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#71
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raise the money for bike facilities from the reckless drivers
On Nov 15, 10:49 pm, Harry Brogan wrote:
Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota I have to agree with Ed on this. Working towards safer and better bike paths is the way to go. All to often we hear about the "I didn't see them" excuse. The person that hit me a couple of years ago tried to use that excuse....at first....but then changed her story to the talking on the cell phone excuse. Those need to be banned while you are driving the car. There can't be a call that's so important that you can't pull over to take it. __o | Every time I see an adult on a bicycle.... _`\(,_ | I no longer despair for the human race. (_)/ (_) | ---H.G. Wells---- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Well, Dr. Evil, wasn't the originator of that clever remark. He stole it from me... This is what I mean, WE NEED BIKE LANES, BIKE PATHS, AND TAME TRAFFIC WHERE APPLICABLE. We can even raise the money for bike facilities from the reckless drivers. |
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#72
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I am convinced bicycling is not safe
On Nov 16, 5:05 am, Peter Clinch wrote:
Harry Brogan wrote: I have to agree with Ed on this. Working towards safer and better bike paths is the way to go. The usual problem with bike paths is rights of way conflicts where they inevitably meet roads. That creates junctions, and junctions are where most accidents happen. Go and spend some time in NL and you find that a fietspad, even as well implemented as in the NL, does *not* isolate you from traffic. However, in NL you find that the typical driver is a great deal more aware of bicycles than pretty much anywhere else you may have cycled, and I suspect that that is rather more to do with the low accident rates. It is actually the case that plenty of roads in NL don't have a fietspad alongside and, especially in older towns and villages, you may well be sharing the roads with cars. That these areas don't appear to be accident black spots further suggests that it's the awareness of many Dutch drivers that makes the biggest difference. All to often we hear about the "I didn't see them" excuse. And you hear that most at junctions, and with bike paths you've still got junctions. The person that hit me a couple of years ago tried to use that excuse....at first....but then changed her story to the talking on the cell phone excuse. Those need to be banned while you are driving the car. There can't be a call that's so important that you can't pull over to take it. It's illegal to use a mobile 'phone (hands-free excepted, not because it's safe but it's vitually impossible to detect and enforce sensibly) in the UK, and I suspect quite a few other places too. But you still see numpties on their 'phones, and they'll still be using them as they go past the junctions of bike tracks and roads that you'll have to use to negotiate a bike path network. Not that bike tracks don't have their place: there are several I use simply because they're plain /nicer/ to use, and that's reason enough, but that's not the same as making me safer. As for the thesis "bicycling is not safe", well, of course it isn't. People get killed falling over stepping in and out of the bath, so if taking a bath isn't safe why do you expect cycling to be? Check out the fatlities in cars, no shortage, so in absolute terms that's certainly not safe either. The trick is whether it is safe /enough/. Consult the actual accident statistics for your own area to find out who suffers how much in different places. At least in the UK cycling is actually remarkably safe when you look at the actual figures, even though the public perception is it's terribly dangerous. Moral of that one is you can't trust superficial perceptions. From a UK perspective (and it's not necessarily the same eveywhere, granted)http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/321/7276/1582gives a more balanced view than most people's perceptions IMHO. Pete. -- Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/ Well, I knew the UK was a smarter place, not only because they have tamed traffic to a higher degree, but also because they don't have a Republican party. Anyway, this assessment about Holland seems to support my idea TRAFFIC TAMING, BIKE ROUTES AND BIKE LANES. Thank you! Regards, Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota aka Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota |
#73
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I am convinced bicycling is not safe
On Nov 16, 7:34*pm, wrote:
On Nov 16, 1:08 pm, (Tom Keats) wrote: You can't dumb down a neighbourhood -- too much soap opera drama goin' on. I like that interpretation. With that in mind I'm a huge fan of these stylish big double chevron sharrows that are being installed in several cities. Encourage these neighbors to really get to know each other. This neighborhood-community interpretation, relies on bikes, not on cars and, much less, on SUVs with tinted windows. These represent the American sprawl (sprinkled with McDonalds and lack of sidewalks). |
#74
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I am convinced bicycling is not safe
On Nov 16, 11:34*pm, (Tom Keats) wrote:
