AG: Aunt Granny's Advice, or How to become an elderly cyclist:

On 11/20/2014 9:16 AM, Rolf Mantel wrote:
Am 20.11.2014 15:08, schrieb dgk:
The type A
who insists on running in the center is a big problem since we don't
know which side to pass on.

I solve this by calling out loud 'Which side an I supposed to pass on?'
while I'm still far enough away to react on their decision; normal
pedestrians get a 'Hi' or 'Good day' or equivalent.


Usually it's not the runners who bother me as they seem to keep to one
side. It's the inline skaters that tend to take up the whole path going
side to side. And I find that a large percentage of these are wired for
sound and don't hear me.

I try to avoid multi-use paths where possible.

On 11/19/2014 8:17 PM, John D. Slocomb wrote:
On Wed, 19 Nov 2014 12:20:34 -0500, Duane
wrote:

On 11/18/2014 7:48 PM, John D. Slocomb wrote:


Probably the walkers/runners should "take the lane" as it is popularly
known to solve all problems :-)

--

Not to get into this debate on yet another newsgroup, but if you look at
what happens when pedestrians walking at 4-6km/h "take the lane" where
bikes are riding at the legally limited 20k/h you begin to see a pattern...

Hmmm.... I would imagine it will be much the same as a bicycle taking
the lane on a highway where motor vehicles are whizzing by at 80 or 90
:-)

OK, let's develop the analogy.

If the path narrows down so much that there's no room for a bicyclist to
pass the pedestrian, should the pedestrian be required to jump off the
path when a bicyclist approaches? If that's not possible (say, if the
path crosses a very narrow, three-foot-wide bridge) should the
pedestrian squeeze off to the side and tempt bicyclists to pass at speed?

We know that if there's lots of pavement to share, these situations are
much less critical. The slower traveler can stay close to the side and
the faster traveler can easily pass. It's when the passageway is too
narrow, for example, that one must engage one's brain.

Oh, and let's note who started this debate "on yet another newsgroup."

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Thu, 20 Nov 2014 11:12:07 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 11/19/2014 8:17 PM, John D. Slocomb wrote:
On Wed, 19 Nov 2014 12:20:34 -0500, Duane
wrote:

On 11/18/2014 7:48 PM, John D. Slocomb wrote:


Probably the walkers/runners should "take the lane" as it is popularly
known to solve all problems :-)

--

Not to get into this debate on yet another newsgroup, but if you look at
what happens when pedestrians walking at 4-6km/h "take the lane" where
bikes are riding at the legally limited 20k/h you begin to see a pattern...

Hmmm.... I would imagine it will be much the same as a bicycle taking
the lane on a highway where motor vehicles are whizzing by at 80 or 90
:-)

OK, let's develop the analogy.

If the path narrows down so much that there's no room for a bicyclist to
pass the pedestrian, should the pedestrian be required to jump off the
path when a bicyclist approaches? If that's not possible (say, if the
path crosses a very narrow, three-foot-wide bridge) should the
pedestrian squeeze off to the side and tempt bicyclists to pass at speed?

We know that if there's lots of pavement to share, these situations are
much less critical. The slower traveler can stay close to the side and
the faster traveler can easily pass. It's when the passageway is too
narrow, for example, that one must engage one's brain.

Oh, and let's note who started this debate "on yet another newsgroup."

Well O.K., lets develop the analogy a bit further.

In another group, that will not be mentioned, every time someone
reports an accident where a cyclist is hurt or killed, a number of the
denizens, without knowing any details other than "cyclist dies",
immediately call for lynching the motor vehicle driver. People talk
about hitting cars that come too close to them with metal devices,
etc.

Perhaps in fair play we should be crying out for lynching, or at least
tar and feathering, of any cyclist that hits a pedestrian?

Or suggest that the pedestrians carry a cane to beat off the attacking
cyclists?
--
cheers,

John D.Slocomb

Joy Beeson wrote:
Before you overtake someone, MAKE SOME NOISE. "Hi!" is popular for
this purpose when overtaking another bicycle on the road. When
overtaking a pedestrian on a recreationway, I like to give a little
more information. After experimenting with many phrases, I settled on
"I am on your left". This usually elicits a smile and a step to the
right.

Or the classic handlebar bell.

Last time I was in the Netherlands, I noticed that even racing bikes
have them. I didn't confirm, but I'm guessing that it's a legal
requirement.

Smith

On 11/20/2014 7:31 PM, John D. Slocomb wrote:
On Thu, 20 Nov 2014 11:12:07 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 11/19/2014 8:17 PM, John D. Slocomb wrote:
On Wed, 19 Nov 2014 12:20:34 -0500, Duane
wrote:

On 11/18/2014 7:48 PM, John D. Slocomb wrote:


Probably the walkers/runners should "take the lane" as it is popularly
known to solve all problems :-)

--

Not to get into this debate on yet another newsgroup, but if you look at
what happens when pedestrians walking at 4-6km/h "take the lane" where
bikes are riding at the legally limited 20k/h you begin to see a pattern...

