Of course people are sometimes killed or seriously injured despite every skill and precaution. That happens in countless activities, even (as you cited above) sitting on a stopped motorcycle. Nothing new there.

That doesn't change the facts that 1) the benefits of regular cycling greatly outweigh the risks, as proven by every study ever done on that topic; and 2) cyclists with more competence are far less likely to be injured or killed compared to "average" cyclists.

Bicycling is not very dangerous. It does us no good to pretend it is.

- Frank Krygowski

On May 5, 5:07 am, Duane Hébert wrote:
On 5/4/2013 1:21 AM, Dan O wrote:



On May 3, 10:04 pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On May 3, 3:42 pm, "(PeteCresswell)" wrote:

Per Andre Jute:
But I think nothing of riding on the pavement to keep safe in places where the traffic is too heavy and traveling too fast. Even without malice most people here don't know how wide/long their cars and especially vans are.
A close-family-member-who-shall-remain-unnamed has no idea whatsoever -
zero, zilch, bupkis, nada... - where their left wheels are when driving
an automobile. Potholes that are way beyond the ghost line, curbs....
you name it. The right-side tires on that car really catch hell. Woe
be undo the poor cyclist....
That plus knowing that cell phone use, texting while driving, and doing
email while driving have become significantly-common informs my riding
today.
My suspicion is that the rules for safe riding are still evolving and
were not formulated in the context of, for instance, the study by
somebody somewhere that indicated 30 percent of people under 30 years of
age admitting to texting while driving within the last 30 days.
Couple years back, a guy I windsurfed with got his while riding the
shoulder of a flat, dead-straight stretch of road. Seemed like the
only plausible explanation was the driver of the pickup truck texting,
dialing, or emailing.
One pertinent question is, to get the attention of a texting driver,
is it better to be at the edge of the road, in a territory they
generally ignore? Or is it better to be closer to lane center, where
they have to look from time to time to stay on course?

Are you ****ing kidding me? It's better to be in the middle of the
lane to be safe from inattentive drivers?

Well that's really what another Frank that I respect much more than this
one refers to as the "crux of the biscuit" and I don't mean the
apostrophe. Andre has a much more lucid comment about that below but
for me that "take the lane to avoid being hit by inattentive drivers" is
the height of ignorance and clear evidence of ignoring reality to
propagate some cultist bull****. I seriously hope that no children are
injured following these instructions.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.b...402dc46e0a0224