In article , * * * * writes: On Nov 16, 1:08 pm, (Tom Keats) wrote: You can't dumb down a neighbourhood -- too much soap opera drama goin' on. I like that interpretation. With that in mind I'm a huge fan of these stylish big double chevron sharrows that are being installed in several cities. Encourage these neighbors to really get to know each other. Yeah, that sort of works. *Except here in Vancouver there are very many traffic-engineering attempts to accomodate non-motorized traffic, and sometimes they conflict with each other. For example, we recently had sharrows installed along our Main Street. *But at the same time, we have these pedestrian's sidewalk bulges at intersections. *So from a rider's POV you're just riding along in a straight line in the safe zone, and suddenly the curb juts out at you, and you're squeezed between the motorized traffic and the curb. That's why I cry out for intelligent & thought-out implementation instead of traffic engineers just slap-dashing stuff down on the streets, dusting their hands off, and saying: "There, that oughta keep 'em happy." Anyway, Commander CarmenMiranda'sHat says traffic is a jungle. *I say it's a neighbourhood. *I shall leave it to the readership to decide upon their own approaches. cheers, I don't know if Canada is a jungle, but here it is. And probably true for most of the South. Well, Los Angeles is kind of civilized, but then again it is a Blue state, which happens to have a Republican governor who stands for the Red issues. |
#75
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I am convinced bicycling is not safe
On Nov 16, 11:51 pm, (Tom Keats) wrote:
I have to agree with Ed on this. Working towards safer and better bike paths is the way to go. All to often we hear about the "I didn't see them" excuse. Bike paths generally don't get you to the butcher shop, bakery, cheese shop, supermarket, hardware store, department store, library, community centre or job site. At best they lead to pretty places where you can pick berries when in season, and snap some soon-to-be-forgotten pix with a disposable camera. Bike paths divert customers away from commerce. cheers, Tom Why you generalize? Bike paths take ME to a shopping area. The one and only. Then I've got some back roads that take me to the supermarket. The rest is nobody's land. |
#76
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I am convinced bicycling is not safe
On Nov 17, 10:39 am, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 17, 3:48 am, Peter Clinch wrote: Tom Keats wrote: Bike paths generally don't get you to the butcher shop, bakery, cheese shop, supermarket, hardware store, department store, library, community centre or job site. At best they lead to pretty places where you can pick berries when in season, and snap some soon-to-be-forgotten pix with a disposable camera. Bike paths divert customers away from commerce. That's implementation dependent. There's no particular problem doing one's shopping via bike path in NL, for example. So this highlights not a basic problem with bike paths, but with bike paths that aren't implemented by people who understand their use. No shortage of those around here either, but it isn't a fundamental failing that is 100% bound to afflict all examples. In America, I'd guess that basic problem afflicts well over 90% of bike paths. Almost all are linear parks with negligible transportation benefit, and nothing will change that. Within thirty miles of my house, I know of only one multi-use (or "bike") path that is mostly used as a transportation link. It's only a quarter mile long, and gets cyclists and peds through a dead end for cars, and into the village center. Contrast that with the much- trumpeted rail-trail, just completed, that runs through over 100 miles of corn fields, paralleling beautiful, peaceful country roads! Except for rare exceptions, you can't fit many utilitarian bike paths into our urban or suburban landscape. The land is already taken up. And the odds will always be minuscule that any given cyclist will find a bike path from his home to any particular destination. Yes, I know a dozen bike path fans will mentally object, saying "Well, I ride my bike path to XYZ!" But unless you're a statistical miracle, almost all the practical places to which you want to ride are off the bike path, and so is your home. And it's always going to be that way. - Frank Krygowski- Hide quoted text - We do have some bike paths that go largely under-utilized because of the intersections. They are a problem. Well they also run under the train, which makes it more simply to just ride the train. |
#77
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I am convinced bicycling is not safe
In rec.bicycles.misc Tom Keats wrote:
Tom Sherman writes: Dane Buson wrote: In rec.bicycles.misc Tom Sherman wrote: Dane Buson wrote: I will admit that sometimes truly I long for the day where you can deliver a punch to the face over TCP/IP. It would purely make for a much politer interblag. Do you want to punch Commandante Monkey Poop or Tom Keats? Well, certainly not Tom. I am relieved to have my expectation confirmed. /You're/ relieved!? I just dodged a punch in the face! ( Hi, Dane :-) :-) ) Hello again, I took a wee hiatus when I couldn't be arsed to reconfigure my leafnode server after a HD change and OS upgrade. I've been more than slightly busy with life, but decided to come back and poke around the newsgroups some. -- Dane Buson - C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas l'Informatique. -- Bosquet [on seeing the IBM 4341] |
#78
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Would you favor a bike bailout?