Hmmm.... I would imagine it will be much the same as a bicycle taking
the lane on a highway where motor vehicles are whizzing by at 80 or 90
:-)

OK, let's develop the analogy.

If the path narrows down so much that there's no room for a bicyclist to
pass the pedestrian, should the pedestrian be required to jump off the
path when a bicyclist approaches? If that's not possible (say, if the
path crosses a very narrow, three-foot-wide bridge) should the
pedestrian squeeze off to the side and tempt bicyclists to pass at speed?

We know that if there's lots of pavement to share, these situations are
much less critical. The slower traveler can stay close to the side and
the faster traveler can easily pass. It's when the passageway is too
narrow, for example, that one must engage one's brain.

Oh, and let's note who started this debate "on yet another newsgroup."

Well O.K., lets develop the analogy a bit further.

In another group, that will not be mentioned, every time someone
reports an accident where a cyclist is hurt or killed, a number of the
denizens, without knowing any details other than "cyclist dies",
immediately call for lynching the motor vehicle driver. People talk
about hitting cars that come too close to them with metal devices,
etc.

Perhaps in fair play we should be crying out for lynching, or at least
tar and feathering, of any cyclist that hits a pedestrian?

Or suggest that the pedestrians carry a cane to beat off the attacking
cyclists?

Well, what I've called for is this: If a person kills or seriously
injures another person while driving a car, they should be forbidden to
drive for life.

We can work on details, if you like. Things like, how bad would a
"serious" injury have to be to qualify? (Death certainly qualifies.)
How would we handle victim culpability? (e.g., someone deliberately
jumping in front of a car, someone who blatantly and egregiously
violated a law that caused the crash, etc.)

But once such details are worked out, I'd be happy to apply that same
punishment to bicyclists who kill or seriously injure other road users.
That is, if your bike kills a pedestrian, you're never allowed to ride a
bike again.

There won't be many such cases anyway. I suspect that cycling causes
perhaps a few thousand serious injuries and maybe a handful of deaths of
non-cyclists per year in the U.S. It's a far cry from driving, since in
the U.S., cars kill over 4000 pedestrians and over 30,000 other
motorists per year.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 22:12:17 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 11/20/2014 7:31 PM, John D. Slocomb wrote:
On Thu, 20 Nov 2014 11:12:07 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 11/19/2014 8:17 PM, John D. Slocomb wrote:
On Wed, 19 Nov 2014 12:20:34 -0500, Duane
wrote:

On 11/18/2014 7:48 PM, John D. Slocomb wrote:


Probably the walkers/runners should "take the lane" as it is popularly
known to solve all problems :-)

--

Not to get into this debate on yet another newsgroup, but if you look at
what happens when pedestrians walking at 4-6km/h "take the lane" where
bikes are riding at the legally limited 20k/h you begin to see a pattern...

Hmmm.... I would imagine it will be much the same as a bicycle taking
the lane on a highway where motor vehicles are whizzing by at 80 or 90
:-)

OK, let's develop the analogy.

If the path narrows down so much that there's no room for a bicyclist to
pass the pedestrian, should the pedestrian be required to jump off the
path when a bicyclist approaches? If that's not possible (say, if the
path crosses a very narrow, three-foot-wide bridge) should the
pedestrian squeeze off to the side and tempt bicyclists to pass at speed?

We know that if there's lots of pavement to share, these situations are
much less critical. The slower traveler can stay close to the side and
the faster traveler can easily pass. It's when the passageway is too
narrow, for example, that one must engage one's brain.

Oh, and let's note who started this debate "on yet another newsgroup."

Well O.K., lets develop the analogy a bit further.

In another group, that will not be mentioned, every time someone
reports an accident where a cyclist is hurt or killed, a number of the
denizens, without knowing any details other than "cyclist dies",
immediately call for lynching the motor vehicle driver. People talk
about hitting cars that come too close to them with metal devices,
etc.

Perhaps in fair play we should be crying out for lynching, or at least
tar and feathering, of any cyclist that hits a pedestrian?

Or suggest that the pedestrians carry a cane to beat off the attacking
cyclists?

Well, what I've called for is this: If a person kills or seriously
injures another person while driving a car, they should be forbidden to
drive for life.

How about doing away with any "death by auto" charges and fall back
on Murder and/or Manslaughter? If you were to be, for example, driving
too fast for existing conditions and you hit someone then you go to
jail.

It does appear to me though that in the U.S. death by auto seems to
have become some sort of a misdemeanor, if not an outright act of God.
Funny though, When I was in the Air Force we were told that only about
1 - 2% of accidents were actually an act of God and the rest were due
to unsafe pacts or practices.

But I guess with auto's it is an accident :-(

We can work on details, if you like. Things like, how bad would a
"serious" injury have to be to qualify? (Death certainly qualifies.)
How would we handle victim culpability? (e.g., someone deliberately
jumping in front of a car, someone who blatantly and egregiously
violated a law that caused the crash, etc.)

There was a trial in San Francisco involving an accident to a cable
car operator. the Court ruled that the amount owing to the individual
injured was the difference he could have earned in his remaining
lifetime if he was uninjured less the amount he could earn after being
injured. Perhaps a judgment like that for car accidents would work.

But once such details are worked out, I'd be happy to apply that same
punishment to bicyclists who kill or seriously injure other road users.
That is, if your bike kills a pedestrian, you're never allowed to ride a
bike again.

There won't be many such cases anyway. I suspect that cycling causes
perhaps a few thousand serious injuries and maybe a handful of deaths of
non-cyclists per year in the U.S. It's a far cry from driving, since in
the U.S., cars kill over 4000 pedestrians and over 30,000 other
motorists per year.

This primitive country I now live in takes the same attitude toward
injuring someone with a vehicle as they do to any other injury you
might inflect. And, they have this ruling that initially and until
proved different, the biggest vehicle is at faulty. A bicycle hits a
pedestrian, it is the bicycle's fault. If a car hits a bicycle the car
is at fault, a truck hits a car...

Note that this is "initially" and evidence may well prove the larger
vehicle not to be at fault, but it does, I believe temper some of the
aggressiveness that I read here about U.S. traffic.

Either that or the people here are just nicer :-)
--
cheers,

John D.Slocomb

On 11/22/2014 6:44 AM, John D. Slocomb wrote:

This primitive country I now live in takes the same attitude toward
injuring someone with a vehicle as they do to any other injury you
might inflect. And, they have this ruling that initially and until
proved different, the biggest vehicle is at faulty. A bicycle hits a
pedestrian, it is the bicycle's fault. If a car hits a bicycle the car
is at fault, a truck hits a car...

Note that this is "initially" and evidence may well prove the larger
vehicle not to be at fault, but it does, I believe temper some of the
aggressiveness that I read here about U.S. traffic.

That sounds good to me!


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Sun, 16 Nov 2014 15:23:31 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Chaplin
wrote:

Multiuse pathways are like rural roads, and the watchword should be that
wheeled traffic keeps right and foot traffic keep left.

That makes almost as much sense as "semis keep right, pickups keep
left."

The quaint superstition that walking on the left has magical qualities
infests, as near as I can tell, the entire United States. I once had
a deputy stop his patrol car to order me to cross a state road twice
because it was "safer" than walking ten feet on the right shoulder!

Thoughtlessly walking on the left worked fairly well in the
nineteen-forties, when gas was expensive, and it was very rare that a
family had more than one car. When I was first allowed to walk along
a road by myself, Mother told me that if I heard a car coming, I
should get completely out of the road, press up against the fence, and
wait there until that car was completely out of sight.

Walking on the left is ONLY for occasions when you intend to yeld
right-of-way to everything that comes along, and it isn't for all of
those occasions. When I'm walking up Sunday Lane, for example, I walk
in the center of the lane so that I can step to the side that the car
isn't using, or to the side where it's possible to get out of the
street. (It usually turns out that the driver intends to park in the
place where I went to get out of his way. Sunday Lane is )

On Sat, 22 Nov 2014 21:26:56 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:

Something that absolutely was not intended to be sent. Some arcane
combination of keystrokes caused a half-written draft to vanish, and I
found it in the "sent" folder.

Please delete it unread. My first drafts nearly always say the exact
opposite of what I intended.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net

On Sat, 22 Nov 2014 11:18:24 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 11/22/2014 6:44 AM, John D. Slocomb wrote:

This primitive country I now live in takes the same attitude toward
injuring someone with a vehicle as they do to any other injury you
might inflect. And, they have this ruling that initially and until
proved different, the biggest vehicle is at faulty. A bicycle hits a
pedestrian, it is the bicycle's fault. If a car hits a bicycle the car
is at fault, a truck hits a car...

Note that this is "initially" and evidence may well prove the larger
vehicle not to be at fault, but it does, I believe temper some of the
aggressiveness that I read here about U.S. traffic.

That sounds good to me!

Another novel thing that they do here. If a vehicle should hit another
vehicle, or pedestrian and someone dies the police immediately take
the offending vehicle operator into custody.

They may decide later that there is no reason to arrest the operator
and release him but the initial act is "grab him" and that way, if
they later decide that they do want him, they've got him.
--
cheers,

John D.Slocomb