On Nov 17, 5:46 pm, Dane Buson wrote:
I just dodged a punch in the face! ( Hi, Dane :-) :-) ) Hello again, I took a wee hiatus when I couldn't be arsed to reconfigure my leafnode server after a HD change and OS upgrade. I've been more than slightly busy with life, but decided to come back and poke around the newsgroups some. -- Dane Buson - C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas l'Informatique. -- Bosquet [on seeing the IBM 4341]- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Good, welcome back, so long as you don't come on the side of Evil... (Evil is defined here as those who are happy with the status quo, and don't want any changes) Anyway this is a very important question to fight evil and lies out there... Would you favor a bike bailout? Yeah you know, there is a good-old-fashioned American company (remember the slogan "Made with Pride in the USA"?) that made recumbents, and still makes bike trailers. Its name is Burley, which not only doesn't use cheap labor, but also has a cooperative of free workers without a CEO making big bucks. Well, you get the point which is neither Chinese labor nor unionized American workers making SUVs... http://www.bicycleman.com/recumbents/burley/burley.htm Their recumbents were discontinued in 2006, and are supposed to come back. But hey, it ain't easy having competition from cheap labor. "Sun" of Taiwan does produce nice recumbents, but Taiwanese workers enjoy benefits unheard of in America, like universal healthcare, so I guess they are fair competion. Anyway, President Obama, and honorable members of Congress who hold the interests of lobbyists in such a high esteem, as well as the American people who helped Obama become #1, as well as the patriots who voted for McCain out of hate for Obama, why don't you bail out Burley of America, or whatever its name is? poll... http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=487295 |
#79
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I am convinced bicycling is not safe
Dane Buson wrote:
In rec.bicycles.misc Tom Keats wrote: Tom Sherman writes: Dane Buson wrote: In rec.bicycles.misc Tom Sherman wrote: Dane Buson wrote: I will admit that sometimes truly I long for the day where you can deliver a punch to the face over TCP/IP. It would purely make for a much politer interblag. Do you want to punch Commandante Monkey Poop or Tom Keats? Well, certainly not Tom. I am relieved to have my expectation confirmed. /You're/ relieved!? I just dodged a punch in the face! ( Hi, Dane :-) :-) ) Hello again, I took a wee hiatus when I couldn't be arsed to reconfigure my leafnode server after a HD change and OS upgrade. I've been more than slightly busy with life, but decided to come back and poke around the newsgroups some. PLEASE! Usenet is more important than life! -- Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007 If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the precipitate. |
#80
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A March on Washington... on Bicycle?
[Removed rec.bicycles.rides where this was *never* on-topic.]
YOU'RE the one who can't handle riders taking to the road as traffic, during Critical Mass. That makes you the fascist. That's because they do in a disorganized way, which in the end helps the public catalog them as troublemakers, a label applied to all cyclists. =v= Motorists take to the streets in a disorganized way, as traffic, and far more of them break many more laws and doing much more damage. Yet somehow the focus in this case goes onto individual drivers, as if they're individual human beings or something. =v= We should accept nothing less than the same consideration. Those of us who don't live our lives ruled by fear sure don't. _Jym_ |
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